How do you relax?

[Danny T]

Relax says Sifu. “I am relaxing as hard asI can”
“How do I relax?” You are not the first toask and many more will follow.
First off you are doing something that isdifferent and unfamiliar. That alone breeds tension. Wanting to do well and topresent your forms (yourself) well (properly) breeds tension. It is always a mentalthing. Free your mind and the body will follow. Easy to say extremely hard todo.

So how do you relax? How is it the othersappear so relaxed in their movements and presentations? How are they able to dothe drills with such a relaxed state and yet be so powerful?

Experience. Time in doing. Repetition,repetition, repetition… Repetition is the mother of skill.
One becomes familiar with what ishappening, what it ‘feels’ like, where it is happening, how it is happening,why it is happening all with experience. You can relax because you ‘know’ whatto expect, when to expect it, and IF it doesn’t happen that way you know why.Immediately due to experience. That is why Martial Arts training is notsomething one can do every now and then or be watched and then know what to do.It must be tactile. It must be felt…, for some of us, thousands of times. Therewill always be those who seem to get it fast. So what? Don’t compare yourselfto them, compare yourself to you. Their experience is not your experience.

To be able to instantly define; range,speed, power, timing, pressure, angle of attack and to coordinate the limbs,body, and mind in that mille-second takes experience.

Experience comes from doing the many drillsthat build the attributes and develops the feel of the technique possibilitieswithin movement. Keep doing your forms to learn feel of the movements into thepositions or structures of your system. Keep working the partner drills andplay with what the different amounts of pressure does or how it changes thefeeling of the drill. Do this with as little movement or tension as possible.Just enough to be in the proper place or structure. Drills are for you to learnabout you, they are not a competition for who is better, stronger, or faster.Learn to feel your training partner, learn to feel yourself and in time youwill be relaxed.

Take your time, have fun, do your best, and enjoy the journey.

 

[JamesGarr]

I have decided there are two things I need to do to get to where I need to be. I need to consciously do things that promote relaxation, like practicing a lot, which I do anyway, and making an effort to breathe normally and let my shoulders drop, and to move my hips and lower body more.

But I also need to put it out of my mind, and just go with it. So my strategy is now to begin practice with conscious thought on relaxation, but once it begins in earnest to put it out of my mind and not worry about it.

I feel like I've made progress but I guess I still have a way to go. Last week in class a visiting sifu teaching us various kicks commented that I seem tense and need to use my lower body more. Yesterday a fellow student at a Tai Chi throwing seminar said I need to relax my upper body and use my hips more. I'm thinking at the time "This is as relaxed as I get!" It's almost comical at this point.

 

[JamesGarr]

This is important and it is my impression that many (most?) people have a lot of difficulty with this. I even see a lot of people who seem to have no concept of it at all. Does your system have a method for developing this ability? Are there drills that you do that help develop this skill? They may be drills that are completely separate from martial technique application, but help you understand how to connect the body as one unit and drive your technique from the power of the legs and the ground.

My system does have a very specific method for doing this, and before I trained in my system I had trained in some others. It wasn't until I had the hindsight that I understood the difference and I realized that in the past I had no concept of how to do that and no method for helping to develop it.

I suggest you specifically ask your sifu how you can go about developing that understanding and that ability, what method of practicing it or what drills might he recommend. Hopefully there is something in the teaching methodology that he can teach you and get you working on. I find that it is something that takes constant practice. Much of my training, every time I train, is taken up with this kind of drill, working to reinforce that full body connection. Without that, everything is weaker.

I will ask him, thanks.

 

[JamesGarr]

Relax says Sifu. “I am relaxing as hard asI can”

This is exactly the conversations I've had. thanks

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

In order to achieve the maximum relaxation, all your 3 joints, wrist joint, elbow joint, shoulder joint have to be loosed up first. There are some exercises that can help you to achieve that.