Who are we?

In April 1997, High View Publications, a successful martial arts publisher and retail book and video company with over 10 years of dedicated service to martial arts enthusiasts, closed its doors.          This closure was not due to any failure, but resulted from the owners' integrity, which wouldn't allow the publishing of new texts just for the sake of profit, when they had already put together the definitive textbooks on Pa Kua Chang, Chin Na, Combat Throwing, Xing Yi Nei Gong and others, plus the famous Pa Kua Chang Journal.

Without the publishing of new texts, the publishing company couldn't retain its retail mail order catalog. But what of the many practitioners coming to the internal martial arts after April 1997? How could they obtain these books?      As High View shut down its martial arts activity, Plum Flower Press took over High View's retail mail order catalog in order to continue the tradition of personal service begun at High View.      We at Plum Flower Press bid you welcome! Feel free to call us anytime at 1-800-531-0693. We are glad to give you the personal attention you deserve.

 

What is an 'internal' martial art?

Different from the external martial arts, the internal martial arts generate striking and pushing and leading and joint breaking power in a different way. In an external martial art like Shaolin long fist for example, knockout power is generated by a large swing of the arm initiated from the foot through the waist, and short, less easily detectable initial blows set up the follow-up knockout strike. In an internal martial art, the power is generated not for the most part with an isolated muscle group (as in the short initial or setup strikes of the external art) or with the momentum of a large swing, but the power is instead generated in the same way one would push a heavy bookshelf: you round your back and push with your legs using your arms as a means of transferring the legs' power to the object you want to affect. One doesn't push a loaded bookshelf by swinging one's arm but by using the power of the whole body. Internal martial arts' power is rightly called 'whole body power'. The difference between pushing the loaded bookshelf and striking is the speed; if one can push another's body with great speed yet still with the same connection to the ground and up through the muscles of the back to the outstretched arm that enables the pushing of the loaded bookshelf, then one will be striking very hard. In fact, if one can apply the power with the speed and the contact time of a slap then the tremendous bookshelf-pushing power remains in the object struck, just as a slap leaves the sting in the object slapped; this is the famous 'shock strike' or 'short power' of the internal martial arts lineage holders.    The short power can rupture organs, while at the same time appearing to bystanders as not very forceful due to the lack of large swinging strokes. This is the source of the mystery surrounding the arts of Xing Yi, Ba Gua Zhang, and Tai Chi as practiced for combat.    This same whole body power is used at slower speeds to lead the opponent into heavy and hard or sharp objects, like the ground if we are talking about combat throws or the corner of a brick building if we are talking about 'leading' the opponent. This whole body power is also used to break the joints by either moving the joint against its natural range and direction of motion, or more dramatically, leading the opponent in one direction and then changing one's own direction while holding tight to the opponent's appendage.    The internal martial arts have been often characterized as spiritual. They are indeed Taoist, with Pa Kua Chang being the most directly Taoist; the famous and distinctive circle walking practice, the mainstay of Pa Kua Chang practice, derives from earlier meditation or walking chi-kung practices of the Taoists. The Taoists were interested in longevity, i.e., living to be very old. This is because they believed that becoming wise took so many years that few years were left to spread and enjoy the wisdom earned by difficult practice: each year earned by earlier rigorous practice, which had soaked up so much of their time, was worth the three or four or even ten years that went into producing it, because one year spent while one is wise is worth many years spent while one is confused or restless or chronically unsatisfied.    The martial arts of Pa Kua Chang, Xing Yi Quan, Tai Chi, and Liu He Ba Fa (the four internal martial arts) produce the most optimum health attainable in the individual. The exercises of these arts increase and maintain health by stretching the tendons, ligaments, muscle and fascia (layers between the organs), increasing lung capacity and breathing strength, redistributing the weight and reconnecting the muscle paths (connections between the muscle groups and recoordinating the relation between the large and small muscles of the body) to exert the proper amounts of pressure on the organs: the intestinal tract, for example, needs the weight produced by the release of tension in the stomach to efficiently push the food through. It is a common result of internal martial arts practice that someone previously suffering from constipation will find the problem fixed.    Back pain is commonly found to disappear with practice of these martial arts. Pain in the lower back is almost always the result of strain placed upon isolated muscle groups or the bone structure of the spine itself, due to the patient's poor, sagging posture, a posture that prevents the strengthening and maintenance of the muscles needed to properly support the spine. The internal martial arts retrain the body so that one's musculature and not one's skeletal structure bear the body's weight. Doctors of eastern medicine commonly require their patients to perform a daily exercise routine designed to instill proper postural alignments. Such routines are part of the internal martial arts.    Wrist problems too are commonly found to disappear as the patient learns to feel what it means to move properly. This feeling is pleasant though strange, and is learned through familiarity, i.e., by repeated movements and intense concentration on complex movements which use whole body connection and later whole body power while simultaneously maintaining the musculature of the body in a relaxed but acutely aware state (this means, physiologically, that the tendons and ligaments of all the joints are stretched slightly, the neck, the shoulders, elbows and wrists, pelvis...).    Meditation through all its progressive stages is part of these arts. One learns concentration by concentrating on the whole body feeling described above. As one's feeling for whole body power becomes second nature, and tension is released from muscle groups previously working at odds with their neighbor muscle groups, the mind moves toward empty-mind meditation, concentration becomes less focused but still as acute, taking in more and more of one's surroundings. Concentration mediation is to empty-mind mediation as straight forward seeing is to what we often refer to as peripheral vision. To lessen the gap between the two types of meditative 'vision' is one of the goals of mediation. Empty-mind meditation taken naturally into daily life is the source of the tales of the intuition of the masters, who could hear or see an enemy before this apprehending seemed humanly possible.    And while the cultivation of health or the cultivation of great physical power by means of the internal martial arts of Ba Gua Chang, Xing Yi Quan, and Tai Ji Quan is by no means easy or quick, it is perhaps the most certain guarantee one has against the ravages of old age and the torment of the bully who would overpower us, whether that bully is another human or is the body and mind-deforming stresses of our modern lifestyles.

 

Training Techniques of the Internal Martial Arts

Training in the internal martial arts is different from that of the external martial arts like Shaolin long fist, and might appear to some as too indirect a way to learn to fight or to involve too subtle a kind of movement to be of any great physical benefit. Neither claim is true. For two reasons. First, the teaching of Tai Ji by unqualified teachers who know only a small part of the Tai Ji course has led many to believe that Tai Ji is just the form, and is the form as most perform it. But Tai Ji, along with the other internal arts of Xing Yi and Ba Gua, have power expression exercises, fast forms, and two person sets in which power is used to affect the partner without, for practice purposes, permanently hurting him. These 'rare' forms and 'supplementary' exercises are rare and supplementary only for those with superficial exposure to these martial arts. Plum Flower Press works to overcome these misconceptions.    Second, many do not know that the form is performed slowly to train very-difficult-to-perform whole body movements, which when performed correctly exercise the small and large muscles of the body almost to excess. One must slowly train the muscles that are not usually under conscious control, must gently engage the ligaments and tendons so that the change one invokes is a permanent change. For example, the stretch of the spine that all these martial arts encourage, when performed day after day while executing the twisting and turning movements of the form, will give the back muscles the strength to hold the vertebrae with the proper distance between one another, a state that for many reasons is the best possible condition for the health of the spine.    We are all at least superficially acquainted with the fairly slow moving Tai Ji form. Such slow movement--if done with the proper attention to body alignments, connection and whole body movement emphasizing the highly coordinated use of the muscles of the back, legs, waist and pelvic region--is the FIRST step on the path to further development of that movement in individual practice of power expression exercises and later in partner practice in which partners learn to use the coordinated body movements with power and from the best angles, complete with set up and follow through. Some internal martial arts systems even begin, prior to the form, with less sophisticated fundamental exercises designed to develop the whole body movement that is supposed to fill the form. Too may practitioners do not execute the internal martial arts form with the proper intention. And such practitioners can practice forever like that, and there will be no results. Plum Flower Press sells books and videos that work to fill the gap between real internal martial arts and mere wishful thinking. We are happy to be of service to you.

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• Plum Flower Press has temporarily ceased operations for research abroad until September, 2008, at which time we plan to reopen to offer our customers even more of the same high quality, difficult-to-obtain internal martial arts products. We look forward to soon serving you again, with the same quick shipping and friendly, detailed customer service. Please visit the Plumflower website in September 2008 to see our new products! Until then, feel free to view the Plum Flower Press website to learn about the kind of items we offer. • (Toll-Free USA and International Ordering Phone Numbers will be reinstated upon reopening in 2008)