[Yoda]

Thaddues said:

Wang Xiangzhai was a truly exceptional martial artist who is arguably single handedly responsible for the standing post craze. He was a Xingyi master who arrived at the truth of standing post training after spending his life training hard in Xingyi. Please note that his practice of standing came as the fruits of his lifetime of practicing Xingyi. There is no one of note who has gotten anywhere by just standing. I'm sure I have just pissed off all the Yiquan people, but c'mon, let's be realistic here. If standing post was such a cure all, there would be no heart disease, no strokes, no cancers among the leading proponents of the practice. Wang Xuanjie, who was supposed to be 'the successor' died young from a stroke. If standing post created superior martial artists, you would see them and hear about them. If it was such a great training, olympic athletes would be doing it for the extra edge. Lance Armstrong would be all over it. Standing post is not part of the traditional Taichchuan curriculum. It's a recent development. All the elements of a standing practice were incorporated into the form and were used to correct the form. Chen Fake for example was not teaching or practicing Zhang Zhuan as a separate training. This focus is recent by people who jump on the bandwagon and need to make a living here.
I watched vidoes on the net of people who claim to fight with Yiquan. It's just a bunch of bitch slapping. All these yiquan experts would get creamed by a decent high school varsity wrestler.
There is no magic power, just hard intelligent consistent training. Do a search on Richard Mooney and get all the facts you before you start following him and buying his stuff.

A number of fun points are brought up here:

Wang Xiangzhai didn't live very long.

I've seen Sam Tam demonstrate yiquan with his students. It seemed very effective on the DVD, but maybe the students are just brainwashed.

It does seem that the ability of a pure IMA guy to win against a varsity wrestler is a rare and wonderous thing, but I believe that it can be done.

In my experience standing, it pulls in a tremendous amount of energy that really builds many martial qualities. I simply wasn't able to handle the quantity and quality of the energy and I'd bet my experience is pretty typical of many practitioners who must either limit their time standing or blow off the extra energy somehow which keeps them in the more modest levels of achievement with the practice.

Not that the practice isn't extremely powerful, just it's very hard to digest.

-Yoda

[thaddeus]

Yoda, on Feb 1 2006, 01:39 PM, said:

Thaddues said:
<snip>
-Yoda

Uh oh, what have i done...

[Cameron]

Do you practice standing meditation or is this something you read?

I have a hard time saying someting that is so clearly an awesome practice "overrated".

To me, calling standing overated is akin to calling Tai Chi overated or zazen overated.

Maybe, it's not the best practice for you personally, for me it's definetly a top 10 practice.

[thaddeus]

Cameron, on Feb 1 2006, 02:05 PM, said:

Do you practice standing meditation or is this something you read?

I have a hard time saying someting that is so clearly an awesome practice "overrated".

To me, calling standing overated is akin to calling Tai Chi overated or zazen overated.

Maybe, it's not the best practice for you personally, for me it's definetly a top 10 practice.

yeah, of course I practiced Zhang Zhuang. I was doing it in the 70s inspired by Kenichi Sawaii's book Taikiken.
I am NOT saying ZZ practice is worthless. These comments were taken from a thread that started regarding Richard Mooney. I have issue with people claiming ZZ is going to cure cancer and give you amazing healing powers. It's just a tool. I would have the same comments for people claiming zazen is going to heal your cancer.
btw, just to be more controversial, taichi the way it's practiced by most people is overrated.
lol
T

[sean]

I don't know about standing meditation's direct relationship to healing or fighting abilities, but what I get out of any held asana, wether it be standing, sitting, bridging, whatever, is a meditation on structure, breathing, selective tension, etc. I never explored standing meditation consistently until my acupuncturist just recently prescribed 20 minutes a day "embrace the tree". I do it after my sitting practices and it's has a unique energetic flavor that I am enjoying. I haven't noticed a yang energy surge yet, Yoda, in fact I find that it's very yin-descending, grounding when you focus on deeply relaxing and surrendering into the minimum structural effort required to support your posture. Maybe the fire comes when you are like wincing and tensing and trying not to shit yourself to muscle through the session. The intention I go into it with is to rest my body on a deliberately efficient, consciously created frame. Like getting on a coat hanger or something. It's very refreshing.

Here's a good recent RMAX discussion on the values of standing chi kung. Cool quote by Kwasi in that thread:
"Excess tension is really uncomfortable when you hold a posture for an extended period of time plus it wastes energy. The discomfort causes you to be aware of tension in your structure and makes you learn control. Over time awareness and control both improve. Bad alignment is also uncomfortable and so over time you learn to stand in the least uncomfortable manner so that your structure handles gravity naturally."

Sean

[Yoda]

Thaddeus,

I just thought it'd be fun to kick around this issue some more. I'm conflicted over the practice, myself.

Thanks for a cool jumpoff point!

Yoda

[thaddeus]

Yoda, on Feb 1 2006, 03:52 PM, said:

Thaddeus,

I just thought it'd be fun to kick around this issue some more. I'm conflicted over the practice, myself.

Thanks for a cool jumpoff point!

Yoda

One approach that I liked was from Fong Ha. He stands with his hands to the sides and waits for his arms to naturally float up by themselves (which they will with the right intention). He feels if you *put* the arms in position, it's a *doing* and not a taoist approach. I kinda like that way of looking at it. I do find when I put my arms in position, I have quite a bit of tension to unravel as opposed to when the arms move up from intention.
But alot of the benefits people claim from ZZ practice are better gotten in other ways. Example..you want increased leg strength...there are lots of more efficient ways to do it. You want to good posture..again, better ways.
ZZ practice can do alot of harm. People who aren't astute enough to release the tension, as Sean points out above, actually become more tense, grip more, and get worse posture. Doormen who stand all day aren't the best physical specimens. I train taichi with a guy that brags he stands one hour day for something like 10 years now. He's so tense and so unaware of his tension.
So ZZ, like any tool, needs to be used properly.
I incorporate ZZ in my taichi training (which is how it was traditionally done--according to Wang PeiShan.) In the form I will stop and do some self checking and sinking, relaxing etc at various points.
T

[Yoda]

Plus, I knew it would get a rise out of Cam!

[sean]

thaddeus, on Feb 1 2006, 01:23 PM, said:

One approach that I liked was from Fong Ha. He stands with his hands to the sides and waits for his arms to naturally float up by themselves (which they will with the right intention).

Awesome tip thaddeus!

[Cameron]

Good points all around. Thadeus, it's definetly good to maintain a critical eye regardless. my main standing meditation teacher is Ken Cohen. I did a workshop with him a couple months ago and think his book is an excellent introduction to standing meditation and the guidelines are very balanced. He makes no claims at the practice curing cancer but does say it is the foundation of qigong training.

Sean, I think it's cool your acupuncturist prescribed 20 minutes embracing the tree a day and look forward to your ellaborate feedbacks. In regards to the energy created, Ken says the 3 tests(I have written about this like a year ago in my journal here) are the test of discomfort, fire and patience. Sean, you are probably in the test of discomfort now where there is some straining etc. after 20 minutes the shoulders feel very heavy, the arms or wrists are shaking etc.

The next stage, and Ken said at the workshop that it could take anywhere from a month to a year to go through these stages depending on the individual, is the fire stage. I guess you could say this is a more yang stage where areas that were cold or depleted are filled with qi and may become very hot. The dan tien may feel very hot where it felt cold before etc. the shaking and trembling isn't experienced as much and the qi is basically surging through the body(providing you also take care to do retention).

The test of patience is the final stage. I think from what Ken teaches this is where standing truly becomes a "spiritual" practice. Maybe the boundaries between inside and outside disappear .You no longer differentiate where your head ends and the sky begins or where the Earth begins and your feet end. You are going more deeply into the awareness aspect of standing. The "Yi" aspect of Yiquan..mind. For me it is really a profound practice that probably parallels zazen in many ways but with more of an energetic quality. Whereas pure zen sitting you are going directly to the shen awareness aspect of meditation in standing your working with the jing and qi and shen..balancing and building them up and then developing them quite naturally.

And the internal power is real. Even BK Frantzis says it was through standing meditation outside of Hombu Dojo of Aikido in Japan that he first realized what internal power was. His water method makes alot of use of standing but with a more ellaborate dissolving meditation. Ken doesn't do any dissolving and says just stand with awareness, let whatever happens etc..very zen.

From what I have heard Chia does lots of mental stuff and from what I remeber of the Bone marrow nei kung book it was alot of do the inner smile, circulate the orbit etc while you stand. I like those practices but prefer Cohen's approach and occasionally play with Bruces dissolving approach. Ice to water to vapor etc.

[Pietro]

sean, on Feb 1 2006, 10:39 PM, said:

Awesome tip thaddeus!

Ehm, actually if you read my blog you would have gotten it two months ago.

[Cameron]

Pietro, I think most of us regulars don't read or do much of anything with the blogs and have decided the personal cultivation journal is the place for these discussions. I am a little embarassed to say I didn't even realize you had a blog on here and will go through it when I have time as it looks pretty interesting.

If you like that format no problem but porbably you would get more feedback and people reading if you started your own cultivation jounral.

[thaddeus]

Pietro, on Feb 2 2006, 03:26 AM, said:

Ehm, actually if you read my blog you would have gotten it two months ago.

Which workshop did you learn this at?
T

[Pietro]

thaddeus, on Feb 2 2006, 03:05 PM, said:

Which workshop did you learn this at?
T

Standing Workshop from Bruce.
5 days, Germany, November 2005.


Unfortunately Bruce takes down the pages describing the workshop once the year is over, so I have no page to address you too. But you have my notes available, and there is pretty much everything over there.

[Pietro]

Cameron, on Feb 2 2006, 09:52 AM, said:

Pietro, I think most of us regulars don't read or do much of anything with the blogs and have decided the personal cultivation journal is the place for these discussions. I am a little embarassed to say I didn't even realize you had a blog on here and will go through it when I have time as it looks pretty interesting.

If you like that format no problem but porbably you would get more feedback and people reading if you started your own cultivation jounral.

I know, I am not getting much exposure over there. I would probably get more if I move it as a sub domain of pietrosperoni.it. But there are some technicalities that has to be solved before. As for the journal:
thanks, but no thanks.

In the meantime... you are welcome to read it all two times

[Trunk]

In a shing-yi class I've heard that "all of shing-yi is in sam choi (maybe an exageration), but you're not going to get all of shing-yi just from doing sam choi". (Sam choi is the shing-yi signature standing posture.)

Its kind of like, doing ZZ, nowadays, a lot more goes on in it and I can process more. Why? Because I've done other exercises that've taught me to open and close my joints (and I do that a little while in ZZ). My sacrum is activated, my meditations are more developed.. all because I've explored those in more detailed specific practices, so when I come back to ZZ there's better integration.

And I know to take breaks in ZZ and do squats (or ankle rotations, or whatever) if I need to process differently for a while. Basically, "things add up".

This post has been edited by Trunk: 02 February 2006 - 08:20 AM

[Yoda]

the undiscovered blog!!! Good stuff in there.

[Cameron]

Kieth,

how were you taught Saamchoy? Sifu Morrissey told me he does 5 minutes with 1 arm extended then 5 minutes with the other arm. And he breathes up and down along the arms to the back .Sort of a mini orbit around the arm to behind the chest.

I prefer just doing embracing the tree but play with it sometimes. Seems like it is the basic posture of Baguzhang or something.

[IanB]

Standing a Defence

I have been doing ZZ for years and have found it to be an extremely sound practice. I have a background in combative martial arts and yiquan like tai chi if you understand it, it allows the practitioner to develop power and skill quickly.

M y ability improved quickly when I began training using some of the yiquan system.

To get this you have to really work at it and standing is only a small part of the training. It will not give you super powers, only wearing your pants on the outside can do that, but it will help you develop connected and integrated movement.

Ian

[mike andre]

Hey,

I've starting doing some standing in the embracing the tree posture and I've been finding it to be a very interesting practice. I'm getting a really nice grounded feeling from it.

I'm finding that I start getting some discomfort (aching shoulders) at about 10 minutes and I'm wondering how I should relate to that. Should I stop as soon as I experience discomfort or should I continue on through the discomfort?