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Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang stood in front of me and asked me to perform a punch from a tai chi form. I settled into the posture and tried not to be nervous. The man is a direct descendant of the creator of tai chi, and even though he looks like an ordinary man, he can break an attacker in half in the blink of an eye. Here he was -- one of the greatest kung-fu masters in the world -- and I was about to show him what I could do.
Trying to remain relaxed, I shifted my weight from my right to my left leg and my right fist shot out, fast, relaxed, and powerful. At the same time, my left elbow thrust backward and my left hand stopped at my ribcage.
Grandmaster Chen was not impressed. He took my right hand in his left, my left hand in his right and told me to relax. Before I knew what was happening, he jerked the right hand out and pushed the left hand backward. I wasn't quite relaxed enough and almost suffered whiplash in my neck.
Relax, he told me again, and once again he jerked my arms -- hard -- forcing one to punch and the other to return to my ribcage. For a minute, I was like a rag doll, completely limp as he repeatedly demonstrated how relaxed I was supposed to be when performing fa-jing.
I'm often stunned by the literal-mindedness of some internal arts people -- teachers and students of tai chi, hsing-i and baguazhang, the three internal martial arts of China. The subject of fa-jing (pronounced "fah-zhing") is one example of how a simple concept is misunderstood and misinterpreted.
Fa-jing means "issuing energy." Unfortunately, the people who desperately need to believe in the supernatural think that in doing fa-jing, you are shooting chi out of your hands or body. They take it literally.
It's not magical or mystical. It's a matter of physics, and in the internal arts, it's a matter of body mechanics.
If you are a boxer, you're issuing energy when you deliver a jab, a cross, or a good left hook. If you're into kali, you're issuing energy when you hit someone with a stick (or even when you block another stick with yours), and if you're into karate, you issue energy when you break a board with your foot.
In the internal arts, fa-jing -- issuing energy -- is more complex, but the end result is the same. You knock the heck out of something or someone.
Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang, the 19th generation's standard-bearer for Chen family tai chi (his ancestor, Chen Wangting, created the art 350 years ago)says fa-jing is a matter of proper posture and internal movement. From there, he says you simply "step on the gas." He likes using automobile metaphors. In other words, if you use good structure and mechanics and then add speed, you will create the unique relaxed power of the internal arts.
The body mechanics of the internal arts are far different and more complex than most other martial arts. For high-quality tai chi you must maintain ground strength, peng jin, whole-body movement, silk-reeling (spiraling movement through the body), dan t'ien rotation and opening/closing the kua. You must connect all of these skills through the body as you deliver the strike with speed, power, and relaxation.
It takes years to learn how to do this from an internal perspective, because we all bring bad habits to the internal arts and it takes years to learn the above-mentioned skills and learn to maintain the whole-body connection as you move. It takes years for us to lose the muscular tension that we've developed all of our lives.
When Grandmaster Chen worked with me on the punch, I didn't have it the first few times I did the punch and he corrected me each time. Then the lightbulb went on and I connected the power from the ground, through my legs, rotating the dan t'ien and closing the kua as the power spiraled through my arm in a relaxed way.
"Ahh!" he said, his face lighting up. "Good."
As a martial artist, few things are better than getting a "good" from Chen Xiaowang.
Later that day, he did a fa-jing demonstration for those of us attending his 2-day workshop near Washington, D.C. With each strike, it seemed his uniform was exploding in all directions. That type of power comes from being connected and relaxing -- and from a lifetime of practice. You can stand a few feet away from him and almost feel the energy when he does fa-jing. It reminded me of being on the floor right behind the basketball hoop during a University of Iowa game. When the big players were slamming into each other beneath the hoop, you could feel the body heat and almost feel the energy as they collided. I'll never forget it, and being close to Chen Xiaowang when he does fa-jing is very similar.
There are two myths about tai chi that all martial artists should put aside. One is that tai chi is a slow motion health and meditation exercise. In truth, it's a powerful martial art that is practiced slowly so students can learn the body mechanics and later can speed up the movements and deliver amazing power without a lot of obvious effort to the untrained observer.
The other myth people should forget is about chi. Fa-jing has nothing to do with shooting energy out of your body. Instead of focusing on chi, which has never been proven exist in independent scientific studies and which is too often the focus of tai chi teachers, you should focus on proper posture and body mechanics. Do this and you'll be closer to developing the relaxed power of fa-jing.
