[i] This according to the Fu system. You can see it in Victor Fu, the 3^rd generation lineage holder, in his siblings, in Bow Sim Mark, another prominent disciple. It’s what distinguishes their bagua “ripple step” aka “mud walking step” which allows the practitioner to apply force at regular intervals to continually uproot push an opponent back while walking. This technique appears in Dragon Palm and other Fu forms, including their version of Leopard Boxing. Fu style waist turning seems to be a fairly unique exercise, that may derive from drunken boxing. Fu waist is additionally allows forward/backward waist action, leaning to expend or build potential energy (what is sometimes called “the rubber band” in that it “snaps back”.)  Yu Chenghui “has real waist”, and it’s a quality you see in all real Taoist Wudang sword.  If you look carefully, you can even see it in Donnie Yen, especially his old-school kung fu movies like Iron Monkey. The root of his power and origin of his movement is the waist. That’s why he hits so hard. That’s why he’s so fast. That’s why he can go and go and go—using the waist expends less energy.

[ii] The muscles are relaxed but the tendons are always fully stretched. This is especially important in straight sword.  The exception is that in focusing (fa jing), the muscles will fully activate for an instant.

[iii] She taught in Boston, MA, where fighting is something of a tradition and there are perhaps a greater ratio of “knuckleheads”.  CWRI lore holds that within a few years she had trained students of sufficient prowess that they could intercede and take would be challengers out side to “set them straight.”  In my own experience practicing extensively in parks in Boston, it was not entirely uncommon for a stranger to approach enthusiastically and ask what I was doing, then, when hearing it is a form of martial art, making me prove it there and then, not taking no for an answer.  People who lack sufficient formal training often don’t understand sparring as an exercise to prepare for fighting, as opposed to an actual fight.  These practitioners will often try to “knock your block off”.  There the inefficacy of going force against force when one has less mass, and the need to stay calm when less experience especially. Luckily, brute force attack, especially from a non-professional, tends to make attacker slow and tight; easy to defend against if one has mobility.

[iv] When you see Donnie Yen’s blindingly fast, sustained punching in Ip Man, this is where it came from.  It’s possible her interest in Mantis was driven by the finger strikes, which are intended for nerve strikes, and require less brute force because the force is concentrated into the pointer finger.  She even used the Mantis hook for Tai Chi exclusively, favoring it’s applications in that art over the applications of the conventional hook hand. The Mantis hook forms the basis of one of the most common Chin Na joint locks and can also be used for striking with the back of the hand in movements like single whip. She also felt it was optimal because it make the palm more empty than the orthodox hook, where emptying the principle function in strong body framework, and a method of generating force.

[v] Sun Lutang lists three distinctions for internal martial art: controlling the movement with the mind, circulation of Qi, and certain principles of movement associated with Daoist practice. As all conscious movement is a product of intention, and we have no scientific validation of chi, only the third distinction, that of body mechanics, is concrete and distinct. 

Note: My hsingyi comes from Sun through Fu, making Sun my “Sitaigung” (teacher’s teacher’s teacher) for that art.  I don’t take updating his scholarship lightly, but he was working from a 19^th century framework that precedes modern scientific method in China.  We understand more now about how the body works, and have a deeper understanding of the internal arts after several generations of continual refinement, conducted by masters like Sun and his distinguished colleagues, true masters all.

[vi] Note that the Qi wiki explains the notion is unverified and represents pseudo-science. It also notes that there is no reference to scientific usages of “energy” in traditional Chinese medicine.  It’s a strong validation of Bow Sim Mark’s teaching that, lacking any training in either physics or economics, with no math, she naturally came to use the term energy in those concrete senses.  In the contemporary martial environment, post-MMA, the utility of mystical concepts in martial teaching is greatly diminished—practitioners who focus on esoteric elements over serious physical training can rarely apply the arts against stronger opponents.  Mental training without the attendant physical training has little to no practical value.

[vii] Again, muscles and limbs as opposed to the waist and connective tissue.  Muscles will contract at the moment of focus, but remain relaxed at all other times, as opposed to the tendons which are always at full extension, even when the arms are close to the body, via circular frames, joint sinking and emptying. 

[viii] The safest situation in swordplay, aside from standing entirely out of range of an opponent, is blade-on-blade contact.  In European fencing there is a similar notion of pris de fer ("taking the blade") but wudang sticky fencing extends this to consistently maintaining contact throughout the exercise or bout.

[ix] This is essential for wudang cutting, where the blade must press into the flesh to cut deeply.  The movements are often quick, so how can this be achieved?  Mechanics holds the answer: the waist driven cut is circular but the blade is straight; it naturally presses into the flesh when drawn across it.

[x] Clearly there is much we still don’t know about the human body, and adrenaline and endorphins, combined with inertia, seem to play a role in that feeling of chi. These naturally produced chemicals can heighten awareness and increase focus. The have a quality of reducing pain, which could contribute to the required muscular relaxation and corresponding vascular flow.

[xi] In regard to feeling we can consider that the nerves transmit information using electrical signals.  In recent years you may have heard some practitioners talk about piezoelectrical impulses generated by the bone marrow, but I haven’t had time to read any peer review papers in that field and so cannot comment.

[xii] In hsingyi, by contrast, the practitioner will sometimes want to hide their weight. In Shaolin, equally weighted horse stance is widely used. And there are exceptions to every rule—internal waist technique can be utilized in an equal weighted stance, which is seen in drunken boxing.

[xiii] Strikes can be linear, oblique, spiral (“drilling”) or follow a circular motion, as in “hammer fist” and “back fist”, but counters (parries) are always circular or spiral, which is are a three dimensional extension of a circular motion.  All of the internal arts contain all of these motions, but linearity is most associated with hsingyi striking, the spiral (coil) with bagua grappling, and circle with tai chi countering.

[xiv] This resorting to force occurs routinely in pushing hands, where many practitioners don’t have access to a high-level master to constantly correct them.  Cheng Manching explicated the principal of invest in loss for the general public, and this was further explicated by Bow Sim Mark as “It’s better to lose than to win and break the art.” The American culture however is hyper-competitive, such that  many practitioners find this hard to adhere to—"win, win win” vs. “lose and learn”.  The issue is further complicated by modern push hands competition, which is essentially wrestling—external application of internal movements—in that no one really has good internal technique when young.  But it’s useful to have competitions for many reasons.  The problem arises when practitioners conflate pushing hands competition with the deeper art, which only really comes with decades of assiduous practice.  It’s difficult to forgo brute force when we are young and have so much strength and stamina.  It’s only when the body starts breaking down over 30 and 40 and practitioners find themselves less and less able to rely on brute force that they naturally economize motion and begin to do the movements internally.  Only high-level masters seem to be able to neutralize brute force effortlessly in fixed step push hands, where there is no mobility, and for the majority of practitioners, it is rare to have opportunity to push with them.  Most pushing takes place between novices, in an art that takes decades to begin to really master. Fixed-step push hands is a feeling exercise with limited application in fighting, in that very few real-world attacks involve by standing in one place and pushing.

[xv] Here I use the term from European fencing. When I first learned it in FIE saber in college, it was referred to as a “beat cut”. One can see it utilized at a high level in Olympic fencing, and in advanced Chinese fencing.

Note: The application of tai chi and other wudang arts be martial or performative, but the techniques and mechanics are the same in either domain.  In a more literal sense, tai chi is a set of forms designed to be applied with a distinct subcategory of body mechanics in a method of movement, as are bagua, hsingyi, baji and wudang.  “Wudang” is also the umbrella term for the entire body of internal martial arts in the Chinese national sport of Wushu, contrasted with “Shaolin” as the umbrella term for the external arts.  But these umbrella terms are distinct from traditional Buddhist shaolin forms and traditional Taoist & secular wudang forms, although these forms are also part of the foundation of modern wushu.