ALTERNATE: 'Leg Charge' Q/A

Pic: Mona Kimura on the job.

Q: I can now feel what you call ‘charge’ in my arms and hands, thank your drills for that. But you sometimes talk about ‘leg charge’ in your books including recent BMM. What does that feel like and which drill builds that quickest?

A: Good that you brought this up. One distinctive feature of my approach is my rigorous emphasis on IP (internal power) rising from the feet and legs. As opposed to most Qi Gong programs, which relentlessly work on flapping hands and arms. This idea is not at all original, witness perhaps the most famous line in the most famous of Tai Chi Classic writings, Wang Zongyue:

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。

The power’s origin is its root in the foot, whence it issues upward through your leg, to be directed at your waist, and transmitted from your fingers. From foot through leg through waist, it must be a fully continuous unbroken internal power stream.

He’s talking there about the real IP ‘Stream’ (remember my classification of stages: Surge (waves), Stream (river), State (lake or ocean). But too often people only remember the famous line: “qi sinks to the dantian”. Yes, that’s a thing, but the IP rebounds off your feet and refills your legs and torso from below in the real process. That’s one key element of what I’ve called the IP ‘ARC’ (Activate, Rebound, Catch) process, ever since my book Juice Radical Taiji Energetics (2012).

This leg charge gradually becomes permanent. It’s 100% tangible, it’s not any kind of abstraction, concept, image, philosophy, or metaphor. But it’s harder to get to the level of permanent tangible charge here than it is it feel some buzz in your hands.

The drills in BMM will build your overall IP, including leg charge. Remember the opening words of the Amazon.com listing blurb for BMM:

Here's a quick self-check: when you're standing around in daily life - bus stop, food court, whatever - are your feet consistently, automatically, all on their own, vibrating, throbbing, and resonating with seismic/hydraulic internal power waves? Can you instantly redirect the power to your hands, or to anywhere in your body, by mental command? If not, then you still have a way to go, get this book.

So almost all the BMM drills have an aspect of legwork. However, if you’ve not yet felt the real IP torrent blasting up from your feet, you might still be skeptical. So in this post I’ll share a ‘new’ drill (not included in BMM book) that will hugely accelerate your leg-streaming experience.

Below is a private Full Metal Maximality subscribers-only video clip of me fully demonstrating this ‘new’ drill, along with tutorial explanation and instructions.