PHANTOM KUNG-FU

A moth will fly right into a flame and burn up.  Many martial artists are like a moth.  Their attention is fatally attracted to the opponent’s force, trying to knock that force out of the way with a block.  They may not have the strength or speed to divert the force with a block.  Even if they succeed, they have wasted time and energy.

PHANTOM KUNG-FU is based on understanding the dynamics of attention and how, by refining those dynamics, we can increase speed, power and the ability to neutralize incoming force.  It teaches you to be aware of the dynamics of the opponent’s attention as well – how to perceive his intentions and control his attention.  This system of self-defense is very fluid and requires special training to develop the range of motion of the joints and their coordination so the body can twist and turn easily.

Creation of Phantom Kung-Fu

When I studied Tai-chi-Chuan thirty years ago with Grandmaster William C. C. Chen I would hang out in New York City’s Chinatown before and after classes.  Here I learned a system of chi-gung called “Spirit Breathing” which I was told was the oldest system.  I don’t know the veracity of that claim but it was certainly an unusual system and was based on working directly with and studying from animals.

Luckily I owned an animal importing company and had a ready supply of subjects to study.  I learned the pattern of attention of each species and tried to adapt that pattern in myself, to apply to sparring.  The imported animals were often not in a good mood as they emerged from their shipping containers and I was attacked frequently.  Many of the animals were stronger and faster than I so I had to use my skill in controlling their attention.  There were many close calls and I had many scars.

I also traveled to the jungles of Central America several times to study the animals in the wild.  I would buy a dugout canoe and spend a few months paddling along rivers, meeting the wildlife and people.

The result of this study is the system of Phantom Kung-fu, a combination of Tai-chi-Chuan and Spirit Breathing training.  It can best be understood as a set of principles.

1. Yield to Yang and Enter Ying

Have you ever tried to lift a speck of dirt out of a cup of coffee with a spoon?  The speck just flows around the spoon.  When we spar, we duck and weave, moving in between the partner’s strikes (NOT away from them).  We move away from his force and towards his open areas to deliver our own strikes.  This speeds up the sparring because we do not block-punch, block-punch.  Our strikes are continuous.  Our attention focuses on the emptiness more than the opponent’s strikes.  If our attention were to move to his strikes, our attention would be in the most inferior position – right in front of the focal point of his force.

You should be focused on his weakest area.  But how do you protect yourself if you are not focused on his strikes?

2. Protect Yourself with Your Attention

Martial artists have many methods of protection.  You can block.  You can tense up your body to make it hard but that would slow you down.  Tensing also makes you brittle and unyielding.  It uses up a lot of energy.  You can stay far away from your opponent and just run in quickly to deliver a strike, then run back quickly.  But if you are going to do that, you might as well just run away completely and not spar.

Our method is to be aware of what the opponent is doing and move out of the way.  We train not to allow our attention to lock up but to remain alive at all times.  The joints are flexible enough to move just the particular part of

the body that is in the path of the strike.  In this way we use minimum movement.  It is like a baseball batter who realizes the ball will hit his body and pulls just the belly back to let the ball pass by.

Tai-chi’s Push Hands exercise is excellent to develop this ability.  It teaches you to yield, to allow the opponent’s force to flow by or to be grounded through the legs and return back to the opponent. 

You learn to sense the partner’s pattern of attention so you know the state of his balance.  You are aware of the responsiveness of each muscle of the body.  You can even lock up his attention to prevent his response.

3. Keep Your Attention Centered and Even

Each muscle, nerve and joint must have an equal share of attention.  A person’s attention, once locked into the thinking mind, now disperses throughout the body.  Each part of the body becomes a decision maker, able to respond independently.  Like a basketball team, each is independent yet must be fully aware of every other part and its movements must be coordinated with the rest of the body.

This coordination is not the result of centralizing the decision making power in the head; it is a skill learned by each muscle.  The body becomes alive and aware so that it can never lock up.

The yin and yang must have equal attention.  Many students make the mistake of thinking that the yang (aggressive) parts of the body deserve the attention while the yin (yielding) parts don’t need attention.  But the yin needs to be empowered by attention as well.  Yielding is an act of awareness. 

Most people pay little attention to their backs so the back is just a stiff board.  This stiffness tightens the rest of the body, preventing force from flowing out and preventing the body from maneuvering.  Each muscle in the back must be aware and contribute to each movement of the body.  Each vertebra must participate so that no one vertebra does all the work. 

Your attention must fill the opponent as well, penetrating every muscle and bone.  If your attention (in his body) is more aware than his own attention (in his body), then you are in control.  You know what he is going to do before he does it and perhaps even before he knows what he will do.  You may also be able to influence his movements.

Your attention is evenly distributed throughout the sparring area, including the two peoples’ bodies.  Attention is like a fluid medium, like air or water, through which the body movements take place.  Each part of each body is connected to each other part through the living, intelligent energy of attention.  This is the art of the martial arts.

4. Keep Your Attention Alive at All Times

Awareness doesn’t end when you decide to perform a particular technique.  Even the moment of impact is alive. 

A punch comes in with loose arms.  Power comes from the body, transmitting through the arms.  When the fist meets the opponent’s body it firms up just enough to prevent the arm from collapsing.  If the incoming arm is blocked, it bounces off the block, circles around and keeps coming in.  All force emanates from the body as a whole so the deflection of an arm is a minor point.

There is a very good exercise to develop the sense of this.  Practice a Tai-chi form and have someone poke and push you randomly in different parts of your body.  Allow the body to yield to the pokes but continue the general flow of the form.

The point is not to consider incoming force to be a bad thing.  Receive it as you would any gift.  Move around it or absorb it or re-direct it.  Just don’t try to knock it away or stiffen up against it.

You can see this stiffening effect if you press on the opponent’s arm and then let go.  He will probably press his arm back against you.  When you let go, his body will fall into the gap, upsetting his balance.  You can use this judiciously in the midst of sparring.  It is an important principle in grappling.  Lead the opponent by pressing creatively at proper angles and then open gaps, perhaps pushing him on the opposite side to propel him into the gap.

The attention must be alive at the moment of impact of a punch.  This moment lasts only a fraction of a second yet your body must re-align all its joints in that time to connect the fist to the bottom of the feet.  Align each joint so that the force flows effortlessly through the arm.

5. Understand Your Goal

We are filled with ideas about self-defense.  These ideas often do not make any real sense.  Part of martial arts training is to examine our pre-conceived ideas and understand how they interfere with our power.  An excellent example of this is the punch.

Get ready to punch now.  Stand up and imagine an opponent, then get to the point just before you let the punch out.  If you are near a mirror, examine your body’s position.  After that, continue reading.

With many martial artists, the whole body will be raised, especially the shoulder of the arm which is about to punch.  The center of gravity of the body will be raised.  The body will tense up. 

Now the body has broken its connection to the ground.  The tense, raised shoulder has pulled the arm back, which shortens the arm reach.  The raised shoulder insures that the returning force of the punch (each action has an equal and opposite reaction) will go to the puncher’s shoulder, pushing him backward as well as injuring the shoulder.  The body’s tension slows it down.

The punch, in Phantom Kung-fu is an expansion, an explosion of the entire body, which is expressed through the arm and fist.  It is not an act of the arm and fist itself.  Each joint of the body, beginning with the knee, expands sequentially, creating a rifling effect.  The back of the body drops into the ground at the same pace as the front of the body expands.  This keeps the body in balance and connected to the root.

The opponent’s returning force (the force of his body’s resistance) is drawn into the sinking down of your back.  His resistance force is then recycled up the front of your body as it expands.  In this way his resistance adds to your force rather than subtracting from your force.

Part of the explosive aspect of punching is the breathing.  In all martial arts, breathing in is associated with expanding and breathing out with compressing the body.  In the external martial arts the body is compressed when you strike.  This concentrates the force within your body, hardening it.  You feel strong and tight.

In the internal martial arts the goal is to generate force in an explosive way and then to release all the force into the opponent, leaving nothing behind.  Striking is a result of the explosive expansion and is therefore associated with breathing in.  We do not tighten the force within our bodies but release the force as an archer releases the arrow.  The arrow does not generate the force; it just transmits the force of the bow.  Our arms to not generate the force of the strike; they just transmit the force of the whole body.

At the moment of impact we do not lock the body but realign the joints as described above, using the feedback received from the initial moment of impact.  The fist comes in loosely and compresses with the impact.  That compression controls the re-alignment of the entire body.  The moment of impact is only a fraction of a second yet our resolution of perception is fine enough to make that small amount of time seem large enough to make these changes.

The larger that fraction of a second seems to us, the more changes we will be able to make per second.  If we have eight turns per second and the opponent only one turn per second, we will easily win.  The goal of the sparring then becomes the development of perception and the refinement of attention.  We are as interested in techniques of attention as in physical techniques. 

The hallmark of phantom kung-fu is that it teaches more about the dynamics of attention and perception than about how to punch and kick.  It would therefore be beneficial for anyone from any style to learn this system and then to adapt it to his particular techniques. 

6. Continuous Perception

The act of punching (or kicking etc.) is considered a single technique in most martial arts.  You either punch or you don’t punch.  Once the punch is launched, awareness closes up until after the technique is delivered.  Then there is a moment of assessment to evaluate the effect of the punch.

This is a very awkward way to fight and yet is the most common.  The second most common is to simply strike continuously with no assessment or awareness of any kind.

Phantom Kung-Fu operates in a completely different mode.  Both the techniques and the assessment are performed on a continuous basis.  The techniques are continuously altered in response to a continuous assessment.  Protective techniques are carried out at the same time as striking techniques.  One member of that “basketball team” as mentioned before, can do one thing and another member another thing.

Attention and body response operate at a high resolution.  You can detect a greater depth of subtlety in the opponent’s motions and readiness to respond than if you do one technique, assess, then another technique and assess.  You can find weak points in the opponent and respond to them much more quickly.

I found that animals naturally have this type of attention.  I would clean the cages of large pythons and duck their strikes as I cleaned.  Ducking became as automatic as scratching an itch.  I hardly gave it a thought.  If I held a frog and it jumped away, my hand would reach out in an instant to re-capture it before it fell to the ground.

When baby mice had to be transferred to a new cage I had to reach into a swarming mass of them, grab a tail and pull the mouse (upside down) to its new cage.  There were dozens of mice in each cage so I had to continuously and rapidly grab to get the job done.  (Mice are used as animal food).  My attention had to keep track of the movements of the mice so my fingers would wind up where the tail would be a second later.

All this translates well into sparring.  Humans are used to single pointed attention.  We can learn to switch our attention rapidly to keep track of several things but the speed of that switching has its limits.  Phantom Kung-fu teaches us to decentralize our attention so that we can be aware of everything at the same time and respond to everything.

If I were to ask you what is in your room you would just look around and see it all.  It might take some time for you to verbally list each thing but you would be aware of it all at once.  In the same way we need to be aware of the opponent’s balance, the readiness of each of his muscles, the pattern of his attention, the quality of his attention, etc. all at the same time.  We need not only continuous attention but also modes of perception that have degenerated in modern humans.

7. Developing Decentralized Attention

An important step in developing decentralized attention is to develop the centers of rotation in the body.  The body can rotate on its vertical axis.  Each vertebra can provide a rotation.  The hips can rotate.  Add to that the shoulder, wrist and foot.

We make sure that each joint has a full range of motion.  Then we practice moving two joints at a time, then three, in various patterns.  The animal forms and spirit breathing exercises are based on this idea, especially tiger, snake, monkey and drunken.  Grappling with someone who has developed an intricacy of body rotation is nearly impossible; it is like running on a floor covered with marbles. 

Striking such a person is also difficult; it is like grabbing the tail of a scurrying mouse, as described before, or like catching a fly in mid-air with chopsticks.

This flexibility and coordination also allows you to “lead” the force of a punch, which lands on your body, downward into the legs and there into the ground.  This is done by sequentially relaxing muscles from the point of impact to the legs.  Thus the incoming force simple compresses the body, coiling the “spring” even more.   You can also use this received force to turn you and send your own fist into the other person.

If you perceive your body as a system of joints suspended in rubbery connective tissue, force can be re-directed easily.  In grappling, the change of a single joint can entirely change the relationship of force between the combatants.  There is always a free joint somewhere that can be moved.  This is preferable to merely applying more and more force in a relationship that is not in your favor.  As you can see, these same principles also apply to one’s personal life as well.

It is important to recognize and utilize the unique characteristics of the connective tissue (or “fascia”), ligaments and tendons.  Together these tissues form a rubbery network, similar to the rubber “spider’s web” found in many playgrounds.

If you try climbing up a ladder and compare that to climbing up this “spider’s web” you can begin to understand the difference between sparring against an external vs. an internal martial artist.  The internal arts make great use of the rubbery parts of the body.  The strikes are shot out like an arrow out of a bow.  The opponent’s strikes are received like a trampoline “receiving” a falling person.

One of the problems one can develop with the emphasis on tension in the external martial arts is the tightening of the fascia.  This tissue, surrounding all the organs, muscles and bones, can be very confining and destructive if it is too tight.

Even people who can do a full split may have tight fascia in most parts of their bodies.  The ligaments in their legs may in fact, be too loose, causing a hyper mobility of the joints (and loss of stability and springiness).  The fascia can be loosened with certain types of stretching (using foam roll and exercise ball for example) and mainly by bodywork (a type of massage).

When the fascia, ligaments and tendons are not over-tight, when they are rubbery and flexible, then each joint can move freely and independently.  You can also feel the alignment of the body through the structure of the fascia and not just though the alignment of the skeletal structure.  This gives you a whole new range of biomechanics to work with within your body and to take advantage of in the opponent’s body.

8. Know the Floor

The term, “floor” refers to that part of the body that serves as the origin of a strike.  This should always be the real floor, the one you are standing on, but it rarely ever is.  In Phantom Kung-fu the force begins at the bottom of the foot then upwards along the inside of the leg, the hips, the tan-tien (the area just below the navel inside the body), then the elbow (in a punch) and then to the fist.

If you tighten your back and shoulders and punch with your arm, the floor is the back of your shoulder.  If you twist your waist abruptly and turn the upper part of the body in a snap, then the floor is your waist.

The floor is obviously not the back of the shoulder or the waist.  It is that relatively flat surface beneath your feet.  Any mechanics not based on that reality is a false mechanics.

There is also such a thing as semi-false mechanics.  You start your force from the feet and then perhaps up the inside of the legs but then skip the hips and the tan-tien and go right back to the back of the shoulder.  In this case you are skipping some of the essential steps.

In the push hands exercise each partner tries to create “false floors” in the partner.  This is very simple to do because it is so difficult for a student to keep to the true floor.  All you have to do is apply a very small amount of pressure (a few ounces) to any part of the partner’s body.  He will press back to oppose your force and that will cut him off from the ground.  His mechanics will then begin from the point of your pressure.  That point will become the new floor.

Your partner should respond by relaxing the part you are pressing on, not opposing it.  We practice relaxing each muscle individually so that our response can be specific.  We don’t want to move the entire body away from the pressure, just that part which is being pressed on.  In this way our movements can be small, exact and quick.

If you use too much pressure, he will be aware of it and just move away or counteract it.  The force must be light enough to escape his notice but strong enough to elicit a subconscious response of the body.  This can obviously be used in grappling but also in kickboxing as well.

In this case you need to exert the pressure on his attention rather than directly on the body.  If you imagine the attentions of each sparring partner as a large beach ball or balloon, the attentions press against each other as if the balloons were pressing against each other.  You can work the mechanics of that pressure.  A good exercise is for each partner to hold a large beach ball and press the balls against each other.  In this case you try to push the partner over.

In most cases the attention is not like a smooth, spherical ball but is lumpy and oddly shaped.  There is usually very little attention around a person’s back or even on the sides.  The attention is easily disrupted and warped.  The Phantom Kung-fu fighter works the attention of the opponent, making his mechanics ineffective.

He does this by “pressing” his attention into that of the opponent at strategic spots.  This creates a reaction on the part of the opponent that can break his connection to the ground thus creating a false floor.

Attention as a force, must be experienced to be understood.  It is as crucial to martial arts training as are physical techniques.  Spirit Breathing training explains this experience this way.  We humans lost some of our senses over the course of history.  Originally the sense of sight was part of a pair of senses.  Sight tells us how each thing is separate from each other thing.  We develop  an  intellectual understanding of the world as a collection of “things” with space in between.  This is the three dimensional world, based on the sense of sight.

The other member of that pair of senses is the sense of internal energy, which tells us how everything is connected to everything else.  An intellectual framework is developed in cultures, which maintain this sense.  It is the “spirit world”.  With the sense of chi we understand how the energy of life fills all space, how our consciousness is continuous with the consciousness of all other living things and how intelligence is not just a function of the brain but is an aspect of chi shared by all living things.  This is the philosophy of spirit breathing.

It is essential to develop this sense in Phantom Kung-fu.  When we spar, we concentrate on attention and on the relationship of attention to the body. 

Your attention can be worn out more quickly than the body.  Someone might have great aerobic capacity but his attention may not be able to last.  Even a half-second break in the sparring may be enough to allow the opponent’s attention to recuperate.  This is why we keep pressing our attention against his.  The moment his attention wavers we get a free shot.  It is very difficult to recoup your attention if you get hit the moment your attention wavers or locks.

Attention may lock when the opponent is preparing to strike.  The attention is locked by the intent of punching.  If you punch the opponent at this moment you can splatter his attention.  This is called “striking the root or origin of the force” and is a common concept in internal martial arts.  Attention is also locked just after a strike because the opponent is regrouping for the next strike.

We must carry out all our activities while the attention presses against the opponent.  We take no breaks with our attention.  When you combine this principle with the principle of moving only in the areas where the opponent’s attention is weak, you can overwhelm the opponent yet remain relaxed.

9. Physical Techniques

The physical techniques of Phantom Kung-fu are as unique as the emphasis on the dynamics of attention.  We imagine the body as an assortment of ball bearings (joints), which are either rotating or ready to rotate but never locked.  Each joint can move independently to adjust the angles of the body according to the movements.  When you “receive” force from the opponent, that force moves into the rotating joints as if you punched into a container of plastic balls.  The force goes into the rotation of the balls or joints.  As the body as a whole rotates, the force returns to its source.  With so many joints rotating, the force is magnified.

We can duck in one direction and circle our arm around to the other side to strike upwards to the opponent’s head.  With each part of the body moving with an independent quality, the opponent never knows how he will be punched or kicked.

We also punch and kick at the same time.  We do not just get the kicks out of the way and then punch.  The punch sets up the kicks and the kicks set up the punches.  Our legs must be as flexible and manipulative in their movements as our arms.  Most of the kicks are to the opponent’s legs but we may also use our leg to create a false floor by just pressing it into his leg and then punching him.  Kicking his legs undermines his root and makes him feel insecure, afraid to advance.

An arm may dangle loosely in front and then strike downward on top of the opponent’s head or circle around to the side of the head.  (Note that when the fist comes in loosely and compresses with the impact, it is protected against the hard skull.  The compression of the fist prevents the hand bones from breaking).   If it is blocked, the arm can maneuver around the block.  When kicked, we move in to the side of the kick to punch.  If he kicks to our head, we drop and kick his supporting leg.  We may combine some grappling with punching and kicking at the same time.  In all cases we never lock ourselves up.  The grappling technique may last one second just to throw off his balance.

With decentralized attention, in which each part of the body has awareness, several techniques can be performed at the same time.  It is as if you were several people fighting against one person.  If you have to fight against several people, then it is even – because you ARE several people, all rolled into one.

10. Nothing

The greatest obstacle to achieving control and awareness of the mechanics of the fascia, ligaments and tendons as well as of the attention is what I call “nothing”.  Nothing is the word Phantom Kung-fu uses to describe the feeling when everything is aligned and energy flows completely effortlessly through and out the body.

When everything is aligned you feel no pain, imbalance, tightness or resistance.  You don’t feel strong, angry or tough.  At first you feel nothing because you are unfamiliar with the experience of relaxed alignment. But then within that nothing, you begin to discern a very refined awareness of the body, attention and of the flow of energy. You realize that every part of the body has intelligence and awareness; that each part of your body is able to connect with the other person and to respond to his intentions before they turn into actions.

In order to achieve this awareness, the student must “sink” his attention into his body.  This act of sinking is really an emptying of programmed patterns of thinking.  In other words, it is an emptying of the cup of tea as in Zen meditation.  When you empty your cup of programmed thinking, then you are able to really “see” the internal energy, which connects all things together.  To someone filled with patterns of thinking (which interfere with sparring), emptying the cup may seem like there is nothing left.  How can one function if your thinking machine is not constantly churning?

When that cup is emptied of tea, it is really being filled with air; it is never really empty.  When your mind is emptied of constant thinking it is filled with awareness of the body’s intelligence.  The body is aware of how to maintain its proper structure and flexibility.  It is aware of how to coordinate the interaction of the fascia, ligaments, tendons, muscles and skeleton at every moment for maximum power.

The key to allowing it to do its job is to stay relaxed while sparring; to keep yourself empty.  When we spar in class, there is a lot of laughter.  If someone gets hit hard, he laughs and says, “Good!”  He feels good that a great technique was performed (even though he wound up on the wrong end of that technique).   He is empty of anger and competitiveness.  Anger is not the path to awareness.  Laughter is! 

It is sometimes difficult to trust that the body’s intelligence (“BodyMind”) is completely adequate to control the sparring.  Your thinking mind and tension want to take over.  Part of the concept of “nothing” is to “let go” and allow the body intelligence take over the sparring.  It is like riding a bicycle.  You can’t think your way through it.  You may fall off the bike a few times but eventually you will gain the skill.

Awareness of internal energy also allows you to do healing.  I was taught “bodywork”, which is similar to an oil massage but very different in its essence.  The healer is aware of the pattern of attention of the “client” and of the attention of each individual muscle.  The client concentrates on particular areas and the healer then relaxes those muscles The ability of the healer to perceive the movement of the client’s attention essentially allows the client to “massage himself”, using the healer to do the job.  The healer can also influence each muscle to relax by directly connecting his energy to the energy of that muscle and then using energetic techniques (rather than brute physical techniques). 

This trains the client to become very aware of the relationship between the pattern of internal energy and the structure and behavior of his body.  He can take this knowledge to the kung-fu school to refine his awareness and the ability of his body to respond in sparring.   And of course, the ability of the healer to perceive the client’s pattern of attention and the condition of his body makes him better at being aware of these same things in the sparring partner.  So healing and sparring practices help each other.

11. Conclusion

Phantom Kung-fu training consists both of physical techniques and training the dynamics of attention.  It requires a refined awareness of proper body mechanics and the relationship of mind and body.  This martial art is an excellent way of learning about the Taoist principle of yin/yang and of the power of relaxation.

The strength and skill of attention can make up for less physical strength than the opponent.  In fact, the opponent’s physical strength accounts for very little against Phantom Kung-fu.  Most importantly, the skills learned in Phantom Kung-fu are useful in every aspect of life.  They make you more aware of your body and of other people.  They bring back the sense of the dynamics of attention and of internal energy.  And Phantom Kung-fu teaches you to be peaceful and centered in the midst of turmoil.

Phantom Kung-fu opens up a whole new world of opportunities to increase your skill in combat.  By greatly increasing your ability to perceived and react, by learning to not waste energy and time and by learning proper body mechanics, the principles of Phantom Kung-fu can enhance any other martial art.

At this time it is only being taught at the Long Island School of Tai-chi-Chuan in Sound Beach, N. Y.

Bob Klein has been studying martial arts and healing since 1967 and received his teaching certificate from Tai-chi-Chuan Grandmaster William C. C. Chen in 1975.  He has been teaching since then at his Long Island School of Tai-chi-Chuan in Sound Beach, Long Island, N.Y.  He is the author of four books including Movements of Magic and Movements of Power and has produced over 60 instructional videos on Tai-chi, Kung-fu and health & fitness with the Artistic Video label.  He can be contacted at (631)744-5999 or bobklein@villagenet.com.