Dec 13 The Secret of Internal Martial Arts – The Deep Front Line

The secret of the ‘internal’ Martial Arts lies in your ability to connect to and use the body’s core.  This is the first thing you are taught in our Tai Chi classes and how we begin every lesson – it is the secret to the famous internal power of Tai Chi!

In order to make the skills of the internal arts universally accessible to all Martial Artists we need concrete and methodical practices that systematically take the practitioner through a layered process to build core skills and sensitivity using simple language and terminology.

In the Shi Kon system we begin this process with Nei Gong.  Nei Gong translates to “inner work” and begins with a series of standing meditations that take the mind systematically through the true core of the body and teach how to use the breath to release excessive tension that can cause stiffness and obstruction.

Learning To Stand

The first skill we teach is how to stand correctly.  This skill is broken down into the following steps:

1 – Making a clean connection with the foot on the floor:  The feet need be to underneath the line of shoulders and four points of connection in the foot are required to fully engage the leg.  These four points are:

• The Ball of the Foot – Gently pressing this part of the foot in to the floor will engage the quadriceps or thigh muscles.
• The little toe outer edge – Gentle pressing this part of the foot will engage the iliotibal tract (I.T band) or “trouser seam” muscles on the outside edge of the leg.
• The heel – This part of the foot gently pressed into the floor will engage the hamstrings.
• The instep – Keeping the other three points of contact of the foot whilst gently engaging the instep engages the femoral triangle or the muscles on the inside trouser seam.

2 – Creating a natural spiral in foot – With the foot connected to the floor make sure your toes are pointing to the front.  Most of us naturally turn our feet outwards so straightening the feet usually creates a gentle spiral or twisting sensation in the arches of the feet – if you can’t feel this turn your feet inwards a few millimeters until you notice a subtle twisting sensation in the feet. 

This spiral should be felt gently in the soft tissue of the feet not in the joints.  A twisting sensation in the ankles, knees or hips is an indication that you are either trying too hard or that your feet sprawled because they are not directly under the line of the shoulders.

3 – Stand up to your full height and align the head – With your feet in position place your finger in the centre of the crown of your head and lengthen the spine by stretching directly upwards through this point. 

There is a tendency to tilt the head when raising it that breaks your postural alignment.  To avoid this fix your gaze in the horizon.  Keeping you eyes fixed on the horizon tilt your head backwards until you are looking out of the bottom of eye socket – note the tension in the eye muscles.  Now still keeping the eyes fixed on the horizon let the head tilt forwards until you are looking through the top of the eye sockets – again note the tension in eye muscles.  Adjust the angle of you skull until there is no tension within the muscles of the eyes to align the head vertically. 

You can repeat this process looking left and right to align the head horizontally.

Connecting and Releasing the Core

With a basic body structure we can now begin to take our mind through the core and learn how to engage with each part of it.  To do this we use the lines of connective tissue plotted by Bodyworker and Educator Tom Myers in his book “Anatomy Trains“.  In his book Tom shows how the muscles and soft tissues of the body form a single connected system rather than a series of individual parts.  He plots out various chains throughout the body that connect together to enable dynamic movement.  Of particular interest to the internal Martial Artist is a chain of connective tissue called the Deep Front Line.

The Deep Front Line forms the true core of the body – it connects us from the skull right down to arches of the feet.  Here is a fascinating dissection where Tom physically explores the entire Deep Front Line where you can clearly see how it literally connects us top to toe.

I remember showing my teacher Steve Rowe a diagram of the Deep Front Line and he immediately said, “That’s it!  If you understand how to use that you’ll be a Tai Chi master!” Since then we have worked with the ‘Anatomy Trains’ of connective tissue plotted in the book.

Steve Rowe introduced a method of ‘softening’ the Deep Front Line to our standing meditations (nei gong).  We use the term ‘soften’ very specifically in a context many would probably use a word like ‘relax’.  Terminology when teaching is very important and we have found that when you tell someone to ‘relax’ they usually go lax and floppy.  In the Tai Chi classics the advice given on the subject is ‘to remove excessive tension’ so we use the more specific term ‘soften.’

When going through the following exercise it is vital that you grasp that we are not ‘relaxing’ the core but rather removing excess tension within it.  As you go through each part you must not loose the good posture you started with.  We will ‘soften’ each part of the core to remove the excessive tension that creates stiffness – with each ‘soften’ the tension in the core will release and the body-weight/centre of gravity will ‘drop’ down to the feet.

Softening the Deep Front Line/Core 

In order to avoiding complex or confusing ‘anatomy’ jargon I’m going to describe this process using very generic terminology to make this exercise as accessible as possible.  Remember very few people will have a clue where the scalene muscles are or what a posterior tibialis is when it’s at home so if you’re teaching this in class DON’T become an anatomy geek – peoples eyes will glaze and their brains will disengage!  It’s the skill you are looking to transmit not long Latin names.  If you are interested in the exact physiology involved watch the dissection and buy the book – but don’t get bogged down by it when teaching.

Here is the method and terminology we use in class:

1 – Soften the neck – The first part of the Deep Front Line runs from just above the ear on the side of the head, down the neck along the edges of the throat and sits on top of the lungs.

How to soften it:  Breathe in through the nose down into the belly.   Take your mind from the side of the ears down through the throat to the top of the lungs.  Gently sigh your breath out and imagine all of the muscles from the ear to the top of the Lungs dropping and releasing.

2 – Soften the lungs – This next part of the Deep Front Line encompasses the lungs and the muscles that surround them all the way down to the heart and diaphragm.

How to soften it:  Breathe in through the nose down into the belly.  Take your mind to the muscles around the lungs.  On the out breath imagine that the lungs are going to drop away from the ribcage and will rest on top of the diaphragm. 

3 – Soften the heart and diaphragm – This part of the Deep Front Line is made up of the muscles around the heart and the entire diaphragm.     

How to soften it: Breathe in through the nose down into the belly.  Take your mind to the muscles around the heart and the diaphragm that form the drum at the bottom of the ribcage.  On the out breath let the heart and diaphragm release so that they drop down and rests on top of the abdomen.

Note - This will take your body-weight down to the psoas muscle that we are about to work with.

4 – Soften the psoas – This part of the Deep Front Line runs through the deepest muscle of our waist called the psoas (see picture to the right).  Our psoas runs from the back of the body and crosses over to the front of the body deep in the groin finishing on a ‘nobbly’ part at the top of the inside edge of the thigh bone.  It is a vitally important muscle group and the part of this chain that unites the upper and lower body.  This is the muscle that is being referred when the Kung Fu classics talk about the ‘waist’.

How to soften it:  Breathe in through the nose down into the belly.  This is a part of the body that forms our deepest core so it is very tricky to take you mind to.  With beginners I tell them to take their mind to the muscles of the belly and lower back – eventually you can make the pathway more precise as the sensitivity of this area increases.  On the out breath release the psoas (belly and lower back) and let it drop until it rests on the inside edge of the thighbone deep inside the groin.

5 – Soften the femoral triangle – The femoral triangle is the ‘muscle’ that runs along the inside edge of the thigh down the trouser seam on the inner leg and runs all the way down to deep inside the back of the knee.

How to soften it:  Breathe in through the nose down into the belly.  Take your mind through the muscles that run from deep inside the groin down the inside trouser seam of the thigh until you end up deep inside the back of the knee.  On the out breath release these muscles so the body-weight drops down and rests on the top of the calf muscles.

6 – Soften through the calf muscles to the arches of the feet – This is the last leg of the Deep Front Line the takes us down through the centre of the calf muscles just behind the shin bone down to the centre of the arch of the foot.

How to soften it:  Breathe in through the nose down into the belly.  Take your mind down through the calf muscle down behind the shinbone running into the centre of the arches of the feet.  On the out breath release the calf muscles so that the weight drops down into the arches of the feet.

Summary of softening the Core

The method allows you train your mind to be aware of the core, become sensitive of holding excess tension within it and provides a method of releasing core stiffness.  It teaches you how to take your body weight and centre of gravity down to the feet – this is the ‘root’ we talk of in Tai Chi.

Here is a summary of the method:

1 – Soften the neck

2 – Soften the lungs

3 – Soften the heart and diaphragm

4 – Soften the psoas  

5 – Soften the femoral triangle

6 – Soften through the calf muscles to the arches of the feet

Learning to use the core

Once you have released the core and become mindful of its true location you can now begin to learn to how to move using it.  The Deep Front Line can be suspended, compressed, opened, closed and spiraled all of which generate power and movement.  There are lots of methods within the Martial Arts to learn the these skills Goju Ryu has “Sink, Swallow, Float and Spit” whilst in Yang style Tai Chi you may use “Soften, Loosen and Empty Push”.  Regardless of the method without the initial awareness and skills transmitted through Nei Gong the chances of you truly grasping the potential locked deep inside the Core in extremely unlikely.  This understanding is the key to true “Internal” power! 

Anatomy Images created using Primal Pictures – Anatomy Trains Edition

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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