Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash
Kim Hoe posted a comment to my previous article on breathing, dated 2020.12.24. My apologies for not responding earlier. Here I share my views on his questions, which might already appear not of your current interest.
Kim Hoe: Like you mentioned and also mentioned by Master Chu in some video, just breathe naturally when practicing WC or Chi Sau. But sometimes we just can’t control ourselves.
Based on your past experience, how do you make yourself calm when tense up, for e.g during Chi Sau. Did you calm yourself by regulating breathing to Dan Tien?
Also I read some article, some said bring your breath to the area that you feel tension. What’s your view on that?
Me: I haven’t had too much struggle with breathing relating to causing/easing tensions. But I think it’s useful to first distinguish between chest-driven breathing and abdomen-driven breathing, the latter being the breath sunk from the chest to the abdomen.
The more your breathing is chest-driven, the closer your breathing is associated with tension, especially the tension in the upper body. For example, in chi sau, the opponent’s force presses up to your shoulders. You react by inhaling more for more power to resist, but just down to the chest level (then holding there). This immediately lifts up your “weight”, leaving the muscles in the chest, the shoulders, the shoulder blades (as the last resort) to bear the incoming burden. They are deemed to tense up.
If this happens to you in chi sau, try to train yourself (basically your awareness) on abdomen-driven breathing. The crucial thing is to maintain it even under pressure from incoming forces – if your breathing is becoming chest-driven, try the best to sink it back to abdomen-driven (or using your phrase – “regulating breathing to Dan Tien”). Sometimes it’s not certain how to trigger the change, because to sink it means first relaxing the chest muscles, which are themselves being tensed up more, waiting for the sinking breath to rescue. You need to figure out your own way in the mind for breaking this vicious cycle, by trials in practice. In any rate, I think putting more awareness on the abdomen area will certainly help.
While keeping abdomen-driven will help avoid tensing up to a certain extent, it is not itself a panacea to the problem. You will still be prone to more tensions when being pressed, but that can then be attributed to reasons other than breathing, like inadequate joint expansion, weak intent in converging, limited body articulation, etc.
I am not sure about the contents of “bringing your breath to the area that you feel tension”. Apparently it doesn’t mean injecting air (hence oxygen) there. Most likely it is referring to your mind activity. I would guess it has to first build on the breath having been sunk, i.e. abdomen-driven. You then think further “sink” the breath up to the tensed area. Here “sinking” becomes the imaginative vehicle for the mind to act. For example, your left hip is tense. Firstly, sink your breath from the chest to the abdomen. Then, ride on this sinking tendency to further “sink” the breath to the left hip.
On the positive side, you can even regard it as a prototype of Qi operation. Such practice might one day click in you on how to mobilise Qi.
Nevertheless, “bringing breath to” or “sinking breath” is relatively a “coarse” act. Imagine that you feel one of the toes is tense and you would want to “bring your breath to” that toe to rescue. That “breath” might still be too big to fit in the small toe for a deep relaxation! Personally I prefer the idea of “linking” for reaching out to problematic areas.
2021.03.05
IdeasWingChun 