Sketch by Joyce McCown on Unsplash
Figure by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash
(The descriptions in this post are based on my feelings. They are not anatomically precise, something you might want to verify from other sources.)
Quite a while ago we discussed rising up the spine in the post Spine Rising from Anus Contraction. In this post I’m trying to propose an alternative to the Anus approach.
If you have trained erecting from the anus for considerable time but still don’t feel comfortable that this method will carry you forward, maybe you can pause and consider this alternative.
Erecting from the anus is a good start to align the spine. It is unilateral – it has a clear base to start, from the bottom all the way up in the same direction to the top of the head.
The anus is acting as the firm base for erecting to occur and, more importantly, to sustain.
When practising it, you would probably be inclined to feel and maintain its “firmness”; otherwise, losing the start will immediately collapse the erecting.
The intent to keep the “firmness” of the anus would probably in turn encourage tightening it up, i.e. you have to keep the tension there and cannot let it go easily, even though you have wished.
As far as erecting can be kept and can grow, allowing the anus in such a state does no harm, because the erected spine will suffice to bring you to the Wing Chun mode, but only to a certain extent. This extent is constrained by the “firm” anus, which is still choking the articulation between the upper and lower bodies, in the way that the spine and hence the rib cage and other linked skeletal parts (in the upper body) cannot expand to the full, and that the hips and legs cannot be freed completely inside (in the lower body).
Yet even being “stuck” in such a constrained state, you are still powerful enough to manifest the Wing Chun dynamics. (And I believe most of us are in this state.)
But you can become better by breaking through the constraint!
Instead of starting erecting from the anus, start your thinking at a position mostly around the last lumbar vertebra (L5) and inevitably involving the first segment of the fused sacrum (S1) – let’s call it the LS point. Instead of just unilaterally going upward, you expand bilaterally from the LS point, going both upward and downward simultaneously – upward to erect the spine by expanding; downward to reach the tailbone tip also by expanding.
In this way, the LS point doesn’t act as a firm base at the terminal (like the anus). Rather, it is just a starting point in-between the spine for expansion both up and down at the same time. This means that the starting point itself is also expanding (constituted by the simultaneous up and down tendencies), causing no congestion to the articulation between the upper and lower bodies.
Since the anus has been freed from serving as a firm base, it is now readily subject to the activity of the tailbone tip, at which when expansion reaches, the expansion can further traverse (no bones in-between for linking) from the tip onto the anus’ muscles and cause the anus to swell.
The swollen anus is now an opened-up channel for further reaching the middle of the perineum, the very bottom point of the pelvis structure that links through to the lines (inside) in legs. This bottom point is pivotal in achieving the complete, non-congested articulation of the entire body, by providing access to further deep-opening up the legs all the way down to the toes.
The traverse from the tip onto the anus is only possible when the downward expansion can reach the anus’ vicinity by what I have called “sliding in” in previous posts. “Sliding in” is a description more from an observer’s view, while “downward expansion” is more an activity inside. Nevertheless, it can be regarded as a vehicle for mind activity: the mind uses the LS point to directly slide in the tailbone tip to approach the anus’ closest vicinity.
The LS point specifically denotes the skeletal nature. At the beginning you might feel it relatively shallow near the surface of the lumbar vertebra, i.e. close to the back. When the pelvis area has been more opened up, you might then feel it moving deeper towards the central but still within the large bone of L5 (involving S1), i.e. more distant from the back. Roughly speaking, the LS point mimics the centre of gravity, and also the Dan Tien when perceived from the Qi perspective.
The ability of carrying out bilateral expansion is a characteristic of mind activity – multitasking that is even not confined by opposites in dichotomies. Thus starting from the LS point also trains up using the mind, apart from erecting the spine.
BTW, the approach of bilateral expansion from the LS point is not something I invented. Those who had trained in Sifu’s place would have come across Sifu’s fixing us on rising up the spine with the LS point approach. Just that it hasn’t been singled out for substantial discussion and elaboration.
While the LS point approach is an alternative to the Anus approach, it doesn’t replace the latter completely from the outset. In practice, they work hand-in-hand during your exploration phase. When you find one approach can no more bring you progress, try the other then, until one day you feel there is no need to rely on the help from the “firmness” of the anus.
2021.02.19
IdeasWingChun 