Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power
by Peter Ralston

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Book Reviews of Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power

Book Review: Wonderful introspective look into internal martial arts
Summary: 5 Stars

For those of us with primarily Western backgrounds, Peter Ralston's book Cheng Hsin is wonderful. He relies more on personal experience, takes quotes from the classics to support his narrative, to define what he feels is the key to understanding the internal martial arts-- specifically, effortless power.

Although some of his sentences are complicated, and take several readings to completely understand, this is forgivable. Finding the precise words in English to convey his meaning is a difficult task, and Ralston does so effectively-- albeit not simply with respect to grammar.

What Ralston does is break down all those esoteric principles you've read and or learned from studying internal martial arts-- be it Tai Chi, Ba Gua, Hsing-I, or others-- and put them in understandable, and IMO, realistic terms. There is no actual spirit here, or internal energy, simply awareness, understanding, consciousness, and biomechanics. To me, a wonderful, realistic interpretation that makes sense from a Western standpoint.

Having ongoing formal training in this area, I can tell you that unlike other reviewers, I found this book delightful. It corroborated all the teachings that I had gathered from my instructor and guest intructors and readings, and put it in another perspective, adding increased insight.

In many respects, it IS a step-by-step guidebook for developing improved structure, internal awareness-- and better yet, there is no quasi-mythical/symbolic gobbledygook to confuse you! To native medieval Chinese, references to earth power and qi may have been intuitively obvious, but I have been trying to understand these terms from a Western point of view. Ralston makes a great stab at it-- right or wrong-- he strips out the spiritual per se-- and gives us something to really focus on and work on. Yes, he talks about consciousness and focus and awareness and being, but anyone who has worked in meditation or internal arts will instantly grasp what he means. Ralston does a nice job of DEFINING what he means when he uses these words.

When the world-famous Chinese master says to you "Move your qi here..." and you say... "Okay, what do you mean by qi, and how exactly should I move it?" You get different answers from different masters... many high-level masters downplay qi. Ralston eliminates that all together. This is what he discovered, this is how he interprets it. Fantastic.

Now, the only question is whether he's missing something or not...

A must read. If I had my own school, this is the one book so far that I would make mandatory...

Summary of Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power

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