Qi — Wing Chun vs Taichi
Light rings: Photo by James Owen on Unsplash
(Continued from the last post: Qi — Breathing and The Feeling of Qi)
Now I turn to Qi.
Filling up — the Feeling of Qi
After you’ve tasted the “feeling of Qi” by calming and relaxing, you experience Qi by “filling up”, noticeably the forearms first, then the body trunk, then maybe the legs too. (To me, Qi in the context of Chu-style Wing Chun is “filling up”.)
I take “filling up” with a simple meaning: For a piece of already-relaxed muscle (not contracting), your mind connects to it and makes it strong in terms of more “swollen”, more dynamic, more elastic, more “flowing”, by filling something into it. Making muscles strong is the main role of Qi in Wing Chun.
Obviously such property is not just limited to Wing Chun, but other martial arts, notably Taichi, though the role of Qi is different. (I just have limited knowledge on Taichi but still try to draw a comparison which may appear superficial. There is a wide spectrum of Taichi variations accessible by us. I particularly focus on the Chen-style Taichi here.)
Taichi’s Operation of Qi
In Taichi, you target to grow Dan Tien (at CoG, centre of gravity), to make it bigger and bigger. How to grow it? The mind mobilises Qi around the body and “accumulates” Qi (not air nor oxygen, of course) to Dan Tien. It is the activity of the mind — connecting different bodily parts to centre around Dan Tien via Qi, so that Dan Tien can initiate every movement of the body.
It’s very similar to what we have been describing the Chu-style Wing Chun — connecting different bodily parts to the lower centre (CoG) by linking, so that the lower centre can initiate every movement of the body.
But the actual operation is vastly different.
In Taichi, Dan Tien, conceived as a big sphere, initiates body movements by rotating/spinning itself by “turning” its spherical surface, like you hold a ball and rotate it by dragging its surface; it’s not spinning from its very centre. Since the Dan Tien ball is big, its rotational momentum obtained in this way is still great too.
The spinning trickles down throughout the body, through the trunk up to the arms and, expectedly, directly down to the legs. All this operation is conceived as Qi enacting, accumulated at Dan Tien, spinning there and “flowing” to the limbs. Physically, power is delivered by muscle-twisting and bursting/blasting. “Twisting” is started by Dan Tien’s rotation and carried on for and during power transmission. “Bursting/blasting” is the end result at the final landing of the accumulation of such twisting across all the bodily segments in between, most noticeable in launching a punch.
The Taichi Qi operation is fundamentally a muscular operation — it is still the muscular layer, already relaxed and filled up though, takes the mastery role in initiating movements; it is Qi-enacting, otherwise muscles can’t remain relaxed but have to contract to perform twisting and bursting/blasting; Dan Tien is the corresponding mind activity to conduct it; and Dan Tien has to be big to cause strong and abrupt twisting to deliver big burst/blast.
Since the muscular layer is still the master, it requires a strong base to draw support for generating the twisting and bursting. The base is inevitably, again, the floor. That’s why in Taichi your feet have to grasp firmly on the floor to draw support (can’t be detached), though in most times one foot grasping firmly while another foot touching lightly — the Yin-yang dichotomy for energy flow. Even spinning the big Dan Tien also requires such firm support from at least one leg.
Wing Chun’s Operation of Qi
In Wing Chun, the “filling up” makes muscles strong and dynamic, so that they are first readily resistant (cushioning and sticky) to incoming forces (expelling them right at the contact surface), and further adding their momentum (accelerated filling up) to empower movements initiated and directed by the skeleton; it doesn’t cause twisting, nor bursting/blasting. Thus Dan Tien needs not be big. On the contrary, it’s as small as a point; it doesn’t rotate as a big sphere for long peripheral distances, but micro-spins as a point at the very centre for great angular acceleration.
Forces so resulted, apart from impactful as contributed by the dynamic momentum of muscles, are also very penetrating (not bursting/blasting), due to the distinct property of joint-rotating — multi-directional forces that converge in one move. It is now the skeleton taking the mastery role, not the muscular layer, which no more needs to draw firmly from the floor; the skeleton itself erects up on its own from inside. Instead, the muscular layer hinges on the skeletal connectors and freely tags along the skeletally-directed movements to add heavy momentum. There is no reliance on the Yin-yang dichotomy.
Qi in Muscles vs Qi in Skeleton
The above is about Qi in muscles. In my opinion, and this is highly my own conception, there is another “feeling of Qi” in the skeleton operating at the same time in the Chu-style Wing Chun. It is the feeling of links that your mind connects different skeletal parts together. It basically runs within the skeleton. Qi in skeleton differs from Qi in muscles: It is very thin, like a thin line, so it doesn’t “fill up”, but “links”; whereas Qi in muscles can be termed in volume that “fills up” a space.
