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I'd not heard that text before. The link I posted above for the ma bu stance does mention the opening of the hip/sacrum area in a bit of detail. You might find that relates in some way to your question...or not...but it might be worth a look.

Hi Tim and folks,

Don't know about other internal styles much, but FWIW Chen style TJQ has a definite requirement that the back should be "relaxed" or "dropped". This is quite subtle and difficult to understand unless someone shows you, but here's a stab:-

It's a tuck, but it's not a tuck. The crucial point is that it ABSOLUTELY CANNOT be attained by tensing the buttocks. The buttocks must be FLACCID (and in fact, the only tension you should feel in your entire body while standing Chen style is in the main part of the thighs, and they should _burn_, at least in the beginning). When you get it right, it's like the lower back "drops", and the pelvis naturally and relaxedly tilts _very slightly_, but in such a way that a delicate alignment is maintained so that one feels the entire weight of the torso compressed and centred on the top of the "arch" where the legs join the pelvis ( "kua" ), and the groin area feels like it's "offering", almost like it feels if you do a jokey sexual thrusting motion (except of course, unlike in a jokey sexual thrusting motion, the buttocks should be relaxed!).

That feeling of compression deep in the lower abdomen is then the famous "dantien" (or one particular aspect of it, rather, the "what it feels like" aspect - in fact the dantien in Chen style is very nearly the whole mid-torso region, everything not shoulders/chest and hips), and it's from that "centre" that every movement is done.

At first, when you get it right, it may feel like you're leaning _forward_ very slightly (hence one recommendation is you should feel like you're about to sit back on a toilet seat), but if you check yourself in the mirror, the back is absolutely ramrod straight - yet _completely relaxed_, and once you get easier with it, it feels like the weight of the skull is resting on a perfectly aligned column of bone right down to the body's centre. (Actually, it feels very similar to what it feels like when you get sitting meditation posture correct.)

All very subtle, and it takes a while of standing, and some correction from somebody who can do it, before you "get it", but once you "get it" it's like the whole thing of internal power starts to open up (at least it did for me, though I'm still only a kitten in these matters).

(Note: I am reliably informed that this kind of "tuck" has to be distinguished carefully from the very pronounced kind of tuck you can see in some of the Southern styles, like Mantis and Wingchun, which seem to be based on a completely different kind of principle - that sort of thing is definitely verboten in Chen style, just as verboten as sticking your arse out and actually leaning forward would be.)

Thanks for the post, a very clear description of alignment without unnatural forcing I think.

Tim - Wouldn't you agree that everyone who enters into training has different degrees of flexibility & strength in their lower back muscles? Some may be very stiff for example. Wouldn't it then require at least some forceful training in order for some people to "develop the natural power of the body?"

Even if you don't believe in forceful tucking during form or applications, might it not still serve as a form of exercise to help someone who can't naturally achieve a relaxed, straightened back to eventually do so?

My experience is that quite a few people (even athletes)have badly arched backs & that this can be corrected by tucking. After practice their backs are straighter, their hips are more open, & the chi flows like mad!

I agree with Tim. While I have been an advocate of tucking, Cat has described what I thought I meant.
Buddy

Dragonprawn,
I agree that specific problems require specific remedies. We should all practice exercises to stretch the lower back, and many of them involve rounding the lower back during the exercise. But exercise is one thing, training to fight is another.

For example, I might practice putting my leg behind my head to stretch my hip, but I'm not going to try to hold that position when I spar (or practice forms). I think it is important not to confuse theraputic exercise and martial arts training.

Let me add another word to this thread, the "neck". You have to hang the top end of the spine upward whenever you discuss the bottom end of the spine.

Recently I felt my waist "enlarged" after doing some front-n-back ZhengLi ("opposite forces"?) exercise. Da da. Ever got lost in a forest and finally see a trail? That's how I feel after years of standing like an idiot. What I want to say in regards to this thread is that merely "thinking/hoping" to relax a region may not be the best method, you can work its related regions instead.

Iron Moose

Would you describe and discuss these 'opposite force' exercises?

Mark,
Since a discussion of "opposite force" may be off-topic here, I am going to throw my 2 cents out and run away. Taiji talks about "practice as if you are swimming/walking in water", well there you go, "opposite force". It's my current understanding that the purpose of standing is to "balance" or to control your own center. Incorporating exercises to feel, control and understand forces and their opposite forces is the key to understand ZhanZhuang.

The exercises are surprisingly simple: you take a 30/70 stance and move it to 50/50. Back and forth. feel the forces that are holding your waist back. Do similiar exercises to get forces in all six directions. Once you get it, your taiji or xingyi will be very different. Sounds good? Gimme your money now! This is supposed to be the biggest secrete in Yiquan.

Just out of simple curiosity, Moose, who do you study Yiquan with?

Regards,

Mike Sigman

I studied with a teacher in North America some time ago, currently i am getting guidance from friends in China. My latest understanding was influenced by Wang YongXiang in Beijing.

These days you can hardly find two branches of Yiquan think the same way. Mike, I can tell you know a lot about Yiquan, could you start a new thread and tell us what branches you are familiar with and whose teaching you believe in the most? Thanks.

I don't know much about Yiquan except for what I have read and from observing a few people who supposedly practice yiquan. I withold my judgement on the ones I have seen practice and who "teach", because yiquan like so many other arts is bound to be populated with a certain amount of people who are not doing the real thing. Most of the yiquan I have seen has not particularly impressed me, but on the other side I like the general approach of yiquan... it's fairly practical.

In relation to the tail-bone tuck (which I think really just says that the tail-bone should point downward and says nothing about "tuck", one way of looking at that requirement is that it's for the same reason the gua is sunk and relaxed, the back is relaxed, the head is suspended, the armpit is rounded, the crotch is rounded, the chest is hollowed and the back rounded slightly, and the stomach is relaxed. They are all done to affect the same thing which connects them all.

Mike