Qigong/Warm-up - does the Yang family recommend anything in particular?

[global village idiot]

My classes do qigong as a warm up and, it must be admitted, as a sort of "side benefit" for our students to do at home when they're not feeling really up to, or comfortable with their memory of the empty-hand form. I find Qigong "forms" are generally easier to remember, pretty comprehensive when done as a complete "form," tend to require less room and are generally somewhat more familiar to Westerners than the postures and transitions in the empty-hand form, apart from and independent of all the benefits of the empty-hand form, which need not be gone into because we all know them.

My colleague and I, who have a mix of beginners and intermediate students, have a tradition brought forward from our old school where everyone who knows any qigong exercises is invited to suggest it and lead the group in it. This has advantages (student confidence, group cohesion/bonding, enthusiasm/ownership, etc.) and disadvantages (some areas of the body might not receive attention). I do the same thing in my own class, but only with my more experienced students. With beginners I'll guide them through an entire "form" so that they are introduced to it and also so that the entire body is given due attention.

I know and teach four "forms" of qigong:
o Ba Duan Jin
o Yi Jin Jing
o Wu Xing
o "9 Temple Exercises"
...with the understanding that there is vast variation in each of these and the way I do them may not be the same as others. I introduce students to them as I think they're ready - generally in the order you see them (my version of Wu Xing is more challenging than Ba Duan Jin, for example), and I throw in a "Temple Exercise" when I want the students to spend more time investigating/exploring certain of the Ten Essentials like "Separate Empty and Full" or "Song Yao" and so on.

I don't remember the Yang Family Instructor materials spending much if any time on qigong "forms," nor do I recall them recommending any. I know when you attend a seminar with the Grandmaster, he expects you to be warmed up before he begins his instruction, which for him makes perfect sense. I don't think I can ask this of my students, nor do I really want to.

It's very true that most of the postures/transitions in the empty-hand form can be done as qigong, but I tend to separate the two activities out of habit more than anything else.

Does anyone know if the Yang family recommends a particular set of qigong exercises as a supplement or "warm-up"?

TIA,
gvi

[fchai]

Hi Gvi,

I have seen posted a form called Yang Family Taiji Qigong, 10 Movements. However, it seems to be a compilation of some typical postures done in repetion to the left and right. There are Taiji instructors who teach abbreviated forms such as 8 Postures Form, etc., which has a very similar approach to the "10 Movements Yang Family Taiji Qigong" form, where you do say Flying Oblique first to your left, then return to start position and do it again but to the right, and so on and so forth. However, doing the postures in this manner, seems to me at least, to be missing something. It may be okay as just movements for the purpose of exercise or loosening up, but the martial quality is missing, and it just doesn't sit comfortably with me. But, that's me and others will no doubt think and feel differently.

I also use qigong forms for both warm up and warm down, pre and post practising the Taiji forms. I use Ba Dua Jin, Yang Sheng and the Lotus qigong forms. I also use other loosening and warm-up routines, but these are more general stuff like knee rotations, arm swings, waist rotations, knee bends, etc. Some of these are routines picked up from previous martial arts training.

Each instructor uses what he/she considers appropriate for the class and the students in it. If you have a class with an older demographic, you may decide to soften/ease/adjust the routines to accommodate any physical constraints. As long as the routines get the class to properly warm-up and loosen before the class proper begins, all is good.

Take care,
Frank

[Bob Ashmore]

GM Yang Jun normally does a quick set of group warm ups at the beginning of a seminar session in the morning, usually again after the mid day break, but I've only ever heard him call them "warm ups", never Chi Kung.
Some of the warm ups he uses probably could be considered "Chi Kung like" if you stand back ten feet and squint at them but I don't believe you'd find many who would actually call them that.
If the Yang Family has an actual Chi Kung set I've never seen it or even heard it mentioned.
I've learned at least a dozen different types of Chi Kung sets over the years, some I still use, others seemed to not do me much good.
More than likely operator error rather than a shortcoming to the form.

[global village idiot]

Hey, Bob!

Yeah, I did a "warm-up" with Yang Jun in Michigan last year. 50 squats and I-lost-count-at-60-some-odd side squats (like for "single whip low style").

I don't care to put my students through that - I'll stick to Ba Duan Jin for them

gvi

[Bob Ashmore]

When I got home from my first hand form/sword form seminar with YJ I could barely walk! I had spent a week and change in Louisville between the two seminars, including the daily "warm up sessions".
I was nearly twenty years younger then, had been doing TCC for over 15 years, and it still beat me to heck and back.
Add those warm ups to hours and hours of form work and sword swinging every day and I was nearly done in.
My legs were simply burning.
Fortunately it was in that good way, sounds weird but... it was.
Because when I woke up the next morning I was absolutely fine, there wasn't days and days of burn out from it like most kinds of physical labor.
I always promised myself to maintain that level of training.
Of course I didn't, so it happened again at the next seminar... then the next... then the next... a few more...
Then at the first Symposium... then again at the second.... (still bummed out that I could not attend S3 due to work especially as my first teacher, Eddie Wu, was teaching there! But I digress).
I would always come home with wobbly legs and feeling fairly well burned out but...
Then the next day... fine.
TCC is a different kind of physical training, sure it's very difficult and for a short time will beat you up a bit, but in the long run when it's done right (hard to go wrong with a GM leading the training) it builds you up much more than it beats you down.

[global village idiot]

I wonder how much of that "recovery from a Yang-Jun Educational Beatdown" is the nature of the art itself, and how much is our own conditioning. Because I can imagine one of my intermediate students attending such a session and afterward, me having to pour him or her out of a bucket into the back seat of my car

I've just finished teaching myself the 13 Luohan form because it emphasizes some stuff I'm weak on; specifically, my right leg is VERY unsteady in one-legged stances - the kicks & Gold Rooster in empty-hand, things like Circle the Moon with Three Rings and Lifting the Curtain in jian. 13 Luohan has several one-legged postures, and it's pretty good conditioning - very dynamic.

gvi

[Bob Ashmore]

GVI,
I think how much is the art and how much is personal conditioning depends on how much of the art you are actually doing.
It took me about a decade to realize how movement in TCC works, which was about six or seven years before my first Yang family seminar, after that doing TCC became quite easy and, in fact, has since been integrated into everything I do making most movement based effort also quite easy.
So for me, and anyone else at that level in the art, it's the nature of the art that allows a quick recovery from that level of training.
Your intermediate student most likely is still using mostly gross muscle movement to shove their body through getting the job done, that's gonna hurt and it's going to do so for a long time. They're really doing calisthenics, not TCC. How much would your body hurt after days on end doing hours and hours of calisthenics and how long will that hurt last? Well, that depends entirely on how well conditioned your muscles are.
"Conditioning" the body to work correctly using TCC movement principles happens practically overnight once someone understands the method, because it is more of a mental effort than a physical one. Once your mind starts to allow your body to move correctly the effort needed to move becomes much less then it is when you're using purely muscle, allowing you to move more correctly with much less physical effort and so while you will get "tired" you won't get exhausted very easily. You use your muscles still, obviously, but in an entirely different way that allows them to recover as you're moving. Not entirely, muscle is still muscle, but if you're using them correctly then the movements themselves, and how you do them, turn into therapy rather than calisthenics.
In fact most of the "hurt" you will experience after you master the correct movement method for TCC is due to misalignment in your postures that cause you to use some gross muscle movement to compensate. That's why every Master you meet focuses so intently on correct postural alignment!
Movement from the mind is really, really hard to explain. I know because I've been trying to explain it to people ever since I figured it out. So far my track record is very low in getting someone else to understand the method. Probably about one in 50 of my students has ever actually caught on to it and I'm probably high balling that ratio.
You will hear the expression bantered around in TCC circles about someone who is actually doing the art, and only by those that are also actually doing it, "That movement was entirely from the mind, not the body", when they are praising someone's grasp of TCC movement.
There's a HUGE level of truth to that statement. Movement from the mind is instantly noticeable to those who are already doing it and when we see it we're always impressed.
We don't see it very often to be honest.
The reason it's so hard to learn to move from the mind and not the body is because it's so easy to do.
Yep, you read that right.
It's so ridiculously easy that almost no one believes it will work.
I've actually assisted a LOT of students to do it, once, then they almost immediately discard it because, well, "That CAN'T be right! It's too easy!"
Once you get the idea in your head that it can't be right... it's not right and your mind doesn't allow it to happen.
I've seen it countless times in my teaching life, so I know it for what it is.
It always makes me sad.
Every time I try to simply write out the correct method I get laughed at and ridiculed.
Again, "It's too easy! That can't be right!" are thrown back at me repeatedly.
Even here, on this very forum, where I once made the ridiculous mistake of finally breaking down and actually typing out how to move correctly using your mind for TCC...
Not a single person who didn't already know how believed me!
Over on the old Taichikungfu magazine forum I made that same mistake.
Same thing happened over there. Only on that forum the hard style guys simply lost their minds and spent weeks trying to convince me I was wrong.
I'll never make that mistake again!

[yslim]

Good morning Bob
I find myself on the same path of TCC with you in this post of yours. Therefore I 100% agree with you what the true value of TCC should be. EXCEPT....I don't get it why you said : "I'll never make that mistake again!". I thought "pure gold fears no fire" applies here.No?
Ciao,yslim

[Bob Ashmore]

Y,
I meant by posting it on a predominantly hard style dominated site, which is an exercise in futility.
If you tell a hard stylist the truth about internal arts it sounds like "high level magic" to them and because of that they can't, or won't, believe it.
The same is true for most students of the internal arts, so it's not entirely on them alone.
It all comes down to this quote from our favorite Star Wars character Yoda that is the one of the most true statements I have ever heard:
Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

[Bob Ashmore]

In the vein of gold, fire, no fear...
Challenge accepted!

Let's see what happens... because...
You want to talk about TCC theory? Go ahead, everyone's an expert and they will talk with you about it for hours.
But getting people to put their money where their mouth is and actually DO TCC...
Well...
That's another thing altogether.
So here we go... again... let's see who's willing to put their money where their mouth is.

There are two sides to everything, including how you can choose to use your muscles.
In TCC we teach to "relax", we teach to "loosen", we teach "stickiness" and "adherence", we teach "following", we teach "do no resist, do not go against" and a whole list of other things.
All of these things, and a plethora more, can only come about from practicing one concept that is so ridiculously simple no one can fail to understand it, but it has to not only be understood...
It HAS to be believed.
Understanding it mentally...
Sure. Everyone can do that.
But believing it... not so much. In fact... almost never.
This super ridiculously easy concept that I've been trying to get across to folks for simply decades is one that if you don't believe it, and I mean truly, honestly, down to your very core believe it...
You will fail.

With that firmly in mind I am now going to refer to "authority" for verification of this concept.
The Yang family teaches this super simple concept in their very first lesson.
And I mean...
The very, very first day, they come right out and say it to everyone.
And they keep right on saying it.
Over and over again.
Hardly anyone pays it the least bit of attention but it is the single most important bit of information they're handing out.
They're hiding the basis for the entire art right out in plain sight.
Which is the simply best way to hide anything.
Okay, rambling over, so are you ready for the super deep dark ancient Chinese secret that you don't need a decoder ring to get?
Here it is...

"Open, rounded, and extended movement".

Done.
Told you it was easy.
There is the ENTIRE art handed to you on a silver platter in one quick lesson.

[global village idiot]

ancient Chinese secret

My husband...some hotshot! Here's his "ancient Chinese secret..."

Hey there, Bob!

I should explain and expand a bit more.

I separate "conditioning," especially that done with 13 Luohan, from my practice of taijiquan. Remember what I'd said a while ago about trying to be as active as someone in late-Qing-dynasty China might be. Basically the qigong I do like that (Wu Xing especially) is "conditioning" or "warmup" for the bodyweight strength training which I still believe is necessary for me, my ticker and my slowly-decelerating metabolism.

As to the postures in taijiquan, taijidao and taijijian, I wish - as much as possible - to isolate them from those in my qigong...for now, anyway. It's complicated, but works something like this:

With qigong, I don't feel the same compunction to do things "right" or "by the book" as I do with taijiquan. With the latter, I wish to do as you advise, and let my mind and the internal feelings guide the postures/transitions, as well as those things I've been taught correctly. With qigong, I feel a bit more open-minded toward it, free to improvise and adapt. In the same way that children use a school playground at recess to experiment with social interaction (whether or not they know that's what they're doing), I also use qigong as a playground to experiment with taiji feelings and structure, then work what I learn into my own "internal classroom" of taiji practice, and then bring that work back to the qigong.

This freedom normally manifests itself as follows: when I do a qigong posture that appears similar to a taiji posture, I'll tend to adapt it so as to be more "taiji-like" than it may originally be represented. An example would be how I do "Bear Shakes Tail" from Ba Duan Jin - I'll move in a way that looks more like the lower-body work in "Single Whip Low Posture" than it's normally seen (I won't do the head roll because I get dizzy easily), and "Snake" from Wu Xing will be much the same thing.

So I'm "playing" - in the sense of letting the process happen without attachment or investment in the outcome turning out a certain way - with the standing-on-one-leg postures in 13 Luohan, then applying what I've learned in that "play" to the standing-on-one-leg postures in taiji. This frees up the time doing taiji for exploration of the feelings, intent and so on that I'd rather investigate and explore, instead of struggling to maintain a posture. I've already done the "struggling" in the qigong. This back-and-forth also seems to help the flow of the taiji form better, as my mind is not interrupted by "geeking myself up" for a physically challenging posture, nor recovering from the struggle of having achieved and maintained it.

The above could all be rationalization, but it's the best explanation of what I meant by "conditioning."

As for my own belief or disbelief in the concept of "open, rounded, and extended movement," I take my hint from part of a lesson I lecture on in Masonry about the "Rough Ashlar" (the stone taken from the quarry in its rude-and-natural state) and the "Perfect Ashlar," the relevant portion of which goes like this:
"By the rough ashlar, we are reminded of our rude and imperfect state by Nature; by the perfect ashlar, that state of perfection we hope to arrive at by a virtuous education, our own efforts and the blessings of Deity..."

In other words, I have to be open-minded to right instruction by good educators and "expert craftsmen" who've gone before me, I have to "chip away" or give up old and erroneous assumptions and habits by diligent work, and I have to "trust the process" and see it through to completion with a sense of humility, optimism and good faith.

gvi

[BBTrip]

Okay, rambling over, so are you ready for the super deep dark ancient Chinese secret that you don't need a decoder ring to get?
Here it is...

"Open, rounded, and extended movement".

Done.
Told you it was easy.
There is the ENTIRE art handed to you on a silver platter in one quick lesson.

Greetings Bob,

I like!
But...I think there is a key word missing from your "Secret Silver Platter."
The word is Loosening.
Loosening & Sinking -- Opening & Extending.
aka,
Fang Song & Fang Kai

In a Rounded manner of course!

[fchai]

Greetings,

I couldn't resist throwing in my two bobs worth. Sorry for the pun. As with GVI, I also use qigong forms for my warmups. However, when I do the qigong form, I also focus on stillness and immersing myself in the 'Dao'. So, it is not just physical warmup but also mind/spirit warmup (?). So, when I do the Long Form I am not just physically prepared, but my mind/spirit is as well. To me if you just emphasize the stretching of ligaments, sinews, etc. during warmup, you are not taking the opportunity to also prepare, focus and still your breathing, mind and spirit. Then when you practice you can bring together what I call the "Five Pillars". Balance (Yin and Yang, the Middle Way, Equilibrium), Mind-Intent, Fang Song, Stillness and Continuous.

Take care,
Frank

[global village idiot]

Hey there, Frank!

I purposely left out anything "internal" in the discussion; not because I'd ignored it or thought it was unimportant, but because I just reckoned everyone does this.

For my part, the mental/emotional aspect of "warmup" qigong depends in large part on what happens after it. Sometimes I'm calming my mind for better focus on the forms I'm about to do. Sometimes I'm getting myself geeked-up for the strength training I'm about to do. Sometimes I'm trying to pay close attention to how I feel mentally, emotionally and physically - this was especially so when I was learning the "13 Luohan" form a week or two ago. And sometimes I'm trying to calm the "monkey mind" and just be mentally still for a while. It depends, and it's often a combination of two or more of these things.

But yeah, I can't see how one can do qigong (or taiji) without a mental/emotional component.

Cheers,
gvi

[Bob Ashmore]

Hey, improvement!
Not a single laugh yet.
That's good.
I wanted to give this time to stew a bit, plus I was on vacation last week and never even glanced sidelong at my computer (I work on them eight to ten hours a day, five to six days a week for a living, so when I "go on vacation" I don't even go near a computer).

I didn't leave anything out. At all.
Looseness, stickiness, sinking, and much more, they all come from the wellspring of "open, rounded, and extended".
If you are not open, you cannot be loose.
If you are not rounded, you cannot sink.
If you are not extended, nothing else will work at all.
These points are just touching the surface, the whole shooting match comes right down to "open, rounded, and extended".
Slough off everything else, in point of fact forget about all of that entirely, and focus on these things. Once you have found them it becomes almost comically easy to reach the rest.
The kicker? Okay, you knew there was one so don't act shocked now...
You have to do these things... CORRECTLY.
There's a right way to be open, there's also a wrong way.
There's a right way to be rounded, there's also a wrong way.
There's a right way to extend, there's also a wrong way.
If you focus yourself on reaching the correct method of performing each of these things, the rest is simply window dressing and just starts to happen on their own.
My first genuine instructor who actually understood TCC and knew how to teach it used to say, "Don't fall for all the Chinese fairy tales being sold as Tai Chi Chuan theory."
It took me a LONG time to figure out what he meant, fortunately I stayed with him, his schools, and instructors long enough to learn a great deal of correct TCC practices.
Then I took up with the Yang Family and am still continuing to learn more correct practices but from a completely different perspective, which taught me more and faster than I had ever learned before, but only because I had a very correct base to proceed from already.
The first time I ever heard the expression "open, rounded, and extended" as a basis for movement... I was stunned.
It immediately made perfect sense out of a lot of disparate other things I hadn't quite put together yet.
And yes, that happened on the very first day I trained in their system.
I had particular problems with "open", it was in fact the most difficult part of this triad of correctness for me to learn.
I came from a small frame, small circle version of the art, where making myself smaller and diminishing the size of my circles was paramount.
Coming into a large frame, large circle practice of the same art was maddeningly difficult, but in the end I did learn to "open" from the Yang Family, which is what I wasn't able to fully grasp from doing small frame, small circle alone.
I now clearly understand why "large frame, large circle" is the "teaching frame".
Taking what I learned there back into small frame, small circle, and what I learned in small I took back to large, has launched me faster and farther into this art than I could have possibly imagined.
But I digress.

Search for the meaning and correct uses of "open, rounded, and extended" if you want the rest to come.