Unlocking Tai Chi's Peng Energy: 3 Key Steps to Successful Training

Peng is the most well known of Tai Chi's 8 Primary Energies, and curiously it may be the one energy people have the most difficulty with. That may be because of how rare it is to discuss how to actually create the Quality of Peng. Once you have learned to establish Yin and Yang Quality, Peng goes beyond that black and white duality, and creates a stable energy structure made of both Yin and Yang Quality. And while formless, it does function like a structure, creating a tangible sense of support and transmitting this profound sense of floating to those you are in contact with.
This skill is based off of the Yin and Yang Qualities built by the Yin and Yang Qigong. Here's a link to that practice:
• Song In Tai Chi: Becom...
Discover how this foundation practice leads you to develop, and freely apply Peng energy.

[@benjamin5938]

I am a french Yi Quan practitioner, and I am very happy to see your videos. Thank you for all your sharings ✋🤛

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Welcome and thank you for being a part of this community! Yiquan is a wonderful practice and really shows how much power one can discover in simple postures and movements. How have you found it to help your Tai Chi, or how has Tai Chi influenced your Yiquan?

[@vidya014]

In Yi Quan Clan, only Cheuk Fung has developed the internal energy. The rest fails to develop, only using muscle and momentum.

[@vidya014]

Cheuk Fung Yi Quan kzbin.info/www/bejne/hIWsoqeClphoocUsi=tjQRdx6lHNpBgGax kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKLNhZeJl7SDodksi=EOB0I0JtTyPVteJb

[@user-zp5it7sn5x]

Very, very good! Your teachings have deepened my practice and teaching of the Yang 108 , push hands and applications very much, as I can now put together the missing links you're providing and I can refine as I practice and teach. I love the subtlety of the small movements creating so much affect. Discovering/applying in the push-hands and incorporating in the form has renewed my joy in tai chi chuan. Thank you from down-under Australia!!

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Hearing that you have deepened your practice, found the missing links, and renewed your joy is the best feedback ever! That's exactly what I hope to see, everyone enjoying Tai Chi more deeply, effectively, and joyfully! Cheers! 🙌

[@Flowingmobility]

Very well explained. Thank you for sharing your knowledge is such clear, obtainable ways!

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Thank you. This is the first time I shared the donut idea online, glad it makes sense!! 🍩

[@Flowingmobility]

The donut was excellent!

[@Turiya77]

Thank you. 🙏

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Thank you for watching and commenting! 🙏

[@karstenbuch1]

Very well explained - thank you.

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Thank you for the feedback!

[@andrewursitti2131]

Wonderful explanation. Thank you.

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Thank you for your comment! Glad you find it helpful.

[@damienr1229]

Nice exercice and well explained ! thank you ! :-)

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

I'm glad you find it helpful! Thank you for the comment!

[@zorbataichi65brown19]

Very insightful stuff. Very grateful you post these. I have the long form, some Chi gong, and Nei Gong exercises, I can execute them smoothly, yet I don't have the ability to absorb or issue energy in these advanced ways. I will keep training. Sifu, when you say 'rising and falling' energy is it the entire body, or just in the torso like micro orbit. Is our mind 'awareness' follow our skeletal bones, or under our entire skin. Kindest wishes George

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Congratulations on all the Tai Chi you have practiced. Being able to do the long form smoothly is a genuine mark of dedication and accomplished! In this video when I say falling and rising I am referring to an awareness of a sensation of sinking and rising, right at the surface of our body. It is like the microcosmic orbit, but more like a sensation of direction rather than an actual flowing. Sinking feeling is like when you experience disappointment and you feel that sinking in your gut. Rising feeling is like that feeling when your hair stand up. But here mainly it is along your skin. Thank you for your kind words! It is very motivating for me to see that people are enjoying that content, and beyond that, it's even more wonderful to discover people benefiting and improving! Cheers!

[@staffordriggs]

Love This I'm a Home Practitioner, taken some Classes School & Private Lessons however Love my Home Studies 😀☺️🙏 So Love This Thank You once again & had my first successful Moving someone Body & energy in the Direction I Desired 😮🎉 IT WORKED YAY Pure Joy & Excitement 😅😊 So my Push Hands Partner is a Wing Chung Ring. Which I use Everything I Have had The Privilege to be Blessed with Here Combined with isometrics, Stretching, Boxing & Tai chi if That makes sense...!?! Anyways I'm Trying to Show Love & Appreciation for You All my Studies Have Took a Quantum Leap since finding You All & Will Always be Internally Grateful 🙏🎨💯⛩️

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

It is very exciting to hear about your quantum leap! You have a capacity to make the most of your experiences, learnings, and practice tools to your benefit that will keep helping you to transcend any limitations! Thank you for sharing your experience with this community and please keep doing so! ⛩️🙏

[@HarryRemer]

One-year Wu student here, in Massachusetts. Thanks so much for such a clear and fun demonstration - and thanks to your student, too, whose questions and comments helped much. I so wish my school had partner work so we could do things like this. It’s all internal so far. I’m going to ask my wife to be my partner for this exercise. 😊

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Thank you! Wu style is a wonderful style to study. And you have a wonderful wife who is willing to help you practice ha ha. Maybe there are communities near you that you can discover online where people are interested in developing Tai Chi skill together! Thank you for your comment!

[@HarryRemer]

@@phoenixmountaintaichi 🙏🏻

[@danilosljiva]

I let my emotions lead me so I probably wrote a little bit too much on your channel before realizing you have much more interesting videos so I subscribed and I'll see if I have any questions after watching all of your videos. I'm really looking forward to understanding the first 0.1% of what you talking about. Not learning not retelling but actually understanding. And if I succeed trust me I'll return the favor in a positive way to the best of my ability.

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Fantastic! Please enjoy the videos and feel free to ask any questions! I look forward to helping you reach 0.1% and then the other 99.9% too! 😄

[@FabioPedrazzoliGrazioli]

Wonderful explanation and demonstration thank you! I understood well the donut metaphor until you showed the one finger demonstration, in the context of the one finger it is still a little harder for me to understand how the Peng energy mechanics are working (I know it works because I felt it too by first hand from working with other masters and advanced practitioners, I just don't feel it myself, yet, at that level)

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

I'm glad the donut explanation helped you! With the one finger, one key difference is that you no longer have much structure to rely upon. But if you accept their pressure, continue to visualize and express the inside sinking yin, the outside rising yang, you will notice that the same effect happens. Because what happens isn't that your structure braces and pushes him, it's that your intention guides his force to flow with your intent, and your inner experience of floating Peng becomes a real experience that he feels, causing him to uproot. And using only one finger while abandoning the structure can even help you to more completely embrace the Tai Chi emptiness. If he does not actively push you, you may have to apply a gentle forward intent of Ji, to cause him to brace and respond. Once that happens, the Peng energy flows through his bracing and causes him to uproot. Does this help clarify? Let me know how it goes for you!

[@FabioPedrazzoliGrazioli]

Thank you so much, I love your teaching style, it is very deep and detailed, your words carry a lot of meaning and give me deeper realizations and understandings. I would love to travel to meet you in person and get to study with you at some point. I will let you know how my finger Peng evolves 🙂 Thank you for your time and many blessings 🤗🙏

[@nathanielbrundige5982]

I love this channel, I really appreciate your clear descriptions of everything. There's one thing from this video I didn't understand. The donut flows down on the inside and up on the outside, but when your student put pressure on your arm you said you flowed the pressure down your back to the ground. . . that sounds like the opposite of the donut model, so I'm confused. Does the pressure reflect off the ground and return up the outside before going in and down? Or is the pressure transmission across the skin a separate path/phenomenon from the yin and yang of the donut ?

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Thank you! That's a good catch. I really should not have said that the pressure flows along the back to the ground. What I'm describing is the energy of Kao, and the actual energy of Kao is that the force flows along the surface in any which way, never entering into the body. It's like how water on your windshield will flow along the windshield, maybe downwards if you are not moving. Maybe upwards and to the back of your car if you are driving fast. But it does not enter your car. So what I'm wanting to convey is that let their force disperse along the surface of your body. And as long as their force remain on the surface of your body, then the upward quality of the Peng donut will catch them and float them. Does that help it to be more clear? Thank you for asking this crucial question because I bet other people are wondering the same thing too! And thank you for following the material on their channel. How have you been able to apply the concepts presented?

[@nathanielbrundige5982]

@@phoenixmountaintaichi Thank you for that clear explanation--I'll have to go back and watch the Kao video. I've been practicing TJQ for many years, but for a long time I haven't had a teacher and just focused on listening, opening, releasing, and sinking. When I really rededicated myself to practicing the forms I found myself having insights that I'd never had before, but also on the cusp of understanding new things that I just wasn't quite ready for yet. Many of your explanations get me over the hump into new understandings. For instance, your video on Zhou and Lu was very helpful in understanding what was happening in push hands. It's my experience that getting one's ego out of the way then the attention just flows to the elbow, the elbow passes the body, and the opponent is directed away, and once that happen the attention naturally comes away from the elbow. But this is a subtle thing, and I think there was definitely a time I wouldn't have felt this. It reminds me of something I think you said in this video (Unlocking Peng, although it could have been a different one), that it makes you "want" to pay attention to that part of your body and release or tense it. That's right where I've been at with my practice, and it explains how the desire for release etc seems to come from some deeper well than just my mind. Also, your explanation of the "donut" perfectly demonstrates the sensations I'd been having with my circulation qigong. It's interesting translating things that you've only seen on a 2D page into a 3D body when one gets one's ego out of the way. Anyway, I like how your explanations clearly expound what I should be doing with my feelings, attention, and directions of energy. Much more clear than just "elbow energy" or "shoulder energy" or "wardoff". I mean, I see how the action deflects upwards and outwards, but that translation just doesn't carry any information with it, but your explanation is so clear. Thank you!

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

​@@nathanielbrundige5982Thank you for the wonderful reply. It's really great that you notice the source of your movement and its release seem to come from a deeper well than your mind. Because that is a sign that you are starting to go beyond what is physically apparent into the more profound aspects of practice. And to discover this on your own is fantastic! What does that tell you about your capacity to learn and grow? Your intuition is good because you said you have been focusing on listening, opening, releasing, and sinking and that is a very good set of essential principles. Consider the idea of dispersing and gathering and how that might be related to the principles you have focused on. That may open new doors for you! Thank you for your reply and being a part of this community!

[@nathanielbrundige5982]

@@phoenixmountaintaichi Your encouragement is appreciated, thank you! Sorry I took so long to get back to your question, it's been a busy week. Thinking about it now, you probably asked more rhetorically and didn't intend for an actual response, but here I am, halfway through it, haha. Anyway, some of the principles of Song aren't very clear to me yet, while I believe others are more accessible to me. I think I might have a handle on "Dispersing": my acupuncturist once taught me to find taut areas in my belly and to focus on them with the intent to soften them. This seems to me like it might be Dispersal. I've been learning to soften areas of tension in my body and even to draw that energy into nearby areas that feel empty or collapsed. This seems to help with pain, posture, mood, and sense of vitality. Thinking of it in a push hands scenario--if a training partner were to apply pressure to my arm, for instance, I might try to use the same softening technique to soften my resistance and their pressure, and then to draw it to areas where there isn't any in an effort to neutralize their force. "Gathering" leaves me with less confidence, but I think it may be related to Qi Condensing? Like drawing it to my marrow, then to the surface of my skin with Peng to become Empty? I dunno. Maybe a video topic for the future?

[@vidya014]

Please show me your 37 steps taichi taolu or the 13 shi taichi.

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Welcome! You can see parts of the form here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5K9moqrnLB1kKs If you're interested in a course to learn it, that will be available in the future. Thank you! 🙏

[@huiwuwei]

can what and how can this be used in the arm breaking competition

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

You mean in arm wrestling? I'm not an expert but using your body all together and with the right amount of tension is probably very important. The best competitors may instinctively do some form of this.

[@huiwuwei]

Wher can I find yin and yang superconductor qigong video ?😮⛩️

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Here you go! kzbin.info/www/bejne/hJrOimWDrtuEq6c

[@bajuszpal172]

Nice, but somehow beyond my cognitive limits. If I may a question: isn´t it about changing our electrinical charge into the same as the opponent, thereby simply pushing him away?Paulk68

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

You are on the right track because you are thinking about yours and their Quality of energy. Positive and negative are indeed states of energy and you can imagine how there are more complex Qualities beyond them, such as heat, cold, love, anger, happiness, sadness. Consider that Peng is the quality of lightness and floating. Can you remember a time in your life when you felt light, as if you were floating? Maybe a time when you felt happy and excited? Or playing in a swimming pool? Now as you are remembering that experience, create the donut like yin and yang energy balance, that is the essence of creating Peng! The next step is to create the Quality in your opponent. To do this you use a method we call Inclusion, which is something we will discuss in another video! Thank you for asking the great question! Please let us know how it goes as you practice it! 🙏

[@ChristianoSts]

What is being physically done in sinking? What's opening? 7:00

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

Great question! What is sinking is your sense of weight. Let go of the tension that holds us upward and let your mass feel the sinking pull of gravity. When you do that, completely, your muscles release and your fascia begins to open up, fill out. This is the physical aspect of Song that forms the conditions for the yin yang balance of sinking that readies you for floating, a release that causes an expansion. And when you have this condition, and an intention of opening and expanding, you create Peng. Check out the video about Song for a more complete explanation and a useful practice of this! kzbin.info/www/bejne/gGG1g4Fml6mrnJY

[@staffordriggs]

🙏💛🎨⛩️💯

[@phoenixmountaintaichi]

🎉⛩️🙏