A Taoist nun in the Sung Dynasty commented on this:

We are taught all our lives to avoid weakness at all cost. Too bad. It closes our minds to possible benefits of weakness. As a matter of fact, weakness, when used correctly, has as much value as strength. In fact, in the Tai Chi Classics we are told that perfect strength comes from perfect weakness. When you meet another person’s strength with weakness you are able to neutralize their strength.

What is weaker than thin air? And yet no matter how hard you strike at it, you can’t hurt it!

Those who govern with virtue are like the
North Star, which remains in its place while
the myriad stars revolve around it.
~ Confucius, 500 BC

Action is the beginning of chaos.
Stillness is the origin of order.
~ Yen Tsun, 25 BC

Wu Chi is an ancient Chinese exercise system that appears to consist of nothing more than simply standing perfectly still. It seems almost unbelievable that something so simple can have such a profound effect on your overall level of health, both mental and physical. Nonetheless, I believe you will be pleasantly surprised the first time you experience the power of stillness.

Wu Chi can be a valuable addition to your martial art workout no matter what style you may already practice. With daily practice of as little as 20 or 30 minutes you will notice an increase in physical strength. However, it will not be the type of muscle strength most people are familiar with.

The strength that comes from Wu Chi comes from energizing the bone marrow. It then radiates outward to the surface of your skin and even beyond in the form of bio-electric/magnetic energy. You can actually feel this happening. The resulting strength is light, lively, and quick. You become very agile and able to respond to any situation with minimum physical effort and maximum strength.

Old kung fu masters described the strength as “iron wrapped in cotton.” When someone tried to grab or strike one of these masters they would be surprised to feel their punching power completely dissolve. It would feel as though they had hit a feathered pillow. There next surprise would come when they felt the hardness of the master’s arms or legs.

Wu Chi also helps develop the connective tissue so they stay strong and flexible. This means that you will be less likely to suffer sprains or pulled muscles. The less time spent in recovering from joint problems means more time for training as well as more productive practice sessions.

How is it practiced? Follow the simple instructions below. Start off with 5 or 10 minutes and work up to an hour or two.

• Stand up in a relaxed manner.
• Your feet should be shoulder width.
• Both of you feet should be pointed straight ahead and flat on the floor.
• You should feel stable, centered, rooted to the earth.
• Relax your body. All matter sinks naturally. It’s a property of gravity.
• Keep your head, as though a rope attached to the top of your head pulls you upward.
• Your eyes can be either closed or about half way open, unfocused.
• Breathe in and out through your nose in a relaxed, easy, and regular manner.
• Your arms should hang down in a relaxed manner at your sides.
• Relax the shoulders and let them hang down.
• Some recommend that you keep the tip of your tongue lightly touching the roof of your mouth.

On one hand, the practice of Wu Chi is very simple. On the other hand, Wu Chi is very demanding. I personally have 6 books on the practice of Wu Chi. Like any other physical regimen, the more you practice the deeper the practice becomes. I would recommend the following two books to begin experiencing the power of stillness.

Ch’i Chi-kuang, Ming General, 1528 – 1587

Tang Shun-chih, 1507 – 1560

Specifically, the power in a human body should come from the bones and joints. They need to move. According to kung fu/tai chi there are nine pearls in the body. Three in the legs; ankle, knee & hip. There are three in the back; sacroiliac, 2nd/3rd lumbar (called The Gate or Life by Chinese) and your chest, neck area. In the arms is the shoulder, elbow and wrist. By moving one or more of the bones around these joints you can use the alignment of your skeleton to neutralize and issue force.

I mentioned the Gate of Life. That just happens to be both the middle pearl as well as the attachment point of your diaphragm. When that point moves it sends a wave down your legs through the sacroiliac, hips, knees and ankles. At the same time, a wave travels up to your chest/neck, shoulder, elbow and wrist. Each joint, as expected, moves in a strict natural order. In fact, the force going down from your center reaches your foot at the exact instant the force going up from your center reaches your hand.

Even more interesting, is the fact that as you stand in your still postures, your breathing causes your diaphragm to gently push and pull on The Gate of Life. Thus breathing is the basis of martial art movement. You should feel, not imagine, but actually feel each joint move through your whole body as the diaphragm gently moves the Gate of Life back and forth.

To be clear, I’m not talking about breathing in the sense that air is moving in and out of your lungs. I’m talking about the real, palpable movement that goes from head to toe. There is an ancient text that says, “the men of old breathed down to their heels”. Now if air somehow got down to your feet it would indicate a pulmonary embolism, a hole in your lungs, which is clearly not advantageous to a human being! Instead, the bodies of these men of old actually moved all the way down to their heels. Real movement, not imagined movement.

The classics say, “the body is strung together like a string of nine pearls”, and “when one part moves, it all moves”. Think of yourself as a skeleton and forget the muscles. Just like a bullwhip is used by a simple flick of your wrist, internal energy is used by a simple flick of your abdominal muscles. From there each joint above and below reacts to that flick, such that when it’s reached it’s limit your hand is moving very fast, just like the tip of the bullwhip.

A big part of internal training is “standing on the stake” or some variation of still postures. Why? It’s simple. First, even though you appear to be standing still, your diaphragm is still moving with your breath. Like I said, that same movement is the basis for all movement from the center. This is “cultivating the chi”.

Next you learn to move it to your hands and feet, or to cause “the chi to jump out of your belly”. That requires your body to be in such a state that the wave will move uninhibited up and down through each major joint. If one of those joints doesn’t move correctly it would be called a chi blockage.

That state or quality of body is called “sung” by the Chinese. It is neither flaccid nor stiff. It is like one of those big advertising balloons of Ronald McDonald. He has a definite shape, but if the wind or some other force acts on it, it will move naturally, while still maintaining it’s basic shape. In the same way, your body, specifically your skeleton, has a designed shape. But your skeleton should be willing to change into whatever shape it needs to in order to channel whatever force acts on it, eg. a punch, in such a way that the force is directed “into the void” instead of knocking you down and/or out.

Tai Chi is form and function together, making it good for both self defense and overall health. Most of us will never get into a fight, but we must all live with some level of health. Nonetheless, a brutal attack, should you be unfortunate enough to ever experience, will certainly have an effect on your health. With self defense as an adjunct to your health regime you have nothing to loose but much to gain.

You may have heard it takes 20 years to learn internal martial arts. False. It should take the same amount of time as any other type of marital art, internal or external. That assumes you have a teacher who knows what he is talking about and that you do, as Yang Ch’eng-fu said, practice faithfully.

No matter how hard a guy can punch, he can’t hurt the air. And what is softer than air? You should be willing to change the shape of your body, ie. move. You simply allow your body to change in a way that blend’s best with the attacker’s moves. If you freeze or stiffen up, then his punch will land.

Yang Lu-Chan (1883 – 1936) was a kung fu/tai chi master who said,

This should not be construed as saying that if you study tai chi or some other art that there is nobody in the whole world that could beat you up. Such thinking is ridiculous! Be reasonable; no matter how skilled you may be, all bravado aside, there is bound to be somebody who could prevail against you in a fight at any given time. Relative to this discussion, there are two types of people in this world; those who could beat you up and those that couldn’t. Who cares which is which? Are you going to look at everybody who walks past you and wonder which category they are in? What a waste of thought!

Instead, Yang Lu-Chan is simply saying that no thought is given as to the effectiveness of the art purely in a martial sense. There is no obsession to become “number one” in the ring or on the streets. Instead, the main reason for study should be health and longevity. The focus ought to be on increasing your resistance to sickness and disease rather than bullies. In comparison to this, the practical, or martial, skills are a mere trifle.

By the way, after a few years of studying a martial art, you will naturally increase your ability to withstand a real life assault. Just don’t worry too much about that part of it!

The practice of kung fu is a science that is learned step by step to reach the level of moving with what the Chinese call “Chi”. Most people involved in the martial arts make the assumption that Chi is a term for some mysterious force which cannot be clearly defined or isolated. Lacking a clear understanding of chi, it is usually cloaked in magic, mysticism and imagination. Too often the mantra of the uninformed instructor is, “let the chi flow.” This leads to a classroom full of starry eyed students trying to imagine a mighty river flowing through their body. Those that are honest with themselves know that such a directive has absolutely no meaning in the real world. Should such a student find him or herself in a real self defense situation, they will realize that a punch coming at their face is very grounded in physical reality and that all their practice at imagination is of little or no value.

Chi, as understood by the founders of kung fu, is actually nothing more than a generic term for energy or power. It is really easy to see why it is so central to kung fu given that a punch, kick, push, etc. requires energy. In short, it takes energy to move and kung fu just wouldn’t work without movement! The question becomes, how does one develop the required energy to move.

What is strength?

As it turns out, there are basically two ways the human body can generate the energy for martial arts. One way of generating power is to tense isolated muscle groups. For example, a punch is accomplished by suddenly tensing the muscles of the arms and upper torso. This is the more familiar type of power to most people. You can easily see the tension and effort exerted by someone as they throw such a punch. It is basically another form of resistance. The basic idea behind training with this type of power is to become bigger and stronger that your opponent. For someone who is big and strong this type of power, though inferior, may be satisfactory. It is known within the martial art arena, rightly or wrongly, as “external energy”.

The other type of energy is not at all like that. It is said that in kung fu the power is in the bones and joints. This type of energy does not require big hard muscles. In genuine kung fu the only real muscle group used to generate power are the abdominals. They are used in such a way as to cause all your bones to move rapidly through space starting with your lower spine. As the force moves travel through each our bones away from your lower spine, each successive joint causes a whip like effect to further accelerate the next bone in line, all the way to your hands and feet. Basic physics tell us that force is equal to mass times acceleration, so the faster a given mass is moved the more force it generates. Your hand weighs a fixed amount, so, short of carrying a roll of quarters in your palm, you can’t increase force by adding weight to your hand. But you certainly can increase the speed with which your hand moves through space. For any given individual, this way of moving is far superior to rough, brutish mucsle power. This type of power is known as “internal energy”.

Internal Energy Can Be Learned By Anybody

Too often it is wrongly assumed that learning internal energy requires 20 or more years. That is simply not true. The fact is that internal energy martial arts can be learned in roughly the same amount of time as it takes to learn any other martial art. Internal energy can be taught to anyone. It does however require the willingness to abandon virtually all of the ideas most people have on how the human body works as a mechanical device. The type of movement required by internal kung fu is not simply a variation or modification of they way most people presently move. Instead it requires a radically new and unfamiliar way of moving.