Facial Expression and Internal Power

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[David Orange]

Just over a year ago, I posted a thread called Ki Eureka, detailing my recognition of ki after nearly forty years of martial arts training. Just before that, I posted a thread called jumankai: kata no chikara wo nuite, detailing my intention to relax my shoulders 100,000 times. I’m sure the relaxing of the shoulders contributed, along with my recent years of seeking Internal Power aiki, to my sudden recognition of ki, one year ago. It has been quite a year, on every level of my life. But very recently, I experienced something that takes the internal power search to a new level. It relates to Phi Truong’s question to me on the thread A Primer on Aikido, Aiki and IS.

Phi said, “david, where is the dantien/hara movement comes into play? would have thought it one of the central tenet of IS.”

I answered, “It is, isn't it? I left it out because I don't understand it. So that's something I need to figure out.”

That’s certainly not because I haven’t tried to figure it out. I’ve been doing tai chi since 1980 or so, but I was never taught the real use of dantien there. And I wasn’t taught specifically about tanren in aikido. A lot of that effect was right there in all my study, but without specific instruction on it, I didn’t even know what to look for—much less how to use it. So the IS/IP/Aiki discussions on aikiweb and elsewhere have been very helpful and I come back here to post some results.

Now, recently, I’ve had another strange insight. It relates to the expression of the face and the development of internal power.

Not long ago, I mentioned that I got a good feeling out of doing some exploratory finger movements that made me recognize the connection of my fingertips to my dantien. I would move a finger a little and I could feel it “pulling” at the tissues that connected it to my dantien. Lately, I’ve felt that connection between my dantien and my face. I can manipulate my facial expression and feel the tiny connections to my dantien.

In fact, I believe that the facial expression is created by the dantien’s response to things in the environment. The dantien creates the expression of the face through tension along the lines of the connective tissue. By Feldenkrais’ reasoning, the brain controls the body, but you can also affect the brain by attentive movements of the body. Likewise, though the dantien creates the expressions of the face through its feelings, we can intentionally change the state of the dantien by changing the expression of the face.

This reminded me that I had heard someone say that you should smile while doing aikido. I didn’t take that too seriously at the time because most of the people I saw smiling while they did aikido had a kind of insipid smile that made me want to puke. And their technique was nothing to write home about. So I never thought much about that. But when I recently felt the connection between my face and my dantien, I remembered that saying and that made me think of Tadashi Abe, who had such a strange smile.

But I didn't’ come to this thought by smiling. I came to it by having a very bad expression on my face. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it and when I thought about it, I could feel direct connections between my face and my dantien. So I relaxed my face and I felt something relax in my dantien. I felt the release of energy I had been exerting to clinch my dantien in the way that would generate the facial expression I was wearing.

Especially with negative feelings, we can put a lot of “stomach” into the face. This is partly because the bad face has roots in eating something bad. The caveman eating something bad would involuntarily make a horrible facial expression so that his wife, children and friends would know not to eat what he was eating. Then, face-making evolved to include any visceral rejection of anything—someone’s behavior, for instance. When we don’t like something, we reject it first with our stomach and the tension in our stomach (as if we are trying to throw up) creates the face we show.
Now, when I realized that my face connected directly with my dantien and that relaxing the face freed a lot of energy in my dantien, I felt all this extra energy in my being and I thought, “I’ll bet you could affect other people with this kind of invisible energy.” Of course, people do read body language (as well as facial language) and if you’re in a state where that kind of energy is freed, other people will feel more cooperative with you just because you are not tense and your face is not threatening. Still, my sense was that I could actually reach out and touch someone with this energy that was anchored in my dantien. And I imagined that must in fact be a big part of haragei—silent communication through the “hara-art”. I knew that a lot of haragei involved “stomaching” the various points of view and ambitions of the members of a group. But this feeling that I could actually affect other people with all the energy I had freed in my stomach…this stuck with me and I spent some time pondering that.

Still, finally, I had to say, “If this energy isn’t clinching up my dantien, what should it be doing?”

At that moment, I realized that, rather than clinching the stomach or traveling astrally, the proper way to use that energy, which is ki, is to push it out from that center and into the hands and feet and head—to fill up the body as a foot fills a sock.

So the body…is the sock of the ki. (There you go, Mark Freeman. :p I hope it was worth it!)

It sounds silly, but if you can feel this, like your ki is as real and present as a foot, and that this real thing extends out into the body as if the body were less real than the ki, and more like clothing for the ki…I think you must be getting the feeling of ki.

That is how I feel now, a year after getting the recognition of which part of me ki is. I have a ki-body inside my physical body, as if the inner body is more real than the outer body. And now I feel like I’m at the point where I can start seeing how to cultivate this much further and apply it at will.
One thing I’ve had a sense about that might be mistaken is the idea of letting the attacker “feel the ground” through your body. When he pushes you, he feels as if he is pushing against the ground, itself. Now I’m thinking that you can do this with almost no muscular involvement if your ki firmly presses the ground on one side and firmly contacts the attacker on the other side. Your ki feels the ground and the attacker’s ki feels the ground through your ki. I won’t know if this really makes sense until I can get someone to push on me. But think about that: to do it, your ki has to be pushed down into your foot…as if your foot were only a sock that is filled by the real foot, which is the ki foot. When we clinch up the dantien and screw up our faces like we’ve eaten an unripe persimmon, it pulls the whole body’s ki up into the dantien. So it’s not down in the leg and therefore cannot press against the ground. But when the ki from dantien presses down into the feet and into the ground and simultaneously into the torso, arms and head, then all of the ki is pressing into the ground and the attacker’s ki should sense the ground on contact. And if his ki is all tied up in his clinched up dantien, it will reference “ground” from your body instead of from gravity and his own pressing into the ground…

So manipulation of the center to release the energy trapped there is one kind of use of the dantien for internal power. It’s part of the process, I think. But the most important thing is to clearly feel that the body joins at the center and use the center as both the source of energy, the source of grounding and balance and the universal joint that transmits power from the lower body to be applied with little effort by the upper body.

Of course, there’s more to it than that, but just in the few days since recognizing the hara connection to the face, my feel for the hara and its influence on the movement of the arms and the strength of the legs has become much more subtle and very interesting.

And guess what?

It makes me smile!!! ;)

Regards.

David

[Mark Freeman]

Just over a year ago, I posted a thread called Ki Eureka, detailing my recognition of ki after nearly forty years of martial arts training. Just before that, I posted a thread called jumankai: kata no chikara wo nuite, detailing my intention to relax my shoulders 100,000 times. I'm sure the relaxing of the shoulders contributed, along with my recent years of seeking Internal Power aiki, to my sudden recognition of ki, one year ago. It has been quite a year, on every level of my life. But very recently, I experienced something that takes the internal power search to a new level. It relates to Phi Truong's question to me on the thread A Primer on Aikido, Aiki and IS.

Phi said, "david, where is the dantien/hara movement comes into play? would have thought it one of the central tenet of IS."

I answered, "It is, isn't it? I left it out because I don't understand it. So that's something I need to figure out."

Hi David,

this whole IS/aiki thing is providing me with more food for thought and reasons to practice than ever before. In some ways I think you have to go through a lot of time learning the external shapes of the waza, dealing with distance, timing etc. The question of relaxation then becomes most important. Learning to move and deal with force in a 'non-resistant' fashion. The whole 'shoulder' issue I was awoken to in quite a dramatic way last year. Even though I had been telling my students for years to keep their shoulders relaxed (they just get in the way of the connection of the hands to the centre/hara/dantien). After I started attending yoga and have my teacher come and manipulate my shoulder blades into the 'correct' place that they 'belong' on the back, I took this new learning to the dojo at he next lesson. I found myself delivering more power for less effort as a result (the holy grail for my own aikido journey). When the shoulders are 'pulled' into this place, it is almost impossible to use conventional strength in the arms. And so much easier to use the hands as an extension of the dantien.

Now, recently, I've had another strange insight. It relates to the expression of the face and the development of internal power.

Not long ago, I mentioned that I got a good feeling out of doing some exploratory finger movements that made me recognize the connection of my fingertips to my dantien. I would move a finger a little and I could feel it "pulling" at the tissues that connected it to my dantien. Lately, I've felt that connection between my dantien and my face. I can manipulate my facial expression and feel the tiny connections to my dantien.

In fact, I believe that the facial expression is created by the dantien's response to things in the environment. The dantien creates the expression of the face through tension along the lines of the connective tissue. By Feldenkrais' reasoning, the brain controls the body, but you can also affect the brain by attentive movements of the body. Likewise, though the dantien creates the expressions of the face through its feelings, we can intentionally change the state of the dantien by changing the expression of the face.

This reminded me that I had heard someone say that you should smile while doing aikido. I didn't take that too seriously at the time because most of the people I saw smiling while they did aikido had a kind of insipid smile that made me want to puke. And their technique was nothing to write home about. So I never thought much about that. But when I recently felt the connection between my face and my dantien, I remembered that saying and that made me think of Tadashi Abe, who had such a strange smile.

But I didn't' come to this thought by smiling. I came to it by having a very bad expression on my face. I couldn't see it, but I could feel it and when I thought about it, I could feel direct connections between my face and my dantien. So I relaxed my face and I felt something relax in my dantien. I felt the release of energy I had been exerting to clinch my dantien in the way that would generate the facial expression I was wearing.

Especially with negative feelings, we can put a lot of "stomach" into the face. This is partly because the bad face has roots in eating something bad. The caveman eating something bad would involuntarily make a horrible facial expression so that his wife, children and friends would know not to eat what he was eating. Then, face-making evolved to include any visceral rejection of anything—someone's behavior, for instance. When we don't like something, we reject it first with our stomach and the tension in our stomach (as if we are trying to throw up) creates the face we show.
Now, when I realized that my face connected directly with my dantien and that relaxing the face freed a lot of energy in my dantien, I felt all this extra energy in my being and I thought, "I'll bet you could affect other people with this kind of invisible energy." Of course, people do read body language (as well as facial language) and if you're in a state where that kind of energy is freed, other people will feel more cooperative with you just because you are not tense and your face is not threatening. Still, my sense was that I could actually reach out and touch someone with this energy that was anchored in my dantien. And I imagined that must in fact be a big part of haragei—silent communication through the "hara-art". I knew that a lot of haragei involved "stomaching" the various points of view and ambitions of the members of a group. But this feeling that I could actually affect other people with all the energy I had freed in my stomach…this stuck with me and I spent some time pondering that.

Interesting stuff, I am going to play with this for a while, and let you know how I get on.

Still, finally, I had to say, "If this energy isn't clinching up my dantien, what should it be doing?"

At that moment, I realized that, rather than clinching the stomach or traveling astrally, the proper way to use that energy, which is ki, is to push it out from that center and into the hands and feet and head—to fill up the body as a foot fills a sock.

So the body…is the sock of the ki. (There you go, Mark Freeman. :p I hope it was worth it!)
It sounds silly, but if you can feel this, like your ki is as real and present as a foot, and that this real thing extends out into the body as if the body were less real than the ki, and more like clothing for the ki…I think you must be getting the feeling of ki.

thanks David, it was:)

That is how I feel now, a year after getting the recognition of which part of me ki is. I have a ki-body inside my physical body, as if the inner body is more real than the outer body. And now I feel like I'm at the point where I can start seeing how to cultivate this much further and apply it at will.
One thing I've had a sense about that might be mistaken is the idea of letting the attacker "feel the ground" through your body. When he pushes you, he feels as if he is pushing against the ground, itself. Now I'm thinking that you can do this with almost no muscular involvement if your ki firmly presses the ground on one side and firmly contacts the attacker on the other side. Your ki feels the ground and the attacker's ki feels the ground through your ki. I won't know if this really makes sense until I can get someone to push on me. But think about that: to do it, your ki has to be pushed down into your foot…as if your foot were only a sock that is filled by the real foot, which is the ki foot. When we clinch up the dantien and screw up our faces like we've eaten an unripe persimmon, it pulls the whole body's ki up into the dantien. So it's not down in the leg and therefore cannot press against the ground. But when the ki from dantien presses down into the feet and into the ground and simultaneously into the torso, arms and head, then all of the ki is pressing into the ground and the attacker's ki should sense the ground on contact. And if his ki is all tied up in his clinched up dantien, it will reference "ground" from your body instead of from gravity and his own pressing into the ground…

So manipulation of the center to release the energy trapped there is one kind of use of the dantien for internal power. It's part of the process, I think. But the most important thing is to clearly feel that the body joins at the center and use the center as both the source of energy, the source of grounding and balance and the universal joint that transmits power from the lower body to be applied with little effort by the upper body.

You may remember that I posted a mind/body exercise on your Ki Eurika thread?

http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showpost.php?p=273232&postcount=39

You were the only poster to say that you tried it, and that you were surprised how effective it was - (maybe others tried and it wasn't? we'll never know).

Although we are using different metaphor to describe what is going on, they are similar in practice. I would offer my opinion though, that metaphors can impose their own limits. Your idea of the body being a ki filled 'sock', seems to impy that the ki ends at the outer edges of the body. I like the concept that the sock is 'filled up' with ki and that it can be 'pressurised' by an external load and respond without involving muscular involvement. So my concept of the dantien being like a pressurised air filled balloon, seems to correspond. I think where my approach differs from yours slightly is that mentally, my balloon can extend beyond the outer limits of my physical body, therefore the 'pressurising' on the ki level starts before physical contact is even made.

At the moment I am having fun playing with this concept. I have someone load up my wrist with a push, and keep it steady, I have already equalised the 'pressure' as in the exercise mentioned in the other thread. I find I can mentally reduce the size of the balloon, still keeping the pressure constant, thereby drawing the partner in, without any feeling of collapse, this can then be coupled with the balloon being rotated in any direction I choose to think it. Uke goes wherever the outer edge of the balloon goes, as if they are a print on the outside of the surface skin. I find I am no longer really interested on what the partner is doing, I am totally focussed on my own internal set up.

Just more food for thought and things to play with...onwards and upwards McDuff!:)

cheers,

Mark

[thisisnotreal]

David, I do not think Takeda subscribed to your smiling/aiki power theory. ;)

re; thread.
It is a good thought. I also noticed that the fear reaction in me (my o my; seems I get fearful an awful lot) causes 'ki to rise'. My 10,000 reps has been to resink it back down to qihai point. Funny thing is; I can't fake it. When i can do it...yes; i feel it in dantian and in my face. Staying relaxed so that ki stays under control...seems so far away to me. Almost unimaginably far away in a fight...

Something else I noticed: Some people have huge asymmetry/eye dominance. What do you make of it?Is this a left/right imbalance? i have thoughts but i don't know. One video clip talks about eye-aiki. not sure what this is all about.

re: sock
Sometimes i feel like it's more of the veins on a leaf than the sock; but you had some really interesting thoughts.

stay crazy,
J

[thisisnotreal]

fascial
fascia
never noticed that before...

[David Orange]

fascial
fascia
never noticed that before...

Yeah...I thought that up. I think up lots of words. Not all of them are as good as that one...

[Thomas Campbell]

Dan gives good fascials. He's got a salon outside of Spencer, MA.

[David Orange]

David, I do not think Takeda subscribed to your smiling/aiki power theory. ;)

Well, it's not my theory. I used to hear it a lot but I never took it seriously. The thing is, I just recently noticed this and it hit me as very profound. And that made me wonder if, in fact, there could be something to it because of the direct connection to hara. And then I wondered if there could be different effects from smiling or frowning. I'm sure that a very upset, angry, or distasteful face reflects a hara that is "tied up in knots," and therefore unable to transfer the physical force of the legs into the upper body with complete fidelity. But could it make a difference whether you have a "calm" face, a "stern" face or a "smiley" face?

When I was beginning aikido, we were taught to have an expressionless face or the "poker" face. No one ever told me to "smile" during techniques in those days except people who seemed to think that aikido was a sort of New Age dance form with swords...and when they "smiled" during techniques, it looked very smug and rather arrogant. And, again, their technique didn't impress me.

It is a good thought. I also noticed that the fear reaction in me (my o my; seems I get fearful an awful lot) causes 'ki to rise'. My 10,000 reps has been to resink it back down to qihai point. Funny thing is; I can't fake it. When i can do it...yes; i feel it in dantian and in my face. Staying relaxed so that ki stays under control...seems so far away to me. Almost unimaginably far away in a fight...

I understand that very well. Lately, though, when I feel perturbed, I monitor my facial tension and I can feel a relaxation in my stomach and a release of needless effort. I use the facial expression to affect the condition of the hara.

And I want to point out that the emotions are one of the biggest influences on the condition of the hara. That's why great martial artists are always known as calm-minded people. If you get too excited in any way, whether angry or silly, the hara takes on certain tensions that prevent the proper transfer of force from the ground and legs into the upper body. So to control the hara, you have to have a calm presence just to get the hara in the condition that will let you use it. And finding that in places like the face and the fingers can show you just how subtle the hara's condition is. And you can make a pretty interesting hobby of feeling the hara and how its movement transfers to other parts of the body.

As for fear when it comes to physical confrontations...I think tough training takes out a lot of the mysteries that generate fear. You never know who anyone really is or what they might do in desperation, but tough training teaches you a lot about what you'll likely encounter and long term, it teaches us about ourselves. And that can do a lot to eliminate fear in a confrontation.

re: sock
Sometimes i feel like it's more of the veins on a leaf than the sock; but you had some really interesting thoughts.

stay crazy,
J

Well, the whole thing about "the ki body" being "more real than the physical body" is just a matter of perspective. If you focus on "mind," then mind is the "real" thing to you. If you focus on "body," the body is more real. And if you really focus on the ki aspect of your being, it will be the most real because that's the part you're working with and using. In fact, of course, they're all equally real, but when you use the ki, you have to be fully in the reality of it and then you can see that, rather than balling it up in your stomach, you have to put it all the way down into the arms and legs--right to the fingertips and toes. And in that sense, I say the body is like a sock that the ki pushes into. It's just another saying to draw attention with a little humor.

Thanks for the comments!

David

[David Orange]

...this whole IS/aiki thing is providing me with more food for thought and reasons to practice than ever before.

Great, innit?

You may remember that I posted a mind/body exercise on your Ki Eurika thread?

http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showpost.php?p=273232&postcount=39

You were the only poster to say that you tried it, and that you were surprised how effective it was - (maybe others tried and it wasn't? we'll never know).

I did find that very interesting and I still think about it and try it from time to time.

Although we are using different metaphor to describe what is going on, they are similar in practice. I would offer my opinion though, that metaphors can impose their own limits. Your idea of the body being a ki filled 'sock', seems to impy that the ki ends at the outer edges of the body.

Well, that was one of the big shocks when I met Akuzawa and he stressed that everything in this way is done inside the body and you never send your power out of your body. You can send intent and such out, but the actual energy stays inside and you do the techniques inside yourself to produce a powerful effect on someone who is in contact with you. A lot of techniques in martial arts seem pretty much to require that you put your energy into the other person as force, but in IS/IP, you keep it inside.

I like the concept that the sock is 'filled up' with ki and that it can be 'pressurised' by an external load and respond without involving muscular involvement. So my concept of the dantien being like a pressurised air filled balloon, seems to correspond. I think where my approach differs from yours slightly is that mentally, my balloon can extend beyond the outer limits of my physical body, therefore the 'pressurising' on the ki level starts before physical contact is even made.

Maybe it's that the intent expands? I was also impressed, when I thought about it, by the old Chinese saying that "jin" "begins in the soles of the feet, is directed by the waist and is manifested in the tips of the fingers." It just hit me one day that all of that is inside the body. The "jin" doesn't come from outside the body and it doesn't go out of the body, but is in the soles of the feet and the tips of the fingers--the whole body filled all the way to the edges.

At the moment I am having fun playing with this concept. I have someone load up my wrist with a push, and keep it steady, I have already equalised the 'pressure' as in the exercise mentioned in the other thread. I find I can mentally reduce the size of the balloon, still keeping the pressure constant, thereby drawing the partner in, without any feeling of collapse, this can then be coupled with the balloon being rotated in any direction I choose to think it. Uke goes wherever the outer edge of the balloon goes, as if they are a print on the outside of the surface skin. I find I am no longer really interested on what the partner is doing, I am totally focussed on my own internal set up.

Very interesting, again. I need to try that. It's also very similar to some things Dan told us.

Just more food for thought and things to play with...onwards and upwards McDuff!:)

Just so. And cheers to you, too.

David