Stances, Partner Work, Dantien Development
Our group has always had a pretty straightforward approach to practicing internal martial arts. Really, everything we do can be broken up into 3 categories: Stances, Partner Work, and Dantien Development. I’ll cover these one-by-one, as if they build upon each other, but they should actually be learned and practiced concurrently.
Stances
A lot of traditional martial arts have stance training, including external kung fu styles and Karate. In old kung fu movies, usually the student has to maintain the stance over a burning candle or something, and the master laughs as the student sweats. Some styles have esoteric exercises or breathing that’s supposed to be practiced while holding the stance. Regardless, the main reason for holding stances is to develop a solid frame within your body that can meet external forces coming at you (grabs or strikes). Since you maintain the stances for long periods of time, you start to relax within them as you practice. After awhile, the framework is there for you already, a part of you that you don’t have to ‘turn on’. The relaxed framework helps to keep you on your feet if someone’s trying to take you down, and helps you to keep your balance if you’re getting hit. The framework helps you to move your body all at once like it’s one piece. Funny enough, a lot of Yoga practitioners get similar results from their stances.
The framework developed by stance training is the basis upon which everything else in internal martial arts is built.
Our style has 3 main stances: San Ti, Chicken, and Tiger. You can find a detailed description of them in our handouts for beginning students. Beginner Syllabus
Partner Work
The title for this category is a little bit broad, but it refers to specific types of partner drills. For self defense, you’ll want to try striking drills with partners, and maybe run through scenarios. What I’m talking about for internal kung fu development are really special types of pushing drills where you’ll need a partner.
The most basic level of pushing drill is to literally push your partner using the stance frame mentioned above, where your partner gives you some weight or resistance and you try to use the minimum amount of muscle needed to push them across the room or something. For instance, you’d hold the San Ti stance with your hand forward, have your partner lean back on your hand, and then try to maintain the stance as you push them across the room. This will help to reinforce the framework within your body, and any weak points in your frame will jump out at you.
Eventually, you move up to push hands practice, which is probably the best partner drill for developing internal kung fu. Push hands practice starts off with set patterns, then as your skill develops you move into free-form practice (basically, wrestling). The idea is to first maintain the framework from stance training while moving through set motions, using as little muscle as possible. Eventually, you smooth out the movements and work out any kinks in your framework (sidenote: in internal martial arts, you’re always trying to smooth things out and eliminate rough spots, it’s a process not an end goal). A natural question is to ask, ‘If the end goal of these partner drills is basically wrestling, then why not just practice wrestling? How is an internal martial art any different?’ There’s nothing wrong with not doing internal martial arts and just going straight to wrestling, but read on to see what makes internal martial arts different.
Dantien Development
At the same time as doing all of the above, you want to be developing your dantien. There are a lot of hocus-pocus explanations of what the dantien is, how it involves chi and energy channels. I’m not saying any of that is incorrect, but you don’t need to know it to develop dantien for martial art purposes. The simplest explanation of dantien is just to move your body with respect to your natural center of gravity. The natural center of gravity is a point a couple inches below your belly button. To move your body with respect to its center, it needs to be a connected whole. In other words, your body needs a solid framework that’s relaxed and can move in a fluid way as if it’s one piece (sound familiar?); then it can wrap around, rotate, shrink into, and expand out from its center of gravity. This is the essence of internal martial arts; it’s what makes them unique and separate from other martial arts.
‘Unique’ doesn’t mean inherently better or anything. Moving with respect to the dantien is what makes an internal martial art ‘internal’, instead of just punching and kicking things. Other arts have their own unique traits that set them apart, and some of them even have crazy-awesome things going on internally (like White Crane or Wing Chun, both great martial arts with their own unique types of internal body connection). Moving the body with respect to its center of gravity is what makes internal martial arts unique.
Each internal martial art has its own practice to develop dantien: Tai Chi has its silk reeling exercises; Bagua has its circle walking; Xing Yi (or at least our style, Xinyi Dao) has the squatting monkey exercise.
Stances, Partner Work (especially Push Hands), and Dantien Development are the 3 pillars of internal martial arts. If you’re already practicing internal martial arts, or are thinking of trying out some classes somewhere, please keep these pillars in mind. It’s actually difficult to find a place that teaches all three.
Also, be sure to check out our Youtube Channel, now with 8 videos posted!
-Andrew
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