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Thread: the definition of fa-jing

  1. #1
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    the definition of fa-jing

    okay i'm sure every chinese tai chi master i've met which is about 3 or 4 have said "faht ging". this basicaly means to generate power. when i see people post about fa-jing the most widely accepted definition is erle montigue's. while he's not wrong that's no the only side to it either. for instance you use your head, hands, shoulders, eblows, hips, knees, and the bottom of the feet to fa-jing to generate power. the only thing is that one sifu explained to me is the translation problem. a lot of people learning any type of martial arts at higher levels will have trouble because the translations will never be the same. for example a chinese poem if translated would sound weird in english and not have it's original power. the same goes for a very complicated english poem with puns and other gadgets. so i was wondering what everyone's opinion on fajing is then. to me i guess it basically means to generate power. it's a very broad term cause i hear it used a lot around here.
    - "Why should the marathon go to the swift? Or the jumble to the quick witted? Because god gave them their GIFTS? Well I say CHEATING is the gift man gives himself!" - Monty Burns

  2. #2
    If I may I would like to explain fajing in a way most people would find easy to understand.

    A bullwip............ you flick the wrist and send kinetic energy through a limp piece of leather.

    This energy gains momentum as it travels to the tip of the whip enough so that it breaks the speed of sound, thus the "crack sound"............ this is fajing........

    The trick is to alow your body to be relaxed so that you do not resrtric the energy passing through the body and then expell that energy to the hand or fist. I hope this helps... your freind ED
    http://www.kungfuUSA.net

  3. #3
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    The bullwhip and cracking example is one type of fajing...particularly seen in White Crane or the tai chi as taught by Dr. Yang Jwing-ming.
    ~ Eric Putkonen
    (Teaching Tai Chi Chuan in Plymouth, Minnesota)

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    Re: the definition of fa-jing

    Originally posted by Zantesuken
    the most widely accepted definition is erle montigue's. while he's not wrong that's no the only side to it either. for instance you use your head, hands, shoulders, eblows, hips, knees, and the bottom of the feet to fa-jing to generate power.
    That IS Erle Montaigue's definition. The movement of the waist is talked about too much and too many people act as if that's all he ever talks about but it is not. If you ask him to describe fa-jing, he will tell you what is in the Classics, and his method does fit that description.

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    really? cause i remember you said something like it's meant to cause people to die inside. it was on his site!
    - "Why should the marathon go to the swift? Or the jumble to the quick witted? Because god gave them their GIFTS? Well I say CHEATING is the gift man gives himself!" - Monty Burns

  6. #6
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    Originally posted by Zantesuken
    really? cause i remember you said something like it's meant to cause people to die inside. it was on his site!
    Taiji was invented to kill people with a light to medium strike. The way this is accomplished is with fa-jing. Fa-jing sends a vibration from the dantien out through the peripherals of the body, like a ripple effect when you throw a stone into a pond. In fact, it sometimes looks like this, especially with whipping strikes like a percussive/oxtongue palm. There are many descriptions people use to talk about the power of fa-jing. Some call it a shockwave, and I believe that is about as accurate as you can get. The vibration or "wave" travels from the dantien through the peripherals and is transferred to the other person. This is a bit like one moving pool ball striking another. The first ball comes to a stop as the kinetic energy is transferred into the next ball, which goes from sitting still to moving. This shockwave can affect the energy system within another person's body, creating imbalances, illnesses, pain, etc. If this shockwave is transferred into another person's body at a point with a lower resistance to energy input (an acupuncture point), then specific effects can be obtained, such as imblances between specific organs, the creation of specific diseases, mental or spiritual degradation, etc. Certain of these points affect the body severely without this shockwave being transferred, and with the energy being transferred the effects become even more severe. Some points which affect the heart and cause a ko with a medium powered strike might now cause death. Illnesses caused with purely physical strikes that were before temporary or dissipating, might now become worse over time instead unless treatment is sought out to correct the specific problem. The energy from fa-jing explodes inside the person like a bomb to cause this damage and seep into their system. Reminds me of the scene from House where they shove the grenade inside the zombie's ribs and he explodes. I hit someone in the chest once with Ji, full power, and he doubled over in pain. He said it felt like a ball of fire had been planted inside his chest. It got worse and worse for a minute or so, and finally began to dissipate. He has heart trouble now, though, with frequent chest pains. He did not before.

    So yes, fa-jing is used to kill people. Those who claim to demonstrate "real" fa-jing by throwing people across the room, for instance, are simply demonstrating parlor tricks done through the use of proper leverage. People who are struck with real fa-jing do not go flying, they drop.

    Now here's where I make enemies:

    The part about fa-jing that is most often disputed is the generation method. Erle's method for generating fa-jing is often called into question because it does not jive with what other perhaps more famous masters have described, in many people's opinion. What I was told when I first began learning fa-jing was that there was only one generation method which was applied to many movements. I had no trouble doing any movement as fa-jing once I learned how it was done. (Though my fa-jing has become more refined and more subtle.) Since then, I have heard a great many people talk about how there are so many kinds of jings and how they can't get a handle on this one or that one, and that they have to get them right before they can learn fa-jing. The truth is that there is only one jing. Period. If you want to express it explosively, you do so, and it is called fa-jing. One of the problems behind this phenomenon of people not being able to grasp what should be simple concepts is that they are willing to fall for the trap, and have their minds cluttered with so much useless information. Why they are accepting of this, I don't know and it saddens me to see people unable to grasp the basics. Second on my list as to why people cannot grasp the basics is because their teachers either don't want them to or else never did themselves. Now I'm not saying everyone out there is like this, because there are in fact a lot of good teachers. I learned to do things a certain way, and it makes sense. And yet I see others who espouse certain teachers' methods who do it differently. Now just doing it differently is not wrong. In fact, it's good as far as I'm concerned. I'm always willing to look at new things and maybe try them out if I like them. However, I have seen people, for instance, doing push hands and letting their P'eng arm collapse almost against their chest, and saying that teacher so and so does it this way because of this and that, and it's bull! In some cases, I seriously doubt that these teachers teach this way, I think that the students are simply mistaken because they cannot quite grasp what their teacher is doing. I have also seen people lean far over backwards in push hands to "yield" to a push, and was tempted the traverse the 10 feet or so between mysef and them and kick them square in the balls to teach them how to do it right!!! (I did not, of course.)

    I believe that things like this exist because people are far too willing to over-intellectualize things, to the point that if they can't f*ck it up on their own they ask their teacher to further confuse them so they can f*ck it up royally. When I teach people, I do not teach them about different jings and baloney like that. I teach them how to do it. I have found that giving a minimum of thigns for the student to intellectualize keeps them from trying too hard and consequently f*cking it up. I was trying to teach a friend of mine fa-jing, and having been up for several days straight before our meeting, my mind was not working very well. After an hour or so of trying to get him to use his body the way he needed by giving him classic sayings and body part specific instructions and breakdowns, I realized it was too much. I was frustrated. He wanted to give up, but I was determined to give him some lesson he could internalize that day. I said, "one more time...punch the glove with the punch I showed you, this time with fa-jing. Fa-jing is like a sneeze. I want you to sneeze into the glove." Well...he looked at me like I was a moron, and gave it a go anyway. He didn't get it, and I went home disappointed in myself for not being able to convey a simple idea like fa-jing to him. After a few months of correspondence with him (he moved to the west coast shortly after our meeting) I got a letter from him saying that he finally understood what I meant when I said "sneeze into the glove." He was finally entering the internal.

    My first glimpse of fa-jing other than Erle Montaigue doing it, was during a PBS special on bears, in which two adult males were filmed fighting with each other. They moved exactly the same way Erle did. I have watched cats, dogs, iguanas, pythons, etc, and have found correlations between what Erle says and what all these animals do when they explode into action. Sometimes, only very subtle things, but nonetheless it is the same, as if fa-jing oxtongue palm strike were the equivalent of an iguana whipping his tail, or a tiger palm strike was the equivalent of a cat puncing on a mouse, or as if certain holds and locks were the human equivalent of a python puncing on and encoiling its prey.

    And now, after all this time of people claiming Erle's method was wrong, I have seen videos of certain masters demonstrating fa-jing that looked exactly like Erle's.

    Now what is the difference between Erle's method of teaching fa-jing and others'? Why could I "get" it in a shorter period than others who studied with other teachers? For one thing, he starts with the most minute and sometimes stupid sounding body movements and builds on them over time, where others say, "do this" and let you figure it out for yourself. For another, much useless intellectuallizing, mostly because of this previous factor, has been eliminated. If you are told the exact body mechanics, there is no need for over-intellectualizing. Now, when people pick on Erle's focus on the waist, they do not realize that those instructions are aimed at people who already have a grasp on opening and closing of the body, etc. That does not mean a beginner could not learn from it, but it is a further refinement, not the be all and the end all.

  7. #7
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    Hang on, I'm not finished.


    When you perform fa-jing, the ENTIRE body must move as a unit. People leave out the feet or the head or something from the equation all the time, and when they do, it is not fa-jing. But then they pick on a guy whose feet leave the ground when he explodes like this.

    Now tell me, whose ENTIRE body is moving, the guys whose feet remain stuck to the floor, or the guy whose feet come up off the ground as he is propelled forward? I have seen other masters on video performing fa-jing, and they also do this. To say that your entire body moves and yet insist that one part of it NOT move is stupid! So these people saying that a method of generation that keeps the feet on the ground is superior to one that allows the feet to move of their own accord are full of sh!t.

    Furthermore, although power is drawn from the ground through thefeet, transferred up through the legs, and manifests in the fingers, the waist is still the controller of the movement. The waist is the commander. The waist as a matter of fact, is the amplifier of power, taking what is drawn up from the ground, amplifying it and then directing it. Now I have heard a lot of people say that the waist does not power fa-jing and that the legs do. What they are missing, and what I have tried to drive into them, is that they are correct and incorrect at the same time. The waist alone does not generate a lot of power. But it can seriously amplify the power drawn from the ground by the legs. People only say these things because they are self-concious about what they look like while practicing, and do not want to be seen doing funny moves. They don't want to be laughed at because they think they are somebody important and deserve better, never realizing that if they were somebody important, they wouldn't worry about being laughed at because people would be laughing behind their backs instead in front of them. Let people laugh, they are going to anyway. Better people laugh for a while so you learn some humility. I have had almost as many people laugh when they see a Bagua form as I have had people step back in slack-jawed awe of fa-jing. That's part of the yin and yang of life.

    "You take the good, you take the bad, you take 'em all and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life..."

    Sory, you're probably too young to remember that show.

    Anyway, these self-concious people, who cannot grasp the waist directing the movement, simply because they are too self-concious, often eliminate it from the equation, and with it the shaking and vibration of fa-jing. They then claim that simple body mechanics are behind things like fa-jing, and proceed to demonstrate by shoving some poor b@stard across the room or against a wall, claiming that this is a characteristic of fa-jing when it simply is not. I have demonstrated this physically to people who did not believe me when I told them it was more than simple physics, shoving them using simple physical power and proper alignement, and then shoving them with fa-jing. In the first instance, they are lifted off their feet and sent flying. In the second, they are shaken off their feet, often travelling only a few feet.

    Now to clarify something, there is Chan Su Jing, the spiralling energy. The theory behind it states that by spiralling the body and twisting it, we create a longer path for the force we are about to transfer to build power and momentum. By doing this, we no longer need space to create effective strikes because we have "internallized" the space needed. If you want to think of this as refining and enhancing the physics of the movement, then you are not incorrect, and in that case, everything would still be physics, but now they are complicated a bit when you think about them. For instance, how do we accomplish this method? Well, in order for our bodies to make a simple spiral, say along a vertical axis, we must twist in the middle. Now if our backbone had a spear running through its length, the top half would turn one way and the bottom half would turn the opposite. If you look at the way a Bagua practitioner walks the circle, this is exactly what is seen in his body posture. This same thing happens to a lesser extent in Taiji.

    What we have is the top and bottom halves of the body twisting agaisnt each other to create torque. Releasing it needs a trigger. So we use the waist, which is at the very center of the area. The waist explodes into action, and the body's power is released. The hands will punch, and the feet will move a bit.

    On top of these large coils, we have ever-smaller examples. For instance, the waist might compress down the center, or only on one side as it expands on the other, the hands might twist to gain a little extra power, or the legs might spiral. Add to this expanding and contracting of the body, as well as violent intent, and the strike is powerful indeed.

    As for the waist, it will shake from side to side, like a swinging door on a detented hinge, returning to center. But it is the trigger and I suppose that's why we talk about it so much. The waist movement allows you to yield and yet not have to lean over backward or use overly large movements to accomplish the same job. In effect, using for instance Lu, with waist movement, yields, and yet does the same job as a larger rollback might, without the extra physical movement and effort. This is a perfect example of what the classics mean by saying that you should use four ounces to deflect a thousand pounds. The four ounces and thousand pounds are measures of effort and force. If you have to make a greater effort than the ideal, then your technique was not perfect. Doing this technique with fa-jing instead of simple waist movement sticks to the classics, and yet is a more practical and quicker application that might just end he encounter as it begins, especially if you follow the classics to the letter and follow rollback with a strike, which will be powered by the exact same fa-jing movement that powers the yielding movement. This conservative type of power generation lends itself to rebounding strikes off of previous strikes, since very little effort was expended, and the body begins to re-coil for yet another strike, just as powerful as the first.

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    And just like one fa-jing strike rebounding off the previous one, I keep going and going and going...

    I'm going to have to stop there. The more I talk about fa-jing, the more in depth I get, and I can't sit here all night typing.

    Tune in next time for more on rebound strikes...same bat time, same bat channel...

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    Sam,

    Assuming any of what you seem to believe is factual... how does one perfect one's fa-jing?

    And how does one find willing training partners who understand that their death will result in the fa-jing being applied properly?

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    You should not be striking people with fa-jing. Despite the fact that I have in the past to illustrate a point, I no longer do. The reason is because I got tired of having to heal the damage I caused. If anyone is foolish enough to allow themselves to be struck by anyone, then they deserve whatever they get, though. However, it would be very hard to kill someone who is just standing there waiting to be hit with a strike unless you are supremely accurate or supremely lucky with the strike. In a fight, there are more factors that come into play, such as being powered by his force in addition to what you might use, adrenaline, momentum, etc. On top of that, intent is a bit different as well. I say to people not to do this strike or that one because death might result to make them careful. There are too many people out there promoting acupoint striking who are careless and invite others to be careless as well.

    You can practice fa-jing on a punching bag, full powered strikes won't hurt an inanimate object. There are ways to tell if you are doing it right. For instance, if you are using a heel palm strike the bag (usually a physical thing and nothing more), the bag will swing like a pendulum. That's the physical force moving it. If you strike it with maybe an oxtongue palm, the bag will not swing but it will shudder visibly. The shudder is an indication of the "qi" in the strike. In Bagua, there is a third kind of palm strike that combines these two, where the bag will not only swing but shudder as it does so. That's an indication of the ability to do both physical and energetic damage at the same time.

    You can apply these observations to Taiji punches on a bag as well. If you just drive the fist in and the bag swings with no shudder, then it's more of a physical thing than internal. If the bag shudders violently but does not move very far, then it's an indication that the strike was an energetic one. And shudder while swinging indicates both physical and internal power are present.

    In training with a partner, you should only be striking at them full power if they are capable of retaliating against it without getting hurt. And if they are it means that they have to strike back at you full powered, which means you must be capable of doing the same.

    To train to be able to strike people with fa-jing requires that you work on your reflexes in conjunction with your technique. Taiji and Bagua have a great many training methods that make certain methods into reflex actions to an attack. By using abstract training methods, we cause the body to want to move in certain ways, and these movements encompass broad categories of movement, so that the movement is internalized and not a technique. Then we train in these movements against different kinds of attacks so that we learn how to use the movement and do not have to depend on technique.

    To perfect fa-jing...you simply have to continue your practice for a lifetime. There are always new levels to explore, and I can't give you an exercise or a set of exercises to perfect something that always seems to get better and better.

  11. #11
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    so.....

    so, in the past, when you struck people with fa-jing to illustrate a point... how many of them died? (if they didn't die, then by your own verbose decscriptions, you did not really fa-jing).

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    uh very good description. almost makes me wanna believe you. your opinions are probably somewhat true and there is only on type of jing. but that's not it's own purpose. i recently met a tai chi master from hong kong. this guy could send his 'jing' through people.
    i was pushing hands with one of his friends and his friend wasn't pushing enough so he lightly touched her back and suddenly she shot straight at me. it was the weirdest thing cause he power tripled from before.
    then before he left i asked him about the part with sending people back and the fajing to kill.
    basically he said that when you start to practise tai chi, standing meditation you are already training your jing.
    oh yeah on a note i'm cantonese and jing is a mandarin term. it sounds very familiar to "ging" which means basically power.
    so he said jing is used for many purposes not just killing people. and i don't believe tai chi was formulated to kill people. taoist teachings to not advocate to kill.
    he still said that you can kill someone with it even if you haven't trained yourself in fa-jing yet. for example if you've trained in tai chi for quite a bit people would feel a difference in your punches from before. you can bounce people back and so on. and he did bounce me back so i don't believe it' snot possible. it was quite cool. he only moved a tiny bit. it wasn't even fast or lightning quick and i felt like i was being lifted off the ground away from him. it was quite quite COOL!

    haha so anyways since you're mentality is western not that i'm biased or anything it will become harder for you to grasp the methods. don't talk to other people about not being able to grasp the smaller details. there is definately a language barrier and even the best of translators can't get the true meaning. since my chinese isn't superior cause i dropped out at gr 2 chinese i'm not inclined to read but my grandma can so that's how i understand my stuff.

    i don't know where i'm going gos i'll conclude it here. ijust woke up and it said that i had a reply to this topic

    i really appreciate the effort you took but at the very end of your post you said that there's always new levels to achieve. so don't think that erle montigue's definition is the ultimate one. you yourself have only reached a certain level. the person i met is probably a higher level so i don't know. he does a lot of training, he goes to china once a year to goto mh toi san (cantonese translation!). i guess it's 5 something mountain. he demonstrated some stuff. so don't say that there's only one use for it. if you fundementally understand JING then you know that everything prodcues jing, your elbows can, your head, your shoulders, your hips, your knees, your feet, your internal organs. for instance my grandma can hold out her arms as if she was diong standing meditation posture and start turning her body left and right and no matter how hard i try i can't push her elbows in. that is also jing. so always keep an open mind. western mentality and asian mentality are a bit different. even though you think you've gotten close you never know how many other levels there are.
    - "Why should the marathon go to the swift? Or the jumble to the quick witted? Because god gave them their GIFTS? Well I say CHEATING is the gift man gives himself!" - Monty Burns

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    also the mere thought that your intent is to kill someone with fa-jing says a lot about your taining. no matter how high a level you attain, your kung fu will easily be lost.

    and about the western to chinese thing i'm not being racist. i'm not talking about the BIOLOGICAL differences. i'm talking about the mental differences
    - "Why should the marathon go to the swift? Or the jumble to the quick witted? Because god gave them their GIFTS? Well I say CHEATING is the gift man gives himself!" - Monty Burns

  14. #14
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    If you want to use my definition to say I did not actually do fa-jing because the people did not die, okay I can see that. But I also said that not all points on the body will kill. It would be difficult, don't you think, to strike someone on the hand and kill them? (Impossible, I'd say.) In any case, I had not been practicing fa-jing long when I did it, so it's possible that I simply was not

    Zantesuken,
    I believe that, although you can direct the energy to go straight through someone, that is a more physical example of fa-jing, and not so much energy. You can also direct the energy to travel from one spot to for instance, the heart. You could strike the lower ribs and direct it to go to the heart by doing things right. What would be the point of sending the energy straight through the person except for demonstration purposes? Better to send it into them and leave it there to do damage when it comes to fighting.

    What many might call p'eng jing, I call proper structure. The instance where you pushed against your friend's arms and could not collapse them...an example of proper structure and not jing. If that's what p'eng jing is, then so be it, but I see no point in putting mystical names on things.

    I practice for self-defense, and part of that training includes learning to kill. I do not train to fight in tournaments, nor do I train to compete in any other arena. I do not train to be like anyone else. On the other hand, I also train to heal, something that takes up a much larger part of my training than learning to kill, if you can believe it. Without sounding too condescending, you know very little of my background. I have experienced a great deal that many people, if they are lucky, never will. It's because of this that my attitudes are a little "harder" than most people's regarding a great many things. I also travel into areas often where if I get into trouble, the intent to kill will be to my advantage. On normal everyday suburban streets, the intent to kill might be an unnecessary thing, but in places where I have lived and through which I have to travel, when the sun sets, you don't want to be caught outside. Having been in a couple of fights where knives were drawn, and having had a gun pulled on me once and another person threaten to pull his gun, I tend to have a more severe attitude than some. I was brought up violently, and lived violently with violent people for a very long time. Though I have become more easy going over the years, there are still things that carry over from that period. Even among these violent people, I am still considered quite violent, though I consider my self quite tame. Go figure.

    My opinions may very well be wrong, but they are formed from some experience.

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    Sam--Question:

    Sometimes in class, we are practicing body alignment and connection through drilling basic long-energy pushes. As you probably know, these are the pushes that can send a person flying and look very impressive, but do not hurt the other person--they're the basic, purely "physical" pushes you mentioned. However, sometimes when we do this my teacher will demonstrate two versions of this:the first is the basic physical/structural one you have mentioned, and then he'll do it a second time, but adding qi into it. You can cleary feel the difference, and the "qi push" is most definitely more powerful, feels different, and is internal.

    So would you consider that an "internal" fajin (by your definition of internal fajin)? Maybe you would have to feel something like that to judge properly. I would say "yes", because he is bringing out the jin (literal translation of fa-jin), and exploding out the qi to add another dimension to it, thereby making it internal, but I'm just interested in what you think about this, since it's kind of in the middle between killing fajin and physical pushing.
    Thanks a lot.
    "Duifang jing zhi meng ji, wo fang tui zhi ce fang xi zhi."

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