Zhan Zhuang Grounding and Structure

Below is an excerpt from a very nice article that appeared at The Way of Least Resistance, on the Standing Stake practice, Zhan Zhuang. The full article may be read here.

 Zhan zhuang: grounding, structure, intention and qi
Introduction

There is a tendency in the Chinese, and increasingly in the Japanese, martial arts to venerate “standing post” training - what is known as zhan zhuang (站樁 - literally “standing like a post”).  In particular the internal arts of China are known for this practise.  Even more particularly, the art of yiquan (意拳 - literally “concept fist”) focuses almost entirely on this as a martial training method.

Yiquan, which is also called “da cheng quan” (大成拳 - literally “great achievement boxing”), was developed by xingyiquan master Wang Xiangzhai (26 November 1885 - 12 July 1963).  One of his students was the Taiwan-based martial artist Wang Shujin (a master of xingyiquan, baguazhang and taijiquan who happens to have also been one of my grandmaster Chen Pan Ling's main students).

In Japan the yiquan tradition was continued by Kenichi Sawai, founder of the school of taikiken (体気拳 - literally “mind and spirit fist”).

So what is the point of “standing post training”?  Can it have any martial function at all?  Clearly Wang Shujin, a respected and well-attested and experienced full-contact fighter, felt so.  However things tend to get more than a little clouded whenever people start to go into specifics of “how” or “why” zhan zhuang should be useful in martial training...

Mostly the claims centre on the notion that zhan zhuang helps you develop “great power”.  And in a sense I can corroborate this claim.  However it does depend greatly what you mean by “power”.

Of concern to me is the notion that zhan zhuang is useful because it develops a kind of “mystical” or “superhuman” power  - one which is often read into the character 気 (qi/chi in Chinese and ki in Japanese).  In my experience zhan zhuang does no such thing.

However, it might be said to develop “qi” if by this term one means something far more subtle - namely “intention”.

Channelling intention: the martial function of zhan zhuang

An ability to channel “intention” is of far greater value than most martial artists think.  In some respects, I see it as the cornerstone of all effective martial training.

After all, what is it that differentiates MMA champions like Georges St Pierre and Anderson Silva from any number of rivals?  Is it their size, strength or speed?  I would say no: there are many fighters who are larger, stronger and faster than either of those champions.

Is it their overall skill and athleticism?  Again, I would say no: there are many fighters who have pinpoint accuracy, excellent technique, efficient movement, etc.

I have gone some way to suggesting that champions have better defence - but even that comprises just another set of skills in movement - skills that many fighters have.

Now we could go all “vague” and say “champions have better timing” but that just delays a further question: what is it that makes their “timing” better?

I think the answer is simply this:

    They are better able to translate “intention” into “action”.

In other words, the psychology of the fighters makes all the difference: how you think affects how you feel, which affects what you do, which affects what you become.

This should come as no surprise: the notion that our minds and bodies are somehow separate is manifest nonsense.  Cartesian dualism has always been, in my opinion, a con.  Rather, each of us comprises one single, connected organism.

So the answer to why champions are better than their rivals is, I think, summed up in this way:

    Champions are better than their rivals at channelling their intention. 

I think the Chinese ancients tried to describe this channelling of thought into efficient action as the “guided flow of qi”.

However if it is true that the ancients used "qi" to describe what are basically mental processes, why didn’t they just use the expression "guided thoughts"?  I suspect it is because they intuitively understood that thoughts are not separate, “non-physical” processes. After all, the whole "mind-body dualism" is a Western conceptualisation that wasn't part of the east Asian world view to begin with.  And in the absence of modern science - in particular, understanding the functions of neurons and electro-chemical signals, fascia, muscle tissue etc. - they devised a suitable, internally consistent paradigm to cover these processes as one single, unified system they called "qi".

The 2014 Lenten Challenge Begins ... NOW!

The 2014 Lenten Challenge Begins Now!!

Finding Time to Train

A common problem for martial arts students is finding the time to train. Actually, that's the first of two problems. The second problem is filling that time in a meaningful way.

I'm of the opinion that we have the time and resources to do what we want. The obstacles that life throws in front of us serves to help us distinguish between what we really want and what we only think we want.

I don't like getting up early. I like NOT practicing even less, so I get up a little early every day for my own practice.

Some years ago, I read a wonderful little book on time management entitled The Art of Time. After all of the obligatory tips and tricks to get a handle on your time, the author got down to the heart of the matter.

Have you ever noticed that no matter how busy you are, when an unexpected but serious event happens, you can magically clear the decks and make the time? You make the time for what you love the most. That I think, is the secret and it is so obvious.

Below is an excerpt from a post that appeared at The Classical Budoka, which is an outstanding blog. The full post may be read here. Enjoy.

104. Finding the Time for Budo

November 12, 2013

A reader recently asked me to comment on how one finds the time to train. We live in a day and age, he noted, that puts a stress on how many waking hours we have to devote to training in budo. How did the great masters of the past manage to train so much? How can we devote all the time we really need when we have jobs, families, and other responsibilities?

It’s not a minor question. Surveys show that we Americans, at least, are working more hours and getting paid overall less (figuring in inflation) than a decade or two ago, and stereotypes notwithstanding, we work more productive hours than almost any other country, including the vaunted Japanese worker. All that work and then having to deal with daily family life will, indeed, put a crimp on training time. Surely, if you’re an adult with a job and a family of any sorts, you can’t be going to the dojo five nights a week to train for five or six hours. It just ain’t gonna work.

First comment: an author I admire and respect (plus, he’s my bud), Dave Lowry, addressed this issue in, I think, a past column in Black Belt magazine. So what I say is nothing new, and much of it is cribbed from his own article, since I pretty much agree with his observations.

Second: We’re not alone in our predicament. Every generation has had to struggle with figuring out how to balance training with living a realistic life.

When the earliest martial systems were founded in Japan and China, they still provided a modicum of practical application for life-and-death situations. Learning to handle a spear or sword, or grapple to the death (or for subduing criminals) were skills a hereditary warrior had to know to better survive if called upon to serve in a war or police action. So it wasn’t much of a choice between pastime or work. Learning the bugei WAS part of one’s occupation. There was no conflict of time between pastime and work.

Go down a bit more in time and, in Japan at least, there was an extended period of relative peace of the Tokugawa hegemony. But early in that period, civil war was still a relative possibility and so martial artists who were skilled at their craft could parlay their prowess into being hired by a feudal lord as part of his retinue or as an instructor. The martial arts were still practical skills that could, in fact, be utilized to save your life during the execution of your duties as a warrior.

However, if you study the records and proclamations, much of the martial ardor and pugnacity of the Sengoku bushi (Warring States samurai) faded as two centuries of peace ensued. Several Tokugawa shoguns had to write public admonitions to the samurai class to continue to practice martial arts and study strategy because as bushi, that is what their station in life was supposed to be about, never mind that the wars were over. So as the samurai became bureaucrats, administrators, teachers and lawmakers, they, too, struggled with balancing work, family and budo training. The problem of finding the time to train is nothing new. The issues are the same.

Here’s my own opinion: if you can’t commit a reasonable amount of time to your training, then perhaps your life is full as it is already and you may have to forego it, at least for the time being. The two koryu master teachers who I admired as my main teachers in Japan both said the same thing: there is a hierarchy of values, and never let your love of martial arts eclipse the other responsibilities you have, or in the end you will be left with nothing. You have to put in adequate time for family, first, because without the support of your family, your life is meaningless. Whether family is just a spouse or significant partner, or ten kids, a wife and three ex-spouses who receive alimony, you have to shoulder the responsibility you took on, and spend the time and effort with family, and extended family, to make sure the family endures, and you as an individual in that family contributes your fair share. That is what being an adult is about. You no longer take everything. Now you have to give.

Second, of course, is your job. Without a stable job and income, you really will have a hard time paying to train. You need to pay dues, room rent, buy new training gear when the old ones wear out, be able to pay for travel expenses to attend seminars and workshops,and pay for medical bills if you fall the wrong way or get hit in the head by a wayward stick. So you have to do your best at your job and to secure a decent wage for a decent days’ work.

Finally, if all the above is working relatively well, you can enjoy budo as a pastime. With a supportive family and good job, doing budo is a plus, a way to keep yourself mentally and physically healthy, a way to engage in an activity that you enjoy with others who enjoy it with you, a way to develop bonds and friendships outside of family and work. Having the mental and physical health that comes out of good budo training will add to your abilities at work and in your  family and social life, but all these parts have to work together and you should never use budo training as an escape to avoid dealing with your responsibilities in the other two spheres of your life.

To be Human is to Suffer

I don’t think that it is likely that after you have your enlightenment experience, that your suffering will end. You are not instantly going to find yourself making all the green lights, not having to worry about rotating your tires or flossing your teeth.

To be human is to suffer. You can either be crushed or you can soldier on.

I have excerpts for you from two columns. One is from an opinion piece by Pico Iyer. The other is from Leo Babauta at Zen Habits.

Before getting to the meat of this post, I want to make readers aware of the upcoming Lenten Challenge.

Every year, I throw out the Lenten Challenge to my martial arts buddies. It has nothing to do with Christianity or religion (unless you want it to). We are simply using this time as a convenient reminder to rededicate ourselves to our training. It’s kind of hard to miss either Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras, the last day before Lent, which is also Paczki Day!) or Easter Sunday (Bunnies, candy, colored eggs; that stuff). Several of us have been doing this for years now.
The challenge is this: from Ash Wednesday (Mar 5) until the day before Easter (April 19), train every day, without fail, no excuses; even if you have to move mountains. Simple enough said, a little harder to do.
It's not as easy as it sounds; things come up. Some days, you might only be able to get a few minutes of training in; but the point is to do it everyday, no matter what.
It doesn't have to be martial arts training either. Whatever it is that you need to really rededicate yourself to: studying, practicing an instrument, walking, watching what you eat, immersing yourself in something new; anything - do it every day, without fail.
In the past on some forums, people have posted what they’ve done everyday. I think everyone who’s done that has become tired of writing, and the others get tired of reading it. How about you just post if you’ve had some breakthrough, or you’ve had to overcome some unusual circumstance to continue your training? Maybe just check in every once in a while to let everyone know you’re keeping at it, or to encourage everyone else to keep at it.

If you fail, no one will hate you. If you fall off of the wagon, climb back on board. Start anew.
For those of you who already train everyday anyway, by all means continue and be supportive of the rest of us. For the rest of us who intend to train everyday, but sometimes come up short due to life’s propensity for unraveling even the best laid plans, here is an opportunity to put a stake in the ground and show your resolution.
Won't you join me?

First, from Pico Iyer. The full article may be read here.

September 7, 2013

The Value of Suffering

By PICO IYER

 ...

MY neighbors in Japan live in a culture that is based, at some invisible level, on the Buddhist precepts that Issa knew: that suffering is reality, even if unhappiness need not be our response to it. This makes for what comes across to us as uncomplaining hard work, stoicism and a constant sense of the ways difficulty binds us together — as Britain knew during the blitz, and other cultures at moments of stress, though doubly acute in a culture based on the idea of interdependence, whereby the suffering of one is the suffering of everyone.

“I’ll do my best!” and “I’ll stick it out!” and “It can’t be helped” are the phrases you hear every hour in Japan; when a tsunami claimed thousands of lives north of Tokyo two years ago, I heard much more lamentation and panic in California than among the people I know around Kyoto. My neighbors aren’t formal philosophers, but much in the texture of the lives they’re used to — the national worship of things falling away in autumn, the blaze of cherry blossoms followed by their very quick departure, the Issa-like poems on which they’re schooled — speaks for an old culture’s training in saying goodbye to things and putting delight and beauty within a frame. Death undoes us less, sometimes, than the hope that it will never come.

As a boy, I’d learned that it’s the Latin, and maybe a Greek, word for “suffering” that gives rise to our word “passion.” Etymologically, the opposite of “suffering” is, therefore, “apathy”; the Passion of the Christ, say, is a reminder, even a proof, that suffering is something that a few high souls embrace to try to lessen the pains of others. Passion with the plight of others makes for “compassion.”

Almost eight months after the Japanese tsunami, I accompanied the Dalai Lama to a fishing village, Ishinomaki, that had been laid waste by the natural disaster. Gravestones lay tilted at crazy angles when they had not collapsed altogether. What once, a year before, had been a thriving network of schools and homes was now just rubble. Three orphans barely out of kindergarten stood in their blue school uniforms to greet him, outside of a temple that had miraculously survived the catastrophe. 

Inside the wooden building, by its altar, were dozens of colored boxes containing the remains of those who had no surviving relatives to claim them, all lined up perfectly in a row, behind framed photographs, of young and old.

As the Dalai Lama got out of his car, he saw hundreds of citizens who had gathered on the street, behind ropes, to greet him. He went over and asked them how they were doing. Many collapsed into sobs. “Please change your hearts, be brave,” he said, while holding some and blessing others. “Please help everyone else and work hard; that is the best offering you can make to the dead.” When he turned round, however, I saw him brush away a tear himself.

Then he went into the temple and spoke to the crowds assembled on seats there. He couldn’t hope to give them anything other than his sympathy and presence, he said; as soon as he heard about the disaster, he knew he had to come here, if only to remind the people of Ishinomaki that they were not alone. He could understand a little of what they were feeling, he went on, because he, as a young man of 23 in his home in Lhasa had been told, one afternoon, to leave his homeland that evening, to try to prevent further fighting between Chinese troops and Tibetans around his palace.

He left his friends, his home, even one small dog, he said, and had never in 52 years been back. Two days after his departure, he heard that his friends were dead. He had tried to see loss as opportunity and to make many innovations in exile that would have been harder had he still been in old Tibet; for 

Buddhists like himself, he pointed out, inexplicable pains are the result of karma, sometimes incurred in previous lives, and for those who believe in God, everything is divinely ordained. And yet, his tear reminded me, we still live in Issa’s world of “And yet.”

The large Japanese audience listened silently and then turned, insofar as its members were able, to putting things back together again the next day. The only thing worse than assuming you could get the better of suffering, I began to think (though I’m no Buddhist), is imagining you could do nothing in its wake. And the tear I’d witnessed made me think that you could be strong enough to witness suffering, and yet human enough not to pretend to be master of it. Sometimes it’s those things we least understand that deserve our deepest trust. Isn’t that what love and wonder tell us, too?

 And now from Leo Babauta at Zen Habits. The full post may be read here.

The Pain & Beauty of Life Changes

By Leo Babauta

The reason for our suffering is our resistance to the changes in life.

And life is all changes.

While I resist change (and suffer) just like anyone else, I have learned to adapt. I’ve learned some flexibility. I’ve realized this:

Everything changes, and this is beautiful.

The Pain of Life’s Changes

What do I mean that our suffering comes from resistance to the changes in life?
...
That’s just a start. Things change all the time, and we resist it. Our day changes, our relationships change, other people don’t act the way they should, we ourselves are changing, constantly, and this is hard to deal with.
So this is the pain of change, of not being in control, of things not meeting our expectations.
How do we cope?

The Beauty of Life Changes

We can cope with the pain in numerous ways: get angry and yell, drink or do drugs, eat junk food, watch TV or find other distractions. We can find positive ways to cope with the stress and hurt and anger: exercise, talking about our problems with a friend, or trying to take control of the situation in some way (planning, taking action, having a difficult conversation to work out differences, etc.).

Or, we can embrace the changes.

If changes are a basic fact of life (actually life is nothing but change), then why resist? Why not embrace and enjoy?

See the beauty of change.

It’s hard, because we’re so used to resisting.

Let’s put aside our resistance and judgments for a few minutes, and look for beauty in life’s changes:
 ...
The possibilities of finding beauty in our struggles with change are endless. And, I believe, that’s beautiful in its own way.

 

Practicing the Basics in Martial Arts

Here we have an excerpt from another good article at The Art of Manliness on Deliberate Practice.

For myself, I put a lot of emphasis on basic movements, exercises and drills; which still isn't what they are getting at here, but directionally correct. The full post may be read here.

The Secret of Great Men: Deliberate Practice

by Brett & Kate McKay on November 7, 2010

What creates great men? What made Ted Williams the greatest hitter in the history of baseball? What made Shakespeare one of history’s greatest writers? How did Carnegie become one of history’s greatest businessmen?

The typical answer that most people give is that greatness is born. Nature blesses a few great men with some sort of innate gift that allows them to excel at what they do – Shakespeare entered the world with a peerless writing talent, and Williams was born to swing a bat. Under this view, you’re either born with talent and destined for greatness or born without talent and destined for a life of mediocrity.

There’s one small problem with this view of greatness: there isn’t much science to back it up.

In fact, studies show that greatness and excellence aren’t “a consequence of possessing innate gifts [and talents].” Rather greatness is the result of years and years of enormous amounts of hard, painful work. Ted Williams spent hours hitting baseballs, and Carnegie spent his entire adolescence learning how to network and developing his prodigious memory, skills that would turn him into a mind-bogglingly wealthy captain of industry.

Studies have demonstrated that young prodigies excel not because of some kind of mystical innate talent but on the merits of pure hustle. Mozart wrote his first masterpiece at 21. That’s pretty young.

But people often forget to mention that he had spent the previous 18 years of his life studying music under the tutelage of his father. Mozart had been paying his dues since he was three years old, and it paid off big for him.

In short, great men aren’t born; great men are made, and they’re made through the process of deliberate practice.

What Is Deliberate Practice?

In the book Talent is Overrated, Fortune Magazine editor Geoff Colvin highlights recent studies that show that greatness can be developed by any man, in any field, through the process of deliberate practice. How does one practice deliberately? Colvin proposes five elements that allow a man to practice deliberately and thus achieve greatness.

1. Deliberate practice is an activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help. Most people practice by mindlessly repeating an activity over and over without any clear goal of what they want to accomplish. For example, let’s say a man wants to improve his golf game. If he’s like most men, he’ll just go to the driving range and hit a couple of buckets of balls without thinking much about specific ways he can improve his swing. Three hundred balls later, this man hasn’t improved at all. In fact, he may have gotten worse.

2. The practice activity can be regularly repeated. The world’s top performers spend years of their lives practicing. Ted Williams, the greatest hitter in baseball history, would practice hitting balls until his hands bled. Basketball legend Pistol Pete Maravich would go into the gym on Saturday mornings and practice shooting from a specific spot on the court until the gym closed at night. To be the best, you have to put in the time. In fact, if you want to become an expert in your field, you’ll need to put in at least 10,000 hours or 10 years of practice first.

3. The practice activity provides feedback on a continual basis. Constant feedback is crucial for improvement. You have to see the results of your efforts to evaluate if the way you’re doing things is working or if you need to change things up to improve. Moreover, without feedback during practice you’re more likely to lose the motivation to keep at it. During your practice sessions, constantly stop and look for feedback. With some activities, getting feedback is easy. For example, if you’re practicing your jump shot for basketball, if the ball goes through the net every shot, you know you’re on the right track. If you brick it every shot, that’s feedback that you need to change things up.

4. Deliberate practice is highly demanding mentally, whether it’s purely physical or mental. This factor separates deliberate practice from mindless practice. When you’re practicing deliberately, you’re focusing and concentrating so much on your performance that you’re mentally exhausted after your practice session. Deliberate practice is so demanding mentally that studies show that “four or five hours a day is the upper limit of deliberate practice, and this is frequently accomplished in sessions lasting no longer than an hour to ninety minutes.”

5. Deliberate practice isn’t much fun. Most people don’t enjoy doing activities that they’re not good at. It’s no fun to fail over and over again and receive criticism on how you can improve. No one likes to be humbled like that. We’d rather do stuff at which we excel because succeeding is enjoyable, and it strokes our egos. Yet deliberate practice is specifically designed to focus on things you suck at and requires you to practice those skills over and over again until you’re mentally exhausted. What a buzz kill.

AoM Man-Up Challenge

This week I challenge you to pick an area of your life that needs improvement and apply the principles of deliberate practice to it. I’d love to hear what you’re working on and how you’re progressing. Share what you’re working on in the comments below. I also recommend going out and getting Talent Is Overrated. It’s one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read this year and will inspire you to seek greatness.

You Are Stronger Than You Think.

An excerpt from another brilliant article at The Art of Manliness. The full article may be read here.

Dig Deep: You’re Stronger Than You Think

by Brett & Kate McKay on November 4, 2013


Awhile back I was doing a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout over on a nearby running/biking trail. Along the trail there’s a fairly steep hill that takes about a minute to sprint up at full speed. For my workout, I would charge up the hill as fast as I could, walk/jog back down, and repeat the sequence ten times. It puts you in a nice amount of pain.

Halfway through the last sprint in my set, my legs and lungs were crying for mercy. I felt sure my body could not possibly run a single more step. But just as I was about to slow down into a walk, a pair of lovely ladies crested over the top of the hill and came jogging towards me. In that moment, an involuntary pride response kicked in, and I somehow found another gear and continued to haul butt to the top of the hill.

A seemingly insignificant moment in my life, but it actually spurred a great deal of reflection. I had felt sure I was physically spent, but then found deeper reserves of strength left to tap. My mind had lied to me. What else, I wondered, might my mind be lying about?

As it turns out, a great deal. We all have deep wells of strength that we may never even know exist, as they are closely guarded by a brain that would rather loaf and maintain the status quo than take you to the next level. But don’t be fooled by this tight-fisted sentinel – you’re physically, mentally, and emotionally stronger than you think.

You’re Physically Stronger Than You Think

Athletes have always known there is a connection between one’s mind and one’s performance – that you can will yourself to keep going when the body grows fatigued. But recent studies have shown that the mind can have quite the opposite effect – slowing you down before you’re actually physically spent. In essence, the very fatigue your brain fights against was created by…your brain!

...

You’re Mentally Stronger Than You Think

Just as your brain can convince you that you’ve reached your physical limits when you really haven’t, it can also tell you you’re too tuckered out for mental tasks, when your noodle actually has more to give.

...

You’re Emotionally Stronger Than You Think

The brain not only gets anxious about expending too much energy in the midst of physical and mental exertions, it also wrings its metaphorical hands when simply anticipating a challenge to your emotional capabilities.

Ronda Rousey's Mom

Tomorrow, Ronda Rousey is going to defend her UFC Bantamweight title against Sara McMann in a MMA event.

Rousey has been dominant in MMA, and for good reason. From the time she was a little girl, her mother, who was herself a world class judoka, pushed her towards excellence. All her life, Rousey has had top coaches and has competed at the very highest level. She won a bronze metal in the Olympics, for crying out loud.

Her last match against Miesha Tate was an ongoing judo lesson. 

None of her competitors has come close to having such an impressive pedigree. All of them have come to MMA; to martial arts at all, fairly recently in comparison, and none have have competed consistently at the levels Rousey called home.

Until now. Her opponent, Sara McMann is herself a long time wrestler and won a silver medal in the Olympics. This will be the first time that Rousey has been matched up against someone with a background similar to her own.

But this post isn't titled "Ronda Rousey;" it's "Ronda Rousey's Mom." 

Recently, at Ozymandias, there was an article about Ronda Rousey's mom, AnnMaria De Mars. An excerpt is below. The full article may be read here.

When I fought a woman from Cuba, I broke her fucking arm.”

If AnnMaria De Mars cared about us excusing her French, she’d have asked us to excuse her French. But this she did not do as she told us exactly what she said to her Olympic Bronze medalist daughter in an effort to cool a moment of competitive panic before an international match.

    De Mars is all those things: nice, friendly and not so relaxed.

That’s right. Those are her gentle words of motherly advice. And they are entirely in keeping with the armbars that the 5-foot-2-inch De Mars used to use to wake the same daughter up for school in the morning — the daughter who became the undefeated Bantamweight Ultimate Fighting Championship belt holder, Ronda Rousey. Rough way to welcome a kid to the day? Well, if winning were going to be easy, everybody would win. Which is not at all how the real world works, really.

”It’s rare to see someone get to that level of athletic achievement and be really relaxed about getting there,” said Dallas Winston from the sports commentary site SB Nation. “Or nice. Or friendly,” he laughs.

But De Mars is all those things: nice, friendly and not so relaxed. When we catch her on a rare day off, what we want to know above anything else is this: What happens in the heads of folks for whom winning becomes a kind of addiction? It was something De Mars wondered herself when Ronda, an athlete just like her other three kids, announced that she wanted to be a champion, too. Just like her mom.

”I took it really seriously since I knew exactly what it took to do that. No way was I going to work harder than her for something she said that she wanted,” said De Mars. So she did her due dilligence and rounded up all of the people that she had met on her way up — world team judokas, Olympic champs — and asked them what their parents and coaches did to lay the groundwork for success. It’s that kind of methodical approach that helped her transform from an overweight 12-year-old Air Force brat in Alton, Illinois, born to nonathlete parents, into a national competitor by age 16.

The Dao De Jing, #50: Death

The Dao De Jing is not only one of the world's great classics, it is one of the foundations of Philosophical Daoism. A free online version of the Dao De Jing may be found here.Below is verse #50, Death

50. Death

Men flow into life, and ebb into death.

Some are filled with life;
Some are empty with death;
Some hold fast to life, and thereby perish,
For life is an abstraction.

Those who are filled with life
Need not fear tigers and rhinos in the wilds,
Nor wear armour and shields in battle;
The rhinoceros finds no place in them for its horn,
The tiger no place for its claw,
The soldier no place for a weapon,
For death finds no place in them.

Flexibility Training for Martial Arts

About any athletic activity requires some degree of flexibility, especially martial arts. There are a myriad of stretching programs out there and if you like me with a LOT of connective tissue in my legs, most of it just doesn't help.
 
Not all stretching regimes are alike though. The kinesiological stretching techniques taught by Paul Zaichik at Elastic Steel are something a little different. If you are really tight, or have a specific problem area, you may certainly want to take a look at them. I think you'll get results beyond your expectations FAST.
 
He has both general stretching programs and others for specific areas or sports. Mr. Zaichik was kind enough to provide with with a video of his Hip Flexor program, which is particularly applicable to internal  martial arts.
 
Below is a discription of how kinesiological stretching differs from standard stretching. Please visit Elastic Steel. Enjoy.

How are kinesiological stretching techniques differ from standard stretching techniques?

There are a few major differences and many minor ones.

1. Standard stretches often stretch multple muscles at the same time.

For example let's say you want to stretch your hip flexors, to improve hip extension and pelvic tilt position.  There are 6 hip flexors. On the top of that- upper adductors flex the hip as well. If the target action of the stretch is direct hip extension, there are 10 muscles (6 hip flexors and 4 adductors), that need to be lengthen for hip extension to take place. If anyone of them doesn't release, hip extension is restricted.

Kinesiological stretching techniques take advantage of the fact that each of those muscle carries out a different function on the top of flexing the hip. Some rotate the joint laterally, some medially, some abduct, some adduct, some cross the knee, while other flex the spine.

Taking this into consideration, kinesiologically each muscle can be isolated and stretch individually.

This allow for much easier stretch and much faster progress. At the same time, this allows an athlete (or therapist) to find out which muscle is causing the issue. Thus more attention can be place on this muscle, through frequent focus, deeper stretching, massage, release, visualization, etc.

2. Next kinesiological stretching techniques are different from other approaches, because stretching reflex is tricked. (Imagine how much further you can stretch, if the pain is not there.) The avoidance of stretch reflex comes from the stretching positions and the concept of target and leverage.

Kinesiological stretching techniques are not passive. This is done by selecting an action (or combination of actions) as target and one as leverage. The target is the muscle action one wants to improve, while the leverage is the action that creates space in the muscle. A position is chosen, where both actions can move at the same time. Basic applications move an leverage, followed by a target.

Advance applications vary greatly, and range from multiple targets and multiple leverages to various full and partial contractions on agonists and antagonists.

In research kinesiological stretching techniques have  preformed better than relaxed stretches, active stretches, PNF and others. The faster results came with shorter recovery time, longer range of motion retention, and significant carry over into sport activities (regardless if used as a warm up, in between skill set, or as a cool down.)