Turn and burn, corkscrew elevator

 

(work in progress)

Turn and Burn (standard basic)

(in the video above, first 25 seconds I'm doing the basic, driving the motion with legs and waist turn, letting upper body go completely dead and relaxed, shifting weight completely from one leg to the other)

In China, even internationally in major cities, such as Los Angeles USA, you'll see in Chinatown local parks seniors gathering in local parks early in the morning, doing various qigong exercises.

One of the most common exercises you see, is they'll spend even 20 minutes continuously just doing one move,  swinging their arms back and forth with waist turning. 

Don't be deceived by how simple the move looks, and think it's only for old and injured people who can't do more advanced exercise. Trust me, this move never gets old, just like drinking water, eating food, breathing, never gets old and you have to do it every day, multiple times a day to keep the body alive and well. 

I'm not sure what the name of the move is, I call it "turn and burn", because the waist turning and loose arm swinging burns away tension and knots in the hips, shoulders, elbows, etc. 

My version, the qigong gorilla 'turn and burn',  takes the move off the rails by introducing many angles and range of motion not done in the standard version of the move done worldwide.

Tips for doing the basic version well

1. Let your upper body go completely dead/limp/relaxed, not using any upper body muscles (other than to maintain posture and form): move with the whole body, don't just swing your arms pivoting at the shoulder joints. Avoid tail wagging dog problem. You'll still get some exercise benefits by doing it inefficiently, but you'll get a lot more benefit if you train yourself to move in a unified, coordinated way. Completely let your upper body go dead, let your leg crouching and waist turning drive all the upper body motion. This way you can really sense where you have hard knots, stiff areas and impeded energy flow in tight areas in shoulders, neck, upper back, waist, hips. 

2.  many people will probably find it's not actually easy to follow the first tip! It may take you days, weeks even, to learn to completely let go of the upper body, arms, etc, and just let the lower body momentum drive the limp upper body. This is quite telling. We're used to being hyper control freaks, impatient, using our hands to grab things, tensing up the shoulders and neck from greed, so when we're told to do 'turn and burn' which looks like arms swinging, we use our greed and impatience to tense our greedy little hands and arms, using arm muscle, upper body muscles, even gritting our teeth, tensing our neck, furrowing our brows instead of following the simple instructions  to completely relax the upper body above the waist. If you have trouble doing tip one, almost guaranteed your static sitting and standing jhana will also have some blockages and suboptimal energy flow and performance.

Moving on to major Gorilla Enhancements to 'turn and burn'.

Starting at 25sec mark of video

Corkscrew Elevator

from 25 sec to 55 sec of video

1. completely rooted in one leg, you are a one legged man with 3 arms.

This is 'turn and burn', except instead of shifting from one leg to the other with each swing, you stay completely rooted in one leg, 100% of your body weight supported with one leg. This means your other free leg, is completely free, that other hip is completely relaxed, you could lift that leg and your body won't tip over. If your body tilts visibly when you lift your free leg, then you're not 100% rooted in that other root leg. The free leg should feel like a 3rd arm. Rooting into your strong leg, if you were to randomly move your 3 arms in various directions, you wouldn't throw yourself off balance. 

2. 'corkscrew elevator' gets it's name

The video footage shows me rooted on one leg, then the other. You can't see the 'corkscrew' that I'm doing, because the motion is small, not visible to naked eye easily, also not great camera angle to see this. 

What I'm doing the whole time in the video on one leg, is I'm slowly squatting lower and lower, maybe just millimeters at a time. So even though you can't see it, what I'm feeling is that my body is gradually and smoothly going down lower and lower, and it feels like I'm cork screwing myself and rooting into the earth. Then when I've gone as low as I wanted to go (usually between 1 and 2 in.)  to get the workout and strength development that I deem beneficial and not wasting a bunch of energy, I start elevating myself up. So in the video, I'm slowing spiraling down, then spiraling back up ('elevator', 'corkscrew').

This is harder than it looks, especially if you haven't had taiji or qigong training to strengthen your legs. 

How low should I go in the corkscrew elevator?

Build up your leg strength gradually. 

You don't have to squat low, in fact, don't. You don't get any points for doing that, on the contrary, taiji and other wushu that do the forms with very athletic low squatting really wastes a lot of PIE (precious internal energy). At a conventional biomechanical level of reality, squatting your body lower, lowering your center of mass, gives you some leverage and balance stability relative to your opponent, but true taiji at a high level, when you're operating at the PIE level with 4th jhana, does not depend on these coarse biomechanical advantages. Mastery of internal energy, jhana, trumps muscular strength exponentially. That's why you see the rare real taiji and internal martial arts masters throwing around people who outweigh them by 100 to 200 bls, who are super muscular, etc. PIE doesn't depend on weight or brute muscular strength.

The real measuring stick of what kind of strength and balance you're aiming for, is be a one legged person, and you should be able to give your 3 arms (free leg is the 3rd arm) should be F.R.E.E. (full range of expression, elasticity), complete range of motion and extension, without affecting your balance on your one leg.

I can't emphasize enough how important 'turn and burn', 'corkscrew elevator', and one legged three arm exercises are. 

Between shake and bake, flying cat cow, turn and burn, plow helicopter, you will fix so many health problems, and prevent so many health problems from happening.

It took me about 90min. just to write this much.

I could write a lot more about the subtle nuances of the move, but it's kind of difficult to explain if you don't have competent jhana and/or taiji fundamentals already.

It's time consuming, energy draining to try to explain the benefits of a few simple exercises, because I know how it looks, especially what my reaction would have been decades ago before I could do jhana. It sounds like a joke, these amazingly simple little movements being worth doing every day, an hour a day or more. 

But to quickly summarize,

Do this everyday.

Chinese people will do JUST this move continuously for 20min., but I found you get much better results mixing it with other moves. For example, shake and bake 10min, then when you're really nice and warm, splice in turn and burn, flying cat cow with more shake and bake as needed to maintain body heat and pliability.

(to be continued)