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Jonathan Wong wrote:
I think I understand what you are saying. For instance, one could "engage" or "activate" the fascial suit with 6-direction intent, then do the jo-trick. He would simply maintain his balanced intent, bourne through the fascia, while someone pushes the jo. Voila, no muscle needed because the strain is distributed through wide swaths of tissue.
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Yeah, that's basically what I'm saying.
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Jonathan Wong wrote:
But, this "activate-once" model doesn't address the mechanism of how ki is lead by intent, except maybe at the moment of activation, correct? What I mean is, when you induce a ground-path say from your right hand your left foot, and then by chance you need one from the left shoulder to the right foot, maybe in preparation to strike with that shoulder, this is done by using intent, without moving. So, what has just happened in your body at that moment?
It is something consciously controlled at that moment, in a particular location (shoulder to foot). It's that feeling that you can feel at any given moment by "intending" to create or bear a force.
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Gawd, is there a way I can keep this short? As I said, things get more complicated.
OK, remember that we're talking about a "whole-body" or global, tensegrity structure. Tensegrity structures have a couple interesting properties and behaviors.
Unlike rigid structures, the external shape of an (elastic) tensegrity structure is determined by an internal equilibrium of forces. If you change that balance of forces, the external shape will change. So when I was talking about using muscle to "guide" movement, I meant that you can use muscle to shift or re-align the internal balance, such that it forces an external change in shape (ie, movement).
Think of a bicycle wheel. If you change the spoke tension (like if you break a spoke) or if you change the length of a spoke (by screwing or unscrewing the spoke) the wheel will develop a wobble.
So here's the first possibility---in that moment when you shift your "intent", you might be shifting around various internal structures, such that the main, err... "avenue" of force is changed. I think this is what happens in the "center"/dantien/tanden. Certain internal structures are manipulated to induce general movements of expansion and condensing. But this may also happen on a smaller scale throughout the body, who knows.
The thing here is that all the muscle activity would be concentrated in the abdomen, and I can say from experience that in the beginning it's really hard to discern the subtle (internal) movement there. So it may feel like you're "using you intent" rather than moving the muscles/internal structures in the center/dantien/tanden.
A second possibility is that you may literally be "connecting" or "disconnecting" certain fascial channels. The human body is a complex structure. And it should be noted that the fascia runs through muscle---I would imagine that flexing muscle would affect the tensegrity equation
somehow, though I can't say exactly how. Maybe there's ways of using muscle that "breaks" the connection?
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Also, the angle of the elastic bands (in this case, the fascia) in relation to the rigid rods (bones) is important for tensegrity structures, so there might also be subtle ways of re-aligning the body that connects or disconnects. [/edit]
Let's say you're disconnecting your arm---the fascia in the arm would still be contracted, but it would be separate from the greater global tensegrity equation.
This sort of thing would probably also be really subtle, such that you would probably perceive it as "using your mind", rather than using the muscles of the body in weird ways.
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I could say more, but this is already pretty long. So don't think this is a complete explanation. And don't think this really explains "how" you do any of this stuff on a practical level.