Internal Arts Secret Sauce

It's not a secret, and it's not a sauce. But it is deeply internal.

Sometimes things happened in classes that were surprising to me. Moments in which a training partner would be knocked across the floor with seemingly little effort on my part. Each time this happened, I was often left wondering why. 

To be honest, in those early days, I clearly did not really understand the function of the training. 

For example, several years ago I was demonstrating the purpose of an exercise in which partners face each other and try to push each other over. Simple right? Yes, but there are deep lessons embedded in the exercise that teach one about directions of force, sensitivity to a partners movements, how to counter an incoming force, etc. 

In this case I explained that the purpose of the exercise was to build sensitivity to an incoming push and respond to it. I had my partner push me aggressively and my response was to redirect his push enough for me to spin around so my extended arm hit him in his middle back. To my surprise, my hit knocked him further away than the effort indicated to me! So what happened?

Whole body connection happened in such a way that the force of my rotation included my body weight and most importantly, my arms and torso were solidly connected to my hips and legs so that the entire body was involved the moment I hit my partner. It is these connections that made that moment possible. And the connections were built through what is known in Nine Dragon Baguazhang as Yixingong (intention-heart-skill).

The "secret" is using your mind to create the feeling of the actual forces that would be involved in a particular push, strike, grab, etc. Further, it teaches your entire body to respond as a single entity so that you don't only use an arm or hand to push or strike.

The most difficult thing about trying to describe all this is that once you feel it happen, no more explanation is needed. But until then, it seems mysterious.

I have gone back to the beginning stages of training several times. For those already in the University, I suggest you return to the first video in the series and start training again. But each time, the learning experience happens on a deeper level. (I will explain this more in another post. Watch for “The Learning Spiral”)

You can learn about Yixingong through Dr. Painter's video series in the Li Family Internal Arts University. The mind-body skill that he teaches in this series is the "secret sauce" that energized that moment.