Flexible Steel

[Anonymous]

When you find Wu ji, you’ll have the flexible steel.

[Anonymous]

would you believe a coconut?

[Anonymous]

It depends on what it said.

[Anonymous]

It says nothing.

During meditation, out of nowhere, a real ball dropped from my throat area into my lower dantien. Honest.
(just an existential experience, not even a visualization)

The next day while shopping in the grocery store I saw coconuts in the produce section (I never buy coconuts.)
But the coconuts were the same shape, size and weight as my falling “ball.”
After I told a co-bagua player about this, she brought in a coconut she had polished—i.e. without the fibrous husk.
The dark brown outer layer now was the same color as my “ball.”

My”ball” says nothing, does nothing, and does not smile.
It is heavy and hard and round and dark brown.
(Real coconuts have 3 germination spots that look like a smiley-face.)

If I ever find flexible steel inside, I’ll use it to cut open my “coconut-like ball” to see what’s inside of it.

Crazy, eh.

[Anonymous]

I forgot about the coconut!

I went back and re-read your description of your experience with the internal coconut. It is a good reminder that there is much more to learn and experience.

My guess is that the Wuji I’m currently working with is a very rudimentary version of emptiness, but I’m also guessing it is the foundation that is necessarily developed before arriving at the profound.

You can’t make an internal coconut fall.

[Anonymous]

funny,
I forgot that I commented on the coconut before.
Your memory is a lot better than mine.
I’ve only related my coconut-experience to a handful of people.
I vaguely remember telling you, but I can’t find where now.
This experience happened a couple of years ago.

Coincidentally, I bumped into Liz last Monday
(she’s the player that responded by bringing in a polished coconut.)
I’d never seen a polished coconut before.
Yep, that was it.
(All my life I’ve known balls very well: hardballs (expert), footballs (expert), soft balls, tennis balls, laCrosse balls, bowling balls.)
However, I did not again bring up the coconut-event with her.

But it made me think about it again.
You know, a coconut only falls off the tree once.
So when you opened a topic about “Flexible Steel” I did recall the episode.

I thought, James doesn’t believe in “Qi,”
how can he believe in “Flexible Steel?”

(Bruce certainly believes that the Wu Style Short Form healed his broken back. My back is quite healthy without Wu Style, thank you.
He certainly can bop Isaac and Jamie and Olaf with Flexible Steel.)

Then I remembered my “coconut-experience.”
That coconut was not a dream or a visualization;
it literally was a solid ball.

Then I put my attention on my lower dantien.
Is the coconut still there?
No.
But my lower dantien feels much more solid than it has ever felt before.
Maybe the coconut is like “Flexible Steel.”
But a surgeon would find neither inside any human body.
Nor “Qi.”
He certainly could find Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) and the nerves of the
Central Nervous System (CNS).
But not “Flexible Steel” or “iron wrapped in cotton.”
What’s James talking about?

For me, like the crater from a meteorite, the influence of the coconut still exists.

So what?

As I develop and progress, the function of the lower dantien becomes clearer and clearer.
This coconut-solid dantien is clearly the hub.
It has a clear relationship with the Mingmen on the spine and the CNS.
Lower dantien to spine to CNS.
I use it to tame the wild mind in the brain,
there’s so much nonsense in the upper brain (this rambling included),
which is often hard to shake off.

Moving from the lower dantien quells the monkey-mind.

I use it in Tai Chi all the time.

I use it doing the Lake Palm Change.
For me, none of the other Palm Changes are as clear as the Lake Palm Change.

For me everything other than the Yang Style Long Form and the Lake Palm Change is just conjecture.

No “Flexible Steel,” sorry.

[Anonymous]

This is related to my training of Hsing-I, Tai Chi, and Bagua as separate and distinct arts.

Hsing-I tends to emphasize a more linear stretch going back to the viscera. The stretch is initiated in the hands. That doesn’t mean Hsing-I doesn’t use the whole body. This is just part of its organization. Ultimately you find the five elements through the fists.

Tai Chi literally plays with the Tai Chi space. IMO, song is the physical manifestation of the Tai Chi Space. Working this way is different and distinct from Hsing-I.

Bagua is about Wuji. Where Tai Chi starts from the neutral, Tai Chi space, Bagua is designed to find and then use emptiness as the source of its power.

Each art has a very particular organization. Each art has a distinct quality and feeling to it. Hsing-I focuses with laser-like intent. Tai Chi goes for Song and feels like steel wrapped in cotton (when it is expressing power). Bagua is more like flexible steel. Bruce’s description not mine, but it is apt.

[Author]

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