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After training with my instructor’s instructor last night I have a somewhat different idea on the 4 energies. I’m interested to know what others think of this idea.
Basically there is only sinking and everything else is a product of sinking.
An – Sinking down
Peng – ‘An’ creates a rebounding ascending emptiness
Ji – The expression of peng
Liu – The expression of anThe idea of Ji and Liu are still a bit hazy for me and I’m still thinking about how they fit, but the idea that got put forward last night was that there is only really up and down. Since Peng is created by An then there is only really An.
Thoughts?
hi cameron.
in push hand practice, bruce has taught it that everything is actually a peng, and that the other energies are based on peng.
peng is peng,
an is a downward peng
liu is peng back and down
ji is the coordination of double peng, like the death star beam.now, it’s true that without sinking, rooting, you can’t get much of any taiji going, so the teacher has a point, in relation to your own body.
but when you talk about the energies, it’s what the energy is doing to the other person, that makes it work as a martial art.
cause the idea of taiji is you can reach them with your power, but they can’t reach you.
anyway, that’s my understanding.
hope this helps…
Interesting conversation guys. I would just point out the difference between asserting what something is versus working with a training method that gets something activated in your body.
In this case, I have no clue about the former, but I think you’ve both presented interesting possibilities for the latter.
My 2 cents…
Ok yeah that makes sense also.
Would you say that without An first you can’t use any of the other types? It certainly feels like that when I do it. Or can you draw up the energy of the earth by sucking it up, without bouncing it up?
I find anything about the 4 basic energies very interesting. Bruce’s DVDs have been very helpful, but I’m still not there in my understanding the vastness of it all.
I think there’s a point to what CB’s instructors are hinting at/ stating. But I sense one has to be careful not to fall into the trap of “everything can be reduced down to…”. Otherwise we may lose subtle distinctions that can be incredibly useful. It is sometimes said that peng energy is central to everything in tai chi, and at other times that liu is tai chi’s speciality. Not sure about any rave TJ reviews about ji, other than that it is very yang and prob a little misunderstood. (Ji is the one that I have the biggest difficulty figuring out.)
I love the exploration of these 8 energies (i.e. the 4 4). In the Nei Jia I have also trained quite a lot of Yi Quan and a bit of Xing Yi, and a tiny amount of Bagua over the last 20 years. But I really sense that the subtlety of these basic TJ energies is worthy of hours and hours of reflection and practical exploration.
My offering…
Interesting conversation indeed. It reminds me of a quote by Kahlil Gibran from his book, ‘The Prophet’, “For thought is a bird of space, that trapped in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.”
We are talking about concepts that cannot be explained easily and are even more difficult to translate into English. I agree with Colin, we don’t want to fall into the trap of having it turn into an mental activity. What we are being told is a tool to help us experience and activate something in our body, not understand it intellectually, as Dan addressed. Over the last 15 years, I’ve seen Bruce change the way he presents and explains material. This is the beauty of an oral tradition, which is what Bruce is sharing with us. The words used to explain will change depending on who you are, where you’re at, what you need to get to where you’re going, etc., so that the essence is never lost. This is also a non-linear tradition, so then there is the question of where on the circle do you pick a starting point? So your teachers are correct, as is Richard. The explanation is only important to the degree that it helps you manifest the energies. If focusing on the an helps you activate peng, that’s a great explanation. If perceiving the an as a downward peng helps you activate an, that’s also a great explanation because once you activate it, you don’t need the explanation unless you teach it and at that point, the explanation is the one the student needs to help them with the goal of experiencing the energy in their body.
Something else that may be helpful is in Chinese, an and sinking are different. The energy an is 按 àn, translated as to press or to push. Sinking is 沈 chén, translated as to sink or to submerge. When talking about sinking your qi, Bruce also uses 鬆 sōng which translates as loose or to relax. Hope that helps.
One simple way of looking at and looking for the experience of the four energies to manifest is this:
Peng, is energy going inward (withdraw) and the body opening outward (expansion)
Ji, is the energy going outward and the body opening outward
Liu, is the energy going inward (withdraw) and the body going inward (moving toward closing)
An, is the energy going downward and the body opening upward….another word for peng is tensegrity, a term coined by Buckminster Fuller….
all energies are always ‘dynamic’, song is dynamic never a static event, opening and closing are never static
the four energies are simultaneously and constantly being manifested at the circumference of a spinning circle
The body can manifest the energies, the chi can manifest the energies and the mind manifests the energies. All three aspects of life combine as one progresses in practice
Thanks, Lee!
interesting.
thought id go ahead and see what bruce says about all this.
PIMA p 127
peng refers to energy rising or expanding from it’s source. it is the primary yang energy of taiji, as well as all other taoist internal martial arts.
later in the page
the original chen style manual states that peng is the source of all the other postures or internal energies of taiji. it is not exactly unique to tai chi, being utilized as much or more in bagua or hsing-i…
next page
Liu refers to the ability to energetically absorb and or yield to counter an incoming force, often with tiny, almost invisible circular physical movement… it is the primary yin energy in taiji.
I have this idea that bruce is pretty clear on his stuff, and that we are still figuring out, so I use this as a guidepost.
now, I started out learning cheng-man-ching taiji, and they put a big emphasis on the yin, energy, they are always working on being relaxed and sinking, not a lot of emphasis on peng. but when I saw ben lo (he’s quite good), it was his ability to push people out that he kept demonstrating.
im gonna guess that as taiji got emphasized as a health art, they started emphasizing the softness more.
but if your gonna try and use it in push hands or in self-defense or fighting, your gonna want some peng, iit’s what gives you the capacity to push them out.ps, if im not supposed to use short quotations of bruce’s work in the forum’s, let me know, just trying to create some clarity…
Thanks Lee! I went looking for the “like” button…I think I’ve spent too much time of Facebook
I agree – interesting discussion! In addition to explanations in Bruce’s books, there’s a section of the book by Douglas Wile, T’ai-chi Touchstones: Yang Family Secret Transmissions, “Songs of the Eight Ways,” that I’ve found useful to further my understanding. Here’s a sample:
The Song of Ward-Off [Peng]
How can we explain the energy of Ward-Off [Peng]?
It is like water which supports
a moving boat.Sometimes the poetic explanation hits the nail on the head. There’s more – I’ll try to post the verses for the four energies, but tonight’s a full moon so off to practice!
I agree with Rich that Bruce is clear about his stuff. We just rarely understand what he says. There is always layers and context to all of his instruction.
Rich’s earlier post said “peng is peng”. Bruce’s book that Richard quoted gives us a hint to what peng really is. Here is my explanation of peng and how it should make sense of Bruce’s comments.
It all starts from understanding how Tai Chi is organized. Tai Chi starts from the yin to find the yang. Bagua is just the opposite; it starts from the yang and finds the yin. The yin of Tai Chi is similar to the double palm change but Bagua is more complete at the end of the day.
So, what’s the yin? You have to open all of your channels at least in the physical and etheric bodies. This is really a function of the mind and a product of a lot of training. Once you can open your energy channels, you have the yin. The channels are open, relaxed, and receptive.
To create peng, you have to be able to allow a force (or the energy of something like a push) to come into the etheric field and physical body. You guide it to one of four places: the spine, the lower tantien, the ground, or into the central channel (which is not just a line inside the center of the bones). From one of these places you want to take it in a far as you can until it starts to change. It starts to become yang. That reflected yang force will expand from its source. In high level Tai Chi this process will always take place in emptiness. Whether you are conscious of it or not is another matter. This “reflected” yang is the source of all the other energies.
So, Lee’s statement “Peng, is energy going inward (withdraw) and the body opening outward (expansion)”, makes more sense and is consistent with Bruce’s statements. Lee is talking about the energy going in and describing the reflected yang energy activating the physical body’s expansion on the way out.
The moment of change from yin to yang is Tai Chi.
Beautiful explanation James! From a Taoist perspective you could look at this in nature all around you. Finding that a lotus flower uses Peng Energies to open and at night the flower closes and sinks into the water (lui). What gets the flower going to open each day? Engeries from the Sun (Yang) with the darkness of night being (Yin). Perhaps this is how golden flower energies work. So, while a physical practice helps to understand energies in our bodies (physical, chi, spiritual, etc.), nature around us can also show us the “spirals” that compose life. Spirals in any form whether is it a lotus flower, a galaxy or the human body will always bring out the energies that are in our T’ai Chi Ch’uan practice. In other words we can expound on our practices or we can go outside and just look at what is around us to see how we should move. After all wasn’t there a crane fighting a snake that helped someone understand how to use T’ai Chi in the first place? Just saying,…
@richard about Chen and yin emphasis
My first instructor did that with trying to be soft and he said it was personally an emotional thing. He was coming from a rough time and the soft made his body a lot softer. (Along with his mind) when in China the Chen seemed to be filled with so much more than simply yin or yang. I notice re-starting my practice with the Wu and the ideas of peng being where to start with applications I feel the ability to acces yin or yang as I need.
My guess is that your instructor’s instructor was describing song. Tai Chi makes almost no sense until you understand what that is. By that time, you’ll have started to find peng. When you get good enough at peng, its opposite will become obvious. Then you are just playing with the possible combinations and variations and you can end up with explanations like Lee describes in his reply.
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