Liu Mian Zheng Li 六面争力

Three axes, at the same time

Liu Mian Zheng Li (六面争力, literally “contending force of the six faces”) is the full form of Zheng Li. Instead of a single pair of force, all three axes of the body are tensed against each other at once:

• up ↔ down — the crown lifts, the feet press into the ground; the first pair beginners start with,
• front ↔ back — push against pull, front knee against rear hip,
• left ↔ right — open against close, arm against arm as if around a balloon.

When this counter-tension is in balance on all three axes, it is Hun Yuan Li — in the teaching image “a tyre full of high-pressure gas that answers every touch”. The terms fit into one sentence: Zheng Li is the building block, Liu Mian Zheng Li the complete structure, Hun Yuan Li the state that results.

The path of development: two → six → all

Nobody tenses six directions straight away. The text by Wang Xiangzhai recorded in 1939 sets out the path explicitly: first seek two opposing forces, and only once these are mastered seek them in all parts of the body and in all planes — “this is hunyuan strength”. In Mo Jin this matches the stages: each direction on its own, then all three pairs simultaneously (level 3, “finding the hunyuan”), finally the diagonals too.

Behind it stands Wang's ground rule of 1928: in all joints, large and small, two opposed forces are always at work — no joint without a counter-force.

What it is mechanically

The six-sided opposing force is an internal force pair: a co-contraction of the antagonists. It cancels out externally and does not move the centre of mass — it creates pre-tension, the “firm ball”. This stored elasticity is delivered only through the external pair with the ground.

That is exactly why it is the store for Fa Li. There the first phase is storing — “six-sided opposing force fully tensed, the body like a drawn bow” — and the discharge is the sudden breaking of this balance.

The most common trap

“Holding” six directions at once tempts one to clamp. Whoever produces the counter-force with muscular effort turns stiff, the breath stalls — and the spring that the whole thing is about is gone. The tension arises from imagination (Yi) and the alternation of releasing and tensing (Song Jin), not from effort.

Not to be confused: 六面争力 and 六面力通试

The characters are almost the same, the levels are not. Liu Mian Zheng Li (六面争力) names the principle of force — what is tensed. Liu Mian Li Tong Shi (六面力通试) is the fifth and highest training stage of Mo Jin — how far it has been trained: all directions available without switching between them. Joseph P. Lau writes this stage 六面同时摸力 (“sensing simultaneously”) — a second, equally attested spelling from another line. The short form 六面力 (“force of the six faces”) is used in the sources for both.