Dusk Before the Dawn

In advance of World Tai Chi and Qigong Day (April 24th this year, and, no, Hallmark did not create this as a holiday to sell cards), I pose this question: what are you doing with the pinkie finger on your non-throwing hand when you are bowling?

A long-ago bowling teammate of mine used to ask that question of opposing players. For most, it drew their focus to a part of their anatomy that has absolutely nothing to do with the skill they were trying to execute. The good ones maintained their concentration; since there were very few good ones, most gutter balled their shot.

When and where you put your focus, especially during injuries, is the subject of this post. No answers are presented, just observations, so I would certainly appreciate any feedback. A recurrence of old knee problems and how they’ve affected my activities has led me to re-examine this.

Most everyone remembers the scene in The Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi places his hands on Daniel-san, healing his injury and allowing him to return to the ring. It makes for good theater, where the Master concentrates his power/chi into another to heal them. But, because of a recurrence of a knee problem, I’m wondering where the person who is injured should put their own focus.

A good part of martial arts is focus with intent, a concept that is mostly unknown to people in their everyday lives. We rarely focus our minds on a particular part of our body unless an external force causes us to, like a bee sting , a scratch or an injury.

If you have an itch, and you think about it, it taunts you and pulls you in to scratch it, i.e., if you focus on it, it becomes more intense. Of course, discipline can hold you back. But if you focus your attention on something else, the itch becomes less of a draw.

Injuries strike me the same way, but that concept is at the same time opposite and congruent to concepts I’ve learned in martial arts. While learning Soo Bahk Do Moo Duk Kwan, as students advanced we were trained to narrow our punching focus as our skill improved, narrowing it down from the arm to the hand, to the knuckles and ultimately to the striking surface of the first two knuckles. The idea was obviously that if your focus is exact, your power and accuracy will be more in line (you will actually send energy when, where and in the quantity that your mind intends).

In Qigong meditation, you focus on leading the qi. The overall goal is to have your qi circulation optimized for better health. In Small Circulation practice, the student is asked to focus on leading the qi around the body, with the goal of this practice being turning conscious practice into unconscious habit (i.e., better qi circulation). Dr. Yang, Jwing-ming’s excellent series of books on Qigong Meditation discusses this in detail (and I highly recommend this books as the best I’ve read in getting rid of the mystic mumbo-jumbo that sometimes comes along with these descriptions and gets down to actionable facts). But he only has a small section in the book on Small Circulation concerning injuries (from section 8-9, page 337):

There are a few ancient documents which record how you can use Small Circulation Meditation for effective self-healing. The theory is very simple. Since your mind can feel and focus on the affected area, it can lead the Qi there to improve circulation of Qi and blood. This is no different from physical massage, which also improves the circulation of Qi and blood.

Like any skill, this takes practice and experience. And focused concentration. Dr. Yang’s YMAA has done some studies utilizing Qigong meditation and tai chi for cancer and other patients. YMAA articles can be found here.

But, playing devil’s advocate on myself (those voices in my head again), is this better than concentrating on ignoring the injury?

I’m a part-time runner, not as long distance as my brother and other marathoners that I know. But I’ve gotten into “the zone” late in distance running,  where you are absolutely out of energy but you are focused on the goal so that the nagging pains do not draw your focus away. This has happened late in Rugby games, after 70 minutes of pounding and you focus on pushing for that one last try.

In these cases, you are not “being in the moment” but personally I find myself running longer and easier when not focusing on pain or injury. Undoubtedly, this is not good long term for the injury, but it does beg the question of focus: do you focus on the injury/pain or focus away from it? It would seem one should focus on it for healing (leading the Qi away or toward the pain/injury??) , focus away from it for performance or to carry out an activity in spite of the pain or injury .

I look forward to comments and insights.

The same director and martial arts choreographer who did Tony Jaa’s Ong-Bak and Tom-Yum-Goong worked on this 2008 Thai film, which, like Ong-Bak has a sometimes difficult to follow plot, great fighting stunts and an unusual martial arts character. Zen (played by Nicharee “Jeeja” Vimistananda who was apparently discovered during auditions for one of the Tony Jaa movies) is autistic, her mother Zin is Thai, her father is a Japanese Yakuza gangster. Zin was formerly the girlfriend and money collector of a Thai gangster. Zin and Zen (yes, as confusing to watch with English subtitles as it is to type) hide in an apartment near a muay thai boxing school, where Zen begins to absorb and mimic their fighting style.

In excellent tongue-in-cheek, she also learns by watching both of the previous Tony Jaa films! (more…)

In the 2nd Xenon Pearl martial arts thriller from Mr. Rosenfeld, Xenon is presented not as the master martial artist of movie and legend, calm and reflecting inner quiet, but as a troubled human, spiraling like his art, but out of control and searching for a path, any path to self-control. A well written and sometimes disturbing look at a man on the cusp, of madness on one side and enlightenment on the other.

Beginning shortly after the end of The Cutting Season (the 1st Xenon Pearl novel), the story picks up with Dr. Pearl still banned from neurosurgery at the hospital, and trying to take care of his girlfriend Jordan (she was attacked and is now paralyzed in spite of Pearl’s surgical skills). Xenon is still fighting his inner demons, his other selves that force him to pick up his sword and right the wrongs that he sees. His cop step-sister Wanda tries to warn him off, taking him to a prison in a ’scared straight’ sense; Jordan tries to stop him; Xenon even tries to stop himself, by seeking out new teachers to try and take the martial arts his nanny taught him (an unnamed art, with no roots given). But he cannot quell the need to ‘fix’  problems with his sword; he manages to alienate Jordan, and anger Wanda. He also finds that some of his victims from the 1st novel have a lawyer building a case against him. (more…)

There are four well known styles of so-called “internal” Chinese martial arts: Taichiquan, Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Lin He Ba Fa. While I have only practiced Taichiquan from this group, this book on Baguazhang gives particioners of other martial arts an excellent grounding in Bagua, and frankly gives motivation for further study.

In a long list of excellent books on Martial Arts from Dr. Yang and his YMAA, this book covering Baguazhang is one of the most thorough I have studied. In the style of most YMAA books, the book covers a genral introduction, a translation and discussion of ancient texts on the subject, fundamentals of the style, barehand form and weapons form.

Contents include: (more…)