Feel the Cables?

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I’ve started watching the DVDs, and I just want to say really big Thank You to the whole Energy Arts Team for making this material available. I’m just watching the DVD’s for motivation at this point. I’m actually working on circle walking (from “The Great Stillness”) and sinking, scanning, and dissolving (from “Opening the Energy Gates), along with a side order of Dragon and Tiger Medical Chi Gung (cause I’ve got the book and it can’t hurt), as per suggestions from my fellow group members (thanks again Erwan and Andrew).

So, here’s my question: What’s Bruce talking about when he refers to cables? I think I have some idea of how the arms can work together (from doing the straight punch in karate when I was younger), but I can’t really wrap my head around what he’s talking about when he brings the legs into it, especially in the wood fist.

Obviously, I’m not going to be trying to apply any of this for quite a while, but this is the first thing Bruce said that I noticed I really didn’t understand. I’m sure there’s going to be quite a bit more of that when I actually start trying to work from the DVDs.

Peter

[Anonymous]

It seems like you already have an idea about what he means by “feeling the cables”. Basically, it’s connection between the different sides of the body, when left arm moves up, right arm moves down, etc. The same idea applies to the legs, but of course it is much harder to feel and apply in the lower body.

In the context of Beng Chuan and the legs, he means that the inward twisting you feel when the front arm pull back in Beng Chuan should also extend through the torso and down to the legs. It’s not any more complicated, it just takes a higher level of skill to involve the whole body.

[Anonymous]

John,

Thanks for the response, it was helpful.

I’ve got a follow up question, if you don’t mind.

I’m able to both picture (imagine), and feel the cables of the arms to some degree. I’ve been trying to imagine (picture) the cables of the legs (and how they relate to the arms) to help me find the feeling Bruce is talking about.

Moving from imagining (picturing) to feeling has worked for me in the past, but I’ve learned that inaccurate imagining leads to incorrect practice, which leads to habits that need correcting. Given that this is a self study I’d really like to be as clear as I can about the images I’m playing around with.

I can imagine and feel the cables of the arms running through my back at the level of my shoulder blades (from karate practice).

I can imagine the cables of the legs running through my pelvis, but the feeling I have for the legs is hydraulic (pneumatic) not like a cable (from tai chi practice).

I can imagine (but not feel) how the arms and legs could connect in the hydraulic model, but I don’t have a clue about how to imagine the cable model connecting, which makes me think I’m don’t understand the cable model.

I see that I’m getting ahead of myself, but I’ve found by experience that misunderstandings and mis-modelings lead to mistakes in practice. and those mistakes take a lot of time and effort to fix, even with regular contact with a teacher (from tai chi and karate).

Sorry for going on about this, but I’d really like to do my best to avoid making the same mistakes that I’ve made in the past, especially in a distance learning setting.

Thanks,

Peter

[Anonymous]

To build off the model you laid out, the way I visualize the cable action of the arms connecting down to the legs is a sort of combination pneumatic cable model, where the in/out force of the limbs is primarily pneumatic (like a piston) which is reinforced and magnified by cables spiraling around the outside. Basically a pneumatic skeleton with a web of cables creating a skin around it.

The lower dantien acts like a gear box. So you start feeling the cable action twisting in and out connecting one arm to the other, and eventually with practice you can feel this connection all the way through the core to the lower dantien, and then with even more practice, through the dantien into the legs.

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