How the idea of Dantian evolved in Hebei Xingyi Quan
Recently I’ve been doing a bit of martial arts posting over on my facebook account and one the general topic of interest is sorting out how Daoist ideas and words are used in the internal arts, especially xingyi and bagua.
I made a post recently about how the idea of Dantian power changed throughout the history of Xingyi which posted significant feedback.
In particular there was one question which in summary was about how most people say Xingyi lost its force generation engine in the Dantian and replaced it with sinking, fascia power etc... since I seem to say differently, can I please explain my perspective.
Since I was already in front of my word processor when this comment came in and because it is interesting to me, I decided to make a longer post here rather than type it all out on my phone on fb.
Here it is:
Xingyi Quan the martial art emerged in the 19th century and was founded by Li Luoneng.
Li studied the art of Dai Family Xinyi, an ancestor style of Xingyi which itself is derived from Xinyi Liuhe Quan, a popular Muslim style in Henan province known for its fierce power.
I do not know a significant amount of information about Dai style, but in a very simple summary it includes three ancestral fists and I believe ten animal routines among other training methods (there are one or two practitioners who read this newsletter so please feel free to correct me and I will include your correction in the next post).
The style has a special feature, along with other Xinyi Liu He styles of a back weighted single leg squat which prepares the lower Dantian to deliver rotational force.
The early Xingyi Quan of Li Luoneng included this posture and it is still evidenced today in Hebei and Shanxi branches of the style. In Hebei it is practiced in the Li Luoneng and Liu Qilan styles, both of which are popular in Hengshui city.
In 2011 I visited Hengshui with my teacher Hai Yang Shifu in order to attend the innitiation ceremony of new disciples of a local Li Luoneng style master named Cui Jieli. At that time I also met a descendant of Li Luoneng who carries on his family tradition, so I got to see a couple variations of the style (how lucky I am to have a teacher who let me come on such an adventure with him!!).
Their movements tend to be back weighted, perform a squat, contain, and vertical rotation action, and transmit considerable force upon impact.
Li Luoneng and Liu Qilan are first and second generation Xingyi ancestors respectively, along with Guo Yunshen in the Hebei style as well as others in the Shanxi school (Li Luoneng cannot be said to be either Hebei or Shanxi style since he is the original ancestor of the entire tradition, although he resided for most of his life in Hebei).
The third generation of Hebei style include figures such as Li Cunyi, Zhang Zhaodong, Sun Lutang etc.. who were students of Liu Qilan or Guo Yunshen.
Ultimately those masters abandoned a strong emphasis on Dantian rotation, but why?
No one knows for sure, but most likely because the Dantian rotation is comparably slow and they found a faster and equally powerful way to practice.
This aspect is a boring topic for me since there is no way to know with precision and it is hard not to take a political stance as a result of my affiliation with three specific lineages of Li Cunyi, Zhang Zhaodong and Xue Dian, so I would prefer to explain the Dantian as a topic in and after the third generation of Hebei style.
1: The movement of the Dantian includes the hip joints:
Hebei style Xingyi subtly rotates the femur joints during stepping and force emission, this is evidenced by the fact that the back femur is typically elevated comapred to the front femur. This gives the body a slanted appearance, even though the posture is actually straight (slanted but straight is an important feature of Hebei style). The orientation of the Dantian, tailbone, spine, shoulders, chest etc.. changes step to step and this inner rotation contributes to subtle inner motion of the Dantian rather than a big gather/release approach common in the old style.
2: Masters gradually moved toward more even weighting of the feet:
if you look chronologically at Xingyi in Hebei province, Li Cunyi’s posture was quite back weighted while Zhang Zhaodong and Xue Dian’s posture was more even between the feet. This is because even posture allows for faster footwork and rooting. One thing most people don’t know is that there are many movements in Xingyi in which the back heal is slightly raised. This invisible raising of the heal creates force storage which is released along the kinetic chain during stepping, causing more power to transfer through the center of the body to the upper limb. Sun Lutang said in his book Quan Yi Shu Zhen that back weighted was for inner training whereas equally weighted was for martial purposes. Equal does not mean double weighted, that is a different matter which involves stagnancy and inability to move. Xingyi is a very clever style and hides many postural features in the legs and waist which make it very dynamic.
3: The pure Yin back:
relaxing the spine is an important feature of Hebei style and as a person becomes intermediate or advanced in the style they rely less on percussive force and suddenly tensing, and more in the entire body conforming around the shape of the spine. Some people call this the difference between long and short force, but in reality it is just great subtlety in which long or short force can be delievered.
4: Hidden circles:
all movements have large and small circles hidden in them as well as complimentary and opposing movements of the limbs. Think of a pair of scissors moving around a joint, but where the blades have joints and you will get the basic idea. These hidden circles allow the body to empty and fill in the appropriate places to produce considerable power. It is comparable but not identical to opening and closing in Taijiquan.
5: Yi Jin strategy:
loosening the sinews around joints allows for significant perfection of posture and the ability not to get in the way of yourself when you move. This means that people can use emptiness and fullness more effectively and faster. Hebei training methods mastered this over the generations.
6: Dantian techniques:
Hebei style after the third generation didn’t quit Dantian techniques, this is a propaganda technique used by people with an ax to grind. There are plenty of Dantian techniques which are studied from beginner to advanced levels including inner overturning done in concert with the rotation of the femur joints, violently shaking the waist and Dantian (Zhang Zhaodong style is especially good at this) and various other approaches.
7: Five directional forces:
remember there are five forces which accord to five directions and five organs/locations on the torso. Hebei style especially emphasizes:
opening and closing the chest/rising and falling: metal element,
moving up and out from the lower back: water element,
rotating the ribs: wood element,
rotating the upper abdomen area: earth element,
turning the chest: fire element,
Not only are these movements in each of the five elements and twelve animals, every element is also present in every movement.
Xingyi mastery comes from being able to express the five elements across all movements and being able to transform between elements in individual movements.
For instance, you should be able to perform Pi Quan, the metal element fist in a water, wood, fire, or earth way, or by combining any of them together. That is the advanced practice of the style, so most people don’t know about it.
There are also some other chanes in specific styles such as Bagua influence in Zhang Zhaodong’s style, or the Dragon Body method of Xue Dian which we could talk about in later posts. Actually, there are many great lineages in Hebei style such as Chu Guiting, Shang Yunxiang and more... All of them have special features that make them powerful and great.
So why do some people say Hebei lost its engine?
Two reasons:
1: They are from other camps and want to disparage Hebei style.
2: There are many modern Xingyi practitioners whose styles are strongly influenced by sport Wushu.
In the former category, all I can say is that if something becomes popular it is sure to have haters.
For the latter category, this is an unfortunate reality of being a widely accepted and practiced style. Today Xingyi is very mixed with some great masters and disciples and some who are totally terrible, but this is true of every style, even very small ones.
So did Hebei lose its engine?
No, that’s really silly, actually the generations of practitioners working to guard caravans all came from the Hebei school and its Tianjin group and included third generation masters such as Li Cunyi and Zhang Zhaodong (who himself opened a security service), so the reason Xingyi is a famous style at all is because that generation of practitioners decided to kill bandits instead of bribe them.
Today I see people making so many crazy claims, even a Shaolin Xinyi Ba guy claiming people say about his style “it takes ten years to leave the gate with Taiji, but Xingyi can kill a man in three,” that is a Xingyi Quan saying, it has nothing to do with Xinyi Ba!! So my suggestion is just to train the style you like with the best teacher you can find. Listen to your shifu, be a good person, learn the martial lessons of the past masters, but don’t use your arts to hurt people, focus on Dao and virtue and try to maintain your longevity and happiness, work on your art every day and try to go deeper, not to look for some secret technique out in the back waters of a remote province in Northern China where people keep their arts to only a small number of disciples, since you aren’t guaranteed to find what you want there.
That’s all.
Have a nice day.