_ Interesting pieces from the web _
A Wu-style book by Ma Yueh Liang and Zee Wen about peng:
"Peng. It is the concealed strength because it is created mainly by feeling and crafty and it can be barely discerned in the surface of the forms. It ranks first in the Thirteen Kinetic Movements, which indicates its importance. In tuishou practice, the learner is said to have crossed the threshold only when he has learned the meaning and method of warding. Beginners often take years to accomplish this..... While practicing, not only the hands and arms, but any part of the body get into contact with the other side should one makes use of the warding force."
It has been described as an audible force, because you can detect the fine motions of your opponent as if through the sense of hearing, and you can thus make a repid response for rapid attack and a slow response for slow offensive. It is also a force of support and attack." (from Wu Style Taichichuan Tuishou by Ma Y.L. and Zee Wen)
In the above quote, there is a mirroring of the common idea that peng jing is the core, without which one is not doing real (tm) Taiji. :^) However, there is also the comment about peng's use as an audible force for listening to the opponent's body and motions.
Listening and Sensitivity have been interpretted (as has just about everyother term related to the neijia) to mean whatever a particular teacher chooses to mean (all the while believing that his/her intuition is infallible, etc.). Almost everyone who has some experience in not only static, but moving jing has had the experience of feeling another person and being able to locate tensions, off-balance areas, beginnings of movements, etc.
On the other hand, there are many sensitivities that someone can develop that have nothing to do with peng jing. For instance, it doesn't take much practice to rest a wrist against another's arm and lightly maintain contact while the other person moves their arm about. Yet this is not Listening in the neijia sense.
The point I was slowly getting to was to express an opinion (i.e., I could be wrong and I'm interested in others' opinions) about listening. In my experience, I think that establishing a good peng path to your hands (or other body areas) allows a constant base from which to judge things. In other words, it is like a comparator circuit or any sensing device which has a known base to use as a comparison.
When I touch someone, I am trying to feel the ground through them. Anything that hinders a pure ground signal is obvious, whether it is a tense shoulder, tense back, unbalanced posture, etc. When someone moves their arms using local arm and shoulder musculature (as opposed to manipulationg the ground strength with the waist and back), it is immediately apparent, no matter what their spiel is. :^)
So the question is, what is the exact mechanism of using the peng jing as a detector of another persons posture and moves?
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allen@starfire.utias.utoronto.ca Mon Jul 22 14:06:35 1996
Hong JunSheng is one of the very senior and still surviving student of Chen FaKe. His skill is so high the Japanese call him wizard hand. He also tries to preserve the authenticity of Chen FaKe's teaching, and I think its quite safe to say that he can represent Chen FaKes ideas with great accuracy. Below are some (unauthorized) translations from his book.
Any mistake in the translation is probably, well most likely, mine.:
"There are two aspects of Peng. One is referred to the 'jing' aspect, which is the 'silk reeling jing'. This jing is obtained naturally through prolonged training in the interchanging of opposing helical motion. My teacher Chen FaKe called this peng jing, which is what is commonly known as neijing [internal strength]. Applying this jing through various techniques we have the eight techniques of taijiquan. The second aspect is the Peng Technique from the eight techniques. This is a technique for meeting the incoming hand of the opponent.............The emphasis of the Peng Technique is on the leading and neutralizing of the incoming force."
"Chen Xin said: 'Taijiquan is Chan Fa [the technique of reeling and winding].'"He also said: "if you don't understand this, you don't understand taijiquan." It is clear that the fundamentals of taijiquan is the reeling technique. The appearance of the motion in Chen style taijiquan is helical. This form of spiral movement not only appears on the surface of the skin, but also appears inside through the whole body. It causes every joint, muscle bundle, and even every cell to experience motion. Through repeated stretching and twining in the training for a prolonged period of time, the body will naturally attain a resilient and elastic strength that is loose and yet not loose at the same time. This is the silk reeling jing. In the Chen style this is also known as peng jing, or the neijing commonly known in taijiquan literature. ChanFa, the 'technique of reeling', then, is the various application of this strength."
"We must understand how to apply hardness and softness, what is softness, what is hardness, and how hardness and softness can interchange and compliment each other. People who do not study Chen style taijiquan, or study it but don't understand the technique of reeling, when they apply hardness and softness their motion are usually linear. Or maybe they understand how to move in large orbital curves, but they don't have the spin coupling with the orbital motion. The result is that when they use hardness they feel they are resisting, when they use softness they would feel they are letting go. All motion in Chen style taijiquan, whether it is large or small, are spinning. If you turn half a circle, you have 180 degrees of arc composed of points. At the contact point with your opponent, if you meet the motion head on (meeting the point), then you feel hardness; if you meet the motion from the side (meeting the arc), then you feel softness. If your point meets the opponent's arc it will slide over and becomes softness. Only if you meet point with point will the hardness appear. If both sides meet each other head on, however, it becomes resisting force with force. At this point, whoever has bigger strength and faster motion will bounce out the weaker and slower. In Chen style, although you need to use your point to attack the opponent's point, you should use the point in the arc from the spinning motion, so during fajing there is no feeling of resistance."
"We can use the motion of the screw as an example. Whether you are driving in or taking out the screw, you cannot use pulling or pushing motion because of the thread. It feels sticky and yet it can easily move in both directions if you just turn the screw. This is what the Classics mean when it says 'Nien is Zou, Zou is Nien'........Taijiquan is a whole body exercise. The requirement of the body being centered without leaning is a vertical thread; the two legs are two threads going down; the two arms are threads that can change in any direction depending on the situation. When everything is coupled together, the directions can change in a million ways, and the opening/closing, substantial/insubstantial, and hardness/softness of the jing is very difficult to predict. Although every part of the body are like the gears in the clock and can have it's own motion, the most important part is still the motion of the torso. So the Classics says it is governed at the waist. The turning of the waist is what moves the arms and the legs, and the compliment motion of the arms and the legs also can not be ignored."
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What is the speed of gravity in Feet per second?
Gravity is the force of attraction one mass exerts on another mass. To answer how fast gravity travels you have to answer the following question; Suppose you have two masses at some very large distance "R" apart. Now gravity gets weaker if the distance is made larger. Suppose one of the masses was moved very quickly so "R" is made even larger. How long does it take for the force on the second mass to become smaller because the distance "R" is now larger? Another words, how long does it take for the second mass to know the first mass was moved. The answer will tell you how fast gravity travels. No one has ever been able to measure the speed of gravity so the answer to your question is not known for sure. However, from theories like General Relativity it is believed to be the same speed as light, which is about 982 million feet per second.
I think the question referred to the earth's gravity on falling objects. The acceleration is then 32 feet per second, per second.
