no tail wagging dog taiji

 

the tail wags the dog

1. the less important or subsidiary factor, person, or thing dominates a situation; the usual roles are reversed.

   "the financing system is becoming the tail that wags the dog"

This is one of the most common problems  in practitioners of  taiji quan, even long time players, even some experts.

With the beginner learning the form, it's easy to see why.  They watch the model, look at what the model's hands and arms are doing, and then try to follow along with their own arm motions. The legs, core, are an after thought. The result is the motion is rooted in the hands and arms, and then the hand wags the whole body. Tail wags the dog. 

This is why there are guidelines for good taiji, such as sinking the qi, originating motion in the feet, turning the waist, etc. All of those details are to try make sure the dog wags the tail, and not getting the bad tail wagging dog situation. But if you slavishly follow those detailed taiji rules and don't understand the purpose behind them, then you can still get some problems. Really what you want, rather than this part moves first, then that part, then another part of the body, is you want your mind, body, motion to be completely unified and moving all at once in perfect harmony. But if you're going to err slightly, much better to err with dog wagging tail, and if the tail lags the mind and intention of the dog, that's far better than the discombobulated scattered energy of the tail wagging dog.

The relevance to jhana force equation and ekaggata

 Tail wagging dog is not just an aesthetic issue. For jhana meditators who do taiji, this is an important concept to grasp, because it affects the power of jhanic force and ekaggata. 

In western boxing, if the boxer is a 'tail wag dog' type of puncher, his opponent feels like the punches 'sting'. In contrast,  the boxer who is a 'dog wag tail' guy, the result is the opponent has 'heavy hands', like the whole weight of the dog's entire body is in the had. Instead of being lightly stung by a punch with the weight of a hand, it feels like running into a brick wall where the hand makes contact.

Another example, a golfer swinging the club, if the arm gets decoupled from the whole body as he uncoils his swing, then his power only goes a small fraction of his full whole body power, losing more than half the distance of a coordinated, unified full body swing. 

 

breathe like a volleyball in your belly that expands uniformly in all directions

(article is work in progress)

The article title ("breath like volleyball..."), is my way of succinctly visualizing and doing the optimal breathing for health from Taoist principles. 

(WASTE FREE) acronym and concept explained here:

https://lucid24.org/misc/qigor/heart/index.html

taiji quan and qigong essentials for jhana meditators


FREE breathing
breathe naturally is the default mode, maximizes jhanic force equation


belly relaxed, imaginary volleyball in belly expands uniformly in every direction

however, modern sedentary habits, and natural aging causes contraction and calcification, leading to worsening of
energy blockages.


to counter this, core strengthening exercises done at low intensity, lower impact, reduced range of motion (to maximize jhanic force equation which opposes tension)
will build out the FREE (full range of expression & elasticity).

why do we have such tense belly area?

because we've developed a habit over our life time from chronically tensing that area, to the point it's an unconscious, natural response that becomes our new sense of 'normal'. 

1. there are legitimate reasons that we've had to tense our belly area for prolonged periods of time.

   a. you drink too much liquid at night, you have to hold in the pee with tension over the 8 hours or whatever time your overnight sleep is. 

  b. you have to hold in your bowel movement until you can get to a bathroom. Sometimes people have to do this for hours. 

2. these are unnecessary, self imposed reasons that we can learn to become aware of, and cease these bad habits.

 a. body image issues, worry about belly fat, getting body shamed, not having a 'six pack' superhero shredded abdominals look.

 b. people, especially women, holding in their farts because they want to maintain a ridiculously unrealistic idea that they're 'clean', 'pretty', and would not dare do the impolite thing such as publicly releasing a loud smelly fart. I've seen women repeatedly do this, hold in their fart for hours, then have bad stomach aches, cramps later when they've left the public event. This is just completely unnecessary self torture. 

Solution: Be polite, announce to nearby victims that you're about to pass gas, move away some distance if convenient, release.  If they look horrified, ask them, "what, don't you ever fart?"

when you walk, do this exercise.

completely let your stomach go. This is especially noticable walking after a big meal.
many people have body image issues, conscious about our 'food baby', the huge protruding stomach.
walk, completely release all stomach tension.
you should notice, if you're really relaxed, the belly jiggling with each step, the vibrations traveling and reverberating down your legs, throughout your body, the pleasant feeling of relaxation (sukha) compared to the tension you felt before unconciously holding in the stomach.
most people do this, hold unnecessary tenion, and over a life time you see th negative health results.


now, do this kind of relaxed walking every time you walk, not just after big meals, and notice the difference between relaxed, belly jiggling vibrations and sukha (of partial jhana all the time), and ordinary unconscious tension we add all over the body without even noticing.

check for FREE breathing in your sitting meditation.

skilled meditators will of course know how to quickly relax most of their body, but very likely there are blind spots that they're missing, and continue to miss because they're acclimated to those tense parts being 'normal', or somewhat numb from years of continuous tightening.

for me, a great example of this is the lower back, and some parts of the buttocks, legs connected to the lower back. I had a slight bias leaning forward in my sitting posture. This tightness wasn't enough to block my jhanas, but it was definitely a problem, that for example, prevented me from sitting more than 2 hours in jhana, and also the tightness prevented my belly volleyball from expanding in all directions uniformly in all postures throughout the day, especially the part fo the volleyball attached to the lower back direction.

typical 'conventional western and qigong wisdom' would say you want to stretch out the lower back, and avoid hard calisthenic type of western exercises that contract the core muscles.

But here's gorilla wisdom from trying out all the conventional ideas and trial and error experimenting different other ideas. NWBH. It's not what you do, but how you do it. If you do situps and other western core strenghthening exercises in a completely relaxed, jhanic way, with reduced range of motion to stay in your 'jhana zone', then you are contracting muscles (the usual warning flag of "building tension, anti-jhana"), but opposing tissues at the same time you're contracting some muscles, are getting stretched. So it's not about avoid 'contracting muscles' unilaterally all the time. You just have to be very strategic about how much you contract, how often, and how relaxed you are when you do it. By doing this correctly, you can do a version of any western exercise typically thought to be opposing taiji principles of relaxation, such as jogging (see shake and bake), pushups, jumping jacks, sit ups, but you do them in a way that maintains partial jhana, and rather than having the negative effect of contracting, tightening and building tension in the body, it is actually stretching, maintaining FREE (full range of expression, elasticity) of the WASTE (warm and soft, tension eliminated)  FREE jhanic condition of the body.
WASTE FREE breathing, WASTE FREE core breathing and full volleyball unifrom expansion in any posture, all day anytime anywhere.

This is how I was finally able to get the lower back direction of my belly volleyball to relax and start expanding in normal standing and walking. I had to counter intuitively do regular daily sessions of western core strengthening exercises (done in relaxed jhanic away). 

Notes from optimal Taoist breathing for health from a Chinese Medicine Doctor:

6 ways of breathing

1. chest expansion upper lung

2. diaphragm lower rib cage expansion

3. dan tien (point near navel) belly expansion

4. ming men (point behind kidneys) lower back expansion

advanced:

5. hui yin (perineum breathing)

6. bai hui (brahma aperture at top of head)

(baby in perfect health expands like a yoga ball, all 6 ways of breathing simultaneously)

yoga ball breathing

allergy: neck, back of head tightness, shifting plates in skull, sinuses. 

(don't remember what this note means exactly, I think lack of proper expanding yoga ball breathing (or inability to do so because of blockages in the body) in all directions is what causes those ailments of allergy, etc.)

ming men breathing, is key to activating more body heat (for vegans and meditators getting cold body easily)

add as much ginger and cinnamon to daily consumption as much as I can comfortably tolerate.

Qi is vibration. When the body is in optimal shape, we should not be able to "feel qi".

(What this means is if you feel bodily sensations, such as hardness, roughness, even fluid hydraulic feeling circulating, the body is still relatively a coarser state of qi refinement. The more refined and unimpeded the body is by blockages, the lighter and more empty of sensation the body becomes.)