Keeping the intent from the ground in the hands


It's fairly easy, once you've been shown/taught to make a jin path from the hands to the feet. The idea is to accept, for instance, a slight push against your hands and allow it to immediately sink and be at your feet so that the pusher is pushing against the ground. I've seen so many people try to force a connection to the ground, though, that I have to caution that it's very easy to do a "ground path" jin wrong.

So, let's look at the first picture below where I'm standing there and manifesting a jin path from my feet to my hands. Pretend, for a moment that I am just a right-angle carpenter's square and there is a path from one end of the square to the other, supported by the structure of the carpenter's square. That's really all that we're doing.

The trick is to keep the straight line of force from the feet to the hands while extending the body ... but not allowing the jin path to get diluted and become a shoulder exercise or a stiff-lower-back exercise. So, to practice this, we need a partner who pushes lightly against our palms until he can feel that he is indeed pushing against the solidity of the ground ... and then we have to attempt to expand our push, using the lower back's opening, while keeping the solidity of the ground in our hands, for our partner to feel. It's something that takes a little practice.

There is a saying that once a push starts, "the hands do not approach the body". In other words, as you start a push, you don't first straighten the lower back, allowing the hands to come closer to the body, and then you suddenly finish the push with your arms. That's an arm push. It's a common mistake. Push with the expanding ground in your hands, not with the arms.

Incidentally, while I prefer to suggest that people work from the feet, rather than the dantian, I realize that a jin push is more complicated that just a line from the feet, so I added a tiny indicator of the amount of jin force that comes from the middle of the body, directly across to the elbows and out the forearms ("elbow power").




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Silly Magic of Asian Martial Arts versus Reality

Image
The Silly Magic of Asian Martial Arts versus Reality Mike Sigman: March 2020 I was reading some remarks by a "Tai Chi" enthusiast and I spotted right away that there was something not right with his mentation … his words were full of nonsense prattle and attempted to portray some knowledge of Hidden Secrets that he was privy to.   The more I thought about it, the more I thought "this guy is really doing nothing different than a lot of established "Tai Chi Teachers". I've watched a couple of qigong videos in the last week or so and I decided it was a waste of time for people to take these online videos seriously.   I watched one video by an absolute master/expert that I know personally, and the video was very clear in how the choreography went … however, I knew that this man would never discuss or explain the ramifications of the breathing, qi, jin, and involvement of the subconscious mind.    So basically, most people would simply learn a chor...
Read more
 Jin a la Aunkai Discussion   Bear in mind that the 6H forum is more investigatory about jin, qi, dantian, reverse breathings, etc., and is less interested in actual martial usage.  Aunkai is a focused martial pursuit, so there is no parallel in goals, although Rob John and some of the other Aunkai demigods do pursue a level of "how to explain this" and "how does this work".  Anyway, to cut to the chase, this is a brief discussion about jin, at least from a 6H perspective.  I'll let some of the Aunkai guys explain the subtleties and nuances that they posit we are missing (in good humor, of course).  😉   Jin is defined as "the physical manifestation of qi" and you can find that definition in a number of texts from different Chinese martial arts.  What that statement means is that a jin force-path is arranged by the mind arranging or "willing" how the subconscious-controlled involuntary-muscle/fascia systems act.  Often, during a day,...
Read more
  TING JIN - "LISTENING JIN" There is an old saying to the effect that "There are many jins, but there is only one jin" (I heard that from Chen Xiaowang, so it's a credible saying). Basically, the jin they're talking about is the ground-based jin where you mentally adjust force directions in your body when your "qi is sunk" and you bring the force/solidity of the ground to your hands (or wherever). "The force/energy starts at the feet, is controlled by the waist, and is expressed in the hands". All of the various "jins", of which there are many, like short jin, cold jin, spiraling jin, hard jin, soft jin, and so on, are just ways of applying the basic jin, the "neijin". The point in this post is that "Ting Jin" is just another variant of the jin that comes from the ground ... because "there are many jins, but there is only one jin". When a person is standing upright with all incoming forces al...
Read more