White Crane Gongfu Southern White Crane is a Soft-Hard Style

For a beginner, the training tends more toward the hard side. It is commonly known that the external styles train from external to internal and from hard to soft. The reason is that it is easier to be hard instead of soft. Not only that, in order to use the soft to defend yourself, you must understand the theory of Listening Jin (i.e., skin feeling and sensing), Understanding Jin, Following Jin, Sticking Jin, Adhering Jin, and Coiling Jin. Then, you must know how to apply the theories of each into practice. However, the most critical aspect of using soft against the hard is that you must know how to cultivate the internal Qi to an abundant level and be able to lead the Qi to energize muscular power with your concentrated mind. In order to reach this goal, it will usually take more than ten years of pondering and practice. Naturally, it is not easy for a beginner to learn these highly secret levels of the art.

Normally, in an external style, a master will teach a student how to use the concentrated mind to generate local Qi, such as in the arms, and use this local Qi to energize the muscular power to a high level. This kind of Qigong is classified as External Elixir (Wai Dan). From this training, the martial techniques can be taught and immediately applied for both defense and offense. This procedure was necessary in ancient times, when self-defense techniques were critical for surviving in martial society. Only after an external martial arts beginner reached a high level of skill would the master slowly introduce him to the way of meditation. Through meditation, the Qi is built up to a more abundant level in the Lower Dan Tian. This kind of training is classified as Internal Elixir (Nei Dan). Normally, the first step of Internal Elixir training is Small Circulation (Xiao Zhou Tian). Through Small Circulation practice, not only can the Qi be stored in the Lower Dan Tian at a higher level, but it can also be circulated in the two most important Qi vessels, the Conception and Governing Vessels.

Finally, Grand Circulation (Da Zhou Tian) is taught to the student. Through Grand Circulation practice, a student will learn how to lead the Qi correctly to the limbs, or any part of the body, to energize it to the highest level of Jin manifestation. In order to mentally lead the Qi to circulate smoothly and freely in the body, the physical body must be relaxed. A tense body will make the Qi circulation stagnant. Because of this, the body must remain soft.

Therefore, when a high level White Crane practitioner manifests Jin in his practice or in battle, the physical body is very soft at the beginning while the Qi is led to the limbs to energize the muscles for action. Once the power reaches the opponent, then the physical body is tensed suddenly. Again, this is why White Crane is called a Soft-Hard Style. Click to learn how Chinese medicine treats Constipation.

From this, you can see that the internal or the soft side of White Crane training, both in theory and practice, is the same as that of other internal Chinese martial styles. The reason for this is that it does not matter how a style was developed, it must follow the "Dao" (Natural Way). I will explain the Dao of Qigong theory later.

In the past, it was commonly known that if a martial artist practiced the external styles and another practiced the internal styles for three years and then they fought, the external stylist would always win. The reason for this is that the external styles teach a practitioner how to use local Qi to energize the muscles and apply it to fighting immediately. This is not the same case for the internal stylist, who will still be learning how to be soft and searching for the ways to cultivate the Qi internally. However, after ten years of training, the external stylist will train toward the soft while the internal stylist moves toward the hard and martial applications. If they fight again, most likely they will balance each other easily.