“Allow space for your breath and relax in doing so” is something that is often mentioned during a weekly qigong session. This encouragement to relax will be part and parcel of many sorts of practice and certainly of those disciplines that have their roots in the Far East. For example, I am regularly told during my aikido training: “relax”, “more relax”, “do relax your this or that” and so on.
When you are not urged to “relax”, you may still be told that you have to be or become softer. And that it is rarely soft enough or can always be a little softer may be evident from the testimony of 7th dan aikido shihan Bill Gleason after a training with Dan Harden: … 11 years of training under Yamaguchi Sensei. Every day he tells me “Not soft enough.” 33 Years later I meet this man, Dan Harden. I really can’t do anything against him. And what is the first thing he says to me? “Not soft enough!”
“Be more relaxed” or “soften up” sound pretty much the same and that is obviously nothing like “brace yourself” or “come on, be strong, make a little more effort and give ‘m hell”. Now, especially if you want to achieve something or are eager to get something done, doing less instead of doing more sounds at least a bit counterintuitive to most of us. That’s not how we were raised. Surely we had to do our best, make an effort and show the necessary commitment to get things done?
So apparently the opposite is proposed and recommended here.
It should be clear that this softening or relaxation is something of a completely different nature than what we usually understand to be “relaxing”. So it doesn’t look anything like a couch patato in front of the TV mindlessly stuffing himself with snacks. Nor does it mean in any way or form withdrawing from the environment and dreaming away. What one should strive for is indeed an utter relaxation, but while maintaing an optimal structure and a completely aware presence.
In that respect, it is somewhat similar to the Daoist concept of “wu-wei”. This term is often translated as “non-doing”, while “appropriate action” or “effortless action” would represent a rather more correct mening. Woei-Lien Chong also describes it as “egoless acting from open consciousness” in her books ‘Filosofie met de vlimderslag’ and ‘Leren navigeren’, in which she examines this notion of “wu-wei” in a very comprehensive way. (available only in Dutch)
In the martial arts and trainig practices of the Chinese tradition, they speak of “sung” or “song” to indicate this state of relaxation. This state of being is somehow described throughout classical Tai Chi literature. The most famous example probably being the phrase: “A force of four ounces deflects a Thousand pounds”. But Susan Foe already reminded us that such texts are often difficult for us to access for various reasons.
Today you may find practitioners and teachers almst everywhere in the world that familiar enough with this internal work to be able to explain what they do in everyday language. That is to say to the degree that that is possible, as words are no more than references and the difference between knowing (knowing-that) and being able (knowing-how) is really something more than a mere linguistic thing.
Paul Linden is one of those teachers who explicitly distances himself from esoteric or poetic (Eastern) language or fluffy language. He likes to understand an explain everything from feeling his own body employing his own way of logical (Western) thinking. Paul Linden’s teaching is aimed at developing and increasing body awareness. Or as he puts it on his website: focuses on mind/body learning through body and movement awareness training.
He starts off his book It’s all the same – except for the differences (available here) with the following assumptions:
The fundamental problems of personal violence, group violence and ecological violence are all branches on the tree of body numbness.
Body awareness methods and principles provide new ways of understanding and working towards possible solutions.
Smaller daily-life problems offer opportunities to practice key exercises and core concepts.
Power without love is brutality. Love without power is ineffective.
The funny thing is that the experiential exercises that are subsequently given in the book seem to have the same purpose or at least achieve the same kind of results as the aforementioned flowery or esoteric descriptions from literature from the Far East and times gone-by. He also concluded that himself, in way as he says he arrives at: “an analytical, linear and mechanical method to bring about the development of intuitive, graceful and holistic forms of movement”.
Paul believes that our body or the somatic experience of the self informs and guides our moral behavior better and more clearly than any philosophy. His own biography seems to bears witness to this idea. He points out that cruelty is always committed from hardening and a stste of insensitivity evoked for whatever reason. And this state alienates us from our own bodies. Moreover, this state of affairs is partly encouraged by our culture. In tense situations, this can easily lead to a vicious cycle of contraction and narrowing.
A force generated from an open, loving and relaxed attitude will work better in many ways than a force that has its origin in a tense body and (often suppressed) feelings of pain or anger. A force that is exerted from the former attitude is not only superior from an ethical perspective, but also considerably more effective from the point of view of purpose, according to Linden.
Doesn’t that somehow remind you too of those 4 ounces and those 1000 pounds?
From whatever perspective you look at it, multiple experiences from the various martial arts tell us that controlled, focused and well-timed (body) actions in a fight can seemingly handle brute muscle power rather easy and bend it in a desired direction. You could explain that as pure physical and technical control with only mechanical concepts and quantities. But in the “internal martial arts” that doesn’t seem to be the case at all, or not quitte fit the bill, wichever you prefer. There we seem to be missing concept or unit; let’s say a kind of Higgs particle.
It just so happens that that particular particle has been around for a long time, some Asian cultures still seem to be steeped in it, but there is still some disagreement about both the status and the existence of this particle. That partical then is the chi, ki, prana or whatever you want to call it which was mentioned earlier here and was the subject of this blog.
There I mentioned that there is a direct relationship between the two in the sense that tensed muscles prevent the flow of energy; and relaxation will therefore promote a better flow and better functioning of the body. A deeper awareness of that fact by making it physically tangible and momentarily perceptible seems to me to be a goal and a sought-after result of, for example, qigong, tai chi for the sake of health or yoga.
And how and to the extent to which force is generated and applied by pure muscle power or otherwise is also a determining criterion to differentiate between external or internal martial arts.
So I’d say: relax and enjoy your day!
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