Liu’s Overview – Revisited

[Anonymous]

Summary of Liu’s Overview:

1) Get everything from your finger tips to your toes and everything in between to become integrated into one unified entity.

2) Open the three tan tiens, yin/yang, left/right, central, and all of the smaller channels.

3) Create a stable mind.

4) For martial purposes, understand and embody how every square inch of your body can rotate like a sphere.

5) Find the one change.

6) For spirituality, learn about the chi of spirit and emptiness so you can eventually understand the chi that enables you to know who you are.

7) Eventually understand the nature of the universe.

Step 1 is finding what I call the physical manifestation of the tai chi space. This is real and physiologically based. It gives you extraordinary access to the entire body all at once. The sixteen neigung is organized to help you discover this place. Some people have found it. I haven’t met a single person who one understands how it really works. Although I have met people who can do it. Bruce says he can’t teach it to you. He can only give you strategies for finding it. If I ever complete my book, this step will begin to make sense to a much wider audience.

In step 2, you’ve learn how to use the tan tiens and the left/right and central channels to control the body in a completely integrated fashion down to the smallest channels.

The result of that work is step 3 – creating a stable mind. You’ll find that everything has to balance from the center and the importance of the mind staying in that middle point. I think Mizner calls this “maintaining conditions”. He’s doing the same thing. He is just using traditional words and phrases to describe it.

Step 4 is quite a bit more difficult. How do you start to separate the body into pieces, inch sized spheres, while maintaining integration, the central channel and tan tiens, and a stable mind?

If you successfully solve that puzzle, you’ll find step 5 – the one change.

Which leads to getting glimpses of emptiness, step #6, and ultimately step #7.

[Anonymous]

So, how do you think step #4 of Liu’s overview works? My assumption is at this point you would have had to gain a lot of control over the central channel. My interpretation is that you start making circles using the central channel. So, the rotations are made in the cerebral spinal fluid in the spine and the bone marrow (inside the bones) and synovial fluid in the limbs. Step #3 absolutely requires a level of mastery of this material. In step #4 we begin to separate. We work the central channel inch by inch to make sure there are no gaps. I’d guess this is a higher level of making circles and spirals (neigung component #9).

Like all neigung, you can train this in a lot of ways. I prefer Bagua for this work. IMO its movement is better suited for it.

[Anonymous]

If I’m correct, in step #4 you develop the ability to create circles and spirals from any place on the central channel.

Step #5 is the whole body open and close that results from practicing step #4. This isn’t the opening and closing of the joints. It is the opening and closing of everything in concert. It has to include integration steps 1 through 4. It includes the smallest channels, the tan tiens, the central channel, and the left/ right channels.

So, the Single Palm Change is the one change; everything opens, everything closes. Most people think they have it, but few do.

[Author]

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