UCB Program

Exploring the foot couple and restarting practice

ian wesley — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 03:49:05 +0000

Week two of practice. Two experiences stand out from the last week of practice. The first was after watching a video on the plex server. Sifu Kelly was leading an exercise where one foot couple is actived more fully then alternating to the other foot being activated more fully. I tried this exercise. I felt a pumping pressure sensation in my neck muscles on the side that was more activated followed by a significant release of those muscles.

The second was while driving I was practicing my tai chi breathing when I became aware of some tension in my back muscles. I kept breathing and became aware that I had been using these muscles to yank on my back for probably years and was able to release them.

Most of this week I have been reflecting on past progress I have made and lost. And how far away from that my body is now. I have moved or life has pulled me away from communities that train together. I have lacked the discipline to train on my own and/or the knowledge to know how to make progress. I am hopeful that this will be a practice I can stick with for years. I have been enjoying the early progress and know the quick wins of the early stages will fade into longer harder fought victories. But I am trying to enjoy this stage of practice and looking forward to my body opening up more and feeling better.

5 Elements

wrenii — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 03:55:30 +0000

Just coming to class was so hard today mentally. I was about ready to call it quits for the night but, as per usual, I stuck it through class. It's always rewarding in the end. I feel ok and my organs, especially my kidneys, are wrung out. Always new things to learn. Interesting (:

Upper Transverse

pchou42 — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 02:49:27 +0000

The transverse stretch that I've previously felt has always only been in the back part of the hip region. I posted more recently about how the part of my back that I feel stretch when I try to stand tall has been moving futher upwards. This feeling has continued to move a tiny bit higher and now when I am focusing on standing tall through this area it feels like the lower ribs are feeling a stretch going outwards. This most recent time I actually fetl a stretch going outwards that was sort of under the shoulder blades ... although I'm not completely sure if it was a stretch or maybe I was actually tensing something but it felt like something new and maybe it was the upper part of the transverse stretch.

Also side note, I've always struggled with this thing where when I do standing sometimes I feel like rolling the hips forwards makes my legs want to rotate outwards and sometimes I'm not sure if what I think the foot couple is may just be the feeling of my feet rotating outwards but held in place by the friction between the floor and my foot. Anyways, this most recent time when I felt the stretch under the shoulder blades I got this slight feeling that there was a new pull that was actually the opposite where my legs were slightly being rotate inwards or maybe it was a just a counter balancing of the outward rotation.

On Stillness

imklg — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 18:11:16 +0000

We all want stillness. States likened to peace, rest, harmony, always seem just out of reach. Yeah, I don't do that. This method doesn't foster that feeling. It's designed to reveal your intrinsic stillness, but you have to do some serious work to gain understanding. Now, I'm not criticizing other methods that give people relief from their suffering. I'm presenting this approach as an alternative to what you already know.

"The way of stillness, a path, the route, the method, anything that leads to striving, is not what I'm talking about. Cultivated stillness is not true stillness." - me

What might this intrinsic stillness be? Where might it reside? In the body or in the mind? Can someone sell it to me? First, know that this intrinsic stillness is there, always, all the time, no matter what, in the body-mind or mind-body. Either will suffice. How to get this perception? That's all it is, a specific kind of perception. A sliver of your sensorum. Very subtle and nebulous at first, then glaringly obvious.

My 5 Mental Models are how I get you there. Standing -> Stillness. First, learn how to stand in an optimized way, then, using specific focus meditations on specific parts of your neuroanatomy, the first aspect of stillness emerges out of the somatic noise of your soft tissue. Easy, Takes about 6 months of Standing to capture this first glimpse. Hope this inspires you to look at your own capacity for stillness in a different way. Cultivation of stillness won't get you there, cultivation of the perception of your own intrinsic stillness will. Also, changing perception is much more difficult than getting an outcome. Finally, stillness is not relaxation and the relationship between the two is not even close. This is topic for another day. Let's close with the idea that intrinsic stillness reveals how profound relaxation might be achieved, but relaxation does not reveal intrinsic stillness. Just keep training.

Standing taller through the ribs

pchou42 — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 03:26:20 +0000

I forget what the proper terminology is for when we talk about slack and how it can be loose or more taut but for now I will just say pull out the slack to mean more taut.

Normally when I do my standing it's been the areas between my feet up to the bottom of the back of the ribs where I can do things to stand tall and pull out the slack. More recently I've been feeling like the stuff under the ribs is an area where I can stand taller and try to pull out the slack. The other day I was working on this (pulling out the slack in the rib area along with the feet/knee/legs/perenium area/back area below the ribs) and I started to get this feeling in one of my legs between the ankle and knee, it felt like a stretch but it felt like a different kind of stretch. When I went from doing the foot couple to working on the transverse couple, the sensation of stretch in the foot couple felt the same or similar to the stretch in the back pelvis area. I'm not sure if this newer feeling was just a one time thing or I'm wondering if when we start to access the deeper layers to the stretches have a different quality to them, or should the stretches in the different parts of the body feel the same but just in different places.

Also, maybe this is unrelated, I did feel like when I was doing the rib stuff it my shoulders/arms were lowering/rotating downwards but it all felt pretty gentle and natural. Today I am feeling quiet sore in the shoulder areas, not sure if feeling more in/under the ribs is related to shoulders at all or if this would be related to other physical activity.

Feeling in the solar plexus

wrenii — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 03:56:37 +0000

I've been noticing throughout my day a feeling like clearing up and softness throughout my torso like I can breathe better and see better and generally am more relaxed. I was wondering what it is - it would come at random, sitting in class or doing homework etc, I'd notice it especially in conditions that put me under stress because the feeling of ease stands out but it's not necessarily limited to any conditions. It took me a few days to realize it is the absence of a tight feeling in my solar plexus/ cavity that was replaced by ease/emptied?: I know the cavity is already a cavity, but you know what I mean. So far the non-interference training has been a new kind of challenge and it's much harder but I'm doing less. It's been a rewarding challenge and it's affecting ie improving all different parts of my life.

Provoking Step / IT band

pchou42 — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 19:02:44 +0000

After the lesson this week the next day I felt some pain/soreness on the side of my leg beneath my knee. I also remember one of the times doing the provoking step when I was torqueing my body I felt a big stretch on the butt and I think that rep may have been the time that really stretched whatever was on that side of the leg. Is it normal to have soreness around this part of the leg when doing the provoking step or was I doing it wrong?

Abdomen stretch

pchou42 — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 17:11:07 +0000

Yesterday when doing the standing meditation I felt a stretch on the front sides of the abdomen. It felt a little like a balloon type feeling like there was a tissue being stretched over an expanding inner object. Normally all the other stretching feelings I've felt in past, e.g. foot couple, transverse, stretch on the back, they've all felt more linnear but this felt like the stretch was being stretched over a more round shape. I also felt like the round feeling stretch a little in my legs as well. This only happened once so not sure if this will happen again or not. I'm curious if this is okay or if this is disconnected. Is this at all related to peng? I feel like I've heard or read people say that peng is sort of like an inflated ball.

It also felt like the feeling of stretch on the front sides was somewhat related to the stretch on the back, if the stretching on the back changed it would affect the front stretch slightly.

Ribs, Shoulders, Hip

pchou42 — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 02:20:00 +0000

I feel like I am able to notice the ribs a little more than before when I do step tap but what I've noticed is that I have to keep the shoulders down. If I don't try to keep them down then the feeling in the bottom back ribs is not clear. Is this fine to do now, or is my sensation of the ribs just because i'm tensing some muscles around there in order to keep the ribs down. I also noticed when I did the tortise stepping that it seemed like I could feel the ribs a bit like when I do the step tap.

I feel like probably for a while now I've not really been going through the 10 points of standing when I do the standing since I've been focused on trying to feel some of the other things we've been working on. So I went back and revisited the 10 points and then today when I was doing the standing I noticed that my right hip socket seemed to be able to release or move into a different position and it felt weak and there was trembling. Does more rib awareness relate at all to the development of the hips or is it just coincidence that I've maybe not been doing the standing correctly and now I'm just using part of the hip that hasn't been used in a while.

Getting the junk out

pchou42 — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 12:56:24 +0000

When I was doing tai chi in college I remember Carlos saying that after you do tai chi for a while you could become ill because the tai chi movements help squeeze the lymphatic system which can make them release old junk that is store inside your body. After last class and the class two weeks ago I felt a little ill afterwards and the following day. Are the new movements we've been going over more likely to release junk that's been stored inside the body? I've felt a little like the joints that were worked are a little achy and also inside the abdomen it feels like something is going on.

Upper transverse stretch or nothing important

pchou42 — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 03:40:39 +0000

A few days a go when doing the push pull elbow I felt a stretch in the middle of the upper back right on the spine and inline with the shoulder blades. When I did the standing that spot felt similar to how the transverse stretch feels in the lower part of the body. The next day when doing the standing I could not feel it very clearly but it seemed like there was still some awareness of that spot and also I feel like the shoulders and ribcage had a different awareness than the previous day. Today when I did the new version of the goat punches I could feel a stretch in that area but then when I was doing standing and I would try to put my awareness on that spot I did not have any feelings of a transverse stretch. I did however feel that my shoulders were wanting to move in a different way than before and I also noticed a different kind of stretch feeling along the front of the clavicle.

I'm wondering if this point on the middle of the back is something that I should keep trying to put my attention on to build the neuronal connections or if this is not related to the transverse stretch in the upper region. I know when I progressed from standing to stillness the transverse stretch in the lower region was completely invisible at first, just like the foot couple was when starting standing but after many practice sessions the feelings eventually were able to be felt.

Also, today I did feel like the sides of the neck had some feeling of being supported. I remember there was a class where you asked if when I would tilt my head if I had any stretching feelings or feelings of support. I didn't tilt my head around but just having it in place there was the feelings on the sides of the neck.

One Time Feelings / Upper body twisting and pelvic floor

pchou42 — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 02:28:00 +0000

Last week there was one time when I was doing the standing and I felt like I had this sensation where the upper front part of the hip was connected into the front part of the abdomen, maybe it was the master cavity. When I would bend it would feel like that point on the hip was pulled into the upper abdomen part. I haven't felt that again though, not sure if this is just a passing sensation or if that kind of sensation is a connection we should try to be aware of.

This week when I was practicing the push pull elbow / rib flexibility there was one time when I turned and it felt like the bottom of the pelvic floor also twisted or rotated with the upper body. I think you've said this is related to folding. The following day though when I was doing the push pull elbow I never had that feeling however when I did the standing afterwards it did feel like the transverse stretch that I normally feel in the back of the sacrum felt like it was more across the bottom of the pelvic floor and in the center of the pelvis. After that though I have not had that same feeling in the transverse stretch.

Also, last week after class I felt like I somehow over worked my foot, It felt like the plantar fascia part in the picture below was pretty sensitive. It did improve and feels better now but there was another day where it was kind of sensitive. I'm just curious if other students have ever had pain in the foot from this training and if it's fine or is it a sign of doing something improperly

Shoulder Blades and Ribs

pchou42 — Tue, 24 May 2022 20:08:00 +0000

In last weeks class I asked some questions about the shoulders and posture and since then I've been thinking that maybe I've been interfering too much with their placement and I've been trying to let them be more natural. This week I've been feeling or have been having an awareness of the shoulder blade or the tissue or space underneath it. I don't remember when but I thought you had said sometime earlier in the training something about the shoulder blades feeling like they just hang off the back. Maybe I'm imagining that but it feels a little like the left shoulder blade has a little of that hanging feeling. Not sure if that is related to the different intention on the shoulders or if it is related to the rib stretching that we went over.

I've also noticed that there is a feeling around the lower left ribs that has returned although it feels like it's deeper. In my last standing session it felt like after a while the lower ribs area on the left and the area under the should blade were both sort of trembling a little and were somehow related. I guess this is probably just another one of the sensations that will pass and is just apart of the "noise" that needs to clear to be able to feel the couples more clearly.

Spine / Back of the U

pchou42 — Tue, 03 May 2022 03:12:06 +0000

Most recently my ability to feel or perceive what I've thought of as the back of the U has travelled futher up the back. I thought that the back of the U was from the lower part of the ribs down towards the sacrum but now it seems like the stretch in my back can be felt slightly higher than the bottom of the ribs. When I was standing earlier in the day and I was feeling more of the tissue/stretch it almost felt a little like spine lengthened. Then later when I was doing it in the evening I was noticing that it seems like the higher up part of the stretch was more on the left side. I know I have a bend in the spine towards the right in my lower back, I wonder if the stretch is trying to pull or straighten out the spine.

I also have not had a lot of clarity on the front of the U but it seemed like this higher up stretch that I was feeling maybe made the front of the U a little more clear, although I'm not sure if I was feeling it or maybe just imagining it. I've been trying to work on feeling the pushing of the shoulder but have not had much more clarity in that region yet but I'm wondering if the feeling of the stretch in the spine maybe is leading towards more awareness in the transverse stretch in the upper back.

pushing up feeling and hanging down

pchou42 — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 03:18:58 +0000

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 - Six Aspects of Minding the Slack

imklg — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 19:48:56 +0000

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. A CIMA term for this overall practice is known as 'Jibengong' or basic methods.

Here's my six aspects of minding the slack:

No collapse - e.g. not falling down. We really don't have a word for 'No collapse'. 'Standing' as part of standing meditation is a good beginning to capture the feeling of 'No collapse', but I prefer a positive definition for something so basic. In our practice, the word standing takes on additional depth.
Everyday ordinary movement - This refers to transition from the esoteric sensations to normal everyday experience. This transition results from changes in our sensorium. The meditative practice is based on 'noticing'. In esoteric terms under 'Yi->Qi->Li', we prefer 'Light yi for mild qi' over 'Heavy yi for wild qi'.
Monitoring - Slack is the primary tool for evaluating progress from Stillness and Pearls to Bones.
Feel the bones - Separate bones and meat, in the beginning, means the ability to directly contact the bones; also, see mobilizers and stabilizers.
One thing - One thing to do that is all inclusive.
Easy - When using the slack, complex integrated movement with coupled power is easy, some might say effortless. Effortless is a bit misleading. Effortless takes years to accomplish. Doing one thing is easier than many things.

Many esoteric terms might appear to be synonomous with slack, but lack specificity. Specificity is increased using systems modeling. Our body is a complex system consisting of both open and closed components. The important structural distinction to make is between mobilizers and stabilizers. Our mobilizers are an open system. Stabilizers are a closed system.

The term 'neutral' appears when discussing internal power and is often used as a synonym for slack. I find it helpful to see 'Neutral' as a concept that only applies to open systems as there exist outside references. Neutral only has meaning in reference to something else. As the mobilizer system is responsive to outside input, it is an open system. It follows that 'neutral' only applies to the meat, not the bones.

Slack has meaning independent of any outside references. Also, unlike neutral, slack describes a relationship of dependency between the parts. Optimal efficiency and power transfer with minimal vibration (the bad kind, noisy, not the good kind, coherent and harmonic) is only possible due to slack. Take away the slack and your geartrain ceases to be functional. This relationship applies directly to CIMA. [wip]

pressure suit

pchou42 — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 03:43:44 +0000

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. Then at the end I just did some bending and even though the ankles were not moving laterally I could feel stretching through and around the ankles, also there was noticable stretch around the knees as well when bending. I didn't really feel like I could feel the cavities but the bending did feel like it was more moving in unison and the movement was more being pulled straight. Is the feeling of bending with more coordination mean that the is more development towards feeling/awareness of the cavities?

Also, the pressure suit feeling has always been in the lower half of the body but in one of the shoulders/should nests areas there was a bit of a pressure suit kind of feeling, not sure if that is some awareness of the cavities in the upper body.

Good vibrations

michael young — Sun, 27 Mar 2022 18:48:37 +0000

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. I have never had these sensations to this degree. I assume that these fasciculations are occuring as habitual tension is being released and that they are not an experience to be sought after. The outcome was relase and openess. The openess wasn't permanent. That just points out the necessity for immersing myself in the Mental Models for duration and consistently inorder to retrain the body/mind.

The breath and movement, the cavities

michael young — Sun, 27 Mar 2022 18:27:47 +0000

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. Then, I would exhale and instead of dropping back to the original position, I would hold the cavities in the condition that the inhale moved them to. This left the interior of my body and the cavities felt more open and expansive. Then, I inhaled again and the cavities felt even more filled and stretched and the standing stretch increase and the arms puffed out even further. With this inhale, the interior of my body felt very open and expansive and the breath was very easy and light. With the exhale, the stretch was very strong to maintain the feeling of openeness. This exploration led me to a renewed appreciation and a new view of the Tai Chi Breath. Letting the breath teach me about ease and relaxation. Learning about openness and releasing the neck. Seeing how closed and collapsed my spine and torso are since when I inhale they have to move out of the way to make room, but once I've opened up and hold the stretch i'm open and expansive inside and breathing is simply movement.

Back of the U pushing up

pchou42 — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 03:03:52 +0000

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. Today when I was doing the standning I was feeling the foot couple and transverse couple more clearly than I had been feeling it lately, and the back of the U had this slight upward supporting feeling like it was the upward part in a tensegrity object.

I know that you've said that in the pearls couple there is the pulling down in the neck ring and a slight upward pressure somewhere in the back of the neck of base of the head, so not sure if this is related or just different and if it is a feeling that will be consistent or just another thing that is changing over time.

UCB as a cultivation path

michael young — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 22:06:07 +0000

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! They are not sensations that arise as the result arranging the body in any certain way in a voluntary way. The Mental Models use what Sifu calls "concrete thought" because the thought/Yi/mental expectaion has a definite/concrete effect on the body and how it arranges ITSELF. I think this could also be called "body-thoughts". The kind of thought/intent that the body automatically responds to. Therefore, The Mental Models are MEDITATIONS. They are an attunement of the mind/body using the concrete body-thoughts. This transforms the mind/body over time. Sifu has said that the body/mind already knows what perfect posture is because of the gravity feedback mechanism between the body and the stabilizers. He then said that The Mental Models are meditations that help us to feel the sensations that this feedback mechanism produces in the body. They aren't exactly those things. They act as a direct bridge towards the body's own perfect posture. It is a process of shedding cultural, emotional, and personal artifacts from the body/mind by bathing in The Mental Model to the exclusion of any other thought, feeling, or action. This transforms our posture, our emotions, and our mental state over time. This process and the effects of it resonate deeply with my own interests in self cultivation/holistic spirituality. I'm very interested in finding, practicing, and demonstrating a complete system of personal cultivation that addresses as many if not all of the dimensions of what it means to be human and I see this process as encompassing many of those dimensions.

Disoriented

michael young — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 02:57:22 +0000

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. My mind and my body are not unified. I know that this is not factual. I know that it's my mental model that has distorted the feedback that my nervous system reports to my awarensess. That's kind of a difference without a real distinction in experience. The phrases that are used in some of the esoteric approaches that speak of unifying or harmonizing the Yi and the Qi and the Qi and the body. I am aware that I, my mental model of my body, am not "in" my body. "I' am kind of floating outside of my body as if to look at it from above. When I do Standing I can feel my mind being pulled into my body and settled into its actual place in space.

Rooting / Grounding

pchou42 — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 00:24:32 +0000

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. Is this skill something that will just develop the more we progress on feeling the couples and the other stages or the training or is there specific stuff to learn to lead force down the body? Just curious

Bone Basics - Gravity vs Gravitas

imklg — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 17:26:41 +0000

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."

I have developed the Mental Models so that these perceptual changes are clear and inevitable. One leads to the next and the next contains the previous. These perceptual changes also enable the deep tissue transformational process of ‘Softness Into Hardness’. A very difficult process, but worth the effort. Initially, practitioners must notice that a heavy mind, such as in those who cultivate gravitas, is exactly the opposite of the lightness of mind required to separate bones and meat. If you find yourself in a grim and serious state regarding your NeiJia practice, stop it. Progressing requires that you walk the finest of lines between great effort and lightness of mind. On the other side of Bone Training you will see that the line is not fine at all.

As for a concrete training methodology, there are several requirements during practice. What movement you choose doesn't matter, although certain movements help. In order of dependency:

Clearly distinguish Shen. ( Refined Warrior Spirit ) from Yi. This takes some meditative work, but with the Standing Mental Model it becomes clear that these feelings arise from different sensory networks. Confusing the two leads to 'Heavy Yi and Wild Qi'. In general, this means do not strive for any positive outcome. Notice the interactions between Shen and Yi->Qi. Avoid anything that imparts Heavy-ness.
Be intentional. Intentional learning in this context means your expectations govern outcomes. This is the most difficult aspect to understand.
Mind the Slack. By maintaining slack as the object of your moving mediation, you are cultivating the mental model and movement primitive that together stimulate the deep sensory networks needed to condition the tissues to clearly perceive that the bones and meat are already separate. This reinforces the Yi.

The separation of bones and meat realization comes first, then, over time, the new perceptions become part of 'everyday and ordinary' movement. There is huge change in the type of training a student can perform after the change in Yi that supports Separate Bones and Meat. For example, certain extremely twisty NeiGong shapes that, before the change in Yi, constrict the breath and range of movement, while the same movement performed after, the breath is free and range of movement increased. Then we play with the different expectations and notice the effect on the breath in the same twisty postures. After a month or so, the Heavy Yi and Light Yi difference begins to become clear. In this method, the Heavy Yi and Light Yi perception is required to directly access the bones. This is very different than indirectly accessing the bones by way of the 'meat reference'. 'Softness into hardness' as a deliberate training process is dependent on this change in perception.

Yi versus imagination

michael young — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 02:46:10 +0000

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. Imagination and visualization can't lead to the integration that we are looking into because it's in the realm of fantasy and theoretically projecting into nothing. Yi is the place where the mind and body are already integrated. It's not projecting or imagining something and waiting for something magic to happen. Once we are given a sensory feedback to pay attenion to and we observe those feelings and how they evolve we start to get a glimpse of what yi is. We see how our intent affects these sensations and our bodies. Well, that enough from me. Hopefully, that made some kind of sense.

5 Elements stomach

pchou42 — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 21:07:03 +0000

I know I've noticed this before I got busy with moving but I was doing the 5 elements some more and I noticed that after I do it when I sit down my stomach feels different, maybe larger or full? Is this just related to increased blood flow in that region or something from the different pressures on the organs? I know sometimes you've said if there is a full belly feeling it can mean that you are disconnected. Is this indicitive or something positive or negative? Or just what happens from doing the practice?

STS Bending

pchou42 — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 02:15:34 +0000

I was practicing the beginning of the san ti shi with the bend and coordinated arm movement. I was trying to not float from the crown point, not sure if I was doing it correctly or not but the thing I was noticing was that when I was unbend and the arms would go down I could feel a stretch or like a rubbing against the lower back/ribs along the side of the back. It was more pronounced on the right side but I could feel it faintly on the left side as well. Is this related to the transverse couple or is this just a passing sensation.

David Beckham Global TaiJi Ambassador

imklg — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 19:12:17 +0000

Embedded video for David Beckham Global TaiJi Ambassador

Many don't like this sort of thing, to me, any additional awareness is good for TaiJi and Chinese Internal Arts in general.

San Ti Shi Elbows, Arm pit and Ribs

pchou42 — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 02:37:51 +0000

Up until now when I've done the San Ti Shi I've felt a big stretch in the back like I was getting rid of some of those fascia crosslinks and getting more mobility. Today when I was doing San Ti Shi I noticed though that the out reached hand side of the body could feel a closing of the ribs sensation when I was thinking about the elbow rotating inwards and the hand going forward. I also could noticed a connection through the arm pit area with the out stretched arm. I also felt like when I was doing this today it did start to feel like it was working my body in a more demanding way than before.

Maintaining ease is not easy

jaybird — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 16:42:20 +0000

Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, maintaining ease has been quite the transformational highlight during my UCB journey. On the one hand, shouldn't ease be easy? On the other, it seems clear why this should be the case. Afterall, striving and forcing have been my primary path to achievement in so many areas of my life. Frustration arises when these primary modes do not produce the desired results that only come through maintaining ease. I feel my capacity for ease is expanding but I notice my propensity for forcing and striving much more clearly when standing. Comparatively, I have far more practice with forcing and striving. It's what feels comfortable. Incorporating ease into training is more foreign and produces all sorts of thoughts and emotion which I presume arise from self doubt.