What should I be looking for in I-Chuan standing?

Ones understanding of the goals of I-Chuan training should develop and deepen
over time. Such progress is possible, however, only if one has an initial idea of the aims
of training. Without a conception however sketchy of those aims, ones training can
easily begin to drift without direction. I would like in the following remarks to touch on
what I consider six basic elements of correct standing practice. The student must learn to
1. Balance his or her skeletal support
2. Balance his or her muscular activity
3. Increase his or her muscular output
4. Coordinate the mental, muscular, and skeletal aspects of movement
5. Learn to use I (mind/intention) in breathing and muscular coordination
6. Balance sung and gian (i.e., learn to work without creating tension) in both mind
and body
Let us examine each of these in order.
1/ Balance skeletal support.
The first key to I-Chuan standing is to learn how to perfect the support provided
by ones skeleton. If the skeleton is even slightly out of proper alignment, the student can
expect very little health or martial arts benefit from training. The most basic aspects of
skeletal alignment concern the proper position of the head, neck, shoulders, chest, lower
back, hips, knees, and feet. One centimeter off the correct position will lead one miles
away from ones training goals.
One can describe the proper position of the skeleton, and photographs of it are
available. But only hands-on guidance by a knowledgeable instructor can teach the
student him- or herself how to adopt the correct stance. Book learning is fine, but a book
can never correct your attempts to copy the postures presented there. With these
limitations in mind, however, we can give a general sense of how to balance ones
skeleton support.
The neck should stay in an upright position, as though one were carrying a heavy
object on top of ones head. One should take care never either to drop the object or to let

it simply rest on ones head. The muscles of the neck must be constantly active in order
to do the work of carrying the object, not just supporting it. Muscles that are merely
holding something and muscles that are lifting are doing two different kinds of work;
only the latter is relevant here.
The shoulders should extend outward from the spine, as though one were giving
someone a big welcoming hug.
The chest should be doing exactly what it does when one gives such a hug:
neither arched outward nor shrinking away from the person you are hugging.
As the head pulls upward, the lower back should at the same time be extended
down and outward, as though pressing into the wall behind you.
The activity of the hips should mirror that of the shoulders, as though you were
hugging someone with your pelvis. Since the bones of the pelvis are not themselves
flexible, what this means is that the hip joints should expand forward and away from their
sockets.
The knees must always point in the same direction as the feet. In other words, the
knees and the toes should point in the same direction. Take care not to let the feet
planate, thereby letting the knees collapse toward one another.
Proper usage of the feet is especially important. You should never let the body
rest as dead weight on the feet. No matter how low or high the stance you adopt, the feet
should always be bearing the body up and forward. Do not rest the weight of the body on
the feet, but rather let the feet lift up and carry the rest of the body. A low stance that
collapses the spine onto the hips, knees and ankles damages the joints and contributes
nothing to ones training. In any posture you choose, you should always feel that you are
ready to leap up and forward. If you would have first to readjust your posture in order to
jump up like this, you can be sure your standing is incorrect.
These are just the basic points of skeletal support in I-Chuan standing. Further
training develops the support of each joint in the body, down to the individual joints of
the fingers and toes. But without a basic understanding of the basics, these further steps
will be impossible, and the results of ones training will be next to nil.
2/ Balance muscular activity.

The skeleton supports the body; the muscles produce power (energy or chi). If
your muscles are weak, your power will be weak. Without proper skeletal support, usage
of the muscles becomes inefficient. Thus, while certainly not sufficient for training the
muscles, a properly organized skeleton structure is nevertheless a necessary condition for
correct practice. But once we understand the basic principles of correct posture, how
should we understand the principles of the muscular activity that posture makes possible?
The main thing to note at the outset is that any kind of physical activity requires
muscle power. Thus, so-called internal systems of martial arts that urge students not to
use their muscles are misleading at best and a joke at worst. Its true that traditional
Chinese training manuals instruct students to use chi and not to rely on the strength of
their muscles. But those manuals are written by and large for experienced students with a
good background in training, not for total beginners hoping to learn secrets from an
ancient book. The real meaning of the traditional injunction to use chi is to use
intelligent, skillful muscle power instead of dumb, brute force. From a modern
perspective traditional Chinese writing tends to be evasive and indirect. The author tells
the reader what to avoid but lets him figure out for himself what positive goals to pursue.
In other words, traditional instructions were not designed for obedient students whose
chief talent consisted in blindly following directions, but rather for people who were able
and interested in thinking for themselves and who could thereby make the art their own.
In other words, the aim of such writing was in part to train the reader to use his brain.
This is why merely obedient people always end up as out-door students. They never
get beyond the level of mere imitation to achieve any real originality in their art.
For example, in tai chi manuals, one often reads that one must not use the arms.
But this does not mean that the arms do no work. A skeleton cannot move itself.
Movement is always only a function of muscular activity. Rather the instruction means
that one must learn to let the muscles move the skeleton, rather than the other way
around. Again, this is an instruction that requires one to use ones head: what, after all, is
the difference between letting the muscles move the skeleton and having the skeleton
move the muscles? Did we not just say that the latter is impossible? But the point was
that the student must learn to maximize the muscular work necessary to move his or her
limbs. Otherwise the movement will be empty and there will no benefit to it and

therefore none to its mindless daily repetition. An empty tai chi form ultimately drains
ones energy. The dubious benefits of this sort of relaxation cannot be underestimated.
But how does one maximize muscular activity? The answer, in a word, is resistance.
Any muscular in one direction must be balanced out by muscular activity in the opposite
direction. Without a clear understanding of this point, ones training in tai chi or any
other martial art will be pointless.
Let us consider one simple example. To move one arm forward, one should move
the other arm back if one wants to increase the first arms forward momentum. The
greater the force with which the one arm is pulled back, the greater the force with which
the other arm moves forward. But we must take care here, because the arm moving back
must not do so emptily. That is to say, there must be resistance to its movement as well
as to the movement its backward movement supplies to the forward movement of the
other arm. The greater the resistance one must overcome to move ones arm back, the
greater will be the force with which the other arm will move forward. This point is quite
general. To move one arm up requires moving the other arm down always, again,
against resistance. The activity of the legs is the same. And if one turns ones head to
the right, one must work against resistance pulling it back to the left. Bear in mind,
however, that resistance generates tension, so the student must learn to create such
resistance without clenching his or her muscles. In general, the aim here is to work as
hard as possible without collapsing the joints.
In time, the whole body responds to the demands made upon it by even the
simplest movements of the limbs. In other words, hundreds of muscles groups respond
automatically to the movement of any other group of muscles. This is only the most
basic concept of balancing muscular activity. Only on this foundation is the next step of
training possible: to test which muscle groups are indeed actively connected to one
another. I will discuss this next step in more detail in a later paper.
3/ Increase muscular output.
Once one can in this way coordinate simple movements forward and backward,
up and down, right and left, the next step is to learn to increase ones power. As I noted
in 2/ above, the forward power of one limb is a function of the power used to pull the

other limb back. The same is true of movement in any direction: it is opposing power
that creates energy. The difficulty here is that this kind of power and relaxation do not
mix easily. Muscular work of this sort tends to create tension. The student must
therefore learn to work his or her muscles to their maximum while at the same time
letting go of any tension this work generates. With the right instruction, this is a problem
each student can and must solve for him- or herself. Ive chosen my words carefully
here: do not work hard first and then afterward let go of the tension the work has created.
Instead, do the one while simultaneously doing the other. In I-Chuan training, this is
called sung/gian together. The experienced student does not alternate between work
and relaxation.
If you know how properly to position your skeleton, you can get a rough idea of
what the training demands here by holding a moderately heavy weight in front of you
while, without dropping the weight, relaxing your muscles as much as you possibly can.
Hold, for example, a ten lb. medicine ball about one foot in front of you at chest level.
Your chest should be free of tension, the shoulders and elbows low and away from the rib
cage, the hands doing the minimum necessary not to drop the ball. Now dont move! As
you stand, the weight of the ball will soon tire your muscles. In response, you will be
tempted to increase muscular tension to keep from lowering your arms or dropping the
ball outright. Probably the first thing to go will be your chest: you will want to tighten
your shoulders and raise up your sternum. You must resist the temptation to do so!
Continue relaxing your muscles. Because you are not allowed to tighten your muscles, as
one group tires, your body will naturally recruit other muscle groups to assist in the work
of holding the ball steady. Keep working and keep letting go of tension. You will do
these two simultaneously as long as you resist the temptation to raise up your chest. This
is a simple but instructive example of sung/gian together. It is up to you to apply it to the
rest of your training.
In I-Chuan training, the goal is not to stand as long and as low as possible. What
matters instead is the quality of the strength one puts into ones movement. The strength
one devotes to any new training activity best begins light and then continues steadily to
heavier work, from simple to complex. Begin with light resistance in a few directions,
and then gradually add resistance and directions as you go, always making sure to

balance that work by letting go of tension your muscular work generates. Beginning with
light resistance and moving steadily to heavier work is the best way to exercise both mind
and body. A useful picture here is start by drawing a light weight bow and then gradually
increasing the bows weight: five lbs., ten lbs., twenty lbs., fifty lbs., and so on. Begin
with just one bow (aiming an arrow forward, for example), and then move to multiple
bows, gradually pulling a half a dozen to several dozen such bows at once. Remember:
any two points on the body can be the ends of a bow. In the beginning, however, its best
to start with two points separated by a joint: shoulder and wrist separated by the elbow,
hip and ankle separated by knee, and so on. Soon, bows can be made of other bows: two
arms separated by the spine, head and spine separated by the hips from the legs and feet,
and so on. In time, any three points can form a bow.
This kind of activity is not for the beginner, and it is easy to misinterpret the true
meaning of sung/gian together. One needs to master all the previous steps before
attempting this level of training. Otherwise, increasing muscular output will only
increase muscular tension.
4/ Coordinate the mental, muscular, and skeletal aspects of movement.
Mastery of the fourth element of correct standing practice is possible only on the
foundation of the previous three. Nevertheless, the basic idea here is simple: All action
begins with a thought or intention. In other words, the mind controls movement. The
mind needs total focus in order not to send the wrong signals to the muscles. Moreover,
the skeleton must be properly aligned and provide perfect support for movement muscle
work makes possible. This means that the external structure of the body must be
perfectly balanced to carry out the intended action, and the muscles, in turn, need to be in
perfect harmony if they are to be correctly activated by the mind. In time, the
coordination of the mental, muscular, and skeletal aspects of movement must be achieved
very quickly. One or two without the others is an unbalanced state that will rapidly
inhibit further progress in training. Ultimately, bringing these aspects into harmonious
relation should come about without a second thought and be as natural to the student as
taking a walk. But this sort of second nature is something the student can achieve only
by means of regular and intensive standing practice along with assiduous work at the

other aspects of I-Chuan training. At the outset, it can take quite some time for a
beginning student to line up mind, muscles, and skeleton in the desired ways. Here,
again, however, the student must learn to practice in a balanced way. You should not
master one aspect of the training at the expense of any other aspect. Learn to practice all
of them together. My remarks on the last two aspects of training must be very brief.
5/ Learn to use I (mind/intention) in breathing and muscular coordination.
Proper breathing is essential to any kind of mental and physical discipline. All
mental and physical activity needs oxygen (chi) generally, the more the better.
Unfortunately, conscious attempts to control ones breathing are often disasterously
artificial. Usually pointless, when taken to extremes, such efforts can be positively
harmful to ones health. I am therefore reluctant to describe any such breathing
techniques. It is worth pointing out, however, what the aims of breathing in this sort of
training are. Above all, one must learn to breathe both naturally and with an eye to
increasing the amount of oxygen the body can process during work. As it is, we tend not
to use oxygen efficiently. Indeed, most of what we exhale is not carbon dioxide but
rather simply unprocessed oxygen. Training in I-Chuan standing should ameliorate this
situation. The harder one works ones muscles, the more oxygen they demand. Ideally,
ones breathing should support those demands.
Ultimately, intention guides movement by means of the breath. Again, the basic
idea here is straightforward: one tends, for example, to inhale when preparing for a
movement and to exhale when executing that movement. One must bear in mind,
however, my remarks above about empty movement. When told to relax and exhale,
most people simply let their breath go when executing a movement in this way. The
student training in I-Chuan, however, must learn how to exhale without ceasing to work.
Consider again the example of holding a medicine ball in front of ones chest. The
longer one holds the ball and the more one lets go of the tension generated by holding it,
the more groups of muscles will be recruited to keep at it. But that means, first, that the
demands the body makes for oxygen will similarly increase, and second, that one has to
keep processing that oxygen even while exhaling. If one simply lets go of ones breath,
one stops working and drops the ball. The task becomes, then, to exhale and keep

working at the same time. Ultimately, this means that one is simultaneously working and
letting go of tension by means of breathing. That is to say, in the end, it is breathing that
keeps sung/gian working together. Otherwise, one is gian when inhaling and sung when
exhaling, one after the other, thereby defeating the aims of training. This brings us to the
last of the six most basic elements of I-Chuan standing.
6/ Balance sung and gian (i.e., learn to work without creating tension) in both mind and
body.
Tension in the mind or body will inevitably destroy ones physical activity. Ones
response to the demands of the environment will be slow, inhibited, and unnatural. An
inactive mind or body (or one without the other) tends immediately to weaken ones
actions. Thus, when it is time for the mind and body to relax, they should relax; and
when one must act, the mind and body must immediately kick into action without a
second thought. This is the ultimate aim of training. Movement should be like touching
a hot stove. No one has to think about pulling his or her hand back from a red hot
surface. In that moment, the mind and body are one: there is perfect unity and activity of
the two. The movement away from the stove is an automatic but also intelligent response
to the environment. To train for this sort of unity throughout ones life, not only must the
body be both sung and gian, so too must the mind. The two must act together as one.
This is how one should stand.

-- Gregory Fong
Portland, Dec. 2007