By Tu-Ky Lam
“Hun yuan li” is the force of the whole body, produced by all parts of our body - head, chest, hips, knees, and feet - working together as a unit. In push-hands, if we apply this force, together with our body weight, we are sure to have an upper hand over our opponent. In fighting, this force can help us knock out an opponent easily. “Hun yuan li” is the core of Yiquan training system. All practitioners and students train very hard for it. In this article, we will discuss how “Hun yuan li” works in the different areas of Yiquan system.
“Hun yuan li” can only be obtained by doing zhan-zhuang. The reason is because zhan-zhuang can quickly build up a good structure that can help increase our strength. (For more details, see my other article entitled “Zhan-zhuang and Whole Body Force”). Therefore, for zhan-zhuang to have any good result, we must have a correct posture. (For more details, see Chapter 25: Yiquan’s Posture and Movements in my bookDemystifying Tai Chi Chuan Demystifying Tai Chi Chuan.)
During zhan-zhuang we do not stand still. Instead, our body moves slightly forward and backward. This is called “mo jing” meaning feeling or searching for internal strength. “Mo jing” helps us discover our whole body force, and put it into practice in push-hands and sparring. For more details, please see my article entitled ‘Mo-jing: In Search of Internal Strength.”
When I last trained with my teacher in Beijing in June 2008, one day when I was doing “Cheng-bao zhuang” (the “Embrace a Balloon” posture with two feet parallel to each other), Master Yao Cheng-rong suddenly gently held my right shoulder with his right hand and asked me to move forwards. If he had done this to me three years ago, I would have not been able to move. Now I just lifted my head up and moved it forward. At the same time, the ball (inside) of my feet pushes the ground, and my knees move slightly inwards (toward each other). And there I went!
Then he put his right hand behind my back, and asked me to move back. Again I lifted the top of my head and moved it backward. At the same time, the ball (outside) of my feet pushed backward, my knees moved slightly outwards (away from each other). That way I moved back to the starting position.
These are the movements that we always do when we practice the “Embrace-a-Balloon” or “Cheng-bao zhuang” posture. Adding pressure by holding someone’s shoulder to stop him from moving is a good means to test his internal strength. My teacher seemed to be pleased with my performance as he said nothing. I thought I had passed the test.
This test will be easier if we stand in an “Embrace-a-Tree” (Hun yuan zhuang) posture where one of our feet is in front while the other at the back. Here we will have to lift our head up and move it forwards. At the same time, our back knee moves toward the front knee, which will in turn moves slightly back (not forward). Our back leg pushes forward while our front leg pushes straight into the ground, and our body will move slightly forward.
To move backward, the previous movement is reverse, with our torso moving slightly back to sit more on the back leg, which pushes into the ground. This time our front leg pushes slightly outward, upward and then backward. (The top of our head should always be lifted at all time.)
In short, when we practice zhan-zhuang, our whole body always moves slightly forward and backward. After practicing zhan-zhuang for two or three year, our whole body force will slowly show up and can be used in push-hands and sparring.
How long do we need to stand to see the good result? Master Yao does not give a definite answer. He told me to reserve two thirds of my training time for zhan-zhuang, one third for shi-li, stepping, and fa-li. One of my fellow students told me that the master asked him to stand one hour and a half a day, and another told me at least one hour a day. (After two or three years, our Hun yuan li will start to show up.) However, I twice heard him say, “Doing zhan-zhuang is better than not doing it. Spending more time in standing (also training) will certainly bring better results than spending less time.”
Shi-li is what Yiquan students will learn after learning zhan-zhuang. Shi-li includes only about ten simple movements that look like qi-gong (much simpler than Taiji routine and is equivalent to it). It took me a while to understand what shi-li is for.
More than once I asked Master Yao how we could improve our push-hands skill. He always replied, “Do shi-li more.” I felt perplexed at first because this was not the answer I had anticipated. I had expected him to show me some push-hands techniques.
After quite a few push-hands sessions, I came to understand that shi-li movements are actually controlling and unbalancing techniques in push-hands. If we have done shi-li properly and long enough to produce whole body force, we will be able to unbalance and control our opponents, instead of being controlled by them. Here I will tell you why.
In double push-hands, we do not just turn circles with our arms, waiting for a gap or a weak spot in our opponents, and then moving in quickly to push him off balance. We usually use different techniques to unbalance or control our opponents before we push them of balance. For example, we sometimes spin (xuan fa shi li) our opponents or split (fen-gua shi li) open our opponent’s arms to make them lose their balance first before finishing them off with a push.
On other occasions such as when our forearms are on top of those of our opponent, we can push downwards, backwards and sideways with our forearms to break open the opponent’s defence and then throw him out. This is the application of “Fu-an” shi-li (movement is like grabbing and throwing a ball and then pushing it into the water). If our forearms are under those of our opponent, we can sit back with both our forearms opening up and moving backwards to unbalance the opponent before we give him a push. This is how “Gou-gua” (Hook and hang) shi-li is used in push-hands.
Master Yao is so good in using shi-li techniques in push-hands. Four years ago, when I first did push-hands with him, he often spun me around like a top, which gave me such a fright that my mind was totally blacked out. In other occasions, after he had unbalanced me, he did not release power to throw me out, but changed shi-li techniques to move me to other directions – left, right, front and back. I was moved around, not able to stand properly, like a drunken man. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get out of his control. I just felt I was sucked in by his power, and did not know what he did to me. It took me three years to understand what he did, and understand why he said practicing shi-li more can improve our push-hands skill.
Most students are taught shi-li soon after they have learned zhan-zhuang. They cannot do shi-li properly because they lack gong-li (internal strength) and do all the movements from their hands without other parts of the body participating in the movement. This is unavoidable. They will have to keep practicing shi-li, and at the same time practice zhan-zhuang to build up their gong-li and pay attention to how they can make the shi-li movements involve all parts of their body into action.
How does Hun yuan li work in shi-li movements? It is very similar to the Mo-jing in zhan-zhuang: the heads leads the movement, the body moves forward (or backward), the knees move inward (or outward) slightly and the legs (feet) push the ground (like mo-jing movements in zhan-zhuang mentioned in the previous section). Each time we move, we have to make the jing (westernized spelling: jin, meaning strength) from our feet move to our hands (by relaxing and by the push of our feet into the ground). When jing is on its way up from our feet, every part of our body has to work simultaneously to help increase strength. If we can do this, this is whole body force.
Such shi-li as “Gou-gua” (Hook and hang), “Fen-gua” (splitting), “Xuan-fa” (spinning), and “Ping-tui” (pushing forward) all end up in a pushing forward movement. People who have had some gong-li from doing zhan-zhuang will find it easy to put their whole body weight and strength on their opponent and so are able to unbalance their opponent. But the first part of “Gou-gua” and “Fen-gua” shi li where we sit slightly back with our forearms open to break up the opponent’s forearms cannot be executed as easily. Most will find, with our body sitting back, it very hard to put our body weight on our opponent, which means little whole body force is present. To compensate for this, we must make sure we sit back (try to make use of our body weight to do so) while we do the first part of the two shi-li movement. At the same time, we must have our front leg push outward, upwards and backwards and our back leg push into the ground. We must also lift the top of our head up, making it go in opposite direction with the front foot. If we do all this at the same time, we will have whole body force and can break open our opponent’s arms and make him lose his balance.
In “Fu-an” shi-li (which looks like lifting two balls up with our hands, and then pushing them back into the water), when our hands push the balls (or flutter board) into the water, we sit back in the same manner and let the weight of our body push the balls down. Here, there is some force in the heels of our palms and forearms. We must relax all other parts of our body. When sitting back, our torso should not come down with our hands, but should stay up. Lift the top of our head more and make it go in opposite direction with the front foot as described in the previous paragraph.
When we lift the balls up from the water, we should not just use our hands to do the work. Our whole body should move together with our hands. We should lift up the top of our head and make it go forward to lead the momentum. Our torso has to go forward accordingly. Our back leg pushes forward while our front leg pushes into the ground. If our hands (moving up and forward to the front of us) are backed up by our whole body like this, we will have whole body force.
If we can do shi-li with whole body force, we can move on to the next stage of training: fa-li, which means releasing power. Fa-li is similar to shi-li. The difference is that when we do fa-li, we speed up shi-li movements with vigorous force near the end of the movements. We usually use fa-li to push an opponent away in push-hands or strike at someone in sparring.
It is important that we should use our head to lead our internal strength, which means it must go forward. If it does not, little huan yuan li can be released.
There are fa-li movements that strike to the front, to the sides and downwards. We can also do fa-li with palm strikes, punches, kicks, etc. The most common fa-li exercise is “qian shang fa-li” which means releasing power forward and upward. Here we start from “Hun yuan zhuang” (Embrace-a-Tree posture with one foot in front and the other at the back). The movement is very simple: we just rotate our hands, move them forwards and upwards and make our palms facing outwards with our fingers pointing diagonally up. The movement near the end is fast and strong with the intention of sending all our energy out. Remember that our head and torso must move forward and our legs must push the ground. After this we move our hands back to the starting position (Hun yuan zhuang). When releasing power, it is essential that our shoulders and upper arms are very relaxed.
When teaching this fa-li exercise, my teacher likes to ask his students to hold a T-shirt between their fingers. If they can throw the shirt up and out, this proves that they are relaxed and not use brute force.
When we do “quan-fa” (punching movements, which contain mainly four punches: punch forward, punch upwards, downwards and horizontally which looks like a left or right hook in boxing). When we punch forward, we must remember to bring back the hand that is not punching to power the hand going forwards. We must lift up the top of our head, turn our back hip, back knee and back foot to help produce more force.
When we practice palm strike with fa-li, we do almost the same things as when we practice quan-fa (punches), except that we must make our palms go in opposite directions with each other.
“Mo cha bu” (ground rubbing or mud-walking) is the foundation of all Yiquan stepping. When doing Mo cha bu, we should not just move our foot forward or backward by itself as doing so has no strength. We should use our hips and our legs to move our foot. For example, we start from an “Embrace-a-Tree” posture with one foot in front and the other at the back with our body weight more on the back leg. Then we rotate our palms to make them face the ground with our fingers pointing the front. This is “Fu-an” ji ji zhuang (Hold and Push posture in a fighting stance).
Before we lift our back foot up and move it forward, we have to shift our body weight to the front foot, and sit properly on our front leg. We lift the top of our head up, make our front foot gently push into ground and raise our body slightly. That way our back foot is lifted off the ground. We now have to use our hips and our legs to move our back foot closer to our front foot before moving it out to the front and form a fighting stance. Now the front foot becomes the back foot. We will repeat the same process to move the back foot forward again. This is how “mo ca bu” should be done. (When we practice Mo cha bu going backwards, the movements are reverse.)
In Mo cha bu, the distance between our feet is only the width of our shoulders (just like when we stand in the “Embrace-a-Tree” posture). The distance can be much widened to become a big stepping exercise (twice as wide). The movements are exactly the same as in Mo cha bu except that the speed is faster and we move forward with our head leading the move and our back leg pushes our body forwards.
Another useful stepping is that we move our front foot one step forward and our back foot follows suit. Here we should remember to use our head to lead the move and our back leg to push our body forwards. With this kind of stepping, we can move in a straight line forward or move diagonally forward in a 45 degree angle. All the stepping should be trained in backward movements as well.
Stepping is good training to our legs. It complements shi-li movements in which we mainly use our hands. Of course, we also practice shi-li with stepping, which is much harder because we do two at the same time. But if we can do stepping (Zou bu) and shi-li well respectively, with some effort we can quickly combine the two. Stepping is useful in push-hands and sparring. Good stepping can confuse our opponents and can help us attack more efficiently. It can also help us step out of danger quickly.
After we can do zhan-zhuang, shi-li, fa-li, and zou bu proficiently, we should take part in push-hands and sparring to test our hun yuan li and see if it is powerful and threatening to our opponent. Master Yao often says, “If we dare to compete, we will make progress.”
It is important that we maintain our good posture and not let it collapse during push-hands (and sparring). We should always aim at our opponent’s center and protect our own center. We need to be relaxed and apply suitable techniques in different situations. The more we take part in push-hands and sparring, the more we will improve. All these are the application of huan yuan li.