Three Keys To Advanced Xingyi Energetics (Pamphlet, 2016) by Scott Meredith

9/9/2020 TC-X: Three Keys to Advanced Xingyi Energetics
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October 27, 2016
Three Keys to Advanced Xingyi Energetics
Three Keys to Advanced Xingyi Energetics
Scott Meredith 10/27/2016
Introduction
People love to attack martial arts books in Amazon reviews with something like this kind of acid-splash:
The book is nothing but a pamphlet. It’s useful content could have been summed up in a four-page Black Belt Magazine
article.
Now, finally, they have their wish – this one really is just a pamphlet. Though in fact, you could reduce almost anything to a
mere soundbite. Tolstoy’s doorstop novel War and Peace could be summed up in one sentence:
Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia including his disastrous 1812 invasion serve as the backdrop for the tangled
personal lives of two aristocratic families.
Anyway, despite these robust intellectual headwinds, I’ve produced some tutorial materials about the traditional Chinese
martial art of Xingyiquan (形意拳), including a book and two instructional films:
Radical Xingyi Energetics (book)
Xingyi (DVD)
Xingyi Transformational Animals (Vimeo tutorial film)
In order to get anything from this short article, you really need to have grokked the content of those materials. This article on
advanced Xingyi energetics costs less than a Caffe Latte Grande. But inevitably, the mere suggestion that you must be familiar
with the foundation concepts will open me to the usual accusations of shilling and SEO marketing and God only knows what
all else. Still, I’ve got to say it again: You must be familiar with the Xingyi basic concepts and techniques as presented in my
earlier materials.
It’s not enough to know and practice Xingyi from some other source, because Xingyi as I have presented it is based on mind,
movement and shape - without tension. But most Xingyi is practiced with extreme tension, either applied consciously as a
misguided attempt to flaunt one’s mastery of ‘Obvious Power’ (明勁 - which is usually taken to mean plain old physical
athletics) - or, even worse, tension is applied unconsciously as blind imitation of bad-ass looking karate or Shaolin, just
because doing so makes us feel strong and safe.
Actually though, it’s totally fine to do Xingyi with tension, maybe throw in a strict breathing regimen, some athletic stretching,
or isometric calisthenics … do it as bad or good karate, or do it any other way you want. No skin off me, and maybe you can
work up a sweat, probably even kick a lot of ass. It’s all good. But if you’re doing it that normal way, you won’t get anything
whatsoever from this document. Therefore, if you aren’t familiar with Xingyi as presented in my earlier materials you’re
wasting your time reading this.
Although these practices were taught to me a long time ago, and are documented in my teacher’s handwritten manual, it took
me decades to really unpack them and finally experience their truth and power for myself. When you finally ‘get it’, these
phenomena seem a lot simpler to work with than they did when on the outside looking in. It is written: ‘The Dao is not far
from you. If you try you can approach it.” I hope I’ve now represented these incredibly interesting training processes in a
more accessible way that may shorten your uptake time to months or weeks rather than decades or years.
https://cattanga.typepad.com/tabby_cat_gamespace/2016/10/three-keys-to-advanced-xingyi-energetics.html 1/8
There are dozens of mainstream styles of internal energy arts in China, and literally thousands of minor sub-styles particular
to families, clans, and regions. There are also thousands of published books and articles on Xingyiquan throughout China and
Southeast Asia. It is possible that some aspect of these practices has appeared in some form in a prior treatment. I can’t cover
everything so I cannot guarantee that every detail covered in this document is 100% new, fresh, never-before-seen and sui
generis. All I can say is that there is no presentation known to me, in either Chinese or English, of these points brought
together and presented in an integrated framework with fully workable and straightforward practice details. If you find
otherwise then I’m happy you have access to something so rare and I’m sorry you wasted a couple of bucks on this version,
but I hope there may be at least one unique detail that enhances your practice and justifies your buy.
These advanced methods are so plain, unassuming, low-key, invisible and simple to perform that 99.9% of readers here will
instantly dismiss them with a sneer. That’s ok though. After all it is written:
下士闻道大笑之不笑不足以为道
“If a fool, hearing of the Dao, does not dismiss it with a sneer then it hardly qualifies as the real Dao”.
I present this material strictly for the benefit and interest of the remaining 0.1% who are curious enough to give something
radical a chance.
Advanced Energy Key #1: Plain Standing
The foundational standing pose is shown and basically explained in my book Radical Xingyi Energetics. It's just relaxed
upright standing, with feet separated to shoulder-width, and your hands very softly and gently elevated with a subtle shaping
of the wrist and fingers. That's as far as the book went with it. Going to the advanced mode requires just one additional
nuanced turn of the screw.
To access the advanced energetics of this pose, you need to connect your hands and your feet together. Normally that would
be thought of in terms of the so-called 'macro-cosmic' orbit, where not only feet and hands, but all parts of the body
(including the internal organs) are all linked via a complex spaghetti map of energy meridians. That is one way to work and
it's good.
For Xingyi advanced energy work, the linkage has an entirely different coloration. Here you are going to link your hands and
feet on the outside. It's almost the energy equivalent of some yoga poses that have you grabbing each foot with a hand – but
instead of doing it physically, you're going to use your mind alone.
You take up the given same standing position as indicated for the basic practice. Your hands are as shown in the figure below:
The energy key:

1. Mentally image your feet as wider than they physically are. It’s as though you are wearing an ‘energy shoe’ that surrounds
your feet on all sides.
2. Very gently, keeping your hands in the same physical shape and position, ‘squeeze’ the energy shoe so imagined.
At first this is just mental work, pure imaginative play. To cross it over into reality you need to have your internal energy fairly
amped up to begin with. That’s why this is advanced work. If you haven’t gone through the basic energy training, you’ll jump
right to this, try it once for 10 seconds, and toss it aside with a sneer, feeling nothing. That’s fine, it’s just where you are right
now. Go back to the starting line please. You shouldn’t be reading this document.
But those who’ve put some time into the basics will immediately understand the depth of this practice. You do not apply
physical pressure in this energy squeeze! Don’t tense up, it’s not a tendon engagement thing or any of that nonsense. It’s just
about 1 oz. or less of extremely gentle pressure, or even just mental intent to apply pressure, imagine the feeling that you
would have if you were to actually squeeze your feet from above, left hand over/around left foot, right hand over/around right
foot, as though squeezing two thick epoxy tube or plastic bottles or something like that. You will suddenly feel that you
actually ARE squeezing the energy contours of your feet. (For those who know yoga, it’s a bit like an energy or virtual version
of the physical foot-grabbing in Upavishtha Konasana B pose).
You will be amazed to discover that this simple imagery and ‘pretend’ action has created a tangible energy linkage between
your hands and feet that is outside the normal internal meridian channels – it’s a direct merging of the charges that are
normally separately inherent in feet and hands. Interlocking the two in this way charges your entire body for as long as your
can softly maintain the hookup. More practice yields longer time of full-body flow and stronger charging. I could say more on
this but it’s really a matter of taking this hint, trying it for yourself, and playing around just a little with it (within the stated
parameters) to find the optimal flow and duration of charge that you can manage at this time.
This is the first of our advanced Xingyi energetic practices. Begin every Xingyi session with a moderate period of standing
with this engagement. Please do not re-cast this as some kind of fascia, tendon, ligament, muscle or even nerve thing. You’ll
widely miss the mark and the experience. It is an energy interlock and you’ll feel it unmistakably and very powerfully as such -
if you can somehow manage to transcend those common prejudices.
Advanced Energy Key #2: Stance Standing
The ‘stance’ I’m talking about here is the well-known Santishi (三體式) of Xingyi. Again, you have to get all the structural
pointers from the earlier book or DVD or films. As I keep saying, you cannot just jump into this document raw and expect to
get anything at all from it. I can’t repeat all that teaching here. In the book and films, I present a pretty minimal version of the
stance, stripped to its bare essentials. You can easily find far more elaborate requirement lists for this on the web, the 36
essentials or the 72 checkpoints or whatever. But if you have the basics in the general range of the simpler version in my book
or films you have the essential pre-requisites to try the advanced energy method discussed in this section.
So let’s assume you have the structural mechanics down ok. I say just ‘ok’ because you really don’t need to obsess over every
little alignment and angle with an MRI scan or an anatomist with a clipboard on every side. Just feel it.
Now, here’s the advanced version:

1. Keep your lower hand unmoving. Relaxed, well-shaped but unmoving as you…
2. Mentally ‘turn’ your hips and waist ‘against’ the lower hand. For example that would be ‘turning’ your hips/waist leftward
‘against’ the left (lower) hand in the illustration. When the right hand is the lower hand, on the other side stance, you
would be turning your hips/waist rightward ‘against’ the right (lower) hand. The key thing is, don’t feel that you’re
pushing your hand across your waist, or forward. The hand is immovable. Feel that you are turning your waist/hips into
your hand. The more you practice this, the quicker and easier you’ll snap from physical standing to energetic standing at
the start of a session.
Again, this is 99% mental work that becomes tangibly energetic. It most emphatically is not any kind of ‘core activation’ of
muscles, tendons, fascia, ligaments, nerves or anything else. There is only the very barest hint, just 1 oz. of physical feeling
involved. Do not turn this into a physicalized or tendon-ized or abdominal-core thing of “wringing the wet towel”, a hard
physical squeeze and stretch-out, as you sometimes hear about for more conventional “internal” training. That is physical
tension, no matter how you try to rationalize it. But this advanced work is totally different. It begins as a feeling that then
becomes a kind of power.
It’s as though you are wearing a broad, thick belt, maybe like a sumo wrestler’s obi. Then, you have hooked your (lower) hand
into the belt and gripped it (in your mind alone). Then, you have begun to turn your waist hand hips ‘against’ your hand but
the hand holds steady and does not allow the (virtual) turning to actually happen. This starts as imagination but soon
becomes an energetic reality. Once you have the energetic engagement of the abdomen and lower hand interlock, the energy
will then infuse your entire body, including your feet, both legs, all of your trunk, your neck head, and both arms and hands
for as long as you maintain the abdomen/lower-hand interlock. After standing both sides in this way for a relatively brief
period (say 5 minutes at most on a single side – you don’t need to stand for hours), if you do the Basic Standing (with or
without the advanced foot squeeze thing already covered) you’ll be absolutely blown away by the resulting power surge.
Advanced Energy Key #3: Five Fists
Here’s where it all comes together. You can express your internal energy in the actual practice of techniques. If you’ve read the
Xingyi book, you know about the several levels of energy experience, including the ‘obvious energy’ (an electric bolt) and the
‘hidden’ energy (an wash or wave through your body). What I’m explaining now is the way to hugely amplify both of those
experiences, and also retain more of the charge as a kind of ongoing annealing process that builds up across many practice
sessions.
This is done through a simple technique I might call ‘scooping’. Notice that in all the basic Five Element Fists of Xinqyi (五形
拳), the hand that is about to perform the main strike on the next repetition (in solo practice of a line of one technique) is
always positioned near, and moving from, the lower abdomen or dantian (丹田) area. If we don’t think of the dantian as a
single point, but rather take the whole lower abdomen as an energy region (traditionally, ‘sea of qi’ or 氣海 ), it can be
regarded, and experienced as, a kind of bucket of energy. This is far more than a quaint or goofy metaphor. It’s an energetic
reality that the Five Fists were created to express and exploit. This is another example of the kind of ‘outer’ connection, from
the exterior, that we’ve already seen in the foot-squeezing technique above.
The process is incredibly simple and straight-forward, but if nobody tells you about it, it’s unlikely you’d stumble over it on
your own no matter how much you practice your Fists. Just imagine (it starts as imagination) that, as your striking hand is
about to extend into any of the five strikes, it first is ‘scooping up’ a handful of … what? To begin with you can imagine it
scooping from a pot of finger paint, or a bucket of mud, water, sand, almost any slightly sticky, fluid, but substantial material
will do for the imagery. You’re briskly and lightly scooping up a handful of that and just flinging it lightly outward and
forward. This basic idea applies to all the Five Fists.
This is what was sometimes glancingly referred to in some Xingyi writings as 'painting energy' (畫勁).
Of course, most of the strikes are done with a closed fist (a soft closed fist by the way, again you must refer to the Xingyi book
as the foundation for this article). That doesn’t seem ideal for ‘scooping’. But in practice that doesn’t matter much because it’s
an idea of energy sourcing and connection. You could actually imagine coating your fist with ‘energy goop’ before launching it
out, that’s really all it is. But as you become proficient with this idea, it changes into a tangible reality. This is a direct
exteriorized energetic interlock unlike the full track of meridians and channels normally described. But the beauty of the
practice is that this direct link from qihai to hand or fist also serves to energize the entire body and prime the flow of the
internal power everywhere in you. Again, it’s like a sort of annealing process that accumulates over time.
For example, with the Pi Fist (劈拳), as both hands pass your abdomen and form into fists, grab two handfuls of the
abdominal store and then fling it outward in the strike. You can begin by imagining that you are either ‘scraping’ the
substance from the surface of your lower abdomen, or alternately that your ‘energy hands’ are actually reaching into your
lower abdomen and scraping out the energy from within (like that bogus psychic surgery thing done with sheep’s guts as a
scam, but it’s a similar kind of feeling to what you see in those videos). That’s just to get started with it. Later you’ll actually be
able to feel the exact location and amount of power you are scooping up and carrying out each time. This process does not
deplete you, it in fact exercises and revitalizes the system.
For Zuan Fist (鑽拳), if you use the open-hand style for the block, then you can ‘grab’ the energy substance from right where
your block ends and the new strike begins, as you form the fist for the next strike.
With other three Fists (崩拳，炮拳，衡權) , your striking hand does not pass through an open phase, but both hands remain
closed as fists throughout the drill. But even with these there is a moment as you begin each new repetition where your next
striking fist begins from your abdominal area. Mentally gather some energy from there to fling out on the strike. It’s really just
that simple.
After practicing a line of any given technique in the above fashion, always revert to standing (basic or stance) for just a minute
or two, quietly harvest the power augmentation that your just-completed sequence has yielded.
Note: A process similar in concept is happening with the 12 Animal Styles as well, but they are more advanced in that the
energy can be localized to cohere from any starting position. That is beyond the scope of this brief treatment.
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9/9/2020 TC-X: Three Keys to Advanced Xingyi Energetics

The energy key:

Now, here’s the advanced version:

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