Peng Jing translated into English as Ward Off is traditionally considered to be the first postural based Tai Chi energy taught to beginners.
I was first exposed to Peng Jing in the late 1970’s.
By the mid 1980’s I was fairly capable with the immovable aspect of Peng Jing.
In more recent years I have become much more aware of other aspects of Peng Jing.
In this article I will attempt to explain a bit about Peng.
When I first set out to write this post I wanted to give a basic but complete definition for Peng Jing that anyone could easily understand.
As I contemplated my personal practice and understanding of Peng Jing I became directly aware that a short, simple and understandable definition of Peng Jing may not be possible.
There simply may not be a comprehensive way to describe Peng Jing that makes it easy for a beginner to comprehend without first training a number of other aspects of Tai Chi.
I believe that perhaps the best way to tackle the subject of Peng Jing succinctly is to list a number of the qualities necessary for Peng Jing.
Due to the length and nature of these qualities I have written separate posts on some of them that can be referred back to for clarification and I will respond to questions.
The student may need to work on other skills that I have not listed here in order to learn to perform quality Peng Jing.
Some of these qualities seem like they would be mutually exclusive to others.
For instance, some of the Tai Chi classics talk about Peng being hard and soft at the same time.
All of these qualities I have listed are present at the same time
for real peng.
The different qualities are just part of the duality (Yin and Yang) of Tai Chi.
Qualities Neccessary for Peng Jing
- Wu Chi Alignment Principles- Particularly the head held up by a string with the rest of the body hanging
- Ground Path
- Sung (relaxed but not collapsed)
- Rooted & Heavy
- Alive, springy elastic and pliable compression ability in the soft tissue of the body giving the body the bouyant feel of a boat or ball on water
- Ligament and tendon strength
- The “straight in the curve” body bows and spirals.
- Round Ball expansiveness in all directions at the same time that makes it so that your body space cannot be entered and at the same time deflects anything/one trying to enter off around the outer circle of the ball
- Sensitivity to feel where the incoming force is coming from and neutralize it as well as draw power off of it.
- A healthy mix of physical and mental eventually becoming much more mental with only a bare minimum of physical necessary. Relax everything so that you use only as much as you need and no extra. Expand with your mind so that your mind creates the expression.
In the Repulse Monkey posture you step back while emitting force.
Making your posture go into a more expansive Peng by focusing on sinking and internally dropping with the simultaneous expansion of your posture.
This action can have an impressive rebounding force for both striking and counter grappling.
The resulting fa jin is one physical example of a focused use of the principle of, for each action there is an opposite and equal reaction.
The video included on this page demonstrates this in a couple different ways.
As usual your posts/videos are done in the right spirit with traditional knowledge translated for western minds. Always appreciated.