Practice the Positive

People who have success do not participate in negative things

They do not start with a negative mind set.

Nor do they practice things that lead a negative out come.

Always judge your failures with the same temperament as your successes.

Master Benjamín Lo Teachings

These teaching points have been compiled through decades of personal experience of Master Lo's teachings. They are not published per se in any other book or publication, either in Chinese or English to my knowledge, though any article or interview with Master Lo would naturally reflect similar content.

1. The Power of Zero

Ben told us, after demonstrating his usual total ease in moving, pushing, or throwing a much larger, stronger, and more physically more impressive opponent:

“Normally we think that if he has 100 pounds of force or power, I better have 150. But then if I get 150 pounds of force, he may have accumulated more himself. Or there’ll be somebody else with more. So next time it will be my 150 against his 200. Then I’ll need to go to 250… and still, there’s always going to be somebody with more than me. It's an arms race in that direction. So I need to reverse my approach. I need to take my own power down to 0. Then there’s no chasing or spiraling. Nothing can change. If he has 100, I have 0. If he has 150, I have 0. If he has 200, I still have 0, on and on, whatever he has, I’m always beneath it, it doesn’t change or affect me. I’m not chasing his attributes, or competing, or catching up, or exceeding him. That’s Taijiquan.”

I’m not saying this idea and practice is easy for ordinary students, like ourselves, to grasp. But it is food for thought from the master, who could always demonstrate it on anybody - no matter how large or how tough or how experienced a fighter.

2. Finding your own Beautiful Lady's Hand (美人手)

This is the procedure Ben sometimes teaches to help us find 美人手 correct position:

Stand close to a wall. Place your entire forearm up against the wall, with your palm facing the wall, and your fingertips together, pointing upwards, and extended naturally along the wall's surface. Don't force your arm against the wall, but conform to the flatness of the wall in a relaxed way. The base of your palm is very lightly touching the wall surface. Let your forearm and straight hand and fingers align and rest naturally, let them be slightly heavy against the wall. This is approximately the shape and feeling of Beautiful Lady's Hand (mei ren shou in Mandarin).

3. Which Taiji form posture is best for static holding practice?

People sometimes ask Ben whether one or another of the 37 postures of the Cheng form is especially good for "holding" practice (keeping the same position for many minutes to check your form and relaxation).

When I asked him this, he said: "No posture is 'best', all are good. Same thing as going to a party, you can always find at least one friendly person to talk to, and you can eventually find a practice posture that suits you very well."

4. How can we practice Taiji in a very limited floor space?

Ben told us two main ways to handle a space-limited practice condition:

a. If you have room to stand up at all, you can probably stand in one of the Taiji form postures. This is actually one of the main practice methods taught by Ben for general usage, not only space-limited. It is called 'zhan zhuang' in Chinese (see Teaching #3), and it can be extremely arduous - particularly if you really try to maintain the full 5 Principles at each moment ... as time passes. Obviously this method is available to you wherever you have room to stand up.

b. But once when I pressed Ben with this question about doing the entire continuous form in a limited area, he surprisingly showed me that the entire Cheng Taiji set can be performed in just four square feet of space! I can't describe each adjustment here, but actually it was very intuitive, just stepping back or moving in place where you would have gone forward. You can maintain all the 5 Principles and complete the entire 37-posture sequence in just four square feet of space.

So, no excuses for non-practice!

5. What is the best way to work on basic fixed step push hands practice?

When I first started with Ben, students would work mostly on fixed-step, double-hands tui-shou. It got extremely vigorous and, frankly, competitive at times. After I'd been there a few years, Ben came up with a new emphasis. More and more he emphasized an alternative practice format for fixed-step push hands, whereby one person would be the designated pusher and the other the designated yielder. The yielder should not actively push, but simply try to neutralize the incoming force of the designated pusher. Every 15 minutes or so, we'd switch roles. I think he felt that people were better able to control their inherent ego and aggression under this more controlled format. I certainly learned a lot from working in this way.

6. Somebody said to Ben, "Why don't you correct me in class? I feel neglected."

Ben said you should be glad when I don't correct you, it means others are worse than you and I need to spend the time with them. He also said that there's only so far corrections can go, depending on the student's level. For example, when a pot is on the stove in the correct place over the burner, then only time will do the job. There's no need to more the pot around on the burner much. Time and heat will do the rest of the job. But, if the pot is not on the burner, or on the stove at all, then of course it needs to be moved onto the burner, that is the function of corrections from a teacher. He also said that his ability to correct the student depends on the student's own progress in relaxation. To bend a bar in a desired shape, the bar must first be soft and pliable enough to work with.

7. Somebody asked Ben, "How we can get to the point of using Taiji as a martial art?"

Ben said that if you are working correctly, combative skill will evolve naturally. It's just like walking - if you set out in the correct direction, and keep walking, then no matter when, even if you didn't want to reach the destination that lies in that particular direction, you'll definitely get there no matter what. So don't worry about it, but keep trying to correct your practice.

8. Pearl Necklace teaching:

Ben said that the postures are like individual pearls on a pearl necklace. Each one is beautiful and valuable. But if any one pearl on a long necklace gets lost, dropped or broken, the necklace it self isn't much affected. That is analogous to having some small error or inability in a given posture. If however the string of the necklace is cut or broken, then the entire thing falls apart, the necklace is effectively gone or cannot be used for anything. The string is thus analogous to the 5 Principles.

9. Beginner's Mind:

Everybody knows about beginner's mind from Zen (Suzuki Roshi). But Ben has also said similar things about tai ji practice. He said that each time you do the form, you should be careful and attentive to keep the principles accurately in mind, cautious about making a mistake just like a beginner. Beware of the careless arrogant "expert" practice mind.

10. An example of the Multiplicity of Error:

Just as an example of the kinds of errors people fall into, Ben mentioned that in one principle (just a single example) "Body Upright", there are 10 major variations and only one is correct. You might lean forward, backward, to the left or right. You might lean on any of the intervening 4 diagonals. So far, 8 errors. Or, you might be upright - but with your body tense. Only the final variation - upright with relaxed body - is correct.

11. 1-Hand vs. 2-Hand Push Practice - Which is harder? :

Most students instinctively seem to believe that double handed push hands (tui shou) practice has just got to be more difficult and "more advanced". But Ben has got us to think more deeply about this with the following rhetorical question: If you went to a Chinese restaurant and they handed you a single chopstick to eat with... ? He said "Yes you could maybe poke a few things, but that's about it. Eating would be really tough." Amusing and true of push hands also - single is far more difficult and more "advanced" (until ultimately everything all merges into total understanding a la Professor Cheng.)

12. Twin Siblings:

Ben often distinguishes three common states: Tense, Relaxed, and Collapsed. Only Relaxed is useful in taiji practice, the others are extremes to be avoided. But Ben has said that the states of "relaxed" and "collapses" can easily be confused by an outside observer, as they tend to appear visually similar. They are, in Ben's words, "identical twins" in appearance. Thus they can only be distinguished by touch.

13. Distinguishing yin/yang changes in push hands (推手) practice:

Ben has used the following teaching scenario to students to focus on the necessary sensitivity to yin/yang energy and tension changes in a push hands partner: If I told you to go down a flight of 10 stairs in the dark, but I also told you that some steps in the staircase are missing, would you just rush and clunk your way mindlessly down? No you would go lightly and sensitively, like a cat. Because you would know that you need to continually distinguish empty from full. That's the mind you need to be good at push hands.

14. Soul on Ice?
Once a famous professor of dance and choreography visited Ben’s Tai-Chi seminar, in Europe. She had developed a perfect system for written choreographic notation that could capture all movements and even subtle nuances of any physical expressive dynamics of the human body. She brought several of her students along to the seminar, and this Professor and her group sat on the sidelines and transcribed the entire Cheng Tai Chi sequence as Ben and the students worked through it on the floor. Afterwards she explained her project to Ben, saying that any of her students, even those who had never learned Tai Chi, could now replicate any portion of the form with perfect precision, just from the notations they had written. Ben asked to see, and indeed, it was true! The students could just “read off” the correct body motions from the transcriptions and they performed the postures perfectly. Ben then called over a large hulking student and told him to stand solid. With a light touch Ben uprooted him and sent him flying across the training floor. Then Ben turned to the dance teacher and said “That is Tai Chi. Where in your notation is that written?” The teacher realized that this inner soul of the art was impossible to capture, freeze, or explain in any artificial, technical system.

15. Money Manager:

Ben said that the main difference between an advanced Tai Chi person and a lesser player is not the “amount” of power they have, but only that  it is used and deployed correctly or incorrectly. For example, say you want to buy a pair of sunglasses for $1.50, and you have four pockets in your jacket, with one dollar in each pocket. Each time you reach into a pocket, you find $1, but you put it back in the pocket, as $1 isn’t sufficient funds. Then imagine that after going through all your pockets in this way, you give up and conclude that you cannot afford the item. But then, somebody else comes along, who has $4 too - all in a single pocket. He buys the item easily and there’s an end to it. Most of us are like the four pocket would-be buyer.

16. Mirror Mirror:

Somebody asked Ben: Wouldn’t it be good to practice the (Cheng Man Ching 37-posture short) form symmetrically, so that we do it the ‘normal’ way, and then learn a mirror image version, with right and left reversed, for completeness or balance or something like that? Then, for example, there would be a version of Single Whip with the left hand hooked and the right hand striking forward, and so on. Ben said that first of all, the form in its current state, as created and taught by Professor Cheng, already has plentiful examples of symmetrical left/right balanced postures, including Brush Knee, Fair Lady Works Shuttle, Golden Cock on One Leg, Repulse Monkey, Cloud Hands,  and so on and on. So not much more of this is really needed. Additionally, a deeper point – many amazing “natural” things are NOT symmetrical or balanced in the way that superficial observers would expect or desire. For example, the human brain has left/right hemispheric specialization, it is not functionally symmetric. And there are plenty of other examples. The Founder of Tai Chi was brilliant enough to create this art, do you think he didn’t know about symmetry? If he was smart enough to create Tai Chi, it would be incredible if he missed this obvious point and now the truth is only realized when YOU come along and suggest it! The form exists in its current state for a reason. So let’s try to master the great art as we have it from the Founder.

17. Qi Gong
Somebody asked Ben, what is the difference between Tai Chi and Qi Gong? Should I study Qi Gong as a substitute or a supplement to Tai Chi? Ben said: “Tai Chi includes Qi Gong. But Qi Gong does not include Tai Chi.”

Simple yet profound. Think about it!

18. Virtual Teacher

Sometime when I'm practicing, I find it useful to imagine Ben is standing right next to me in "corrective" mode, as he has so many hundreds or even thousands of times. I inventory myself, what would he correct? First... he'd probably tell me to sit lower - front knee over toe! Then he usually check for body upright, perhaps I sometimes have a slight lean? Then ... relaxed? Abdomen, everywhere? Shoulders in a line (not one higher than the other? Waist facing square to a wall (or perfectly to a corner in the diagonal postures) ? Each of us has our own unique inventory of faults, but the corrections are all uniform, they derive entirely from the 5 Practice Principles. I do find this helpful to focus myself.

19. Taiji Humor (?)

Ben teaches us entirely in accordance with his 5 Practice Principles. But we exhibit all kinds of weird variations. Ben often laughs gently at the strange distortions we come up with. Ben sometimes says "I tell you wrist straight or waist straight or body upright, and you all bend yourselves this way or twist and wrench yourselves some other way ... I didn't tell you to do those things, why do you do them? Sometime I will tell you 'Make sure you bend your wrist like this' (makes a wild and weird shape), then you'll all suddenly do it perfectly straight!"


Source website
Copyright 2009, Scott Meredith 
 http://www.zmq37.com/ben_lo_teachings.html

Five principles of good Tai Chi Ch'uan skills Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo

Five principles of good Tai Chi Ch'uan skills An interview with Mr. Benjamin Lo of San Francisco. Five basic principles for the development of good Tai Chi Ch'uan skills, emphasized by Mr. Benjamin Lo, are: 1) Relaxation. 2) Separating Ying from Yang. 3) Turning the waist. 4) Keeping the body upright. And 5) Maintaining the hand like a beautiful lady s hand. Lo, who teaches in the San Francisco area, puts first the most difficult of the principles: relaxation. "People always say to me, 'You always emphasize relaxation. But how do I do it?' I say, 'Do the form.' That's the only way. A lot of people ask me: 'Do you have any special posture that can help me relax?' I say yes. They ask, 'What?' I say: 'Do the form.'" "If we had some other kind of posture or form that will help your body relax, we wouldn't be teaching you Tai Chi Ch'uan. We would be teaching you that. But so far, we haven't found those kinds of things." Lo said relaxation involves the entire body at the same time, "not just one wrist, one palm, on leg, etc." "We want your whole body relaxed at the same time. So far as I know, Tai Chi Ch'uan does this. Of course, other kinds of martial arts maybe have this, too. But I don't know." Lo's second important principle is separating Yin from Yang. "Yin and Yang are Chinese words and have the meaning insubstantial and substantial. Sometimes in ordinary talk about Tai Chi Ch'uan we discuss separating the weight. But that is not exactly right." "I can put my weight on one leg and the other leg has no weight. But in the meantime, the other leg can be stiff, too. The Yin has to be soft and have no weight. Soft and relaxed. But at the same time mixed together. Even the Yang leg has to be relaxed." "Even if you don't use force, your arm can be tense. That's because we are human beings. We have our limitation. But we try to use less muscle than we usually do." "Most people use 10% of their muscles, but maybe we use five or four or three percent at the senior level. You can't say completely don't use muscles. When you need it, you use it. When you don't need it, relax." During push hands, Lo, who has practiced over 40 years, said the goal is to use internal strength and to avoid the use of force. "Usually, I tell my students don't use force. Instead, use sung. How do you translate sung? Relaxation is not an exact translation. Relaxation can just be collapse but that is not the meaning of sung." Lo said there are different degrees of relaxation and that in push hands this often becomes apparent. "If you meet someone who is better at push hands, then you become hard. When they meet someone who is better than them, they become hard. That's the reason we have to practice and practice. It is a lifetime challenge. There is no end." He also said that softness can be like water, which can become very strong, or wind, which is soft, but can have the power of a tornado and destroy a city. As to how a student can combine and separate softness and strength, he said: "The student has to slowly practice. practice. And practice." "I always tell the student, 'If I tell you and you can get it right away, that's learning. But if I tell you and you can't get it right away, then you have to slowly practice until you get it. gradual practice over a period of time. Without practice you can't get it. If after people have told you and you can't get it then it's because you haven't practiced." Practice, Lo said, involves patience and perseverance. "Students want to find the good teacher. Why? Because he can show them the right direction. If you have the right teacher, a good teacher, it is still not a guarantee that you will be good. You have to practice. Sometimes both teacher and student have the frustration. But you have to be patient and keep practicing." "I tell people when they learn Tai Chi Ch'uan that patience is not enough because people always lose patience. So I tell people you have to have perseverance. We have never heard of people losing perseverance." "Patience is good but it is not enough. After five years you can quit. I have seen people practice 20 years and quit. If you have 20 years patience, it is pretty good, but if you have it a lifetime, then we call it perseverance." "Of course, a lot of people quit. Of course, teachers feel frustrated, too. Sometimes they feel, 'I put a lot of time and energy in and these people cannot learn.' So the teacher needs a lot of patience and perseverance too." The inner struggle that goes on during the study and practice of Tai Chi Ch'uan is also important, Lo said. And this involves the student's having to fight with himself first. "When you practice Tai Chu Ch'uan, it is not just physical. You try to make your willpower stronger, too. When your willpower is stronger, you won't easily quit. Everybody feels frustration, including myself. But you have to overcome it. Otherwise, nobody can help you." "This part is pretty difficult. That's why we have to struggle inside. Some people can take a lot of pressure. Some people collapse easy. Everybody has a different capacity." Push hands, he said, requires the same emphasis on the five principles as the form and it has the added value of enabling students to check on their own development, whether it be relaxation or form. "I always tell my students, 'Your partner is your teacher when you practice push hands.'" "Usually, people get better," Lo said. But he said he tells students not to expect straight or steady improvement, rather in a curve that can go up and down. "You have to keep practicing. When you breakthrough, then you jump up. But sometimes you can stay in one place and can't break through. When we reach a certain level, we think that's our limit. But nobody knows our potential. I think the student should always be better than the teacher." But he said that students should not compare their progress with other people. "Compare with yourself. For instance, before you practiced Tai Chi Ch'uan every year you caught colds often and got sick often. After practice, you get sick less." "Or, after you practice many years, it never happens. That's great. That means to compare with yourself. If you compare yourself with other people then you make trouble for yourself." However, he added, that sometimes it is good to compare oneself with others because other people can be a source of stimulation for practice. "Sometimes people ask me if U.S. students can do good Tai Chi Ch'uan. And I always answer, 'Why not?' Chinese and American students are no different. The main thing, somehow, is that American students need more discipline. All the teachers have the same feeling like that. Without discipline, you can't stay long. Otherwise, within a few years you quit. "I think it is based on cultural background. Chinese say, 'Okay, I practice Tai Chi Ch'uan and if it takes 10 years, then okay.' But here, in 10 months they must have some result." Regarding goals in practice, Lo said: "When I started Tai Chi Ch'uan, I was very ill. I was sick very bad. I could walk maybe 15 yards. Do you think I had a goal? Sure, I wanted to recover my health. Then I practiced and got healthy and then I wanted to keep this way." "Later, when I began teaching, I wanted to be healthy and keep on with my research and study. Of course, everybody has limitations, including myself. But I just do my best. That's what I tell my students. If you feel you are doing your best, then that's okay." Lo's five major points also include turning the waist, keeping the body upright and maintaining the hand like a beautiful lady's hand. You have to follow the five, he said. "If you can't follow the five, then follow four. Of course, it is better to follow four than to follow three. But it's still not good. It is better to follow all five." Of the five principles, the first one, relaxation, is the most difficult, he said. The other four, he said, everyone can do. "You don't even have to know Tai Chi Ch'uan to do them perfectly. The problem is that when you put them together, you can't do it, especially when your legs start burning, aching, shaking and you forget about all the principles. A lot of people are like this." "It is all very, very simple but it is hard to do it. Talk is easy. One minute you can know the five principles, but maybe in 50 years you won't get it, especially relaxation." "Everybody thinks that they are relaxed, but when you meet somebody better than you, you become hard. So we can't be perfect. It is a lifetime challenge. We just keep doing and doing. Just the basic things." ----Retyped by David Chen, 2001.

Ben Lo Workshop Waukesha, WI

Ben Lo Workshop Benjamin Lo Workshop, May 27-30, 2011