Interview with Mr. William Beattie

What all went into the founding of the Combat Geometrics system?

There was a multiple amount of things to consider during the evaluation process before we were able to set the 4 levels in stone so to speak. Some 15 years worth of internal martial arts and pugilist experience went into the founding of this system. All training systems of combat are only practicing mechanisms at which we might reach the ultimate goal of some form of self mastery. This particular system is a culmination of the best working tools that martial arts has to offer. The wisdom behind it is that you’re not wasting your time performing endless katas that have relatively no amount of real time usage. Combat Geometrics is a clear cut approach to tackling the bull-shit mysticism that exits in the internal martial arts world today. For instance, during my stay in China I spend endless hours at parks meeting new teachers and acquiring about proficient masters. Many masters were rich with theories but after a few sessions of crossing hands with them they begged off claiming that they are way too old to be proficient. Another middle aged man that goes by the name Master Wang, lectured me for a good 15 minutes on Doaist philosophy and how each of the 5 earth elements represented particular moves to combat specific styles. He seemed to have the academic edge as I proclaimed to him that I don’t believe in such hog wash. Then I commenced to throw him around the park at my leisure. I asked him, “Which element would you suggest against a style such as mine?”

People need to learn that a good rooted stance is as much mental as it is physical. I was at The Temple of Heaven in Beijing where I came across a trio of taiji experts. Their master watched on smiling as he instructed two middle age men on the correct methodologies of Fa li. I stretched out watching them closely as they displayed pushing methods with a wide deep stance. They ask me if I would have a go at the youngest student. I obliged and then proceeded to throw him around until he lost face. The older man stepped in and it was the same rag doll story. Finally their master was ranting about something in Chinese when I tried to show them their over exaggerated wide stance was a thing of myths. After he refused to listen to my explanation he decided to jump in and have a go with me. I waited for about 30 seconds to see if he would turn out to be a formidable opponent. Nothing- I gave him the push of his life that almost knocked him off his feet. He explained that he was now 85 and he was no match for me at his age. That’s understandable but I wasn’t using force, rather I was using empty force that I have seen a 90 year old man use with utmost precision. Grand illusions are running rampant these days and the precursor to getting shafted is often the state of amazement. I went to China thinking I might learn a thing or two, and ended up being the one handing out advice. I simply didn’t find a master that could push me and hence the title of my colleague,Yang Jun’s, book Undefeatable.

Most experienced Taiji players understand the basic tenants of the taiji classics such as: A. Avoiding double weighted ness on offense issuing or defensive positioning, B. Using mind/spirit intention YI/SHEN and not LI or force while issuing. C. The correct alignment of the body from the Head to the Foot. Important points are a raised head and straightened spine, rounded shoulders, relaxed hips and legs etc. The theory of central unified weight states: when the body and mind are fully relaxed the body is able to concentrate (whole body weight) via (gravity and spirit) into a focused point under the foot. This can be done with two feet, but our theory states: The weight/force is greater using single weighting versus double weighting. This force is also greater when the two feet are in a relatively close position. ( Not further than shoulder width apart ) The reason is that the mass of the body when the legs are closer unifies and drives the weight into the sole of your feet. For this reason your stepping should be almost TOE TO HEEL while moving inward on the opponent’s center of gravity before you ISSUE him on the offensive.

Excellent! What about your philosophies on breathing and how that works in correlation with fajing?

The answer is that breathing is a vital part of controlling our minds and energy. There is a definite relation scientist have found between our diaphragm and our subconscious. When we are scared and tensed our breath is short and constricted. For this reason we have found that a simple breathing exercise we call the Three Sixes is most efficient for alleviating stress and helping one to control emotion. This drill can be found in the Combat Geometrics book under the Mark Master section. Bottom line- when your body has sufficient oxygen it is able to convert Mind-Energy most efficiently and this translates into better Fa-Jing potential. This concept of mind-energy is also used to stick or root to the ground via mind-consciousness. During my stay in Beijing this is what I found that most of the masters I worked with were lacking. They understood relaxation and for them it was enough to set them way above the curve in Fa li and Fajing. The downward intention of the mind through the foot acts as a sort of pressurized force; its released in a split second during a discharge as the mind moves the energy outward expansively. This is the whole original concept behind expanding and contracting. This is almost a complete mental discipline and only requires little physical exertion to maintain good posture. Breathing can accentuate this contraction and expansion phase. To inhale makes a person light and nimble, and to exhale makes one heavy and driven. This is best explained using the pool analogy. When you inhale and hold your air in your lungs you float on the top of the water. When you exhale and empty your lungs, you can sink to the bottom and stand on the floor of the pool.

That’s a very useful analogy. Have you discovered any secrets of the internal trade? Is theremanything that you have picked up over the years working with different masters that would be considered as inside knowledge? Or is such talk preposterous?

Secrecy is a very relative thing when talking about information. It would be very presumptuous of me to suppose that I am the sole holder of certain techniques and practices. When you talk secrecy with most masters they will immediately shift the conversation to the ideas of fundamentals and hard work, and foundation principles. Be sure of one thing, each system and lineage holder does have techniques and practices that we would consider as secretive. Is their a way of extrapolating them? Of course there is. It is the nature of man to want to amaze and bewilder. It is all about creating an environment of respect & honor towards a master to help you position yourself into the inner circles of a particular lineage. People have a natural tendency to want to impress you.

Most of what I have seen that people would consider inside knowledge is fantasy stuff like spot striking at different hours of the day, various qigong techniques, and finally diet and mental conditioning. The best masters will declare that there are no secrets or shortcuts, and only hard work. I agree with that to a certain extent, but then you have authors like Robert W. Smith writing books like, “There are no secrets,” and then he turns around and writes a sequel declaring that there might be a few after all. According to Robert, Chen Mangching declared that if there was a secret it would be that the mind directs and controls the chi/energy. Robert also mentions that he saw Chen doing an exercise one day that was unfamiliar to his classmates. This was a drill called the Pop sickle that actually works quite well if performed correctly. It’s a simple exercise where a person stands single weighted and uses the other leg to help push and drive down the rooted leg, thus creating a deeper sense of rooting. Chen professed that since he started doing it on a daily basis his fajing had improved tremendously. I have showed the most proficient way of doing this in Combat Geometrics, and I have developed it over the years into a Swan style Qigong drill. This bringing us back to the importance of expansion and contraction when talking of bonified martial application. What I had discovered from the many years of push hands practice and sparring was that most people have almost zero horizontal balance control.

This is the main reason that Bagua circle walking is such an effective training tool. If one trains the turning and opening of the hips correctly, then he will gain excellent horizontal rooting control. I took this a step further and created a drill I call the Heisman Drill. The reason is that while doing this drill a person looks as if he is doing the Heisman trophy stance. I practiced this drill for one year in combination with some Wu style taiji and have literally blown people away with my horizontal rooting. The two drills I have created are the Heisman, and the Running man drill. The latter works on the more common vertical rooting along with the Swan or Pop Sickle drill developed my Chen Manching. Bagua and other Tai Chi systems do give you a basic horizontal rooting with things such as the Single Palm change; but they are in no way comparable to the amount of balance you need to stay rooted while performing the Heisman drill or the Running Man drill. So to make a long story short, these are the two items that I would most liken to the word “secret” while talking about internal martial arts. The other nuances I will cover in a manual I will be putting out called, Bagua-Taiji that I had been working on with Master Chen in Beijing.

Master Sheng Li and master Cheng discuss fajing at Ritan Lu Park, Beijing

How did you and Master Chen come up with such a concept of Bagua-Tai Chi?

Well when you work out with accomplished Masters you start to notice a few things about their daily regimens. Firstly, most of them as kids learned the long versions of Yang, Wu, Chen style etc; now they have adapted to the shortened versions as they start to glean into the realities of the internal. The best of them only perform the sets for audiences and in their own training time practice only functional moves. Yang Chengfu was a good example of this. He would be found practicing Single Whip, Repulse Monkey, Fair Lady Works her Shuttles, and Grasp the Sparrow’s tail, over and over again.

What I have always been focused on is what really works when we talk about Self Defense and Combat. For me, the internal arts are only for ascension into Self Defense, but standing on their own, few in the game can really defend themselves moderately using it. The reason is that Asian Martial arts focus too much on the one strike that will knock someone out, and not enough on how to get to that point. Western Boxing for instance is a highly proficient self defense methodology. If you don’t believe me, then go sign up at a boxing club and hide your black belt in the locker after you get knocked around a few rounds. In my opinion a person should first start off learning Boxing combinations and functional footwork. Then when he’s in Tai Chi class he can learn how to incorporate focus and relaxation into his striking game. There is nothing that can build short distance striking power like Tai Chi Chuan if practiced over a long period of time and the fundamentals are taught correctly. If you’re just relying on Tai Chi and Bagua for self defense, then I wouldn’t go talking back to any bouncers or tough guys any time soon. You will get your block knocked off! Then again if you practice Tai Chi, Bagua etc. in tandem with Boxing combinations then you will start to develop a high degree of functional self defense that will catch the meanest and the toughest wise guys off guard. On the other hand if you just want to think practically and not in terms of UFC mixed martial arts kind of combat, then the Internal Arts do offer a degree of self defense against the average Joe walking the streets. Anything is better than nothing when someone is harassing you or bullying you in a school yard.

People often ask me about Xingyi and its effectiveness. I tell them that if they can’t execute a normal punch with any kind of efficiency that I wouldn’t expect anything exceptional out of a few Xingyi Classes. In my opinion Xingyi is like training one specific facet of fighting that can be disastrous if you’re up against someone with good solid foot work and movement. The style of Xingyi is so linear and the executions/strikes are so space limited that its no wonder the famous Guo Yun Shen had serious troubles with Dong Hai Chuan.

Back to your question since I have quested off track here… Master Chen and I came up with this idea of integrating the best of Tai Chi and Bagua into a simple short set that would be very effective for learning practitioners. This would cut out a lot of the, for lack of better words, Horse Shit foolery a person would have to go through to learn the 108 Long form set and 64 Bagua Long form Set. I know this is going to get a lot of people upset with me but you have to realize that only so much of Tai Chi and Bagua is really useful. Why should a person go through these long sets everyday in some kind of fantasy land wonder trek, when they can learn a more simplified set that concentrates on Song/Repose; and enable them to focus on the serious points instead of wandering blindly into the internal wilderness. At the end of the day it remains in art form and a lot of people actually like the sect kind of atmosphere and performing the long flowery sets. I’m not downing those people that perform them, but if you’re going to tell me that they are the hallmark of a great master, then I would reply, “Horse Manure” What they are is great showman that have memorized a Long Set that after a while starts to baffle and confuse the layman. I have seen people clap at some of these sets and most of the performers have no concept of Song or repose in movement. Another words those moves wouldn’t stand up against a fly weight amateur boxer and these people are hoarding in crowds bedazzled just to catch a glimpse of such spectacles. These people have been seriously hoodwinked by the showmanship; thinking they are witnessing something great when in actuality they are watching pointless dance movements coated with rhythm and enchantment. Again I have digressed…The first time I actually conceptualized the idea was when I was pushing hands with Master Cheng at Ritan Lu Park, and we were doing free style push hands practice. We would start to circle each other in push hands and he said,” Bagua-Taiji ” Now I have heard of this before and I know for a fact that I am not the originator of Bagua-Taiji. The Bagua-Taiji set that I have created has been formalized and will soon be put to press and released on this website.

I am very interested in your concept of Energy Release and Fajing. Can you expand on this in anyway?

There is a chapter in The Looking Glass File called, The Heart-Mind Connection. When we talk about energy there are a lot of things to consider. There is psychic Mind/Sexual energy, there is Heart-Mind energy, and then there is the ultimate combining of the two that together are like Gold compared to utilizing just one. When people tell me that ethics doesn’t play a vital role in energy cultivation -I have to have a good hearty laugh. Some people rely solely on Mind/Sexual energy and have a great degree of success with it. This method includes rejuvenation after sexual intercourse as well as retention of seminal fluids. On the other hand the Mind/Heart energy is the strongest and most capable of the two. So the question remains, how can we combine these two together? Well the Mind-Sex energy comes from proper breathing and mind related stimulation of the groin-spinal cord & brain center. The Heart-Mind energy comes from years of living ethically and having a clean heart. People that have this have strong electrical/magnetic auras and are able to generate massive energy by sheer compassion and humility.

To combine these two takes a person to be aware of these subtle realities and also to have the will to want to integrate them. Simple Qigong drills and Breathing Drills that I have covered in The Looking Glass File would be a stepping stone for most people. Sexual ethics is the second part. If a man is married then I wouldn’t put any restrictions on the amount of times he has a sexual release. The Heart-Mind will supersede the need for an excess of jing type energy. If a man is sexually active and not married, then he will suffer in both departments. He may make up for this with breathing techniques, restorative dieting, and balance control, but against someone that is working with the whole piece of the puzzle compared to just one compartment; he will be completely outmatched.

Now releasing this energy for combat is a whole different issue. This takes lots of experience and perfect timing during execution. This becomes some what of a mind-heart reflex for the experienced player. For instance if your pushing hands with some one there will be either a big opening or small opening for release, depending on their skill level. For someone that is considered a denizen of this art, there won’t be any indication of an opening to release energy. To move or reach the core of this person you will have to depend solely on unconscious sensitivity. Another wards you will feel a ripple in his changing of balance and if you’re at the apex of this art, then you will be able to react accordingly. This isn’t easy and it doesn’t come fast for most people.

The most effective way I have found to catch a master off guard is to create an opening using false hard strength. This means that he will perceive an opening for release when I use hard strength for only a fraction of a second, then when he reacts he finds me back in the Song/Repose disposition. At this moment he try’s to release and fajing me, I make my move and react to his reaction. Other wise if you try to use Soft Force, or Empty force, you will never find an opening against a real Master. Now against a normal person or a moderate practitioner you can use this Empty force and Release energy, almost at your liking, and you will be able to rattle his core. At the level that we are talking about it’s a complete mind game. There are some great mind exercises mentioned in Yang Jun’s book Undefeatable, that can help a person to overcome their over reactive ness. You must be able to maintain complete relaxation at any given point in time or on demand if you wish to reach the fun filled plateau of fajing dominance.

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