Bruce Frantzis Interview

BruceBruce KumKum You’ve been practising Internal Arts for almost There are sixteen components to Qigong. 40 years and have gone through a range of Qigong is a modern term but if we go back different disciplines, could you tell me a little more than 50 years ago the term Neigong was about what you are teaching now? always used. If we talk about that, the whole thing about it is that the meridian lines are one What I primarily teach now is a six-part Taoist of the components. Breath work is another, as Qigong system that contains within it all the is working with the core channels of the body, building blocks. This Taoist Neigong seems to working with the secondary energies of the P1 be the root from which all other qigong systems body, working with the opening and closing of Bruce Kumar Frantzis, in China have obtained some, or the bulk of, the joints, the opening and closing of the spine, their information and capacities. I also teach working with the movement of the internal author and lineage Taiji & Bagua and I teach them two in ways. I organs…. all these are very distinct pieces. To master in the Taoist arts, teach the Short Form for the vast majority of try and learn all of them while you’re doing has been working since people, because that’s about as much as they either Taiji or Bagua is a virtually impossible 1961 in Eastern healing can do, and I also teach the Long Form. When task. In the old days you would just learn the systems, Qigong, martial I teach the Long Form I also teach the fighting Long Form because the pre-supposition is that arts and meditation, part of it. I teach some applications in the Short you would be practising three-four hours per including sixteen years of Form but when people go into the Long Form day, six-seven days a week. Now, even in China, I get more into the fighting applications and since that time has become really short, Qigong training in Japan, India also the real meditation work that occurs in sets are taught with a small number of and China. Taiji, along with Push Hands and stuff like that. movements that work on what the internal I also teach a lot of Taoist meditation. I teach components are. The first stage of it, and this He is the founder of also Qigong Tuina which is the healing Qigong is what I teach the majority of people, is purely Energy Arts, Inc., based work. I worked with a Qigong doctor in China for making you healthy. If you have a disease, in Marin County, for 10 years and have taught this work very you can get well and if your health is so-so, it California. Energy Arts sporadically over the years but wanted to wait can get better. The goal is to take a person offers instructor until I got the Qigong teachings really with a weak condition and give them a strong established before I worked with the very condition or help change an unhealthy condition certification programs, specific healing work. to a healthy condition. retreats and corporate and public seminars in Do these various disciplines you’re using The second stage, training, which I teach North America and having similar connections but different end occasionally, is much harder and much more Europe. Frantzis teaches products? intense. It’s for martial arts. I sometimes teach Energy Arts courses in that to professional athletes because those meditation, breathing, Yes. The Qigong is very clearly building blocks. people are going to train the couple of hours a It’s not martial arts. Instead, it just gives you day to get very superior abilities and you don’t Qigong, Taiji, Ba Gua, the juice or the energy. Softness is the biggest get superior abilities just by doing something Xing-I and related thing about Taiji; it’s softness and the use of casually a couple of days a week for an hour. subjects. Yin energy. The biggest thing about Bagua is its incredible degree of spiralling and its The third level is about how Qigong is done in B. K. Frantzis is currently ‘unpredictability’ especially in terms of terms of meditation. This is what the Chinese working on a new book footsteps and movement. Energetically Bagua refer to as Shen Gong. I’m not really teaching about Taiji. For details of is really much more like a vortex and Taiji is this a lot. I teach it sometimes when I teach like the waves of the ocean. That’s the feel of it meditation but I don’t teach it in general events, instructional and the reality of its uses in fighting. Contrary because I simply don’t have people with materials and certified to some people in the game I do think Qi exists, enough background. That’s all it really comes instructors, visit the I think it’s a very learnable subject and a very down to. You can’t go to university if you can’t Energy Arts website, real subject and I just chuckle at people that do your A levels. You have to have the www.energyarts.com. don’t believe in it. I find that to be somewhat foundation. of a humorous statement given the fact that for Bruce will be teaching in thousands of years all this stuff has been based With reference to Qigong and Neigong, would Scotland at Tai Chi upon it and the distinction in China between you say that Taiji as an art is ineffectual without things that are physical and things that use it? Caledonia from 7th - 14th energy is very clear. I devoted a couple of June. chapters on how qigong works and qigong Yes. Well ineffectual in what way? There’s a theory in my book, ‘Opening the Energy Gates thousand ways in which you could be Full details at of Your Body.’ ineffectual. www.taichi-caledonia.co.uk or call 0141 810 3482 That’s interesting because in the main, when Well let’s say Taiji as a fighting art? for a free prgramme. working with Qigong practitioners, they tend to focus on acupoints, meridians etc. TAI CHI CHUAN 4 ☯ arar FrantzisFrantzis An Interview with Ronnie Robinson Without the application of real Neigong arm and coming back in,” then it’s nonsense. Of the sixteen parts of Neigong, which are all principles you will find that your Taiji will have It’s too much, there’s no way in which your part of Taiji, most people in the west maybe do barriers at each point and without Neigong you mind can remain still, calm and concentrated one or two at best. The whole method is not won’t go past them. Then the question and still do that – that’s a mental gymnastic understood. What gave it such a reputation, becomes, “Can I learn the movements of a exercise. You can do that sitting, but you can’t which allows these incredible people do the Taiji form and not really be doing Taiji but make do that moving. amazing stuff they do, is rarely available in the it work for fighting?” Sure you can, because West. I’m trying to open up those doors for Taiji comes out of Shaolin and as long as you Out of all the teaching you are doing are there people, but what makes it very difficult is that, are able to move in such a way, to parry a punch common themes that you feel people should be it’s like a computer; you cannot tell from t h e and make them go down, you’ll be fine. By the aware of but are perhaps missing? box what’s inside. same token, a good street fighter can make up his own Taiji form, in the pub when he’s drunk, I run instructor’s training courses regularly and So, in accepting what you as long as he can slam the guy in the head and I find that the vast majority say, that most of what is knock him out, then he’s got an effective martial of people studying Taiji do really happening can’t be art. However if you’re talking about what Taiji not understand their seen from the outside, can really do…? body alignments; The can you relate to me, majority don’t know a little about That’s what I mean, the original creation of how to do the what it is, the art. breathing work and you the majority, in the Well if you’re talking about the original creation West, do not know feel of the art then there’s no way of being effective how to do the people in fighting without the Neigong. It’s like trying opening are to buy a plane ticket without money; it’s not and missing? going to work. Well I can tell you One thing that interests me is that in the three how I’ve tried, and what I’ve official books on Taiji from Mainland China done is not really a lot different only one of them contains detailed from what a lot of other people are information on acupoints and that’s the doing. one on the Wu Style. However, I know that many Wu, and other stylists have 50 years ago virtually nobody would neither a knowledge nor an interest have you do a small Qigong set to get in these points.

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