Sep 27 Waking up the Psoas through Tai Chi

There are plenty of times during your martial arts career when a certain principle or concept clicks and something that you’d spent weeks, months or maybe even years trying to figure out suddenly reveals itself… and usually it’s so simple it’s almost sickening that you couldn’t see it sooner.

I was at Steve’s having my private lesson in his garden,

“Today we’re going to work on qigong. Do the first exercise.” He asked.

We practice the Yang family martial qigong system and the first exercise involves letting the head tip forwards and gently pulling up on the tailbone to use the weight to the head to open the spine. If I’m honest it’s an exercise that I usually gloss over as I don’t really get a lot from it.

“Okay, did you feel the movement engaging the psoas?” Steve asked.

“Erm, sort of.” I gingerly replied.

“That’ll be a ‘no’ then.” He said holding me around the waist and pressing his thumbs deep into my abdomen.

The psoas is a muscle that lives deep in the waist starting at spine around the bottom part of the ribcage and then travels deep through the core to finish on the inside top edge of the thighbone. It is said to link the arms to the legs and Steve describes its function as ‘uniting the upper and lower’ body. Being able to engage and use the psoas is a key factor in gaining true ‘internal’ skill in the martial arts.

With his thumbs buried deep into my belly Steve told me to do the exercise again.

“You’re not engaging the psoas!” He said. “Find my psoas and I’ll show you.”

Pressing into Steve’s stomach connecting to the psoas he performed the exercise and there was a huge movement and I could feel all of the deep muscles of the waist stretch, contort and engage. He then had me press a fist into his stomach and then almost sucked my fist into his belly and then thrust it off. It felt like he had one of the aliens from the movie punching my fist from inside his stomach.

We then spent the rest of the lesson going through each qigong exercise with Steve pressing deeply into my psoas coaching me through its engagement. With his thumbs pressing in I started to feel the deep waist muscles engaging and could see how each of the exercises specifically teaches a different range of movement and subtle engagement in the waist. However without him pressing in I couldn’t feel a thing.

“With your thumbs pressed in I can clearly feel the movement in the waist but I can’t feel a thing without them….”

“It’s just a case of being able to take your mind there and building the sensitivity to feel when you’re engaging the waist and when it’s disconnected. This is your true internal training.” Steve replied.

So over the past few days I’ve done virtually nothing barring poking my stomach and trying to engage the psoas. It’s amazing how little awareness I have over this part of the body. However in a just a few days I can already start to feel some spark of life in the waist. It’s something Steve has been telling me to do for years but sometimes it takes the right lesson at the right time for the teaching to sink in – the true meaning of kung fu. To think all I needed to do was to take my mind to the waist and start to become ‘sensitive’ – makes me wonder what the hell I’ve been doing for years. Sometimes you really do need a poke in the right direction.

Gavin King

Gavin King is a Shiatsu practitioner, writer and Martial Arts instructor from Essex in the United Kingdom. He runs a full time Martial Arts centre in Hockley, Essex teaching Tai Chi and Kung Fu. You can contact him via Facebook or Twitter!

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