Grasping the Dao of Chinese Bodywork Tuina

By Dan Reid

Central to Daoism is the concept of transformation – spiritual transformation, bodily transformation, even political transformation – and learning new skills is indeed a practice of transformation. The Daoist love of learning is a natural extension of its affinity for transformation and is evidenced by the vast diversity of fields to which Daoist theory is applied, including medicine, martial arts, nutrition, ecology, interior and urban design, sociology, economics, agriculture, and various fields of psychology. It could be said that all disciplines are, in essence, studies of transformation, and to the Daoist, all transformations are shadows of Dao. The quintessential technique for the Daoist, however, is to discover reality by leaving things be and letting them return to “ziran” – to be “as they are” – and thus to find their intrinsic nature (xing). This intrinsic nature is the most permanent existence of a thing and so holds within it the greatest potency, and the greatest potential for longevity. Further, this nature lies within a balance of yang and yin – tension and relaxation, development and atrophy, movement and stillness. So, the Daoist study of transformation brings with it this understanding of balance.

With any transformation is a bit of pain. The pain of leaving behind the old skin; the pain of twisting into the new form; the pain of breaking through a preliminary shell. Anyone who takes up the internal martial arts of Taiji, Xingyi, and Baguazhang will feel this odd discomfort of pushing up against our long developed limitations in the body. Standing and positioning oneself in the most effective alignment possible is at first the perhaps least natural feeling. But in time, the body adapts, and the hidden benefits of shifting the body to its primal form arrive, often unexpectedly and not according to any plan of one’s own. Such is also the case in life: as we try to correct our lives to align with what we know is our proper place in the world, unexpected “coincidences” will cross our paths like a branch from the heavens bending down to let us climb out of our situation just when it seems the path forward has come to an end. I’d like to tell you of my own journey along one of these branches, and how it continues to reveal to me the true-to-life applicability of ancient Daoist teachings.

As a child of the ‘80s, a golden age of martial-arts movies and marketing, the Chinese Gongfu master has been imprinted on my subconscious as an indelible archetype unto itself, encompassing the warrior, the sage, the magician and the healer. Thus, that familiar moment in so many Gongfu movies, where a succession of finger jabs renders an opponent frozen until an equally skilled master comes along to undo the combination-lock, percolated in my imagination as I flipped through Tom Bisio’s handbook, A Tooth from the Tiger’s Mouth: How to Treat Your Injuries with Powerful Healing Secrets of the Great Chinese Warrior. With its Gongfu herbal formulas and therapeutic bodymanipulations, my desire to learn more must have sent out a strong frequency.

The first response to this signal arrived as an all-butoffered scholarship to study TCM in China for five years. Though after intense consideration I decided not to pursue it, this opportunity proved to me how much I was willing to change in my life to pursue the path of Chinese medicine. Struggling through a French TCM school in Montreal where I live, however, didn’t seem like much of an option. So, what to do? After about a week of slowly accepting the need to look for more work as a cook, I was randomly introduced to a student of Baguazhang Gongfu… whose teacher also teaches Chinese sports medicine… in Montreal… and offers a full certification course in Tuina massage therapy and Chinese osteopathy. With a “clack, clack, clack!” everything suddenly set into place. Little did I know at that moment that the association I was about to join was in fact the very same through which Tom Bisio learned Chinese sports medicine and external herbalism, and that my soon to be Tuina teacher, Ethan Murchie, followed Tom Bisio as the sitting president of the North American Tang Shou Tao Association (NATSTA) – the association founded by Bisio’s and Murchie’s Gongfu and Tuina mentor, the legendary Vince Black. To briefly note the quality of

PHOTO BY MARTIN PAYETTE

Dan Reid using the Tuina rolling technique to clear the bladder channel at the Tang Shou Tao school in Montreal where he also studies Xingyi Quan and Baguazhang.

Gongfu instruction in this association, of the many highlights I’ve experienced with NATSTA, my recent introduction to Baguazhang duck-knives by none other than the Gao Style lineage holder, Liu Fengcai, and some of the finer points of Xingyi Quan by Hero Mountain Style lineage holder, Li Cang, are among the top.

Students training for NATSTA’s professional certification in Tuina massage therapy must simultaneously study internal martial arts (Xingyi Quan, Baguazhang, Taiji). The primary reason for this is that Chinese osteopathy requires disciplined strength and coordination, while skills like acupressure, joint manipulation, and the “pushing (tui) and grasping (na)” of Tuina demand a balance of strength and relaxation that is at the core of Internal Martial Arts. To correctly perform the subtleties of Tuina’s fundamental techniques, such as rolling the back of the hand over muscles and energy channels, the postures and body connections learned through Xingyi Quan, Baguazhang and Taiji offer profound advantages. Neigong and Qigong training is, of course, also highly instructive for body work practitioners, and part of NATSTA’s curriculum.

As an independent scholar of Daoist Studies (or so people have started to call me after publishing 2 books in the field, both now in their second editions), Tuina has opened up another realm of practicality for the wisdom teachings found in early Daoist texts. No matter what profession someone is in – whether they’re a cook, mechanic, politician, customer service agent, artist, or school teacher – some guidance and wisdom can be found in Laozi’s teaching. The healing arts, however, have a special advantage in this regard, Winter 2019 — Page 35

especially those connected to Chinese Medicine which is the canopy of branches, twigs, and leaves that grew from the Daoist cultural seeds of cultivating longevity.

To understand and follow Laozi’s wisdom of nurturing life, it certainly helps to work directly with the changes of the body. Finding tensions and the subsequent vitality that follows the release of those tensions, it is easy to see how the natural state of living things is indeed the state of relaxation, softness, and flexibility. Further, and as Ethan has to regularly remind me, the efficacy of a technique correlates largely to the practitioner’s ability to relax their hands and align their structure. Though the ego wants to bring transformation through domination and force, these techniques teach the efficacy of softness, illustrated repeatedly in Laozi’s Daodejing. Heshang Gong (c.200 AD) further emphasizes this point in his comment on Daodejing, chapter 70: LZ: My words are very easy to understand, very easy to follow Yet none in the world are able to understand them, none are able to put them into practice HSG: People hate the soft and pliant, but like the hard and tough.

And as Laozi describes in Daodejing, chapter 76: When the tree is strong It encompasses both (rigidity and suppleness) The rigid and large reside at the bottom By training the lower body – from the abdomen to the pelvis, thighs, knees, and toes – to be rooted and connected, the upper body, including the fingers, hands, wrists, and shoulders, can be soft and thereby access greater sensitivity and connection to the many changes taking place beneath them. This combination of strong roots and supple branches also allows for a deeper more natural power to be expressed through the body. Laozi’s wisdom again helps to illustrate this in Daodejing chapter 77:

In all under Heaven Nothing is softer or more adaptable than water Yet, for attacking that which is hard and strong Nothing is more capable of victory There is nothing which does so with such ease

The direct bodily contact of any therapeutic bodywork requires that therapists ground themselves not only physically but spiritually as well. If a therapist’s energy is in chaos they will not be able to bring a patient’s qi back into a balanced alignment. Like the geometric patterns exhibited in water crystals that have been spoken to with contrasting positive and negative intentions, the subtle influence of one’s inner stability is unavoidable when handling any living being that is receptive to energetic influence. Consequently,

Zen Master Dogen’s Instructions for the Cook can be adapted beautifully to bodywork. Dogen’s guidance for complete attention to the present task, and his instructions on how the Zen cook should handle food has served for me as inspiration when handling the fragile parts of another person:

“Handle even a single leaf of a green in such a way that it manifests the body of the Buddha. This in turn allows the Buddha to manifest through the leaf. This is a power which you cannot grasp with your rational mind. It operates freely, according to the situation, in a most natural way. At the same time, this power functions in our lives to clarify and settle activities and is beneficial to all living things.”

While manifesting the body of the Buddha might be cognitively awkward for some Daoists, it may help to think, instead, of establishing the Virtue of Dao which brings all things into their natural wholeness – or “oneness.” As the anonymous commentary included as part of Guanzi’s Art of the Heart-Mind (Baixin, c. 350 BC) explains: Thus, always without desires Observing its inner subtlety Always with desires Observing its outer surface

Virtue is the abode of Dao. When things attain (Virtue), they live. Being alive, they can know the office of Dao’s essence. Thus, Virtue (De) also means “attainment (de).” As for this attainment, it is called “attaining the causality.”

The effortlessness of this (causality) is called “Dao.” When abiding in things, we call it “Virtue.”

If we are to understand Dao as the natural harmony and perfection that engenders an abundance of life and health, then Virtue (or De, as in Dao De Jing) is that which is attained through a perfection of balance and effortlessness. Subtly, quietly, mysteriously, almost imperceptibly, Virtue fashions and refines a vessel of life, bringing it towards a more perfect reflection of Dao. The role of the healer is, ultimately, to bring beings back to harmony and balance, wholeness, and their naturally connected oneness. As Zhuangzi said, “The foot is forgotten when the shoe fits properly. The waist is forgotten when the belt fits properly.”

In trying to help a person’s structure and alignment return to its original form, a Tuina practitioner must learn how to work with the efficacy and power of De and Dao, relaxing their hands and letting nature guide them through the tissues and joints so that they can see which way those structures want to naturally move. This skill confronts a practitioner with the need to balance intention with nondoing. Intention plus effort will quickly lead to excessive pressure and pain, while applying the skill of De and the efficacy of water, the practitioner can bring change in accordance with the body’s intrinsic nature. The practitioner is, thus, constantly confronted with the challenge to remove any errant willfulness so that they can perceive the underlying subtlety.

– Daodejing, chapter one

Tuina, thus, becomes an arena for the application of “the art of the heart-mind” – a technique couched in the philosophical intersection of early Daoism and Chinese medicine, as detailed in my second book, The Thread of Dao: Unraveling Early Daoist Oral Traditions in Guanzi’s “Purifying the Heart-Mind” (Bai Xin), “Art of the Heart-Mind” (Xin Shu), and “Internal Cultivation” (Nei Ye). We can find in the Guanzi (c. 350 BC) the most forthright instructions of its era for cultivating the heart, mind, intention, and intelligence. The Daodejing, written more or less around the same time as the Guanzi, was also born of this fertile spiritual and intellectual culture evidenced further in the Zhuangzi and the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine. Guanzi’s Art of the HeartMind appears in two sections, the second of which contains the following guidance for cultivating the heart and mind:

是故曰, 無以物亂官 Therefore it is said: “When things do not confuse the senses, 毋以官亂心 And the senses do not confuse the heart-mind – 此之謂內德。 This is called ‘inner Virtue’.” 是故意氣定 Thereby, the energy of intention is settled; 然後反正。 Having (settled), it returns to alignment. 氣者, 身之充也。 Energy-breath then fills the body, 行者正之義也。 And one’s conduct is righteous and upright. 充不美, 則心不得。 If this fullness (of energy-breath) is not pleasant, the heartmind does not benefit. 行不正, 則民不服。 If one’s conduct is not upright, the people will not be provided for. 是故, 聖人若天然, 無私覆也; Therefore, sages resemble Heaven during such times: They are without thought of self when sitting above all. 若地然, 無私載也。 They resemble Earth during such times: They are without thought of self when supporting all. 私者, 亂天下者也。 As for thought of self, it puts the world in chaos. – Xinshu Xia, lines 9-20

How well does this passage describe the necessary internal cultivation of a bodywork practitioner!? 1) Keeping the mind clear, intention is stable and clear and qi is efficacious. 2) A practitioner must be righteous and upright. Permission to touch another person in such a way is an honour and a privilege that must never be violated with inappropriate intent. Further, keeping one’s own qi “righteous” and “aligned” will naturally influence that of the client. 3) Lastly, a practitioner must have total focus on the benefit of the client. They must not get frustrated or impatient, or feel like the client is somehow beneath them or their service. There should be no thought of self, as, above all else, such thoughts are just a distraction from the subtleties of the body that that very self is trying to connect with.

At the time of writing, I am still slowly working towards certification as a massage therapist, enjoying the scenic route you might say. Carry water, chop wood: practice Xingyi and Bagua, practice Tuina at the community clinic. If Gongfu can be defined as the art of determination, you might say that getting on a bus to class after a long day at work is, in and of itself, a Gongfu practice that can lead to great personal transformation and insight. Every practice and art seeks transformation, and transformation takes time, while time, in and of itself, can take effort. The search for transformation can be difficult, confusing, and discouraging, but as Laozi reminds us in Daodejing chapter 41, this confusion, difficulty, and discouragement may, in fact, be the path that leads to Dao:

When the highest student hears the Way Diligently, he treads the path When the mediocre student hears the Way At first present, he falls back When the lowest student hears the Way He breaks into a great laugh If he did not laugh It wouldn’t be the path Thus, such sayings have been established:

The illuminated path appears dark The path forward seems to go back The level path appears uneven The highest virtue, low as a valley Great purity appears disgraced Magnanimous virtue appears insufficient Deep Virtue appears easily detached True substance seems to change Great squares are without corners Great vessels develop slowly Great voices rarely speak Great images are without form The Way is hidden and without name

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Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. Three year

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