From Beginner To Legend: The 5 Step Roadmap to Tai Chi Enlightenment

We got that like this, I move that, see? Doop. So, and because he's pulling me, there's a stretch between my fascia and his fascia, where we come into contact. I can feel that, I can use that to move him. And be really heavy and strong for me. See, if I jam my leg into him, like this, then it's actually fairly easy for him to stop. But when I don't, this is regular blocking, and when I switch, you'll see my blocks are very soft. Try and hit me. Yeah. Okay, ready? See? That's one kind. Come again. Not so bad, but go ahead and push. Yeah, be mean to me, yeah. There you go, that's mean. Yeah, so go ahead and do that. So I take that, I move that to my body, and I send it back to him, see? I'm gonna do a strong punch, you do a good block. Okay, good. So that's a solid, strong block, right? So, I saw my body, I charge my yin and yang in my body. Ready? Yes. Oh! Hello, thank you for helping me with this demonstration. This is the big one. We're gonna talk about the five different masteries. Bastion Mastery, Song, Qi, Neijin, internal force, and Yi. And why for each of them. The pros and cons for each of them. And the reason that it's structured the way it is. Sound good? Okay, cool. So, in our curriculum, the first step towards internal power, internal mastery, is through fascia mastery. Fascia is our connective tissue that runs through our body, and it governs how our body connects together and works together, our coordination, all of that. Its advantage is that it's totally physical. It's very easy to feel. So, quick illustration, if you shove me, if you're pushing me like this, like that, so he has his pressure and he's feeling my resistance. He's adjusting, he's not letting me push him up or down and so forth. But if I touch his fascia and distort his fascia, then his body's ability to respond and correct itself, to apply force to me, starts to get weird. Starts to fail. Go like this and don't let me push you over. So, he's resisting me, but if I stretch his fascia and feel it down to his feet, then his resistance gets strange. So, the advantage primarily is that it is totally easy to feel. I can feel his skin stretching, right? I can do it through his clothing. Don't let me push you. So, he's strong like this, and if I feel the stretch through his clothing, I can start to move him, like through a gi or something like that. I could probably build a machine, like a robot that does this if I had a good enough mechanical or electrical engineer working with me. So, anyone can start feeling this and learning this. I could teach anybody to do fascia mastery in like one class, right? So, that's the advantage. And it is very useful in like wrestling, grappling, if you're pushing, pulling me in different ways. But the downside is that I have to feel the stretch. So, a stretch has to happen, okay? So, if you're pushing me, right, then I could feel the stretch. Like that, in a split second, I feel a stretch and I can start to make him go whichever way I want to go. Same thing if he's pulling me. He's pulling me like this. And because he's pulling me, there's a stretch between my fascia and his fascia where we can contact. I can feel that, I can use that to move him. But it takes a split second. So, the downside is that it's hard to use if you're really fast, especially at like punching or something like that. Because if you're wrestling, you're grabbing, pulling, and stuff, that all takes a second or so. But if you're like Bruce Lee and I can't even see your punch, right, then I probably can't feel that stretch in that time. If you were a slow puncher, I could probably do it. If I knew what you're gonna do, if I knew, here, put your hands up, that we've been fighting, this is round seven. I know that when I do this, you're gonna throw that right across my face. I know it's coming, right? So, when it's coming, right, I can stretch that fascia. And I'll be able to be ready and do that and land that. So, if I know what's happening, if I figured it out, then I can do it. But otherwise, if you just surprise me with a really fast punch, right, then it's very hard to get that down. So, at that level, I might block with the intention of gliding through this fascia, punch me, and I might get it and I might not. But at least I'm gonna block. So, at least I got that much. But it's hard to really get a strong, strong effect against fast strikes if you're a competent and tricky, tricky fighter, you're not predictable. Does that make sense? So, that's the pros and cons of fascia. The other thing about fascia is it dissolves the tendency to double weight in Tai Chi. So, what does double weighting mean? People think it means, oh yeah, weight on both legs. Well, that's double weighting too, but the one double weight means what we really worry about is double heavy. Meaning, you push me somehow, somewhere, he pushes me, and I push him back. So, we're both being heavy. Okay, that's double heavy. I go ahead and push. I want him to be heavy and me to be relaxed. This is what I want to be. How do you get that habit? Because whenever he pushes me, I want to push back. It's, well, if you practice your fascia bouncing, whenever he pushes me, and I know if I just get this fascia, I can set it back, right? If I build up the habit, let's move away from the obstacle. Come over here, Ellie. Oh, no, you stay here. Ellie, come over here. Yeah, so if we use through fascia mastery, overcome our habit to go force on force, then we'll be more ready to move on to more subtle, more effortless things in Tai Chi. Does that make sense? So, the next thing we train is song mastery. Song is the release of tension in your body and the release of the fascia tension. When you do that, you gain a couple of things. One is that you become un-telegraphed. So, otherwise, you tense up your muscle and you punch. You brace your leg and you step. You can get rid of all of those things. Put your hands up like this, brace yourself, so that without winding my hand back, I just pull my momentum into him and the force just goes immediately. And I can be, hands up again, I can be out of range, like this, and then I relax and my weight flows and then it just goes without me having to push with my leg and be really heavy and strong for me. See, if I jam my leg into him like this, then it's actually fairly easy for him to stop. But when I don't, when I don't have any of that, then that's totally different, isn't it? So, that's song. It allows that un-telegraphed movement, allows me to completely flow my momentum into him, whatever the motion may be, without any telegraphing. So, it's very helpful for delivering good strikes that have a lot of penetrating force that are hard to read, hard for him to tell coming. Because if I don't have to wind up, put your hands up and I get here, which hand's gonna hit you? You really don't know, because actually either one could do it. And being sung and relaxed like that has some benefits in how you can take hits. Your body is more relaxed in a way that's the force passed to you. Just like in a car accident, the person that's drunk and relaxed actually gets hurt less. That's just the way it is. But it's, aside from that, song does not help a lot on your defense. It helps you get hurt less when you get hit. But ideally, you don't wanna get hit, right? So, so far, fascia mastery can be very helpful for dealing with clenches, wrestling, grappling situations. Even in ground fighting, you can use the fascia skills. And song gives you the ability to move well, to transmit a lot of momentum, and your body becomes very, very relaxed. And everyone says, how do I stay relaxed if someone's punching me, someone's pushing me, and stuff like that? That's why the fascia mastery that gets rid of that double waiting is the gateway to making this easy. And you've done it in order, and you found it reliable to go from step to step to step, keep going, gaining that skill, haven't you? Yeah. So, that's why that is helpful. Once you have song, and your body's learned to be relaxed, and the tension is gone, your fascia is open, then you can begin to let your qi flow well. Because muscle tension blocks the flow of qi, and your mental fixation on either your muscle tension, or on our struggling, blocks your awareness of your energy, of your qi. So, upon the foundation of song, you can start to feel qi. And qi, what is really cool about qi, is that you convey the quality that makes them float, or sink, and this is where it starts to be useful against striking. So, like I said, fascia was so-so against striking, and song lets you get hurtless, but qi mastery lets you begin to deal with fast punches. I probably still can't block Bruce Lee punches, I don't even see him. But, normal-ish human beings, yes. So, come forward a little bit. So, let's do a drill. So, if you try and punch me, yeah, so, yeah. And I'm gonna block you. So, I'm blocking his punch, continue. So, he's punching me like this, right? This is kind of like a southern-style kung fu practice. He's trying to hit down the center line, I'm trying to stop him from getting to me. And really try to reach me if you can, yeah. So, I'm blocking, but the problem is, he's recovering from my block as fast as I'm doing my block. So, I'm gonna be doing this all day, until I get hit. So, I would like to gain an advantage. Well, what if I use more structure, use my structure and extend my arm more? Let's see what happens. I'm still not getting a hit, I'm just getting more tired. So, that's not the tai chi solution. This is where the chi mastery, the bureaucratic floating or sinking comes in. Come again. What happened? Lifted back up. If you really watch my fingers, come a little bit closer. Yeah, if you really watch my fingers, you can see that my hand, this is regular blocking, and when I switch, you'll see my blocks are very soft. Try and hit me, yeah. Okay, ready? Yeah, it's just like 45 degree angle. Yeah, so now, every time we make that contact, he feels a little bit floating, so he wants to feel the impact and bounce off that and do the next one over and over. That's what he wants to have happen, but he's feeling that floating with each one and that's delaying his next movement a little bit, and then he gets more behind and the feeling overwhelms you eventually, so that you cannot continue that. I don't have to do it eight times in a row. You come in and punch me. So, it really, see, we're in like that. So, this is where it begins to be useful against striking. Dial is floating. Sinking is good too, so punch me. One, two, keep trying to hit me. See, so as soon as sinking touches him, affects him, his combo breaks because he can't get his momentum back to do the punch. See, you come. And then, it's our advantage. So, once you achieve mastery, it starts to be useful against strikes, as long as you can perceive the strikes. It's still useful against throws, if you step in and do a, yeah, go ahead and do. So, he wants to do a throw like that, so he has to grab me and connect with me. By the fact that he's connecting with me, he's totally opening himself for me to connect with him too. It goes both ways. So, he comes, see, see, like that. Or, come again. So, I float him the first time, sink him the second time. So, in the half second or so that it takes him for him to get into place and do his throw, we can begin to float or sink, so that his power gets shifted and he can't quite complete the throw you want to. Does that make sense? Yes. So, Chi mastery gives his ability to deal with grappling and also with strikes. And the bigger the strike, the better. Like, if you do a big haymaker punch, then it's really easy to float that. But even like fast, tight punches, you can still begin to affect that. Does that make sense? Yes. And so now, what's fun is that in the Chi mastery, we really entered, we really got beyond the physical to something that's energetic. Fascia was physical. Song is the release of the physical. And so, Chi is now truly energetic, something beyond the physical. And Chi mastery, when you can feel your energy and affect the way your energy flows and feels within your body, it opens a door to your ability to be a healer for yourself or for others. Because you can now control what your energy is experiencing in your body. You're not stuck in the negativity. You're not stuck in some resentment or some kind of improper organ energy state. You could replace that with a certain pleasantness or now freeness that is healthy for you. Or you could do it for other people. And you'll find out as you practice with your partner with Chi mastery, you're both feeling better and better and better. And as you dissolve these irregularities or fixations in your energy, you start to open the door to Tai Chi as a spiritual practice, where you're now becoming a more spiritually attuned and free person. So, this is where it gets really, really interesting for me. I mean, I like all of it, but I think Chi mastery is a turning point to something special. The next topic we do is Nei Jun mastery, which is Yang family's eight techniques of Peng, Li, Ji, An, Cai, Lie, Zou, Kao. So that's where you take the floating, sinking, Yin and Yang mastery that you develop in Chi mastery and combine it with the beginnings of manipulating intention to make eight particular useful techniques in how they conceptualize their combat. So that's just basically getting really practical and technical with the Chi mastery. But it introduces you to the beginning of how to use your intention to influence everything. Of the eight techniques, three of them are pure energy and direction, and rollback is energy plus Yi, plus intention. And the four diagonals, Cai, Li, Zou, Kao, are actually all Yi-based techniques. So that is sort of a bridge to Yi. And you'll also learn how they combine the different energies in a strategically effective way. Just like in boxing, jab, cross, hook is a pretty good combination. Punch, punch, roundhouse is a good combination in kickboxing. There are certain combinations of these things that make a lot of sense and are very fluid, very, very adaptable. So we'll discuss that. But once you've gone through that, you've opened your eyes from Chi to Yi. Yi is the most subtle, because at least at Chi, you felt something. You felt yourself float, you felt yourself sink. On Yi, you won't even feel anything. So if you go like this, don't let me push you. Give you resistance. I use my Yi, I take it, see? What changed for you? It just felt like a, I don't know, like an expansion, but I don't know. You can't really say what changed, right? Come forward a bit again. So you push me. So you're pushing like this, okay? So from here, from the intention that's between us, I move that, I move it back into you. You're nodding your head. What are you nodding your head about? Yeah, I just felt like the efficacy of it, it just seems like so smooth. Yeah, that one I use no physical tension. I just move that your intention point to my elbow and back through you again and just follow that along. So you don't even know what's happening and how it's happening. So it's a most subtle. It's a most subtle and it lets you instantly take control of their energy, their momentum and their force, their balance and all that stuff. So that if you punch me and I block you here, the fact that we clash right here and he wants to hit me, originally he has intention to hit me. I clash, there's an intention to deal with my block. I'm gonna make use of that. He punches again. That's one kind. Come again. What are those like? It's like you're a ghost. Like a ghost, yeah, because I'm not even like physically there doing anything. So this is Yi and so Yi is more subtle, but it's very important, especially back in the day, in the day that Yang Taiji was being taught in the palace and stuff like that. Because back then, if you fought, what it really meant was that you fought with weapons. So when you fight with weapons, Yi is extremely useful beyond the efficacy of Qi. So let me illustrate that. Stay there for a second. Thank you. Ta-da, big sabers, okay. Yeah, come forward a little bit. Come over here a little bit. So if I swing your block, boom, like this. So he's got a good block. He's got his strong leverage point and I have a mediocre leverage point, like this. But the fact that we clashed and he's trying to prevent me from cutting his head off means that there's the E point right there, right? So let's come like this. So we got that like this. I move that. So what was that like? What pushed you over? It was just a smooth force coming at me. Just a smooth force coming at you, yeah. So what I really did was, I'm holding a sword, but basically I'm doing a rollback. I'm doing a rollback like this. But I'm rolling back his intention through the arc. It just so happens that empty hand I'm doing this, but if I'm holding this, my rollback has this cutting thing at the other end, which is very effective. So that's one kind of Yi use from contact. We have a contact, we roll that back, and then we cut. And then there's another kind of Yi use. So see, there's this clashing that happens, right? Like this. So see how he hangs for a second? So he's blocking and he's keeping his balance. That's what should happen, right? See? Yeah, shoot. So in that case, I took his blocking intention, I roll that back to this side, and I let it out. And then he got rolled back this way, and he can't get his balance back, he can't get his intention back. So I step through and something victorious happens, let's say. So in weapon use, weapon use Yi is very, very effective. And it makes for some of the most impressive looking demonstrations. Like if you grab my finger, you push me over. Push, push, push. Up, left, bend my finger. Like twist it, twist, yeah. So this is a painful situation for me, and there's no way for me to muscle that, but go ahead and push. Yeah, be mean to me, yeah. There you go, that's mean. Yeah, so go ahead and do that. So I take that, I move that to my body, and I send it back to him, see? What did that feel like? It felt like a concentrated band of like, you know, something like a tensing up. But not in the, just like a rubber band or something, or bands of fibrous tissue, just phew. Something happened. Crystalline. And it generates the means to move me back. Crystalline is a cool word. Yeah, but if you think about it, this, when I move him back, it's the same as what I did with a sword. I just, it's much less deadly and cool as a sword, but Yi lets you do these kind of interesting, interesting demonstrations. And it is at the highest level of the Yang family Tai Chi art. Because even, because our energy follows our intent. So if you control the intent, then you control everything. In the classical saying in the Yang family is that the Shen is a general. The spirit is a general. And the Yi is a general's orders, the battle orders, okay? And your Qi is the banner, the flag that, or the person that gets the order says, rally here, charge with me, or whatever. And then your body is a soldier. It's a follow the flag, the follow the banner. Does that make sense? So at the crudest level, you fight soldier to soldier and wipe out all the soldiers on one side, okay? If you, a little bit better, if you take out the bannermen, then they're disorganized. That's better, right? And then even better if you, that side beating their Qi. And then next is fighting the Yi, the general's order. If you're interested in the general's order, you hack their computer and then send the wrong orders out. Like, everybody go to the east gate and there's no one at the east gate, then that's even better. There's no conflict that needs to be had if you can control the Yi, right? I guess if our Shen, our spirit, if our generals can just get together and have a beer or some tea and get along, then that's even better. But that's a little beyond the scope of this for the moment. But, so that's what I said. Spirit is a general, Yi is the orders, Qi is a banner, the flag, and then the bodies are the troops. So we want to go as high up the command chain as we can. On the other hand, it's not easy to get up the command chain. It's easy to reach, get the soldiers, it's hard to talk to the general or the CEO or whatever, right? So, that's why we practice in order to become more and more aware of more and more subtle things because fascia lets you relax, stop the struggling to feel Song. Song lets you relax your fascia so you can feel Qi. Qi lets you focus on something that's non-physical so you can become aware of the non-physical, the Yi. And it's pretty impossible, unless you're like a meditation genius, to be able to sense the intention, to sense the intention without having mastered the Qi, mastery of the Qi is basically the best stepping stone to help you get from our typical physical experience to transcending that to the non-physical experience. Does that make sense? Right, so I know we went through a lot of esoteric topic. Do you have any questions you wanna ask? Yeah, the more I progress, I feel that the fascia is becoming something alive. It was always there, but it feels like, it's hard to explain in words, but it feels like a fullness that you can direct. It becomes a more, my arm transforms at that junction. Yeah. Like it's activating. Yeah, activating. And it's like almost isolating. It's like, I know it's Song, there's like that empty space, but then it feels like the hand. That's awesome. It's like something different. Yeah. It's like, I can't explain it, but it feels like a crystalline structure at that local level and not letting the other person's force in. I could explain it. Okay, yeah, so, you know. That's why you asked me, I guess. Yes, yes. Hoping I could explain it. So, yes, so what happens is, at first, fascia is just kind of an inert physical structure. And I've seen some comments saying, you can't control fascia, it's an inert physical structure. It's like, well, I mean, you can wiggle your ears if you practice. You'd be surprised what you're capable of when you really send your awareness into it. So, you became aware of your fascia. You release it, so you have Song. You practice Qi, so you have Yin and Yang. When the Yin and Yang energizes in the proper circuitry of Yin and Yang, our body and our fascia, then the fascia becomes very, very energized, okay? When that happens, your spirit, your Shen, it actually bonds to your body in a stable way to your fascia. So, your spirit lifts, your spirit is like an outline of you, okay? Your spirit, if we cut it in half, doesn't have entrails, doesn't have organs or whatever. It's just the shape of you, okay? And it basically velcros to you. It velcros to you at your fascia. When the Qi is good along your fascia, it velcros strongly to you. And when your spirit is strongly attached to your body and now aligned with your body and your movement and with your awareness, then you have a oneness with your spirit, a solidness to it that is what people aspire for when they say, I want to be one with the spirit. You're achieving that. You achieve that in a real, physical, tangible way. And the way you experience it is a certain type of fullness, like you said, crystalline. And everyone's experience might be a little different, but there's something more, something special to how you feel your body. And actually, when you interact with other people, you have that quality, like there's a certain unstoppable-ness to it, too. So, I guess I illustrate that. Let me take these things off. Put your hands up for a second. So, if I punch and you block me. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna do a strong punch and you do a good block. Okay, good. So, that's a solid, strong block, right? So, I saw my body, I charged my yin and yang in my body. Ready? Yes. Oh! Close call. Okay. Finish. Yeah. So, what was it like when you blocked that? Yeah, it was like a sickness. I don't know, just like jammed me back. Let me go a different direction so you won't go into those things. So, I'll go around this way, so you're blocking like that, right? So, you're blocking that pretty well, right? Come again. Sorry, sorry. It's okay, I like it. So, what was that like? Just being like hammered into the ground. Yeah, so, in a classical way you say, but the pung has really filled my hand and reinforced my hand. But beyond that, that yin and yang that forms a pung allows my spirit and my body to really move as one in a way that is more than what it was without it. And so, you're experiencing that transformation for yourself, and that's pretty cool, isn't it? Yeah. Yep. Any other questions or thoughts? Not at this time. Right, so thank you for helping me illustrate these principles, and good job on your growth. I'm very happy for you, and thanks for watching. See you next time.