Light Skill

[ChangWuJi]

"I asked the seventy year old Wang what special skill Huang had given him. He awnsered that he had learned mutch. According to him, Huang's greatest skill was to jump twenty feet high without bending the knees. Wang had been successful in this skill but never to the same degree.

 

In the section on "Light Work" in his book "Wu shu Nei wai kung", Wan Lai sheng mentiones this method. One person practises the Swan: using only the flex of the body, one attempts to jump without bending the knees. With this restriction, a one inch jump was the equivalent of one foot. By dint of daily practise, one gradually could soar over obstacles twenty feet high. Coupled with the vertical jump was the Swallow, in which the flex of the knees is added to that of the body, and the boxer is able to long jump over twenty feet from a standing posture. Finally, weighted clothes and shoes are used, and after ten years the long jump can be extended to thirty feet, even with the added weights. Such feats are clearly beyond our ken, defying as they do the longest recorded Olympic jumps taken at full gallop. They certainly smack of exaggeration, but if reduced by half still represent skill unavailable currently."

 

Chinese Boxing by Robert W. Smith

[Joecooke007]

That is very interesting. You are a very well read person.

 

 

[ad]

er.....? two feet, thrity feet !!!,

 

come on, remember we are humans here, i dont care what chi or the law of physics can produce, i believe nobody could jump up half way up Big Ben

 

 

[ramcalgary]

it is myths like this that hurt the arts.....

 

get real dont beleave everything you read or hear!!!

[ChangWuJi]

Would it help if I tell you I have done at least a part of the "light body curriculum", and had quite interesting abilities ?

 

I only have some reserved attitude speaking of it because I don't have them currently, and may never have them in the amount I had earlier (I did not jump up roofs, but could reach the basket rim. As I have a capsule damage in the foot, I always feel that when the high jumping ability kicks in, it cracks and gets more damaged, simply because one part of the "famous" ability is not being teleported in the air by a graviton force field, but simply a liquid filling the capsule with a certain pressure giving it more stability, so the muscles can fire larger amounts of simple mechanical power with enough control to not destroy the joint. The brain has automatic steering receptors to shut down firing the muscles if the torque on the joint is too high, so even if your muscles could do a stronger jerk, it gets cut at the amount the joint says "no" to the pressure.

 

The other half is the usual body jerk, same as in using jing.

 

So, the primary goal for this internal light-body ability is to first have a relaxed and connected body, allowing the liquid (lymph/joint liquid) to shoot whereever it is needed. This is the same ability as the "bone marrow washing ability" for iron-body usage coming hopefully from that sort of qigong. As this is a very common goal for internal styles, you don't need extremely "special" sorts of qigong or neigong exercises, the usual ones done in a right way do that. I have not tried the excersise described in the book but there are other excersises which develope this same ability. That means, simple leg work, standing work, slow moving work, and simple qigongs (no "qi-moving", but stretching, relaxing and breathing). Walking in circles around a basket rim with rocks, than taking more out as you progress is another good method. The other part is created by extremely slow moving forms for stretching the legs and leaning forward. The exercise I did was the Senkong exercise, consisting of 16 simple movements combining rasing the sceletton, shrinking, turning and leaning. The bad news is I did this consecutively for 7 years, always in the same manner of simply doing, no "try-this-try-that-more-that-angle-perhaps-turn-more-that-finger", I just did the f_____ exercise with no thinking but letting the feelings do what they use to. And I did it SLOW. I did not discuss this with 10,000 people trying to change the exercise from their intelligent comments, and did not read 10,000 books explaining the exercise without doing it. And this is the only reason why I developed that abilities and other people seemingly did not. Which does not prevent them from discussing it.

 

You can bet your families treasure that all of the top internal masters have light-body abilities, in the sense they can do what is humanly possible. Perhaps they don't call it like that, perhaps they don't show off and do not discuss this. Just the fast running, high jumping, untouchability is a light-body capability. If you do the proper work as described, the body automatically learns this flooding of joints, and proper distribution of that liquids over the body in the direction it needs it, that means, make the limbs heavy where needed by flooding it and closing the valves, or making it "weightless" with emptying it, and opening the valves that prevent it from flooding frictionless away. It is from one point of view simple (for the body to do it), from the number of interacting cells impossible to do it (with concentration). You learn the conscious flooding for practicing strengthening it like using an expander, but you don't have to and simply cannot learn to do the steering apart from the body. It's like jumping because you want to vs. jumping by concentrating on the legs and letting them "jerk".

 

Perhaps I put these exercises here, if the trash-talking ceizes. But don't expect them making you fly within three weeks.

[Jiggy9]

I would much appreciate reading the excercises.

[Punchdrunk]

Chang Wuji, your posts are thought provoking.

 

There are stories of Musashi, the great Japanese fencer, leaping with that level of power and agility. But the "sword saint" has definitely crossed the divide from history into myth.

 

It sounds like your art requires an even higher level of patience and most uniquely FAITH than the Shidokan Karate I study or many of the other styles discussed on these boards.

 

How did you begin, and where did your belief in the more fantastic possibilities long study could afford you stem from?

 

I know if I do 500 squat kicks every day for even a month I will kick better, but waiting 10 years for tangible results requires true belief.

 

 

Why and when did that faith arrive for you?

 

OSU!

 

 

[ChangWuJi]

If you practice continuosly, every day, sunshine and rain, wether indoor or outdoor, you can practice much less accentuated and thus much smarter, but gain a power you would not believe in the beginning, over some months, for the full picture over years.

 

To have something to start with, try the following: Use a medium-low horse stance, arms hanging relaxed to the side. Lean alternating very strongly forward, as much as possible, and the other turn only enough to not tumble backwards when doing the moves, and stretch from the low horse stance to a high one (nearly but not completely streched) with the whole body. Do this stretching / "raising" EXTREMELY slow, so you take a three minutes run for getting from the low position into high. Your legs will be trembling, but not ake, this is how it should be. If I am cramped emotionally, I get aching muscles, but this is not a "good" sign for having done HARRRD work, but a sign for not being enough emotionally relaxed. It should not be pushed away, as you need emotions to grow, while it usually vanishes from the mild meditational aspects of this moving.

 

For upper body strength, you also could combine this moving with raising the hands from the side in front of the body to a position in shoulder height, like lifting a log, palms up in the end.

 

Do this every day for between 10 minutes and half an hour. Lets see how this works for two weeks.

 

with the "jerk" that it also will begin to happen when you do NOT concentrate on it, as the body, that old fool, will realize of the work it could do that and will start to NATURALLY and COMPLETELY incorporate it into its habits of using differing methods by some clever fuzzy logic evaluation scheme. It has to analyze a lot of things, as for example a full jerk from a specific source could easily break your own joints, if they are not aligned perfectly and meet some conditions. So, there has to happen a lot of learning work for the intuitive body feelings, that cannot be speeded up and not replaced by conscious attempts to initiate that jerk. Just do the other thing, do that exercise for some weeks, and continue jumping or acting as normal. For me it happened suddenly that I first used it in a practical context, and it was full-force immediately. Both me and the other guy where astonished from it happening.

 

There is just one exception, a rather simple one, and that is you can use this power SLIGHTLY in doing stomping exercises, for example like that when you stomp and hit the open palm with the other fist simultaneously. For me this is more of a conscious "try", but not without a context.

 

Important for the learning is the intent in the moment you do the tries, which have to stay natural. For example, you do not place your hands on a wardrobe and say your arms "jerk", but place your arms on it and want to rock it away. Such ways, you develop internal abilities along with timelessly repeated and developed natural goals. Some day you will develop the feeling for running with that powerful mode, or do many other features. Just the beginning is, do it with as less reflective considerations as possible, it teaches itself to you.

 

If you do this for enough time, but not overworking through for example doing it for half an hour where you are already exhausted after a quarter of an hour, this aking will vanish. The streaming you might experienced will not vanish. The trembling might take a little longer than the aking, but it is not a problem. Of course you should NOT concentrate on having a special feeling in the legs, or feel "into" the streaming for "controlling" it, as you only invent some things that are not necessary for the body doing its duty. If it comes from alone, you are one stage further, if you create it consciously, you don't know. The big problem of our semi-educated time is, people concentrate, provoke, evoke and "visualize" a thousand things, without the body having learned anything from it or even doing the thing which is CONCRETELY the process that is ACCOMPANIED by that feelings. It is the difference, if you have a shower and feel wet, or "induce" and "visualize" the wet feeling without having the shower. For feelings it is no difference if you provoke them or if they make themself, but at least in case of the shower, your friends will smell the difference.

 

Same way is the streaming a byproduct of the muscle trying a specific movement, creating the feeling because there IS something slowly streaming below the skin. If you create that feeling, the muscle movement does NOT happen in the same way automatically, as this is somewhat a naive reversal of cause and outcome, if a cause has a effect, having the effect does not induce the cause. Only some bodies are somewhat more generous and try to do what apparently was your intention, if you do a raindance for it or simply do the thing you should do. The precondition for a body being able to guess what you like it to do is, it must at least one time have experienced itself was doing it and you remembered it as a picture what you like to happen. As a body is a LITTLE bit smarter, you should simply continue doing the exercise, and it creates over the time a strong feeling of experiencing a better moving quality, and thus the body chooses from itself the better quality for the right application.

 

Now, if your legs are trembling, you only have to rest afterwards, sit down and enjoy the nature. If they ake, massage the legs afterwards, jump around a little bit, and stretch them a LITTLE bit. Do not overstretch them passively, if they cramp from the process, let it happen, and wait until the muscle decramps from alone the next day.

 

 

[Punchdrunk]

Let me see if I've proccessed the basic physical movement of this exercise -

 

start in the medium low horse stance

 

raise up into the high horse stance leaning forward, slowly over three minutes

 

at the same time raise your arms palm down from your sides in front to shoulder hsight palms up

 

next lower back into the original position over three minutes

 

rise again from medium low horse stance to high horse stance leaning backwards over three minutes

 

raise the hands and arms as in the first instance

 

lower back down

 

This whole sequence as described above should take 12 minutes

 

Don't analyze, project, anticipate or theorize as to the results that may come, just give it time and consistent effort. See what the results are after time.

 

Is that the gist?

 

What do you mean when you talk about the streaming and the jerk? I don't quite follow you in regard to these terms. Are there decent references available? I don't want to change styles but I am intrigued by yours.

 

Also, I'm still curious what led you to embrace this style with so much dedication?

 

Osu!