1. Xing Yi Quan’s 12 Transformative Animals

2. Mantis Internal Foundation Drills - 7

3. Dark Fire - Xingyi Internal Long Staff

4. The Hot Zone - ZMQ37 Tai Chi Extensions

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I was into Iaido and Japanese sword training for a long time. I trained under three teachers, a 7th Dan Iaido/Kendo, an 8th Dan Iaido, and an 8th Dan Iaido/Kendo. I just mention these because in Kendo at least these rankings really mean something. The test for Kendo 8th Dan is super severe: Kendo 8th Dan - Passing Japan’s Hardest Test. I was also incredibly privileged to do some training with supernatural sword hyper-master Tetsuzan Kuroda, in Japan. So anyway, whether or not I personally was any good at it, at least all my teachers, both in Seattle and Tokyo, were top notch.

Now, in sword practice we had a fundamental start or rest position: sitting in seiza, with hands extended on thighs:

But! We also sometimes practiced the more Zen type of meditative mudra position in seiza. And that’s what I want to go over now as a yet another super-simple yet super-amping IP charging drill.

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The Bare Metal Minimality program includes a yoga pose which is absolutely fantastic when re-targeted to the off-label purpose of IP generation as opposed to normal yogic butt-tuning (and spiritual enlightenment emphasis. That is Downward Dog, Chapter 8. Talk about a diamond in the rough! This pose is way undervalued and misunderstood at least when it comes to IP generation.

I admit it may be a little subtle in the beginning, you just have to catch the knack of using this to IP-ergize your limbs. That is in fact the essence and definition of the martial arts-oriented Great Energy Circuit （大周天）

I gave the basic instructions in the book. I instructed you to consciously feel that you’re pressing your fingertips into the mat. That will activate your IP and attract it to your hands strongly. From there you can flow the power backwards and upwards, surging it through your hands to torso to legs. All this is described in the book.

However I’m aware from teaching this in seminars, such as San Diego last year, that some people can’t really trigger the process via the suggested finger press protocol. So in this post I’ll give you a very strong alternative that should work for anybody.

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Back in the day, as I’ve mentioned before, I trained intensively with Nishino Kozo. Three classes per day in Tokyo for some periods - morning, noon and night. He liked doing Tai Ki (energy transfer) with me in front of the whole class, because I had such an entertainingly extreme reaction to his energetic projection. My body would do a crazy Russian-style leaping forward roll onto the hard floor. Much to the delight of the crowd.

Anyway, the Nishino system has contributed an excellent terminology for talking about certain Internal Power (IP) development tools and processes. The most important concept they have is 充足 “juusoku” what I translate as “charging” or “filling”. There’s a series of Jūsoku charging exercises. These are correlated with “元” (gen), which are areas of energy origination, concentration and reflection in the body. In the Nishino system, the categories progress as follows:

• Ichigen 充足 (一元, one element/tanden)

• Sangen 充足 (三元, three elements/soles of feet + tanden)

• Yongen 充足 (四元, four elements/soles of feet + inside hands)

• Tagen 充足 (多元, multiple/all cells in body)

(You can see that these mirror the trajectory of my own ARC framework - not a coincidence). For each of the above ‘charging’ orientations, there are particular drills which emphasize the associated ‘gen’. This is really an excellent marriage of theory, terminology, anatomy and practical drills. It’s far more practical and workable than most of the overly complex “Qi” anatomy and theory layouts you see in other systems. You can actually feel the charging effect of the particular drills as they activate the associated ‘gen’ (I will call them ‘surfaces’ from now on). For example, Yongenjuusoku refers to experiencing the inner hand surfaces (palms and facing side of fingers) and soles of the feet — the four limb-ends of the body — as ‘charging surfaces’. This means body areas that are particularly easy to fill with IP, and of which the IP experience is more intense than other body areas.

However, there is one crucial omission in the above system. And I’m going to supply the missing element for you now, in this post. Just so you know, I’m NOT writing this to lard things up and throw more tinsel on the already over-complicated Christmas tree of IP theory. This is crucially important and fully tangible in your practice. It’s news you can use.

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Once in a while I want to toss you guys a perfect drill. In weather studies, a so-called perfect storm refers to “a confluence of multiple independent weather systems or atmospheric conditions that combine to produce an outcome far more severe than any single system would have caused alone.”

So in this brief article, I’m tossing you a confluence of:

1. Pose (physical configuration),

2. Point (energetic locus of concentration) and

3. Protocol (instruction for use of mind)

Which produce an IP blast far more mind-bending that any single factor would have caused alone. It’s among the most powerful and yet simplest IP drills you’ll ever learn, just as a quick thank you post to all my paid subs as we close out the First Quarter of 2026.

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百聞不如一見

"Hearing something a hundred times is not as good as seeing it once"

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[Internal Experience SEMINAR: June 6-7 2026 Now full at my normal max of 25, but I like to have a few attendees on standby because there are always three people who cancel the day before… ‘new job’s a hassle and the kids have the flu’ EMAIL for: Information/Inquiry]

Q: Hi Scott, is there a place where I can watch demonstrations of the exercises from the book? I think that would be really helpful for a newbie like me. I’m only on the second drill - walking friction step. I’d like to get a feel for the hand movements and how they time with the foot movements. I learn well by absorbing the teacher - watching and feeling the movement. Text is kind clunky until I have that initial “feel” for the movement. After that I find the text really helpful for further refinement.

A: It’s a reasonable question, and the answer is that I have made partial clips scattered here and there showing some of the mechanics of the 13 drills in Bare Metal Minimality. These are demonstrations by me or by other teachers. Eventually I need to make a dedicated video companion to the books. However, this post links you to over half of the dynamic (moving) drills of the book for which video would be useful. Some of the others are static positions where the book’s rendition is adequate. But there are a few where I just don’t have a clip at the moment. Those gaps have ‘TBD’ = ‘To Be Done’ as a placeholder. Let me know if there are access issues with the videos.

There are however deeper issues with the videos linked below:

1. These scattered demo videos below were not originally created in the specific book context. So the teaching element isn’t as seamlessly coordinated to the book as it should be.

2. Also, note that in some cases, where somebody else is the teacher in the clip, they are not doing the exact IP drill I’m describing in the book. In almost every case, I’ve used a traditional drill as a starting point, and then shaped it to massively amp the IP supercharge. So when you see another teacher in a clip, try to get a feel for the mechanics, but remember: the book’s IP emphasis is the point. Always go back to that.

3. The mechanics are important as a foundation, but (I’m sure you understood from my fanatical insistence on this point in the book) the point of these is NOT the mechanics! The only real point and purpose for these is IP cultivation ALONE. But I agree the frames are very useful in the beginning. ‘Work to Rule’ in the beginning, and that means doing your best to replicate the physical underpinnings.

The Golden Dozen Internal Power Drills - Demo video clips:

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Most of my readers probably don’t know (or care! 😅) that in the past I have trained Muay Thai pretty intensively, in Chiang Mai. It’s really a blast. One of the cool things about Muay Thai is their approach to sparring. In regular Western boxing, at least in the USA and Tokyo boxing gyms where I’ve mainly trained and hung out (including the Wild Card in LA), when it comes to sparring people tend to go really hard. Great people - I’m not saying there’s anything illegit about that. It’s great training and can be super fun. But it’s really heavy and scary even while being fun. The nicest people are suddenly intently trying to take your head off, or at least concuss you! Time and a place for it, for sure 🤕. But sometimes it’s nice to do a lighter, more “technical” kind of sparring. This is where Muay Thai protocol really shines. They have a way of training with light, controlled precision that somehow still at least feels semi-realistic, while being super fun. Another great thing about Muay Thai is the fantastic leg work. Not only lower leg destruction (kicks) but especially all the tricky trips and sweeps. But that stuff is closer to practical combatives, not the focus of this publication.

Enough about all that. Actually, I’m just using MT as a semantic clickbait into what always and forever is the sole concern and interest of this publication: Internal Power (IP) training and the IP Experience. Muay Thai is always called ‘The Art of Eight Limbs. The idea is that your two fists and two feet are 4, then adding in knees and elbows makes 8. Now I’m going to introduce ‘The IP of Eight Limbs’, which (sneakily I admit 😲) has nothing to do with “unconventional body part striking”. Sorry! It’s more like “unconventional body part standing”. It’s an incredibly powerful IP mental protocol that produces fantastic results, but could possibly be a bit too subtle (or too extremely subtle) for some readers. Yet when you catch the knack of it - WHOA BACK OFF. Anyway let’s have a look at it, shall we?

BACKGROUND & PHYSICAL FRAMING

Readers of my stuff know that I’ve consistently emphasized two basic modes of Standing IP work. They are very similar, nothing fancy like Yiquan standing modes - that’s cool but it’s a whole different subject. The two super simple standing IP generation modes that I favor come from classical Tai Chi and Xing Yi.

The simplest of all is what you find at the start and end of any Yang-family based Tai Chi style, such as ZMQ37. In this mode you stand upright, feet evenly weighted, arms very slightly straightened to your sides, like this:

This isn’t what we’ll be working with in this post, but the contrast between the Tai Chi mode vs. the Xing Yi mode shown below is instructive. The Xing Yi mode looks similar but with a couple of crucial differences:

Note the arms and hands. In the Xingyi version,

1. Your arms and hands are rotated slightly ‘inwards’, relative to the Tai Chi version.

2. Your hands in the Xingyi version should be formed as the Tiger Mouth configuration, which emphasizes the area between extended index finger and thumb.

These differences may appear slight, but it matters for the 8 Limbs thing that I’m about to tell you. I frame the point about the arms and hands contrastively so that you really pay attention to how I need your arms and hands shaped for best effect.

THE HOT ZONES

In IP training, of course I’ve many times emphasized the central importance of the palms/inner finger surfaces and soles of the feet. I’ve written umpteen posts talking about those, which together form the focus zones called Yongen-jūsoku (四元充足) in the Nishino Breathing System. I would translate the functionally, not literally, as “Four Surfaces Charging”. It actually should be ‘Six Surfaces Charging’, not just Four, but that’s another topic for another dedicated post, coming soon. For now just remember that I’ve often talked about hands and soles as terminals for our internal Large Heavenly Circuit (大周天) energy network. Now, for this post and just for the special protocol of this article, we’re going to shift the focus as follows.

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三體式 (sān tǐ shì), which is the fundamental training frame of Xingyiquan, is so simple and easy that it’s surprising how hard it can be. It’s also supernaturally effective as an IP generator. I’ve written a lot about Santishi (Three Body Pose) in my other books and it’s a foundation of Chapter 12 in Bare Metal Minimality ‘Stationary Splitting‘. The ‘Splitting’ is because Santishi is both a static Internal Power (IP) generator pose, and also the final impact position of the first of the five primary Five Elements (striking techniques of the art).

There’s one advanced aspect of working IP via Santishi that I’ve not yet written about. I consider it advanced, even though actually it’s brain-dead simple. But the simplest things are the hardest. When confronting something complicated, expensive, time-consuming and troublesome, we respect it and take it seriously. When a practice looks and sounds like nothing special, we’re like: “meh I’ll get to it”. In this case that would be a mistake, because you’ll miss one of the most effective IP accelerants.

TAI CHI BACKGROUND

To set the stage, let’s first talk about Tai Chi - a far more commonly practiced IP-Centric art than Xingyiquan. In Tai Chi, the principle of single weighting is very well known. It’s one of Ben Lo’s 5 core principles - that you are always supporting more weight on one leg than on the other, whether that’s 100/0 or 70/30 proportionality. It’s quite obvious when applied to the legs due to their support function. However, you also sometimes hear about a possible yin/yang distinction in the upper body, that is, your arms. This is often brought up in the Push Hands context, as the idea that when pushing a partner, one hand should be active/yang while the other is passive/yin. This creates a single vector of attack.

There are issues with this. It sounds kind of practical but actually it’s a bit too physical/tactical. The concept too “technique-y”. If you are working with IP alone, then you just need to touch the partner any which way to get the reaction. And the physical shape of the arm or technique won’t matter. You just need the contact, and sufficient for your IP to touch the partner’s inner tension. It’s like, if you are shocked by one live high-tension power cable or two, does it really matter?

Some teachers carry this beyond that semi-practical partner work context, into the practice of the solo form. They’ve noted that in most Tai Chi poses, one arm seems to be more extended, or more extreme or more intentionally shaped than the other arm. Even in a very passive looking move, such as Play Guitar, one hand is a bit forward of the other. And in something like Repulse Monkey, it’s very obvious where you’d assign the Yang vs. Yin arm labels, just based on appearance. The teachers who emphasize this distinction are not wrong, but they don’t usually explain or teach the real, IP-centric point of making this distinction for the arms, in the first place.

To really understand how to use this concept in the one place it can really matter, which is in pure IP-generation mode, it’s better to back off of Tai Chi for now, and work it in Xingyi mode, where it’s an extraordinarily powerful IP accelerant - and much simpler to understand and easier to feel at first. Tai Chi is designed more for understanding the lower body’s yin/yang IP contrast, whereas Xingyi is absolutely optimized for both upper and lower body IP development. Anyway in this post I’m going to go over the upper body work, because it is so rarely taught.

It’s a crime that such a powerful training modality should be so obvious, plain and plebian that 98% of people hearing it will just forget it in a minute, let it slip right by them. But maybe that’s natural filtration.

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Readers sometimes think that because I emphasize relaxation so strongly in all my books that I have no experience of nor appreciation for, the use of tension in IP training. Not so. The reason I constantly harp on relaxation is that everybody is so unbalanced. Everybody is super tense by default. That unconscious pervasive tension has to be addressed first and foremost, as the top initial training priority, before we can get anywhere at all.

But once the whole relaxation thing has at least begun to be addressed, we can move into the very judicious and surgical use of tension in IP training. Tension is part of internal work in many systems, including Bajiquan (八極拳) and most especially Mantis (七星螳螂拳) internals. But it’s usually counter-productive, because people instinctively lock onto the psychological effect of tensing up (makes us feel safe and powerful) and that overwhelms the precise application of this tool.

Now, before we get down to the absolutely awesome refinement that I’m introducing in this post, there’s one more thing to emphasize: all IP training is helical (spiral in nature). That means that you basically keep repeating the same thing, over and over - but you’re always getting higher (or deeper, depending how you want to look at it). It’s outwardly the same but inwardly you’re getting amped 10x or 100x by gradually increasing in both knowledge (of advanced refinements to the basic drill) and in personal experience as to how you best maximize that drill for your unique body and mind. The refinement I’ll talk about here today seems ‘small’ but applied in the context of a good foundation in the host drill, it’s utterly astonishing in its effect on your IP experience over time.

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As readers of my book Bare Metal Minimality should know, I trained intensively for about 10 years with internal master Nishino Kozo sensei in Tokyo and Osaka. More details in the book. This post is short and sweet: I’m giving you another detailed augmentation for Chapter 3 The Nishino Squat. This is already an awesome Internal Power (IP) generator, but let’s amp it up a level.

If you’ve read any of my other books, you’ll be familiar with my simplified IP architecture system, the ARC (Activate/Rebound/Catch). I’m not going to rewrite the whole explanation here, but the ARC has a few associated essential energy ‘points’. These are correlated with physical body zones or locations, but they aren’t truly physical, they exist in the human etheric energy ‘shell’ body which outlives the physical.

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[INTERNAL EXPERIENCE SEMINAR: June 6-7 2026 Information/Inquiry Mostly full - a few slots left. I cap attendance small to allow for personal interaction. I know the world’s blowing up right now, travel’s getting more expensive and troublesome etc. If things get too bad, I’d even be tempted to cancel (with full refunds of course). But - if enough of the pre-registered people can hang in with me, I will do my best to make it happen. If you’re a true IP geek/otaku I can promise you a 1-time only ‘Event like no other’.]

"Experience the fire rising through your form

From the soles up

Until the body burns to ashes

But you remain"

— Dharana 52 of the Vijñānabhairava Tantra

Tai Chi master Zheng Manqing told author Robert W. Smith the 3/9 ‘Stages’ of Tai Chi internal power progression. Smith included those in an appendix of his book ‘Masters and Methods’. They are reproduced from the book in the graphic above. If you wish, you can simply take those as gospel, straight from the horse’s mouth. Totally great way to go, and stop right here.

However, as a curiosity nothing more, in this post I’ll go through the entire list, adding my personal annotation. I’m not a famous great super master (or any other kind of master) like Professor Zheng. However I did train intensively with his #1 student in Taiwan and closest disciple for 35 years. That has resulted in my own direct, personal experience with the internal power (IP), the fostering of which is, to me, the entire point of Tai Chi practice.

So the annotations and commentary below naturally reflect one guy’s view. My experience largely aligns with the overall flow above. But there are some specific divergences of ordering, emphasis or missing/added elements.

There can be many reasons for that:

• Maybe I’m so far below the Professor’s level that I’m not even close to putting the first foot on his ladder.

• Maybe it’s just the natural variation and differences in personal perception of any two different people going through ‘the same thing’ but of course refracted through their own individual bodies and minds, as must always generate some subjective variation.

• Or maybe it’s just differences in descriptive terminology and semantics.

But to me the following are axiomatic:

• A progression of IP developmental experience definitely exists.

• The progression largely will follow some recognizable and relatable version of the general outline above

• The progression is 'objective’ in a certain sense, the same way many human learning and developmental experiences (which are subjective in the moment) can nevertheless be communicated and closely synched to other people’s.

But one more thing to emphasize before I get into the weeds (my analysis and annotation of the canonical Stages in the pic above). All these stages should be thought of as a spiral, not a singular one-time monotonic progression. The first time through yes it feels like a linear process. But each of these can and will be re-experienced with ever-deepening intensity. In my view there is no limit to how far the development can be pushed.

A spiral could be upwardly or downwardly directional. Going upward, we can think of each new cycle getting ever more refined, pure, exquisite and high-vibrational. Going downward, we can think of each cycle generating stronger, more deeply rooted power and foundation.

It’s the spiral twist on the classical theme of Shiva as the pillar of fire (Jyotirlinga), where the Mahadev demonstrated his infinite power to the gods Vishnu and Brahma. Seeing Shiva manifesting as huge pillar of fire, they agreed that whichever of the two could reach the end of it would be known as the greater. Vishnu became a boar, digging into the earth to find the origin. Brahma became a swan, flying up to find the top. But in the end they returned and had to admit that the pillar seemed to be infinite in both directions.

The first time through this IP developmental spiral is special, so I’ll call that Cycle1 from now on. But let’s cover some conceptual pre-requisites. The Foundational Text of practical, Experiential IP is Wang Zongyue’s Tai Chi Classics. The line below is the most practical statement of the function of IP, how it tracks and how it feels:

其根在脚。發於腿。主宰於腰。形於手指。由脚而腿而腰。總須完整一氣。

“Starting from your foot, issue through your leg, directing it at your waist, and expressing it at your fingers. From foot through leg through waist, it must be a fully continuous process.”

That’s a great starting point. But note that it’s tracking the function or deployment of IP. My focus right now is the generation and augmentation of IP. For that, using my own experience learning, reading, teaching, but most importantly constantly working it, I have synthesized a simple model of IP Experience, which I call ARC. ARC is kind of a midpoint between cultivation and function. This simple ARC framework gives you “areas of attention” which you can refine using your active attention, and which when you feel them happen, spontaneously coming to your passive attention, help to confirm that you’re on the right track.

• Accumulation/Activation: the filling of the dantian with IP

• Rebound: after A, the power drops but then bounces upward from the soles of your feet

• Catch: the power rises through your torso and surges out through your arms and hands

That’s a very simple description of the first things you will tangibly feel in your Cycle1. It does not refer to imagination, philosophy, semantics, metaphor or anything like that. It’s just a human experience that most people don’t work on (no particular reason why they should, I’m just observing).

Anyway my annotation or commentary below may be rough-edged. It may seem force-fitted in some places, and there’ll be loose ends in others. It may get confusing. But to my knowledge this is maybe the first, or at least a rare case, of somebody with a reasonable depth of practice history, lining up their personal IP experience against an authoritative teacher pre-existing syllabus. I can’t promise perfect clarity, but I think it’ll be of some interest to a true IP geek (which I have to assume most you are or wouldn’t have read this far down).

Let’s go through each item in the original sequence: (NOTE: The material below is ‘Part 1’, covering the first six of the Stages in the graphic above from Smith’s book. Part 2 Coming Soon)

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[Internal Experience SEMINAR: June 6-7 2026 Information/Inquiry]

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I recently wrote yet further details on squeezing the most out of the Tortoise drill from my Bare Metal Minimality book. Please read the post ‘Leg of the Tortoise’ first, as shown below. In this post, I’m giving out another crucial additional detail that will again further amp your IP Experience and long term harvest from this fantastic drill.

Assuming you have developed some experience with this drill, you’ve incorporated it into a regular disciplined IP practice, and you’ve also read the post above, you’re ready for this icing on the Tortoise cake, below. It’s quite simple and easy but punches well above its weight in IP generation potency.

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“What makes the art difficult is that a practitioner gets bored with the plainness and simplicity of the postures, feels that it is ugly to watch, until finally he gives up halfway. Or he hates that its principles are commonsensical, resenting it for having no fantastical methods. He fixates on using an energy of vigor and strives to show off with bizarre postures.”

— Trad IP Master Guo Yunshen

Anybody who’s even remotely familiar with my materials knows that I constantly vamp the relaxation thing, as the foundation of all IP cultivation work. I practically never shut up about complaining that people basically aren’t. Relaxed that is. And that almost all IP training frameworks, after a brief intro hand wave at the word, never look back at it again in any depth. And yet what I find consistently in every push hands or kuzushi training I’ve ever done, with literally thousands of people, is that nobody is relaxed in the way that matters. Not to say some people aren’t great fighters or players. There are a sprinkling of truly awesome martial arts gods that I’ve been privileged to have known and interacted with, many who could in a fair fight kick my butt into next week and most of your butts too.

But that last sentence misses the point of IP cultivation in the first place: to avoid a fight altogether be the gloves loaded with lead or otherwise. Let me say it again for the millionth time (I should pin this to the top of every post from now on):

YES - internal power training IS relevant to combatives; but NO it’s not because IP will amp your punch like some kind of mystical brass knuckles (though it may!). The combative relevance of IP lies in its mystically amazing defensive properties, massively hyping your sensitivity and affordance of awareness, avoidance, evasion and escape. The statement right here from Sun Lutang expresses the singular goal of combative IP training at the highest level: “Boxing arts are ultimately a means of practicing emptiness and thereby joining with the Way. This is the true meaning of transforming into a condition of perfect emptiness and perfect nothingness. When not moving, there is silence within, emptiness without a single movement in your mind. When something unexpected suddenly happens, even if you neither see it nor hear it, you can nevertheless sense it and evade it. The Zhong Yong says: “By the way of total sincerity, one can know what is about to happen.” Got that? ¡Eso es lo que es!

That’s the entire game. Amping your AQ (Automaticity Quotient). I know it’s confusing to people, because it’s natural to think that if IP doesn’t make you into a steely-eyed dealer of death, well then… it’s obviously totally fake or completely pointless. I will say though, it takes so long to get to that level (Master Sun above) that the journey better damn well be the reward anyway. Fortunately it really is. As you keep progressing the IP Experience is just absolutely amazing, overwhelming, sublime.

Anyway I was talking about relaxation. It’s the Prime Directive. And even martials arts mavens who can fight well, or yoga people who can thread their legs around their necks three times - none of them are relaxed in the IP foundational sense of the terms. I know because I have touched thousands of them. The only person I ever worked with up close and personal at great length without EVER detecting the slightest hint of tension or resistance, not even that little “leading edge” of stiffness that you can always evoke from even the very best people, was Benjamin Lo. His level was true Tai Chi relaxation.

So (finally getting to the point of this post) that being the case, WHY in my latest book, Bare Metal Minimality, did I include a drill which not only seems to involve a whole lotta physical tension, all over the body, but worse yet, seems not to have even the most tenuous relation to Chinese or Japanese combative tradition, or to any martial arts at all?

I do admit that some yoga asana seem to fit Master Guo’s admonition against “bizarre postures” quoted above. But Chapter 8 of the BMM book ‘Down Dog’ is based on the most pedestrian, common-ass drill in all of yoga - the first thing you’d do in any lunch-hour Gold’s Gym pickup/quickie yoga session. More like Master’s Guo’s recommendation of keeping things “plain and simple”.

First let me deal with the trivial issue of Down Dog’s martial arts provenance. If you can read Japanese, you will enjoy feasting on my last year’s article in Hiden Gekkan (premier traditional martial arts magazine in Japan, sold on newsstands all over the country) where I explicitly laid out the historical relation between that actual exercise and the very deep martial tradition of India. (See photo at top of this post) How deep you ask? Well, Down Dog is the major component of the mini-sequence Surya Namaskar, which in turn is the foundational drill of traditional Indian wrestling. Wrestling is one of the prime arts of the Kshatriya caste. The national epic of India, the Mahabharata, is 100% dedicated from first to last to the doings, arts and history of the Kshatriyas - the warrior caste. You’ll never get any deeper or longer provenance than that. So yeah - it’s martial enough.

Most importantly though, let’s talk about the drill itself. Here it is as it appeared in the book:

Note the extended-straight arms and legs (one arm very slightly bent due to ancient martial arts injury - think of it as straight). There’s obviously tension in this pose. I’ll explain in a minute that a certain kind of tension can be useful, if correctly managed. The reason I constantly inveigh against tension in general is the 99% of the time, people tense for no reason. It’s just dead baggage.

Ramana Maharishi once talked about a man who shouldered a huge heavy suitcase as he boarded the train, and then as the train started moving, he stood there still holding the case.

“Why not put down the luggage and let the train carry all?”

- Ramana

That’s the spirit. Mostly people have lots of non-functional, unconscious tension. It’s a matter of proportion. I have to emphasize the anti-tension side of the message to counter-balance the overwhelming prevalence of useless tension. And before you can do anything productive with tension, you need to be able to recognize the difference between functional and non-functional, and you need to know how to get any IP work from the small sliver of useful tension.

But there is a way to use functional tension. It’s not easy and not obvious but it is at least extremely simple. Maybe too simple. Because when it comes to internal training, it seems everybody loves complexity. We want nei gong protocols described in glowing terms like multi-colored jewels self-embedded in holographic lotuses or something. I’ve done plenty of that kind of neidan meditative work in the past. But the simple stuff I’ve laid out plainly in Bare Metal Minimality works better if you give it a chance.

So, functional tension in the case of Down Dog is obvious in your supporting arms and legs. It’s easier to talk about the arms first but the same point will eventually apply to your legs also.

What about Down Dog’s functional arm tension so perfectly designed and calibrated? It’s because Down Dog’s functional arm tension is at the Goldilocks Optimum. There’s plenty of options for muscle work in martial arts training. The most obvious example is the simple pushup. The trouble is that to use tension for IP cultivation, it needs to be within a certain range of intensity. That’s because we need our MIND engaged in just the right way, without fatigue or distraction.

Suppose you hold a pushup position, raised or lowered plank, for a (timed) 30 minutes, with no rest whatsoever. That’s something we’ve done in Systema training. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shading Systema or any other discipline. That work is done for reasons intrinsic to the Systema training goals. But for the goal of IP cultivation as I work it, that’s too much strain. The quality of mental engagement is degraded. It becomes an exercise in will power, breath, and other extraneous qualities. Though it is said that you must not rely on muscle, but only on tendon engagement, mostly it’s becomes a physical struggle.

Down Dog on the other hand, is ingeniously designed to apply precisely the optimal positioning for the perfect dose of functional tension. The extreme extension of your arms yet without too overly strenuous loading is just ideal for IP work. The pity is that hardly any students, neither yoga people from their side nor martial arts people from ours, ever experience that (to the astonishing degree that they could). Yoga people treat the long Down Dog holds in Surya A and B (five long breaths) as breathing and posture work. Martial arts people, like the Indian wrestlers definitely practice those, but they move through the pose too quickly to soak up the special type of power it generates. So here’s the simple yet crucial money shot in two parts:

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[Internal Experience SEMINAR: June 6-7 2026 Information/Inquiry]

Far be it from me to backbite a fellow traveler on the Nature’s Great Way of Internal Power, but honestly this is getting ridiculous. ‘Tai Chi’ has become nothing but a cheesy branding label. I would say even worse than ‘Yoga’ abuse.

Case in point, look at the idiotic AI slop above. Truly T-AI Chi for sure, witness the garbled text and the sleekly fake master. This kind of shit is all over the web now. They promise that ‘Tai Chi’ will build you up like Arnold Schwarzenegger, lose you a hundred pounds - or More! All just from ‘Chair Tai Chi’ or ‘Tai Chi Walking’ or some such line.

Speaking of the current craze for ‘Tai Chi Walking’, let’s dig into that a little. It’s all the rage, not just on fake shill sites such as the example above, but even dignified by no less than the New York Times itself, in a recent article (just last month):

Sorry it’s behind their paywall. But here’s a quote:

“In recent months, interest in a practice some have called Tai Chi walking has swelled, largely driven by social media and videos of A.I.-generated musclebound, gray-haired characters. Many of the claims are outlandish, for example that older adults can bulk up or slim down with just, say, seven minutes a day of gentle exercise.”

The full article page shows a short video loop of a professor in Georgia demo’ing the drill. This ‘Tai Chi Walking’ is partly derived from the semi-modern Chinese martial art of Yiquan, which is called 摩擦步 or ‘Friction Stepping’. The main modification incorporated to justify the ‘Tai Chi’ label is that, instead of kind of sliding your stepping foot along the ground, in a flat plane, the foot is picked up entirely and put down heel first. More like ordinary walking in that respect, and yes, more like the stepping in the various traditional Tai Chi forms. Beyond that they say you should just be very slow, controlled, mindful.

It’s also closely related to the ‘Zen walking’ you see people doing in between seated meditation sessions at Zen sesshin programs. That’s kinhin or 禅の経行, literally ‘light walking’. Some Zen sub-styles do it a little faster than others, but it’s largely the same idea as so-called Tai Chi Walking. Some marketing genius recently figured out that, while Zen was an attractive gimmick label in the 1970’s, in today’s world, especially targeting seniors who are mainly just scared of falling, the non-religious connotation of ‘Tai Chi’ would focus-group better.

Again, I don’t mean to backbite fellow travelers or anybody. I’m sure this is a great anti-stress and slightly leg-firming routine. However, I want to distinguish this from the Real Thing.

Because regardless of the provenance, this looks a lot like the friction stepping presented in Chapter 2 ‘Walking Friction Step’ in my book Bare Metal Minimality. It looks so similar but in practice very few practitioners are capturing the true essence of Friction Stepping, so I want to explain the real technical specs again here and now.

First of all, the point of it is fostering Internal Power development. If it helps with something else, such as preventing falls, that’s great but not the point. As for ‘awareness’, I would say ‘attention’ is the required input. The awareness, at the highest level, is provided by the energy itself. But that’s another topic for another time. For now let’s stick with the attentional mechanics of the practice.

The most important feature is the true cat-step. The NYT article above mentions this in passing:

“Some people call Tai Chi gait a catlike walk,” Dr. Yang said. “You need to walk very slowly and silently.”

The readers won’t realize it, but the “some people” he mentions is actually the Tai Chi Classics, which specify 邁步如貓行 (lit. take step like cat walk).

In fact, pretty much no demo or teaching video for ‘Tai Chi Walking’ online is performing the true technical cat stepping. That’s ok! They have different, shallower goals. But we here are strictly devoted to fostering and amping the tangible Internal Power, so we have to take it more seriously and do it fully and correctly.

So I’ll now review the real cat stepping as embedded in Friction Stepping, possibly in even greater detail than the “minimal” treatment in the book itself. There are several sub-stages that need to be attentively performed at every step. Nothing especially spiritual about it, but the following mechanics, done right, trigger the real, tangible, mentally-controllable IP, which to me is an experience ‘beyond spirituality’ (spirituality being largely talk as far as I can discern).

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I heard there was a secret chord

— Leonard Cohen

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All the apparently simple drills in the book Bare Metal Minimality are multi-functional. They are like the light and compact Swiss Army knife, which packs all kinds of tools into a keychain appendage.

For example, I presented the ZMQ37 Tai Chi heel kick in the book, with specific emphasis on the foundational aspects: grounding and gapping (see the book for what is gapping).

But that’s far from how deep the rabbit hole can go on this drill. As a kick, you naturally assume that it primarily works on foundational attributes. But with a small mental-physical adjustment, energetic augmentation radically shifts to ARM CHARGING.

When you saw the photo of Professor Zheng performing the Tai Chi heel kick above, you probably felt "Well, that’s kinda vanilla...” But appearances deceive. In this post I’ll coach you the small adjustment that turns the effect of this drill upside down.

Here’s me doing the same, again in vanilla base mode:

It’s fine to drill it this way, just follow the BMM book. But there can be more to it.

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You’ve heard of eye of the tiger, this is leg of the tortoise. And I do mean leg, in the singular, because it requires focused attention on one leg at a time, alternating. I’m talking here about the chapter/drill ‘Tortoise’ in the book Bare Metal Minimality, chapter 7.

My main point in this section of the Substack is to offer you a large variety of extensions, amps, and refinements of the drills in that book. So that the ‘static’ book effectively becomes an infinite resource. (I do sometimes get into other IP training ideas in this section too, going beyond the present book into things I’ll cover fully in the next book).

I’ll now tell you something very simple you can do to further amp up the IP generation from Tortoise - this awesome, comprehensive work of IP genius sourced originally from Yiquan. You can read more about the provenance of the drill in the BMM book. You can see Master Yao’s performance of it in this clip below:

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[NOTE: I’ll cover this content below and a lot more cool stuff in my upcoming IP Immersion Seminar in early June on west coast. Write to me for details if interested. Attendance strictly capped.]

To really feel the max whole body IP (Internal Power from traditionally-rooted Asian martial arts practices), to have it shake you like a rabbit in the jaws of a dog and wash you like a shower of liquid gold, you need to understand how IP comes from the legs.

I’m not saying the legs are the ultimate upstream source of IP, of course not. IP is a kind of etheric energy which is our original soul power, and it’s ultimately independent of any material basis whatsoever. But the proximal, effective source when you’re working it is the lower body, the feet and legs. From there it infuses your entire body all the way to the brain and then face then heart center, arms, hands everything. But to crank it to 11 you must understand how to trigger it from the legs. Too many people settle for a little tingling or warmth in their palms and think that’s what it is.

So in this post, I’m going to give you a Tai-Chi sourced way to start really feeling what you need to feel. It’s quite good because it allows you to begin where all humans are most comfy, with a simple, visible, obvious physical configuration that’s trivial to copy and learn. But it’s very useful because the physical differentiation of weighting, of yin vs. yang in this pose will naturally lead you to understand the distinction between supporting and non-supporting leg. Once you understand that, you’ll be able to consciously relax your ‘off’ (yin, non-weight bearing) leg. That in turn will hyper amp the contrast between yin and yang in your legs. And though that may sound like a mere philosophical abstraction, over time you’ll realize it’s anything but. It’s the royal road to experiencing the genuine 24K, IP thrill of a lifetime.

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What happens as you get more advanced in your IP training? What is the most important concrete and experiential milestone?

In terms of what’s actually happening, getting the enhanced flow through your head is the most important thing. This is an absolutely real and fully tangible phenomenon. The only reason you may not be experiencing it is if you still have too much tension in your shoulders, neck and head. Over thinking also blocks it.

When reading the material below about next levels, bear in mind that IP is the essence of human life and is always present in all parts of your body, even without any training. I could call that base-level stuff IP0 (‘IP Zero’). What we’re discussing is the highly unusual practice of deliberately augmenting, refining and tempering that power into a transformative experience. I could call that IP✶ or something to distinguish this higher, intentional level. For ease of writing I’ll just use IP. Be aware of the distinction though.

If you regularly and diligently practice drills such as the simple but extremely potent 2-minute chunks in Bare Metal Minimality, you will build up a lot of tangible IP in your torso and legs and spine. Then you’ll hit the first major milestone:

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Last week I posted Part 1 of this mini-sequence. It showed the prep stages for localizing the hard wave to your forearms. As prep, it did not yet involve the forearms. It showed how you have to control the whole body hard wave, using your mind and a mental ‘seal’ alone, and how you then have to be able to instantly transition from that (visible resonance) to the ‘soft wave’ or pure ‘wash’ state where the IP is un-sealed to complete a full circuit. That first Part 1 post is here:

So you can be forgiven for thinking wtf does all that have to do with the forearm (cestus) localized hard IP power? This post will take it to that next stage.

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You’ve heard of vibe coding, well this is vibe crushing. But don’t worry - it has no relation to AI.

For those who want to edge up closer to the original motivation of IP development, which back in the day was martial arts power, we can delineate distinct stages of work. This still doesn’t address the street or cage reality of ‘fighting’. For now it’s best to think of this as just another IP training modality. But as IP training modalities go, it’s the most amazing.

Xingyi striking techniques seem the closest to normal street stuff (in appearance, configuration, and timing), so let’s use Xingyiquan as our lab bench. Everything I say here can eventually be experienced when executing any of the 17 Xingyi techniques. As we go along, I’ll mention a few Fists (Xingyi techniques) specifically by name, culminating in Crushing (崩拳).

There are 3 trajectories for mobilizing the IP charge you want to add to your IP overall baseline when delivering a Xingyi strike:

1. Full Circuit: This is bringing up the long energy, from feet to fingers/fist (as written about also in the Tai Chi Classic writings). I covered this in my earlier book AXE Radical Xingyi Energetics.

2. Short Circuit: Here you generate the short energy, from the front and center of your body out to fingers/fist. I also covered this in AXE.

3. Local Charge: This is something I haven’t covered before. Again, it’s just another way of experiencing the IP in order to deepen your understanding. It’s not a secret killer superpower (though it feels like that in practice).

Our IP training goal in this mode is to be able to trigger the hard wave inside your forearms+fist as you strike. I’m not claiming that this is immediately combat useful. Neither are pushups, but the Marines still do them. It’s just another amazing angle of IP experience to enrich your inventory of such.

So how to trigger the localized hard wave in your cestus?

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