Recent YouTube Yiquan vids

Wow Pipes is just great. A series of videos called Yiquan Training Reloaded that I have to go back and watch later. One of them:

from http://youtube.com/user/YiquanAcademy

Recent youtube bagua videos

These videos from this guy’s channel crossed my Yahoo pipes, an amazingly good web 2.0 mashup service to aggregate feeds and much more. You can not only combine feeds, but parse searches for feeds, do things like combine them, truncate, search for specific terms, block various elements, and more. Essentially check in with a cache of sites a search engine already crawled, hone in on whatever you want, filter in infinite ways, even translate with Babelfish, all done as a sort of “intelligent agent” for you in the background. It’s the promise of “intelligent agents” cited in 1998, finally realized to some extent. Anything is possible, limited only by one’s creativity. It’s the web remixed, but accessible to non-programmers. I set up some simple ones to get alerted to blogs and videos, then sorted by date to find recent items. Look to the left to see some examples.

Anyway I love this teacher’s username, baguaman8. Very nice. His videos look really good. I’d already put his blog in my blogroll to go back and visit, but here it is again: http://wangshuchin.blogspot.com/

MA cults of personality

I’ve personally seen, heard and read some shocking behavior and expression that I see as evidence of a cult of personality around some “master” whose students follow him with totally blind adulation. The blind worship almost always goes beyond appreciation for great skills to extend to some kind of attributed leadership of virtue, heroism, or more. Shouldn’t the originally Buddhist based arts help one to let go of attachments of all kinds? Shouldn’t the Daoist based arts help people to be “one with the Dao”, “to follow Dao and Dao alone”, rather than become a blind follower of a cult of personality? Even in post-monarchic, democratic, free-thinking societies, this kind of weird psychology and sociology occurs. There must be some deep fault in human psychology that comes from some ancient need to follow the alpha male that is not totally overridden by free-thinking, liberal education, democratic ideals, freedom of the press and so on. How stupid can people be?

Here is an excerpt on cults of personality from the Wikipedia entry:

A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country’s leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies as well.

A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders.
…
Background

Throughout history, monarchs were almost always held in enormous reverence. Through the principle of the divine right of kings, rulers were said to hold office by the will of God. Imperial China (see Mandate of Heaven), ancient Egypt, Japan, the Inca, the Aztecs, and the Roman Empire (see imperial cult) are especially noted for redefining monarchs as god-kings.

The resurgence of ancient Greek democratic ideas in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries made it increasingly difficult for monarchs to preserve this aura. However, the subsequent development of photography, sound recording, film and mass production, as well as public education and techniques used in commercial advertising, enabled political leaders to project a positive image like never before. It was with these circumstances in the 20th century that the best-known personality cults arose.

Read more here. Isn’t Wikipedia great?

Obvious in hindsight

I keep finding once I write something down, it almost suddenly seems so obvious, why didn’t I think of it before? However, before, it just wasn’t obvious to me, sometimes even right before I thought of the sentence. A good, unexpected side benefit of blogging. What is the name of that phenomenon? Epiphany is too strong a word. It should mean “obvious in hindsight” or “gee why didn’t I see that before”, or “discovering the obvious that was hidden in plain sight”, but not exactly the same thing as “20/20 hindsight” or “I was blind but now I see” and more specific than simply learning or having an “aha”. There ought to be a word for it.

Also, what is the name of the phenomenon when some new product or market is discovered, e.g. DVR’s via TiVo, the Sony Walkman, the Wii, consumer GPS, the Apple iPod, the World Wide Web, and in retrospect it seems like “gee how did we ever not have that?” What is that called? It is happening more and more in tech markets. It’s a weird phenomenon.

An Wu Shu

There is a series of videos recently posted on YouTube called “An Wu Shu”. Here is one below on xingyiquan:

They all seem excellent and worth checking out multiple times. The teacher is apparently a sanda and forms champion in various internal arts.

Regulating the sympathetic nervous system

This part of the ANS controls the “fight or flight” responses. It can produce body reactions such as increasing blood flow to the skeletal muscles as much as 1200%! Whoa. I would think zhan zhuang is more about calming the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system (controls “rest and digest”). However these systems are not binary and mutually exclusive. They work at the same time, apparently in opposition yet in complementary fashion. They are seen as a sort of gas pedal and brake that can have phases in between. Is it possible that one can train these systems to partially use the fight or flight response, under some control, rather than out of control - sort of balancing the bodily states between the two extremes in a more optimal way? The systems are always on but become more active for different situations. The sympathetic nervous system is active for actions requiring quick responses. I would think one would want the maximum level of calmness as much as possible while being able to tap into the sympathetic nervous system and somewhat control the gas pedal to any extent possible to make use of it without going overboard. Some quotes from the wikipedia entry on the fight or flight response:

• It is relatively rare that a threat from another animal results immediately in fight or flight. Usually there is a period of heightened awareness … An example of this is kittens playing: each kitten shows the signs of sympathetic arousal, but they are aware of each other’s intent not to inflict real damage.
• Although the emergency measure of the stress response is undoubtedly both vital and valuable, it can also be disruptive and damaging. In most modern situations, humans rarely encounter emergencies that require physical effort, yet our biology still provides for them. Thus we may find our stress response activated in situations where physical action is inappropriate. This activation takes a toll on both our bodies and our minds.
• Prolonged stress responses may result in chronic suppression of the immune system, leaving the sufferer vulnerable to infection by bacteria and viruses.
• Repeated stress responses can be caused not only by real threats, but also by mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, in which the individual shows a stress response when remembering a past trauma

Overuse of the stress response seems to be a uniquely modern problem. I can hear George Costanza’s father shouting “Serenity Now!!!”. From those points above and various readings on qigong, zhan zhuang, meditation, and so on, I am guessing we would like to be able to hit the gas pedal slightly at will but then regulate it so that it’s not going off all the time (e.g., road rage) — getting the “Zen calm” homeostasis as the normal state so that use of the sympathetic nervous system is kept to a bare minimum yet very “ready” to activate. I think that’s also why the yiquan folks say to not do the “maximum” activation of “almost movement”, imagining the maximum resistance, in shi li very often. Past a certain point or frequency, it’s harmful for that relaxed homeostasis and harmful for the immune system.

That last point in the above wikipedia excerpts suggests just having a memory can trigger the sympathetic nervous system to overload, an example of how powerful the mind/body connection is. Since we can somewhat control, especially via meditation or biofeedback training, not having (letting go of) thoughts that will produce this undesired response, it seems we can gain some conscious (but indirect?) control over the body’s nervous system responses. I guess that qigong, zhan zhuang, yoga, meditation, and biofeedback are all training the nervous system in this way, but the mechanism is not fully understood. As a practical matter, no one really needs to understand the mechanism, though. “Just do it”. I am getting the newfangled Wii Fit soon. If only it had some kind of biofeedback device to go with it… old tech + high tech would be super cool.

Reductionism vs. intangibles - it’s all about the nervous system

Another great analogy Yayama makes in his book Qi Healing is concerning reductionism in a mechanistic, scientific way vs. intangibles explained through some other mechanism of understanding.

Car - can take apart and look at all the component pieces and understand how each one works and put the system back together and understand it as the sum of those parts.

Computer - can take apart to a point but that deconstruction doesn’t explain the information that is controlled by the software.

He makes the analogy that a physics approach to medicine is like trying to understand the car through deconstruction, but that doesn’t explain software or the “information” processing of the mind. He doesn’t draw this conclusion but the next step in this analogy is that we can understand that the software controls the ones and zeros that are indeed understandable as physical, electronic parts of the computer firing (transistors on or off). How does that analogy relate to the software of the brain controlling the “ones and zeros” of the body via the nervous system firing? Is the nervous system more than binary? (yes) How does qigong affect the autonomic nervous system and even allow qigong and yoga masters to bring certain ANS functions under conscious control? Breathing and relaxation are regulated by the nervous system or the consciousness/intent, so it makes sense that we start the whole process with breath control and relaxation but what happens after that? What is the intersection of this conscious control with ANS regulation? How does it work? Apparently the clues are all in the workings of the nervous system.

Marketing qigong based on yoga’s success

From a marketer’s point of view, the only thing that would bring any of the qigong and TCM knowledge back to the future is changing consumer demand, driven by a real or perceived need. Most likely that means demand driven by patients’ needs (because neijia hobbyists are few, but everyone needs to be concerned with health, especially in economies with rapidly “greying” populations) and the trend in appreciating “alternative” and “holistic” medicine on both the supply and demand sides, as well as in related industries such as insurance (what works and is cheaper is better) and pharmaceuticals (difficulty of creating new compounds is possibly balanced by research into traditional herbs and why they work).

Unfortunately, the people most likely to try something like qigong are the ones who would take it up too late to derive any “mastery” save for youngish people with more time to recover fully and keep training for “wellness”. Yoga, however, has taken off among youngish, healthy populations in Western countries. Nevermind that asanas are really one of eight limbs that is really about preparing for meditation toward spiritual goals. “Absorbing what is useful” in a secular, health sense, is fine and good from a capitalistic, economic point of view that isn’t knowledgeable about or particularly interested in a specific spiritual tradition.

The subset of people (segment of the market) who take up yoga and then wonder about qigong are more likely to seek some “mastery” of biomechanics and “internal stuff”. Firms selling qigong should target yoga “consumers” with “cross sell” messages, e.g., why qigong will help you take your yoga to the next level. Something like that.

When terms such as “namaste”, “chakras”, “third eye”, and “ujjayi breathing” are in pop culture, then it’s easier to imagine that terms like “meridians”, “acupuncture points”, and “dantian” could enter pop culture as well. It could happen. Right now, as a proxy to broader interest, when I track feeds for yoga topics in blogs, the feeds are updated incredibly frequently. The feeds for tai chi, taijiquan, qigong, etc., are updated very rarely. The other factor is simply that yoga has sex appeal, whereas qigong has none. No one can see what’s happening. The benefits and even the process itself are unseen and therefore more difficult in a way. “Stress reduction” is a good benefit but that has more mainstream competition from not only yoga but even something like running or lifting weights. It doesn’t firm your abs and so on. Also, there are no ridiculous accessories like halter tops, eco-friendly mats (aren’t all these stupid accessories going in a landfill? what do you do with your old non-eco-friendly mat after buying the new one?), straps, blocks, blankets, music, and so on to hawk at great profit. It could at best be marketed as an auxiliary exercise to a hardcore subsegment of this market. Well, maybe it could be tied to “more youthful appearance” or something like that that targets the same psychological vanity-based needs that yoga unfortunately hits on.

That means there are basically three segments a firm could target:

1) patients seeking alternative treatments and exercises, but can’t do a lot of movements found in things like yoga
2) a tiny subsegment of yoga hobbyists
3) a tiny subsegment of neijia hobbyists

Hypothetically, the messages to reach each of these segments needs to be very different, maybe:

1) health and wellness exercises not requiring difficult movements
2) the next step to improve your asana work: pranayama and its cousin qigong
3) ugh. [very problematic. this population embraces yet rejects and criticizes qigong work.]

Based on this thought exercise, as a marketer, I would reject segment 3 and just target 1 and 2. As a student, I find that is unfortunately ironic that neijia continues to have no nei and I can think of no environmental factor that could influence that behavior and attitude and receptiveness to change in the near future. This segment that used to incorporate qigong almost by definition seems least likely to embrace it due to its ambivalence and confusion. Anyway, segments 1 and 2 look somewhat promising as tiny “niche markets”.

Neijia losing qigong and tcm concepts

If ( a big if) the best ima folks of old achieved this kind of “autopilot” qigong mastery at the same time they achieved perfect biomechanics, techniques and “no mind” flow, no wonder people thought they were so powerful. It’s hard for me to believe one could achieve that without at least some theoretical knowledge of the meridians and these concepts but it’s hard to know what would have been common knowledge. Regular people today don’t understand medical theory, either, but have some concepts floating around in common parlance like “cold virus”, “bacterial infection”, “immune system”, “cardiovascular system”, “heart rate”, “blood pressure”, “cholesterol”, etc. The Taoist based arts’ students must have at least had some basic conception of the larger body of knowledge in qigong and TCM. Words like “meridian”, “qi flow”, “dantian” probably were somewhat analogous to those modern terms today. No one really has a deep understanding of them but can throw the terms around to the point that everyone thinks they actually do have an understanding of them. I think neijia that attempts to integrate what is practical from TCM with MA is mostly lost or getting more lost now because

1) a newer, different worldview is assumed to be totally incompatible (instead of alternatives that can be “mixed” sort of like mma)

2) no one will put in the work (possibly related to #1 and more probably because each discipline is so hard in and of itself and no one really needs to do so any more as a practical matter),

3) some of the best methods that still exist, e.g., yiquan’s standing, threw out the traditional vocabulary and concepts, erasing an important link that could reconcile the problem of point #1 above,

4) beginners aren’t interested in building a foundation based on something deceptively simple like standing. they want to work on hand waving choreography or something useless. Teachers who need to make a living have to cater to that demand.

5) getting into “qi hugging” seems to motivate one for health and healing and demotivate one for danger and destruction, at least in the atomic age, and

6) probably much more.

On the flip side, if the popular culture starts talking about terms like “meridians”, that makes it more likely for a niche group to pick up on that… my next post will look at marketing qigong to certain segments of the market.

After microcosmic orbit

I’ve been doing a lot of study on qigong lately and there seems to be a clear consensus that people (at least men) should open the downward channel first (down the front for men) because

• it’s more difficult than opening the upward channel (up the spine for men),
• only opening the upward puts too much qi at the top of the head
• sinking qi to the dantian (funny that the acupuncture point on the front is called qi hai (sea of qi) is key
• and more I can’t remember at the moment

After getting flow in this channel, one works on “microcosmic orbit”, connecting ren and du meridians for flow up the back and down the front (opposite for women?). I have a vague sense of that now so, not to get ahead of myself, I wonder what’s next. Apparently what’s next is opening these main acupuncture points (aka chakras) until “heaven energy” is absorbed through the bai hui (top of head) point and “earth energy” is absorbed through the hui yin (on perineum) to get the “macrocosmic orbit” going. Microcosmic orbit, it seems, is kind of “internal” - completing a circuit inside. Macrocosmic orbit is apparently to absorb “external” qi. Beyond that, one forgets about either of these. They kind of go on autopilot, I assume. Kind of the analog to “no mind” in ma where your technique comes out without needing any conscious thought.