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Sacrum compression

Submitted by michael young on 2022-04-25 20:15

I've started feeling that my sacrum is being compressed and also it feels suspended it is in an omnidirectional hammock.i

pushing up feeling and hanging down

Submitted by pchou42 on 2022-04-04 20:18

When doing the standing today I did feel like I had a pushing up feeling in the neck area but it also felt like my body was kind of hanging off from the top of the head. It almost felt like if you put a sheet over a stick, the pushing up feeling was the stick and the sheet draping down over the stick was the sensation of something from back top of the head just falling downwards around the neck and shoulder. Not sure if this is related to the pearls or maybe this is just related to the foot couple and the head neck and shoulders, or maybe neither and it's just a passing sensation.

Be a Slacker - Seven Aspects of Minding the Slack

Submitted by imklg on 2022-04-03 12:48

The slack of which I speak can only be felt after cultivating coupled power and experiencing a bit of 'noninterference' in meditation. Conceptually, this definition is analogous to the slack of a geartrain. Slack for our purposes is defined as the range between 'softness-weakness' and 'strength-vigor'. This experiential range is subjective, and arises exclusively from interoceptive signals received from the deep core stabilizers. Chinese Martial Arts terminology at the start of this process is Jibengong or 'basic methods' and Shenfa, aka 'torso methods' as practice deepens.

pressure suit

Submitted by pchou42 on 2022-03-31 20:43

When I was practicing today I did the standing, then did some wash face and arm swings. Then I did the standing. Then I did some of the punches/elbows and windmill kick (not sure if that is the correct name) and then the standing. Then I did the kicks that you just taught and the standing. Each time I would return to the standing the pressure suit feelings in the legs would get stronger.

Opening laterally

Submitted by michael young on 2022-03-27 11:57

Something I forgot to mention in one of my previous posts is that along with the smile there is a feeling of expanding laterally. The neck, the skull and sinuses, the chest, and the hips. This lateral expansion is one of the primary conditions that lead to a feeling of openess inside.

Good vibrations

Submitted by michael young on 2022-03-27 11:48

I had an intersting experience this morning. I was having tightness in my neck and my throat, again (eye roll), and I was unable to get back to sleep so as I was lying there I decided to try to use the mental model of standing, especially the soft eyes, throat, and solar plexus. As I did this, I started to feel twitches and vibrations in my lower lip, the area around my eyes, in my throat, around and behind my strenum, at the solar plexus, and into my abdomen and perineum. These vibrations happened with these tissues softened and released. It felt like a bubbling brook flowing downward.

The breath and movement, the cavities

Submitted by michael young on 2022-03-27 11:27

I noticed while training and looking into the cavities that I could allow that breath to affect the cavities which would produce movement. I was bending and when I inhaled, all of the cavities would fill and I would be stood up and my arms would puff out. As I exhaled, I would return to the orginal position. I decided to see what would happen if i treated this expereince like the Tai Chi breath. I would inhale, I would be stood up and my shoulder blades would spread and my arms would puff out.

Back of the U pushing up

Submitted by pchou42 on 2022-03-21 20:03

In the beginning when I first started feeling the back of the U it was just a tiny horizontal line up nears the back of the ribs that would sometimes feel a tiny pulling down when I would do bending. Then one day after I had been doing UCB for maybe a year I all of a sudden felt the back of the U separate like it was three sheets of something and that had been glued together and then glue finally came apart and now it was a longer sheet of stuff.

UCB as a cultivation path

Submitted by michael young on 2022-03-04 15:06

I have recently had an evolution in my view/thinking on The Mental Models. My previous approach was to try to approximate the feeling by moving or stretching. I would stretch my foot and along my ankle, knees, and pelvis in a way that would produce the sensations called for. I'm not saying this is not good practice. But, it is not working the Mental Models. It is body work. It will not lead to the transformation Sifu is pointing toward. It will only lead to a limited physcal skill that can't carry us forward to emptiness or the ability to "just move". The Mental Models are MENTAL!

Disoriented

Submitted by michael young on 2022-02-24 19:57

On my journey of undoing I have noticed that at times my upper torso actually feels like it is detatched form my lower torso. It's like two building blocks that are not just separate blocks but they aren't even stacked over one another. They are significantly offset from one another. When this feeling is clear enough I can "better stack" them and my body feels comfortable. I know that this is not the mental model we are looking for. It's just an observation. Feeling my body with this kind of clarity ibecome acutely aware of this kind of intense sense of physiological disorientation.

Rooting / Grounding

Submitted by pchou42 on 2022-02-16 17:24

A couple of days ago I had my wife push against my arms in the ward off stance for fun. She was probably humoring me and not pushing very hard but she did push and it felt like I was able to withstand a certain amount of force without my structure collapsing. With my right arm out it felt like I could feel the force go into my back foot a bit and on the left side when she pushed I could feel my ribs compressing quite a bit. We have not really talked about rooting or grounding much in our training.

Indifference to discomfort

Submitted by pchou42 on 2022-02-16 17:20

In last weeks class you had started talking about the bones training and how when you start to do the bones training there is this mental aspect where you are not bothered by certain feelings inside the body. Normally when I do the standing and try to feel the transverse and pearls couples I feel like I need to stand tall and do other things in order to feel the couples, if I don't do those things I won't feel the couples. The stretch of the couples also feels somewhat unconfortable.

Yi - Mental Expectation

Submitted by michael young on 2022-02-15 18:48

One of the best, and most frustrating, things that I have been realizing is that I have to STOP DOING this stuff to approximate the models. It's also that most liberating things. This is not some amazing insight that I have had. This is simply the teaching as given by sifu. But, I am hard headed and overly ambitiousto try to produce some effect. I thought that was the thing because other systems use that approach. This is the very thing that sifu is pointing at that makes any system with that approach are "dead ends". Not that they don't produce skills.

Bone Basics - Gravity vs Gravitas

Submitted by imklg on 2022-01-31 10:26

This is a weighty topic. When students first encounter the bones, they laugh. Bones don't make sense. I say:

"Bone Training is weird. You enter a strange and uncertain place. With gravity there is no Yin/Yang. How could there be when gravity does not vary? To separate meat from bones requires great and sustained efforts of mental transformation. Your body's state of bony separation never varies. Our expectations are what varies. At this time, to perceive bony cues is virtually impossible."

Yi versus imagination

Submitted by michael young on 2021-12-15 19:46

I have recently began to notice the qualitative difference between the light yi associated with movement and what I normally associate with "thought". With yi, it always leads to movement or change in the body. I feel like it could be compared to wind. Yi is wind when it it fills a sail and the boat is moved along. Imagination is wind as well but it's immaterial to the boat because the sail is not up and the direction is wrong.