Praying Mantis Qigong?

[onyomi]

I was wondering what, if any type of qigong most of you PM people here do? My shifu teaches a set of exercises that supposedly come from Shaolin originally, called Yijin-jing ("Channel-changing Classic"). I feel I've had a lot of success in the two years I've practiced... improved energy, ability to feel the dantian qi, ability to send the dantian qi out to the hands and feet, etc.--and it just gets more interesting the more I practice it.

My Shifu definitely considers PM to be an "internal" art and also says that strong qi flow to the fingers is necessary to do higher-level PM (sealing meridians, etc.)

Anyway, I was wondering if Shaolin/Buddhist qigong was a standard accompaniment to PM in most curriculums? Since Wang Lang was supposed to have studied at Shaolin, I guess it would make sense. I know some people do Baduan-jin, which is apparently just the third section of the "Heaven" segment of Yijin-jing. Does anybody do any other types of qigong besides Yijin-jing or Baduan-jin? Any info. would be much appreciated. :)

[mantid1]

Do you do the open hand or closed hand version? Maybe both?

thanks

[onyomi]

Open-handed or closed-handed version of what? There are over 150 different exercises in the Yijin-jing, many of which can be done more than one way. Some of the exercises use relaxed hands, some use certain finger positions, some use loose fists and a few require that you tighten your fist as much as possible.

[mantid1]

I was talking about Da Mo Yi Jin Jing. It has two sets. The first has 12 and the second has 11 with number 12 of set one being repeated at the end.

Sorry, This must be the basic version.

[mantis108]

I submitted an article to the Mantis Quarterly and it has been published in the last issue.

There are plenty of Qigong in Mantis including the Yi Jin Jing. But mainly there are 3 more prominant ones:

三回九轉還陽法 (San Hui Jiu Zhuan Huan Yang Fa)
(Three Returns Nine Rotations Render the State of Yang method)

八段金身法 (Ba Duan Jin Shen Fa)
(Eight Sections of Golden Body method)

十八用功法 (Shi Ba Yong Gong Fa)
(18 Applications of Effort method)
Also known as 十八羅漢功 (Shi Ba Luohan Gong)
(18 Arhat Skills)

Hope this helps

Mantis108

[onyomi]

Actually, the second two are probably included in my Shifu's version of Yijin-jing. He has it divided into 108 "Tian-men" (Heaven), 36 "Di-men" (Earth) and 18 "Ren-men" (Man) exercises. The "Man" exercises are also called "Dong Luohan" (Moving Arhat), so I would guess these are the same as the third set you refer to.

The "Heaven" section is divided into 9 sections, each with 12 exercises (although the last exercise in each set is always the same, making the actual number of exercises 100). My shifu says that Baduan-jin is actually just the third set of the "Heaven" segment, called "Qianba-zhan."

The "Heaven" section has multiple goals, the primary one being tapping into and harmonizing the "original qi" with the qi from breathing, eating, etc. It also seeks to increase the lung capacity, strengthen the dantian, train you to sink the qi from the breath into the dantian, stretch the muscles and tendons, open the qi meridians, train ability to issue force from the dantian, train the qi to flow naturally or by intent, etc. The "Earth" section is concerned with harmonizing the organ systems and is the section I have the least experience and understanding with. The "Man"/18 Arhat exercises are designed to develop the "post-natal qi" and have more specifically martial applications.

So the only method of those I've never heard about is the "Three Returns Nine Rotations" one. Could you describe that for me? What kind of exercises are involved? What are its goals versus the 18 Luohan and Baduan-jin exercises?

[onyomi]

I was talking about Da Mo Yi Jin Jing. It has two sets. The first has 12 and the second has 11 with number 12 of set one being repeated at the end.

Sorry, This must be the basic version.

Oh, wait. I know what you're talking about. Did you learn those exercises from Yang Jun-min? I bought his book on qigong a while back, and while it has some good theory, it also has some mistakes. Also, his version of the Yijin-jing is very abbreviated. Those exercises are actually just the eigth set in the "Heaven" section of Yijin-jing, called "Sanfang-tu." The only thing is that the correct way to do them is not to tense and then relax the fists 49 times, but rather to tense the fists 49 times without ever relaxing! It's very difficult because you have to keep the rest of your body relaxed while you tense your fists tighter and tighter without releasing any between tensings. One way to make it easier is to just do one hand at a time or to just do two or three fingers (say, your index and middle fingers pressing hard against your thumb).

If you continue to tense while keeping the rest of the body relaxed you will notice you are starting to vibrate, beginning with the hands and then moving to your entire body! The way it affects the meridians differs depending on the hand position, but they are all very good for getting your meridians open. Unfortunately, they're also the most exhausting!

[Ou Ji]

Good stuff guys. If any of you read the Taiji forum you'll know that I'm planning a Qi Quest. Seems I just can't get a handle on all the things everyone says they feel so I'm actually going to make an effort with my Taiji/Qigong practice for a change.

So where can I learn this Yijin-jing or the ones listed by Mantis108?

Don't think I can get up to Yellowknife and funds are seriously limited.

So far I have a Taoist Shake and a recommendation to pay attention to my body ( :rolleyes: ) but I'd like something a little more specific.

I plan on posting the results, if I feel my Qi flowing or if I vibrate or something, but if they're negative I'm sure it will be because I did it wrong or not long enough.

Any help is appreciated.

[mantid1]

nope, did not learn them from Yang jing ming. Did not learn them from his book. Learned them from my teacher. I do know that yang jing ming did not practice this set he just translated it and did the pictures for the book. I think he did a great job on the book. Being a novice myself I would hestitate to say he made mistakes in translation. His is just different than mine.

It takes over an hour to do the yi jin jing the way I was taught. I could not imagine doing the complete set that you describe. It must take 8 to 10 hours to perform. You are much better than me

Ou Ji

Just what is it you are looking for on your chi quest? I would suggest to figure out what type of gung you want to do. For fighting, for health? Go from there. I would not run of looking for the esoteric qigong because is meant for the so called inner students. You will waste alot of time and money if you are not sure of what you want. There are alot of people out there who will help you waste it.

My advice is to keep it simple and practice the basic foundations of it.


In fact most mantis styles have the qigong built into the system The student just does not realize that they are doing it.

Keep in mind that there are many different types of "chi". So I am always sceptical of the teacher that is teaching students to move the "chi" without teaching what type of chi they are moving. See my point?

This is one reason I train with my teacher who makes a living doing Chinese Medicine. He will not teach me a gung that I do not understand or am not ready for.

I have found that most do not have the mental discipline to practice the basic qigong.

So you can go out a learn a new sequence or two and call it wild goose chi kung or what ever and it will still be good for you. But so is walking.

The reason I am giving you this information is because I have been doing tai chi and qigong for a long time. I do not consider myself "great" at it or feel I have a deep enough understanding. I have had lousy students run off and start to teach on their own. From my experience most of the Tai Chi & qigong teachers are just wanna be. That is why I would research who you learn from very carefully.

Any one can buy a book a spew out the information. That is different than doing it.

Same goes with praying mantis kung fu. Beware.

You should have your praying mantis teacher help you find someone.

I wish you luck.

[Ou Ji]

I'm open minded but very skeptical at the same time. I think most of it is BS but I do know for a fact that the real deal is out there. I've experienced it.

What type of Qi? Well nobody has been able to pin down even one type of Qi let alone many types. I'll settle for an easy to obtain one to start.

The goal I guess is health since I'm getting a bit long in the tooth but if it will help my fighting that's fine with me. The goal is to see if I can experience what others believe they feel. Qi circulating around my body, tingling, heat, etc.

I don't think there's anything more than natural body processess. Like standing Qigong where I've heard peeps say thier feet get warm. Well my feet get warm if I stand too long anyhow. Ask a waiter/waitress about their feet at the end of the day. That's not Qi or evidence of Qi IMO.

Holding a ball, hands close palms facing each other. Move hands close and away and feel ??? whatever. All I feel is warmth when hands are close which is expected since I'm a warm blooded animal. No Qi there unless I let my imagination run wild.

Qi is natural to the body and can't be separated from the body but I'm still looking for evidence that Qi is something other than the usual known body functions.

I don't currently have a Praying Mantis teacher. I just learn here and there so I'm on my own. That's why I ask here.

[onyomi]

nope, did not learn them from Yang jing ming. Did not learn them from his book. Learned them from my teacher. I do know that yang jing ming did not practice this set he just translated it and did the pictures for the book. I think he did a great job on the book. Being a novice myself I would hestitate to say he made mistakes in translation. His is just different than mine.

It takes over an hour to do the yi jin jing the way I was taught. I could not imagine doing the complete set that you describe. It must take 8 to 10 hours to perform. You are much better than me



You're not supposed to do the entire Yijin-jing at once! At most you're supposed to do one set of 12 exercises per day. If you have more time you should do the same set again. This is the best way to really get a feeling for what those exercises are doing rather than trying to do all 150 exercises in one day. In fact, the more I practice, the more depth I find in each of the individual exercises such that I can spend an hour on just 2 or 3 of them alone.

[mantid1]

You are much more schooled on these matters than myself.

But, If you can spend an hour on two or three of them why learn 150?

You said they supposedly came form shaolin. If you have doubts about the origin why practice them at all? Why spend so much time learning 150.

A walk may do you just as good.

Have a nice day

[yu shan]

I just do the 8 pc brocade. My Taiji teacher calls it 8 quick!? Anyone ever hear it called this?

[onyomi]

You are much more schooled on these matters than myself.

But, If you can spend an hour on two or three of them why learn 150?

You said they supposedly came form shaolin. If you have doubts about the origin why practice them at all? Why spend so much time learning 150.

A walk may do you just as good.

Have a nice day

Why run, swim, do pushups, squats, curls, tricep extensions, calf raises when you could just do the bench press over and over? There are 150 different exercises because the body's qi system is complex and there are many different aspects to train. Just like weight lifting, there are so many different exercises in order to work the entire body in a variety of ways. Same thing with qigong.

As to the origin, I practice the exercises because they work. I don't really care if they were actually created by Bodhidharma or if they were actually created by generations of PM masters in Shandong. The history of the system my Shifu told me is something like: the Shaolin monks gradually compiled a large set of qigong exercises which they named after their great progenitor, Bodhidharma as a sign of respect. Bodhidharma may have actually taught them some exercises, but it's debatable. My shifu says Bodhidharma was really more of a religious teacher than anything else and that his primary contribution was the transmission of Chan/Zen to China via Shaolin, not the creation of Shaolin Kung Fu.

Wang Lang, the founder of PM, was supposed to have studied at Shaolin, but there's even some debate as to whether or when he did. Some place him in the Song Dynasty, others at the end of the Ming/beginning of Qing. My shifu seems to subscribe the Ming/Qing theory, believing that Wang Lang was able to make it out of Shaolin with copies of their Yijin-jing scrolls before it was burned down. He then passed this system down to generations of PM practitioners in Shandong province. Of course, it's possible that the Shandong PMers further altered the Yijin-jing from its Shaolin version, so it's impossible to really know if these exercises were just as the Shaolin monks practiced them during the Ming or even earlier.

[mantid1]

I agree.

It seems like you have learned alot in three years. You must be able to train many hours a day to be able to gather as much knowledge as you have. Learning the 150 sets must have been very hard to learn while practicing your praying mantis, tai chi and Qigong. That is a big accomplishment.

Could you please descibe the bodys chi system? I mean other than the basic meridian structure we have heard about.

I would like some in depth info

Thanks

[onyomi]

That's why I'm glad my Shifu makes DVDs. After about six months of Taiji practice I asked my Shifu to teach me qigong for a while. He spent about three months teaching me all the basics--how to breath, how to meditate, how to do the exercises, etc. and then he kindly gave me free copies of his DVDs and book for me to practice with at home. After that I switched my focus to Praying Mantis and started spending the majority of my class time on that while continuing to practice qigong at home with the tapes. Otherwise I could never remember the proper way to do all the exercises! Even having owned the tapes for over a year now I still do the exercises with them because I'm always noticing new things or understanding things my Shifu says in them that I didn't understand before.

As far as the qi system is concerned, what would you like to know? The largest qi reservoir in the body is the xia-dantian ("lower elixer field"), located about three finger's width below the navel and in somewhat. Through the practice of qigong, we learn to sink the energy in the breath down from the lungs and into the dantian. From here it flow through the two primary vessels and can also be sent out to the limbs. The two primary vessels are the dumai ("governing vessel"), that runs from the dantian, down around the perineum, up the spine, over the top of the head and to the nose. This then connects to the renmai ("conception vessel"), which runs from around the the nose down the front of the body to the dantian.

Next in importance after the two vessels are the shi-er jing-mai (twelve meridians). There are twelve on each side of the body, so there are actually twenty-four. There are six of these flowing to the fingers and palm of each hand and six of these flowing to the toes and soles of each foot. Each of these is associated with different organ systems. Acupuncture works on the idea of using needles to adjust the energy flow in these meridian, thereby harmonizing the organ systems.

As far as martial arts are concerned, it is important to open these meridians up and learn to send energy from the dantian down each one. This allows you to have more powerful, explosive strikes, and also to perform more advanced moves like dian-xue and duan-mai/dim-mak ("pressure-point attack" and "sealing the artery"). I don't know how to do these more advanced moves myself yet, but I can send the qi flowing to different fingers at will. You will notice as you punch that if you concentrate on a different knuckle you will feel the energy flow in a different way, causing the torque and feeling of the punch to change. Supposedly advanced practitioners can also use this to cause what might look like the same punch to have different effects on the opponent.

If you want to know where the meridians are located and what organ systems they are associated with, I suggest you do a web search for acupuncture charts. If you have any more specific questions about how we train the meridians, how this applies to martial arts, etc. feel free to ask and I will answer to the best of my limited knowledge. :)

[mantis108]

Yi Jin Jing is possibly a Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911 CE) creation. Anyway, with all the hype that Shaolin circus has behind it these days. I'd rather stay clear of it.

To be honest, I have not seem the mantis version of YJJ. I have learned the Tanglang version of Ba Duan Jin, Pai Da Gong (a version of San Hui Jiu Zhuan), and 18 Luohan Gong but not the YJJ. There is no doubt in my mind that they reinforce each other and they complement each other. I think Ilya Profatilov and Kevin Brazier are the people to talk to about the Tanglang YJJ.

Personally, the Qigong or rather Neigong corpus of Tanglang is a wealth of knowledge that is second to none. Tanglangquan definitely is not external.

Mantis108

[onyomi]

Yi Jin Jing is possibly a Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911 CE) creation. Anyway, with all the hype that Shaolin circus has behind it these days. I'd rather stay clear of it.

To be honest, I have not seem the mantis version of YJJ. I have learned the Tanglang version of Ba Duan Jin, Pai Da Gong (a version of San Hui Jiu Zhuan), and 18 Luohan Gong but not the YJJ. There is no doubt in my mind that they reinforce each other and they complement each other. I think Ilya Profatilov and Kevin Brazier are the people to talk to about the Tanglang YJJ.

Personally, the Qigong or rather Neigong corpus of Tanglang is a wealth of knowledge that is second to none. Tanglangquan definitely is not external.

Mantis108

Would you mind describing for me a basic idea of the exercises in San Hui Jiu Zhuan? I assume if it's called "pai da" that there must be some slapping/hitting involved. Is it like a massage thing or more like a building resistance to blows thing?

[EarthDragon]

Not that the medical qigong I have been taught is in PM but it is the strongest skill I have ever seen or heard of.

While living in San Francisco. I was fortunate enough to meet and train under Yen Chu Feng from Bejing. Her skill is called jin Gon Tzu Li Gong. This is a qigong that is used for medical healing. it is a high level qi shooting skill. It has been highly effective for curing many diseases.

She now lives with me and has cured many thousands of people here in NY. One of them my friends mother who was terminally ill from Cancer. the list of healings is enormous. One of the most interesting things besides people rolling around on the floor while being treated. Is that she has ways to demonstrate the power of her work. I will post a pic. of me shoving a steel wire through my leg. I did this while she protected my nerve receptors from firing. Therefore i fetl not even a pinch. Nor did my insertion bleed. She does this to perfect strangers and non beleivers. seing as how many sceptical people think its a palor trick. but those of us who know better are amazed at the high level of understanding.