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Wujifa, like everything, is an exploration of life. Zhan Zhuang should be "alive", as the core practice of our art and science, but what does it mean to have life in your practice? For me, when I consider life, I think of breath, movement, flow - and awareness of these things as the self-consciousness of life. An exploration of this, not as a theory but as direct experience lies at the heart of Wujifa.

When we stand, we adopt a certain posture. What is the meaning of this posture? Tai chi and Qigong call it "Chi Flowing" but what does that mean to us, as practitioners of the practical method of Wujifa? Obviously, there is a physical human experience these ancient methods and ways of speaking are pointing to, so how can we better understand and experience this without becoming ungrounded from reality?

Take a look at the heart pictured above. Physically it is no different from the one in your chest right now. What is this picture missing that your living heart has? Your heart is connected to the rest of an integrated system, for one. Your heart moves. Your heart is involved in the flow of blood through your body. What is missing from the heart in the picture might be called "life".

In stance it is no different. Is your stance just like a picture in a book? To what degree is there connection, movement, and flow? I'm starting to notice this in my practice, and beginning to ask myself if I'm focusing on the heart in the picture, or the heart in my chest. One looks beautiful, but has no life, the other is part of who I am. Which will you choose to listen to?



Look at the amoeba in this video - and notice how everything moves through its whole body toward its food. If this isn't "Chi Flowing" I don't know what is.

The Triangle of Balance, Relax, and Structure is the first of the three Wujifa Triangles!

Each one has its own meaning... If you look back to the post I've linked to, you'll see that relax is not limp, structure is not rigid, and balance is not polarity.

Thinking a lot about the words lately, and keeping them in my attention to see what new meaning develops. A little while ago, I had a bit of an "AHA!" moment about balance.


You see... I always used to think balance was about just stacking the blocks (look at the rolfing picture). Then, all of the sudden, we were talking about weebles - you know weebles wobble but they don't fall down, like we have before so many times and how they're balanced and if finally clicked for me - blocks which are stacked up are balanced, but so is a Weeble - in a similar, but different way.



A weeble, in addition to being an undisturbed, vertical structure, with no deviation of one part being precisely stacked above the other parts, also has a low center of gravity. therefor, it is IMPOSSIBLE to tip over.

So in stance, in addition to getting the structure aligned, we're also relaxing to "sink the chi" so that we find balance - Balance, relax, and structure are all interwoven in this definition - and that's the key to the Wujifa Triangles.