Tai Chi of Professor Cheng Man Ching through the voice of his Italian representative - Why have you given the name EXPERENCIAL to your Tai Chi School? The name Prof. Cheng gave to his school is SHR JUNG that means To be in the centre. This To be in the centre derives from the relationship existing between theCentre of GravitySpace and Synchronicity Time, related one to another. Everybody knows that inside ourselves there are lots of personalities, many identities, each of them leading to ones individual aim. When one of these identities, for instance that aiming to knowledge, becomes the strongest, other identities will join the strongest one, in order to build this Centre of Gravity, which enable us to pursue an aim with the maximum of determination. So we dont waste our energy everywhere around, among thousand of accidental events, which are commonly called destiny or fate. The stronger the Gravity centre is the more free we feel. When our CONSCIOUS INTENTION YI NIAN becomes precise, intense and continuous, accidents cannot happen: unforeseen events will occur less, because accidents also need Space and Time to happen. Things normally occur around us and we are influenced by them, so accident is controlling the most part of our life. Possibility of accident is all around us. If something is not happening, something else takes place instead. Only after developing The CONSCIOUS WILL (another meaning of YI NIAN) we are free from fate, from accidental events. The accidental theory is very simple: accidents only happen when space is available, if space is taken they cannot happen. What does take place? Things we are aware of take place. We need a permanent, real identity, in order to build this gravity centre allowing to take all other identities inside us under control. For instance our good proposals we feel inside could be taken under control by laziness, an often better identity to comply with. If we succeed in letting this Identities Group have the power to express our best intentions, then this Centre of Gravity will control and tame the requests of the lazy identity. Our aim is to become ONE, in Chinese you call it SAN I that literally means three inside one ( 3= Body, Emotions, Intellect). SICHRONICITY : The Centre of Gravity is something taking place inside us, in our space. But Synchronicity is a phenomenon taking place in the external TIME. I mean what most people are calling Coincidence, that means unforeseen relationship between determinate facts happening in our life. This chances of life may appear in many forms, for instance as a dream, a meeting or an event, linked to another without apparent reason. Most people spend their whole life without seeing anything: all messages they get are simply curiosity, strangeness, fortune... Who s able to be in the centre however, will make out that the most important task he has, is to discover the specific Meaning of his being in the world. Everybodys life makes SENSE in a particular way, so that our ACTING among people is unique and unreplaceable. That is what Christians call vocation, Socrates DAIMON, Buddhists DAHRMA. To sum up we can say that To be in the centre means let our individual note playing in the great symphony of life. You need to become INDIVIDUAL at the end: so you can transcend afterwards your individuality. The best Italian word to explain and translate SHR JUNG is esperenziale / experiencial. Human being is loosing his sensibility and ability to re-act to stimulus, because hi is used to introject everything is crossing through without assimilate it. To swallow something means not to assimilate experience. That leads to a progressive atrophy of self- thinking and self-acting, to the impossibility to be oneself, to be in the Centre. The assimilation of experience on the contrary imposes not to be completely swallowed , but to be bitten, chewed and finally completely destroyed ( de- structured), in order to be absorbed in a selected, critical way, pulling out food and vitality for our growing up.

- What is the difference betweenthe so-called Experiencial Tai Chi and other Tai Chi Schools? Applying this practice, we observe life. Other Academic practitioners employ their Tai Chi skills to remake the doing of the greatest teachers of the past. One has to be completely free from past conditioning influences and schemes in order to reach a natural practice. Academic practitioners repeat the correct execution of fixed models, in a mechanical way, we try instead to develop through an experiencial, so personal way the inner potentiality of the practitioner, coming to a more exact and personal dimension of HARMONY, where everything techniques, forms is becoming, but not the principles TAI CHI is based upon. The harmonious relationship between BODY and SOUL makes the essence of our practice, meanwhile ENERGY CHI is just a secondary element. - What does it mean for you to teach experiencial Tai Chi? First of all I dont mean to teach, but to hand on these basically principles other people have learnt by others. This sort of communication basically happens from my body to yours. It is a different language for each of us, and this is the first thing I had to learn as a guide. It is not correct to tell someone how and what to feel, everyone catch reality according to his own dispositions. This difference has to be not only respected, but also motivated, as to let the practitioners be himself, helping him to develop his Capacity of Discrimination, thank to which you can make up your mind about what is useful and what is not for your self-fulfilment at that moment. These are the steps of learning : Understand yourself, possess yourself, transform yourself. Understand yourself: it means to KNOW forces existing in our body, their function, use, relation. ( That hasnt anything to do with Aura, Metaphysical, Cosmic Energy or some other spiritual items...) Possess yourself: it means to know how these forces are to be used in a conscious way, instead of using them mechanically or rather being their instrument: let us think about rage, laziness, hunger, thoughts, sex... Transform yourself: it means to lead the exceeding energy deriving from these forces, which have been used consciously, in order to come to a non-ordinary condition of awareness. From this moment the practitioner is let alone and he should constantly remember that every foreign advice for coming out as a winner upon these Battles could be like poison. The best place to let this way ripen is now and here, where life is catching us. Only through SELFKNOWLEDGE and not through faith in symbols of someone else, the human being comes to that reality in which his identity is rooted. You should remember that the entire history of evolution is history of CONSCIOUSNESS and of the progressive spreading of becoming aware. - Have you got a teaching program? Yes, I have got a program lasting 17 years, but the most important work is going to be done in the first 3 years. The first aspect is concerning the Form, that means the physical shape. That simply means to let our vital force freely flow without meeting obstacles and without stanching, trying to gather or preserve it. SUNG is required for achieving this goal. You can translate this Chinese term in an almost approximately and rough way as Mind Relaxation or Body Release. As we have already said you need to know and control your body, free it from all muscular tenses, in order to reach an extremely natural condition , Spontaneity Tze Ran. You have to release your whole body, beginning from the head to the feet, from the inner side to the outer one and first of all in the way of thinking. The control upon the form has got a practical meaning in Tai Chi, because if you want to apply the substance of this art, you have to use Forms and

Postures, which are very exact. You have to be able to come in a YIN or YANG condition, according to peculiar rules. The thing is, that you dont make some usual body exercises! If your Posture and your Mind attitude are right as well as your moving, then results will come soon. Second point: harmonise your breathing. For the beginner it is important to breathe in a natural, spontaneous, easy way. There are very few normal people, who can breathe in a right way... Dont try to control your breathing without the help of a Master and without taking the right measures. That could lead to psycho-physical diseases. You can exercise like this, but it has nothing to do with Tai Chi. You can distinguish three kind of breathing: the mechanical, the artificial one and that one produced by movement. The so called normal breathing is unconscious. The artificial breathing happens under mind control. These two kind of breathing are supported by different muscles, which are independent. The main problem for the beginner is to let breathing pass through from a muscles group to the other one. Its quite an impossible task. We are mostly concerned with the third breathing, produced by moving. The most necessary thing is the KNOWLEDGE of human body. The basically idea is that some movements, some postures could produce an alteration in the breathing, even if you have a so called normal breathing. It is difficult to know which movements or postures will cause a certain kind of breathing and the most important thing is to know which kind of movement is good for which kind of person. Breathing is like your fingers prints: everyone has got his own... From the time you have been born you have been breathing mechanically a certain amount of air, if you let some more air coming in, it cant be combined with the substances in our body. Bio-Chemistry is Proportion, exact quantity. You have to remember that air doesnt content only oxygen, but also other components and all that come in the lungs, which usually absorb the substances they need . What about the quantity in excess ? The controlled breathing, as usually practised, causes only disharmony: if you only change the other substances inside your body, that means also yours habits, you could get benefits from these techniques. Stomach, for instance, needs a certain amount of food, not only for nourishment, but also because it is used to; stomach is provided with nerves, which at lack of pressure, cause hunger in stimulating muscles. There are two types of hunger: that one of the body and the nervous one. Lots of organs are working mechanically, every organ has got his rhythm, linked with other organs. Changing breathing, you also change the rhythm of lungs. And what about all the rest??? The stomach has got its rules, it needs some time to digest food; if food has to stay one hour in it, but you accelerate the stomachs rhythm, food will come through sooner and the stomach wont have time to take what it really needs; somewhere else the contrary happens... Lets see another aspect of less known breathing; the diaphragm is a flat, large and strong muscle, which lays like a cover on the abdomens viscera and it separates the upper side from the bottom. At the top there are the brain, the hearth and the lungs. At the bottom there are the stomach the intestines and the sex organs. The diaphragm separates them like a barrier, but also it connects them. You dont usually consider this function of the diaphragm, and forget its position: it is set with vertebra, where other muscles groups are fixed, too. If these are rigid, the diaphragm cant impossibly naturally functions. The diaphragm is connected with is Pillars to the body of the second, third and often fourth lumbar vertebra ; it is also linked with the disks, which are inserted between every vertebra, to the arch of the psoas, which ranges from the cross hypophysis of the first lumbar and that one of the second lumbar.

The diaphragm is in the front, at the back there is the large muscles amount of the back: so vertebra are between these two forces and the are submitted to both of them. At the moment of letting air in, trying hard, rips are automatically pressed forward, the bust backward. Thinking to make it better ( or worse) you lift your arms up in the vain hope of increasing the thoracic volume. Contracting the diaphragm in order to let air in, you inevitably contract the spinal muscles, getting them shorter. In the aim at relaxing and releasing, you shorten yourself. The problem is how to let air come out and not actually how to let air come in. People always think they dont let enough air come in ( that is a particular sort of CHI), but their lungs are filled with such a great amount of air thath they cant eject it. You can think of a very full bottle you try to fill! If you want to have a good breathing, you shouldnt try to get anything, and first of all dont try to practise breathing!!! If you dont breathe well, that is because the diaphragm is blocked, as well as the back, the neck and the feet are. It is wrong thinking that if you breathe deeply with the abdomen, that means to deform further the diaphragm, you can obtain a sort of wonderful ability. In order to breathe well you must begin to free the NECK, the NAPE, the BACK and the FEET. You have to achieve SUNG, CHEN ( to plunge), ZHONG TING ( postural setting), as it is stated by the Ancient Masters of Tai Chi. Tai Chi is neither a breathing, nor a martial technique to its own purposes, but it is the Art of Balance and the study of arches movements first, of spheres movement afterwards. The diaphragm is connected to the neck through a vital nerve, called The Phrenic Nerve. It originates from the fourth cervical vertebra, down to the thorax, crossing the pleura, where it is connected with the diaphragm. It is a motor nerve, and it cant really freely function if the nape is contracted. The pneumogastric nerve also crosses the neck before reaching the lungs, the hearth, the abdomen. It is a bigwig of the autonomous nervous system. When the muscles of the rips and the abdomen are free moving the activate the solar plexus at the cross point of the vegetative nervous system, just under the diaphragm, where the sympathetic nerves and the two pneumogastric nerves meet. Ancient masters knew all these things, so that they gave in the 10 Essential Points of the M. YANG CHEN FU the following advice: xin jing qi he, relax yourself and release your muscles, breathe in a natural way. Xu ling ting jing, keep your head upright, as hanging from the top, in order to free neck and nape from their tensions. Third point: control upon your MIND. It is the third and last point, you could impossibly get any results without. You have to take control upon your own CONSCIENCE, so that your Conscious will is changing from excitement and anxiety to complete calm. That means to develop Attention ( a positive aspect of Mind) and Awareness ( a negative aspect of Mind) thank to the selfremembering, getting the inner and outer part of your body in a state of Great Sensibility. Only then you can have the exact sensation of CHI flowing into your body. At first you only feel some nervous sensations, perhaps a stimulus of the endocrine system, you dont feel the CHI, like meant in Tai Chi. These three discussed points are in the 3 Levels, 9 Phases San Cheng Giou Bu Kung- that Prof. CHENG learnt at the Taoist School Sacred Society, connected with the current HUANGLAO. The whole Taoist Alchemy is anything but an evolutive process of CONSCIENCE, described in its metallurgic-chemist terms, following the hermetic process So up, so down. You mean alchemy like a simplifying tactics in order to discover the acting principles in reality. Is reduction at the mineral state must not be understood in a negative way. - If I understand it properly your practice vision in its last part is very different from the practice which is nowadays very popular. I mean you dont teach for instance The small heaven

revolution or how to open the third eye, how to see the aura, in a word, how to develop the socalled ones own Psychic Power? What is the good use of developing all that, if Soul is not over the narrowness and unsteadiness of human mind? The purpose of all arts is Experience of the self. Human beings nowadays think that few years of practice in such secret Methods could bring them to the level they put their idols. How many persons practising Tai Chi, Yoga or others disciplines have reached the power promised by these practices? Who could support his own affirmation in revealing himself, as some Christians Saints, Indian Bodhisattva or authentic TAOs men have done? The modern world is rich of scientific knowledge, but it is unfortunately ignorant about the interior aspects of human nature. The discriminating power of balanced intellect, considered absolutely necessary by the Ancient Masters, has been replaced by the most effective motivation of our age: money. I dont mean that activities like CHI KUNG, REIKI, KARMIC ASTROLOGY, CRISTALTHERAPY, the reading of AURA, and YOGA are not useful, in order to awake the Kundalini energy, for instance. There are surely some valid things in them. The point is that in the centres where such activities take place, there is no work about the self in relationship to ones own personal growing up or self-fulfilment. One gets instruments, techniques, notions, but one doesnt real support to ones own development, like the process of Knowing oneself, possessing oneself, transforming oneself. The benefit of these centres mostly consists in the superficial being al ease together, relaxing the body from the daily tensions . These centres dont have a real head giving an orientation, even if there are thousands arms, which could be energetic or tired, frenetic or measured. On the other side, all ways a human being has got to stay awake are used to deck ones sleeping: so you are dressed with a buddist tunic, like a stylists dress, you are singing the morning mantra, like other people are used to playing golf or doing jogging... - Now I wonder what your opinion about martial arts is. We have got the Military Art, which aim is to prepare as soon as possible a soldier to follow orders, so that he lacks the conscience, able to kill everyone, with no doubts. We have further the Martial Sport... and finally the Martial Art. It is a very long way towards perfection, with help of discipline, which is to be learnt and constantly improved. It is the way to a particular Soul attitude, able to let human potentialities come through, in every arts field, because to a certain extent all arts, all kind of Martial Styles too, come at the end together. The Martial Art is different from other methods, aiming at the developing of human potentialities, because of its particular way of working with the other, and of the concept of life/death. Knowing the battles strategy means to understand how to face reality, instead of suffering or escaping it. Life is hard and bad, so should I be harder and worse, always struggling in order to survive? Not at all! To live life as an eternal struggle is not wise, but paranoiac! A warrior is a master in facing conflicts, which are in between on the way to the fulfilment of his purposes. The challenge is not to destroy everything, but finding the WAY through harmony to creation. The Martial Art is concerned with life, so that everything else cant be called in my opinion Martial Art. When I speak of disciplines I say that these techniques or practices have got an existential meaning. They are to be directed to the human being in his wholeness and in his uniquity, not like a simply acknowledgement of technical abilities. The body care is the less important part of this art. The improvement of the practitioner has to be valued in his attitude inside the practice itself. I would like to stress that if you use instruments and techniques of a higher level, if you

dont master the techniques of the preceding phase, there is no efficacy or help in applying to them. It is further important to understand why and how school wants to use that particular instrument . - What about the situation in Italy of the school of Prof. Cheng Man Ching? Prof. Cheng began to teach Tai Chi in USA, exactly in New York at 1964. He died in Taiwan at 1975. During these 10 years he has been teaching Tai Chi to thousand of people, who spread his teaching. So Im not the first practitioner of Tai Chi of this school in Italy, neither I am the best, but Im the only one in Italy who has accomplished the whole teaching program of the school, and Ive passed an exam to be able to teach in Taiwan at the head quarter of Prof. Cheng, and at the Malaise Borneo at the schools of G.M.Huang Sheng Shyan. The association grounded by Prof Cheng in Taiwan appointed me to its Italian representative. With me other practitioners passing the exam at the school in the Far East are appointed to teaching as International First Level Teachers : theyyy are Maurizio Gandini from Airone from Milan and Franco Fozzi from Olbia/Sardinia. At the end of April this year, during the visit of G.M. YAP GIONG and HUANG CHIEW MEI in Italy other people will be able to make the exam, in order to let them become full members of Prof. Cheng Man Chings school. So as you can see, that is just the beginning.... - Is there any difference between the Tai Chi of Prof. Cheng, you are teaching in Italy and that one teached in the USA? Yes there is. But theres a difference in the appliance and not in the substance. There is a very different cultural reality in USA, which is far away from ours. So, Prof. Cheng created his Simplified Tai Chi, in order to adapt it to the American culture. So, as he said, it is based on a tripod: Form 37, Sword and Tuei Sho. This tripod supported a crucible, inside with there was anything he knew about the art to reach the TAO. His American representative BENJAMIN PENG LO and one of his famous students WILLIAM C.C. CHEN have surely taken all the could assimilate and they are doing their very best to hand on Tai Chi. American people are keen on a particular aspect of Tai Chi: how to do? A Tai Chi Master said once to me: You should give them at first what they are looking for, then, when they trust you, you can give them what they really need. We are surely all beneath the same sun and on the same earth, but everyone should create something different, unique and original. - All right, we are coming to the end of this interview: what about some advice for your practitioners? I cant give any advice, because it is better to pick up a painful fruit from a tree, than to look at someone picking up a sweet one according to some foreign advice. You shouldnt do like some people who know the word: try everything and keep the best, but they dont try anything and keep the first thing they get.