Flip through any human biology book and you should see that a human body is made up of different subsystems: the skin, the muscle, the skeletal, the blood circulation, the nervous system. If it is a medical book, it would even have the lymphatic system overlaid.
What most books miss the most is the most important subsystem for the internal martial artists: the fascia system. What is the fascia? Imagine a system where it connects to the muscles, the bones, the tendons, the ligaments, and serve as webbing surrounding all the internal organs. In other words, the connective tissues that connect to all other systems. The Chinese word for it is 膜 membrane, suggesting its nature.
The acupuncture meridians, unsurprisingly, map to the fascial pathways, and unsurprisingly, the abdominal area is a nexus of fascia materials. The kicker? Take a look at a book on fascia anatomy book (*), and compare the major fascia systems with for example, Chen Xin’s famous drawing of the silk reeling spiral Qi lines.
Make you think. Doesn’t it?
Then consider the fact that to most people, fascia is not even on their radar screens. If they pay any attention at all to the connective tissues, it’s to avoid injury. Very few training exercise is specific to this area. No wonder most people do not “get” internal martial arts.
Among other documents, the Yang’s “40 Chapters” makes it clear that Qi travels in the fascia, tendons, ligaments connective tissues, hence the heading of this blog entry, “the Qi Substrate.”
(*) Anatomy Trains, by Meyer is a good one.
Anatomy trains is great. It offers an (almost) concrete (fascia) version of meridian systems!
It’s also why sloppy push hands doesn’t work. We must generate proper fascia lines before we can be soft-like-the-master. Unfortunately, that hopping bit (am I too skeptical?) is encouraged by teachers. And they program it into weak mind/body/reflex systems.
Another concept to explore along these lines is tensegrity.
Peace.
I don’t have a medical degree to assess the facts you mention in your text. Two things make me suspicious in it:
1) You main point (meridians map into fascias) is done by method of resemblance: “acupuncture meridians, unsurprisingly, map to the fascial pathways” – even unsurprisingly, as if it would be an established truth.
2) Secondly, in the last paragraph you suggest that in the martial arts fascia work so well, because “Qi travels in fascia”. Indeed, a lot of internal stuff could be explained in the following way: “smart” relaxation of the muscles makes the joint less tense and more agile and, thus, limbs become suspended supported by a “free-hanging” system of fascia. To me, this model explains lots of things in Taiji very consistently and practically. The question that I ask myself is how far we can go, using Occam’s razor, i.e. with the purely physiological model without employing the notion of Qi.
hmmmm, yes yes yes