kevin_wallbridge

The rarest martial art I know is one that is done well.

This is an interesting issue and I can suggest a way to understand this. One of the keys is "divergent" pathways you mention. The term being translated is 經別 jīngbié, where 經 is "meridian" and 別 is "to part from" or "diverge." The Jīngbié are very important observations of meridian behaviour that help us understand distribution of influences throughout the body. The 手少陰心經/ hand-lesser-Yin-heart-meridian is an interesting case in point. Without grasping the Jingbie one cannot see how the heart can so clearly show in the complexion, a basic feature of classical and modern diagnosis. An observed characteristic of the Jingbie is that they diverge from the main meridian pathway, typically on the limbs, and re-unite usually higher on the body, but always on a Yang meridian. Therefore, the Yang meridians branch and re-unite with the same meridian; while the Yin meridians branch and re-unite with the 表里 biāolǐ or interior/exterior pair. So in the case of the "heart meridian" it branches from the upper arm, enters the body at the well of the armpit, connects to the heart, rises along the windpipe, exits at the surfaces of the face, and finally unites with 手太陽小腸經/hand-greater-Yang-small-bowel-meridian at the inner canthus if the eye (near the tear ducts). The Jingbie of the "small intestine meridian" is a funny one. As an exception to the rule of Jingbie rising it is called "points to the ground" and is only partially described in the 靈枢 Língshū with only the branching (shoulder joint), entering (armpit) and organ connections (heart and small bowel) being mentioned. We have inferred in the subsequent 22 centuries that the exiting point and re-uniting point are the same as for the "heart meridian." So this only gets us up to the eyes but not the crown where we find Baihui. The thing is we have risen up to the mid-point of the 太陽 Tàiyáng meridian complex. It is commonly understood that the 足太陽膀胱經/foot-greater-Yang-urinary bladder-meridian rises from the eyes, over the forehead to reach the crown where it enters to knit the brain. This means that if you were to take off a person's head at the level of the eyes there is nothing that is not connected to by 太陽 Tàiyáng. To reach the crown via Taiyang one only needs to reach the eyes and you are already there. This brings me to explain a phrasing that I have chosen to use. Above, where I referred to 手少陰心經 I called it the "heart meridian" with a very conscious use of quotation marks. This is because in meridian theory we don't refer to the meridians by their associated organs, we refer to them by their associated phase of Yin-Yang. So I would prefer to say that "the way by which the influences of the heart reach the crown is because of the connections between shǒushàoyīn and zútàiyáng through the pathways of the shǒutàiyáng." It can be extremely useful to grasp that different levels of organization and differentiation are at work here. Sometimes we see the meridians as being strongly related to organ functions and systems, this view is typical when strongly versed in 臟象 Zàngxiàng organ differentiation theory (what one of my teachers called "the tyranny of Zàngxiàng"). However, there are times when you only need to look at the framework of the six divisions of Yin-Yang and interior-exterior pairings. Sometimes we think "heart meridian" and "kidney meridian" but often the frame of "they are both Shaoyin" is far more useful clinically. There will always be lots of five-phase math involved when looking at lung and spleen issues if you do not grasp that at a certain level and from a certain perspective they are simply what 太陰 Tàiyīn is. It does not take cognitive gymnastics of metal and earth to see the connection between the spleen and the large intestine if you can see that they are paired as Taiyin/Yangming. Why, when treating issues of the gastro-intestinal system are the "small and large intestine merdians" hardly used? Because it is through 陽明 Yángmīng that we have the strongest connections to the whole system. Just another small excursion into meridian theory.

This is one of those "lost in translation" moments. Dazhui (GV 14) is "the meeting of all 12 Yang meridians" (this phrase counts left and right sides/ so 3 in each limb). Baihui (GV 20) is the meeting of all Yang, hence the name of "100 meetings" where "100" stands for "lots and lots." They are both the meeting of all Yang meridians, even though the phrasing is slightly different. Dazhui is often used for issues that are within the meridians themselves (though not exclusively); and Baihui is often used for non-channel specific issues of Yangqi (though not exclusively). Yes I have it. It is a great book and I think it makes an important contribution to the field. I don't know of a better work in English. When I teach meridians the students get a handout of the relevant sections of the Lingshu (completely in characters) and we go through the text translating it word by word. My teacher said to me, "I want you cast this material out over your cerebral cortex and fill it in as you go along. This is not a study that is ever finished." Or something to that effect.

If anyone has any specific questions about meridian theory (經絡學) I would be glad to try to field them. I have been a professor of Chinese medicine for 19 years and I teach the meridians course at our college (along with fundamentals, mental emotional disorders, ethics, history, Chinese language and physical culture). One thing to keep in mind when considering meridians is to get the images with lines connecting points out of your head. Everything that isn't an internal organ is meridian. Your arms and legs do not have meridians on them, they are your meridians. We know from ancient texts dating to the Zhou Dynasty that meridian theory pre-dates point theory. While a minor point it can be significant cognitively when we learn points first and meridian afterwards. I see that most often people try to approach it like connect the dots, but it is actually the opposite. More like learning river systems then identifying where the towns are. This brings us to points and the discrepancies about point location. Most often we only look at the first half of point location, especially if we are not thinking about needling. The description of the point location in terms of surface anatomy is only half the information. You need to them look at the depth and angle of insertion of the needle to see the location of the actual point itself, which is not on the surface, rather buried deep into the tissue of the meridian. Two different texts may consider two different entry points for the needle and so not give the same surface location. As well, there is the issue of cellular individuality, we are all unique and you always need to palpate and locate the point. No matter what the texts say, your acupoints will be where they are and you have to poke at them to find them. I am glad to see people keen to learn.

Take care of yourself my friend. When in doubt, spiral out.

BKA, LSY?

It depends entirely on the patient. It depends on the nature of their condition, excess problems tend to be more reactive to needles. As well, their is the patient's own somatic sense of what pain is, what we could call their "threshold." Should the leg spasm? Well it certainly can spasm, while not the most common reaction it can occur. As for someone not acknowledging a patient's discomfort and adjusting the treatment, that has nothing to with the medicine itself. It is base incompetence and a complete lack of bedside manner. That is not the fault of the system.

With all due respect to Heiner Freuhauf I disagree with quite a bit of his article. I teach the history of Chinese medicine, and know many of the same sources as he does, yet my conclusions are quite different. I have been trained in a "classical" family tradition of Chinese medicine as well as the modern state system. There is a favourite line in the West that "the communists broke Chinese medicine." The creation of modern curriculum and the active removal of some references to certain traditions is often cited as the cause. The thing is that the codification of curriculum and the removal of elements that were considered irrelevant of superstitious is a process that goes back to the foundation of the Taiyi/Imperial Bureau of Medicine in the Song Dynasty 1000 years ago. Is the Huangdi Neijing still the foundational text? Yes. Are other classics like the Nanjing, the Shanghanlun, the Zhouhou Beijifang,or the Shennong Bencaojing still studied? Yes as well. What is missing? Well, its the folk practices that are derived from clinical experiences by particular doctors at particular times. Sometimes these things are clinical pearls, but most of the time, because of misunderstanding, mis-transcription (homonyms are a major problem in transmission of old texts), or just plain wrong ideas, these things were useless or even dangerous practices that needed to be lost. We cannot just wash folk-modelling with a brush of wishful thinking and presume that most of the practices that have been dropped from Chinese medicine should be preserved. It starts to become like apologists for for an idealized view of North American First nations people as all peaceful and at one with the land, ignoring the facts of pre-Columbian environmental degradation or human sacrifice, and so on. Magical thinking that did not stand up to the tests of clinical use often arose and fell throughout the history of Chinese medicine, to say that classical is better is just simple minded. That is not to say that there was not a concerted effort on the part of the Communists to impose the doctrine of dialectical materialism upon Chinese medicine and to modernize it. The thing is that Yin-Yang is so much more solid as a philosophy than dialectical materialism and so integrated into Chinese medicine that it just went back to Yin-Yang anyway. A passage in a teaching text in China may read a bit like Maoist propaganda at first, but the quote they site will, in the end, lead to classic Daoist philosophy and thinking. The integration of science into Chinese medicine is not the hobgoblin it seems to be presented as. It does create challenges and issues to be sure, but it is not an either/or choice. Sure there are people involved with the science of Chinese medicine who use antibiotics and shun traditional formulae, yet there is quite a lot of room within the world of Chinese medicine. There are also many thousands who look at the older methods and pass on much of the wisdom that is not found in a Macciocia textbook or one of Shanghai volumes. The biggest problem is that the basic education that people receive in Chinese medicine is just a start. Its the apprentice level of craftsmanship and it gets confused for being sufficient. What gets called by the critics "Classical Chinese medicine" or "Authentic Chinese medicine" is simply the journeyman and master craftsman level of the training. I say that the wider Chinese medicine is practised the greater likelihood of there being more master level practitioners out there. I have heard the same critique of Taijiquan, yet there are many more high-level players today than there were 40 years ago, and in a large part this is due to Taijiquan's increasing popularity. With more people practising there are more people practising it wrong, but also more people going deeper and trying to figure it out and share it. Sure there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people doing crappy Taijiquan out there, but that means there are more than ever doing good Taijiquan as well. The thing about the basics of Chinese medicine that come from the Communist moulded system is that it is at least competent and not crap. If a practitioner wants to just stay there it is too bad, but not a growing problem that needs to be solved. There are more and better high-level practitioners of Chinese medicine than any time in the last 150 years. The same classics that were used 1000 years ago are the same classics studied today. In fact I teach a third-year class tomorrow which is a character by character analysis of passages from the Neijing that illustrate many of the first instances of core concepts outlined from fundamentals in first-year. I for one know the classics are being taught, I am teaching them myself. Professor Kevin Walllbridge, 東方古典科學院 Academy of Classical Oriental Sciences

I really don't remember, it was years ago on Empty Flower which became Rum Soaked Fist. I'm sure the posts were all purged in the migrations over the years. The end result was the consensus that while you could criticize the man, who he had trained with stood up to scrutiny. As for credentials as a sage, just the fact that he was known as a notorious *sshole of the highest order who clashed with just about everyone he met and now he is not and does not, it says to me that he has cultivated something. I will leave definitions of sage up to others.

There is no substitution for an in-person question. If you can't understand it from the book then the book is not the source you need. He still teaches, why not go to a seminar? The terminology may be B K Frantzis' but there is no question he learned from a legitimate teacher. Liu Hongjie was well known in the martial arts world of Beijing and did teach BKF for 3 years. His credential have been questioned strongly in the past and have stood up to sceptical scrutiny before. It is certainly conceivable that Liu used the terms water method and fire method. Not being familiar the with terms is no reason to question BKF's legitimacy. He has certainly achieved enough to have something to teach.

Regarding the original question. Donnie Yen's mother is Bow-sim Mark, a student of Fu Zhensong's eldest son. His base is probably Shaolin and Taijiquan, as his mother is reknown for them. I became his die-hard fan when he stood up to Yuen Wooping when filming The Iron Monkey (1993). He said Wong Keiying was a real guy and was famous for his Hung-Gar, so he only wanted to fight choreography based on Hung-Gar.

BKA, if you don't mind I will derail this thread from Buddhism to Bagua. Consider the way in which pressure is used in the practice. Consider the role of pressure and release in the mother palms. Consider the role of pressure on the sole of the foot as you pull yourself into each step.Consider the role of pressure when you bridge with someone else's arms. Consider the role of pressure when their actions elicit a response from you. How do you respond to pressure? Do you allow coping mechanisms based on successful responses from the past to initiate cascades of engagement; or can you ride the changes in pressure as the engagement unfolds? Do prior experiences affect the quality of responses to pressure; are some pressures harder to receive because of mental-emotional scars or experiences? A light touch on the shoulder and a light touch on the eye-ball may be the same amount of pressure from the other side, yet to receive them engenders very different responses in ourselves. It is often the same when receive a force from another, whether physical, cognitive, emotional or otherwise. The response to pressure is an active place for the practice to play out. Plain language and no resorting to jargon or untranslatable terminology except for "mother palms" which has a Bagua specific meaning..

Well, "peng" is a posture, except when its not. The term has connotations both as a noun and a verb. So there is some talk at cross purposes here. What Chen Zhonghua is saying is simply Yin-Yang theory, I'm not sure why that is so hard to see. Yin without Yang is meaningless and vice versa, isn't this a well established concept? By the same token he is simply implying peng-song cannot be understood independently either. This is actually a fairly common understanding of the dynamic which has been expressed at least since the 1930's in the Taijiquan world coming out of Beijing. You cannot have "springy aliveness" without "relaxation" or you will be too stiff. You cannot have "relaxation" without "springy aliveness" or you will be collapsed. There is nothing new in what Chen Zhonghua is saying.

The shoes are not doing the first person any favours. Running shoes should not even be used for running, let alone Baguazhang. To my mind if you are not working on 趟泥步 mud wading step for the first three years you are wasting time with pre-existing habitual movement patterns you are still going to have to correct later on. With those shoes on, the heel strike first/rocking footwork he is doing is going to feel more natural, even though it is wrong. I encourages a stiffness in the foot and ankle and reduces the liveliness and sensitivity to the ground. He doesn't need to be sliding like in a silky Wushu demo, but he should be making some effort to glide the step with control over the plane of the foot (especially since he is on absolutely smooth ground!). @malikshreds: What he needs to do is make the rotation of the hip around the fixed femur they way he enters the root on that leg. What he is doing doing is somewhat like shrugging in the hip of the forward leg, then swinging the back leg into place, allowing the kinetic energy to transfer across hips laterally. He avoids falling over or twisting his knee by then letting the angular momentum grind his foot on the ground, which again feels more correct by the nature of the stupid shoes he is wearing. He cannot leave the hip of the forward leg as steps into the koubu and ever get this correct. Instead of letting the swinging of the back leg become the power of the hook step, he needs to strengthen the internal rotators of his hip and close from the lesser tubercle of the femur to the pubic bone, muscles that are typically weak in people who sit in chairs or drive cars without doing specific corrective exercises to address them. If he knew to keep track of where his tail-bone points he would be better off. Closing into koubu the tip of the coccyx points down to the arch of the foot of the supporting leg, that way the weight remains committed to the leg you are entering, hence the koubu is a hidden kick. Once the weight from the hip spirals down that leg the tail-bone can simply point into the other foot and the weight becomes distributed (unevenly) between the feet. This way you can quickly grab your weight into the front leg and root to the next leg without allowing the angular momentum to carry your weight laterally. This lack of control of lateral forces is exactly what I am grabbing and manipulating when I toss people around. If you try to do hide-flowers with that foot grinding going on against someone who can feel lateral energies you are going to get launched into low-earth orbit. It impractical and simply not Bagua. I see this all of the time in Bagua and it is just half-assed transmission without the necessary focus on jibengong and fuzhu gongfa. Unfortunately he doesn't understand his body enough to even learn the form. He needs more basics. Like this: No offence intended to anyone but knowing Taijiquan in no way gives any insight into the details of Bagua footwork any more than knowing Shakespearean sonnets helps you read sonnets in the Portuguese, they are different worlds. Related by underlying philosophies but they cannot be understood in each other's term and methods. Understanding Taijiquan can tell you some things about Bagua in terms of energetics, but not in terms of structures.

I missed this thread before. Thanks to everyone who contributed, some nice stuff here. Some of the aspects of Chinese society that are well outlined in the Confucian tradition are things I have struggled with. As any non-Chinese who has spent any time living in China will tell you it becomes a love-hate relationship. The thing about 面 face was sometimes hard to take. Still, as time has passed and I have spent more time with the classics my appreciation of what the Confucians were getting at has made it easier for me. Seeing some of the strictness of the social rules as a means to live with each other in such density now seems more adaptive and less arbitrary to me. As well, seeing the central role of compassion in the tradition has made me feel much beter disposed towards the teachings. My Daoist inclinations would still make me fart at Confucius' dinner party, spill fod on my shirt and tease his stoicism, but I now also honour his deep heart.

Its a good start yet if you watch just his feet you can see he frequently "grinds" his sole on the ground. This is because his external rotators are too tight (piriformis the most likely culprit). This makes it hard for him to commit to the 肟 kua and so his angular momentum is not drawn into a tight spiral into his hip and down his leg and so "dumps" laterally off to the side. This is an error to be corrected in the first year of training or it will either keep him from ever rooting into his supporting leg or it will transfer the lateral force into his knee. Swimming body is also not present at all, unfortunately.

I think I'll get my college to get it for me. I actually teach meridians theory at a Chinese medicine school, so its my field. The underlying principle, that meridian theory is often glossed over in favour of 臟象 zang xiang/ organ differentiation, is a good one and a key aspect of what sets our school apart. I'm glad to see a text in English addressing the issue.

Wow. Some folks have a pretty wild definition of "history." Anyone want to reference a source for any of the speculations here, or shall we stick with divine inspiration and metaphysical channelling?

Taomeow, http://www.thechineseteashop.com/how-to-store-pu-erh-tea.html this may help. Pu'er is not for everyone to be sure, however when is properly prepared in an appropriate Yixing pot and with good control over the water temperature and steeping times, it can be something quite special.

I do 功夫茶 gongfu cha, the Chinese method with tiny pots. My favourite is Dahongpao 大红袍, a wuyi wulong tea.

I have over 20 swords. Several spears and staves and long poles. A pair of combat ready crescent knives. A couple of lock blades and a commando fighting knife. A three section staff, a halberd, and even a Polynesia shark tooth sword. So yeah, kind of into weapons. My main thing is the 劍 jian/straight sword.

I like it just fine, but the OP doesn't mention any cough due to deficiency. COPD? Then 冬虫夏草 dongchong xiacao is the herb. It also has the downside of high cost. Anytime herb=expensive then the chances of some unscrupulous and corrupt middleman stepping on the product with an adulterant rises. Fo Ti Tieng (a registered trademark) is not the same as polygonum multi florum/何首乌. In China it called Heshouwu, Fo Ti is apparently something it was called by an American herbal distributor. Fo Ti Tieng is a compound of three herbs. As Baldwin's UK says on their website: This may be what should not be combined with 人参 ginseng. In fact wasn't it ginseng and heshouwu that Li Chungyun was suposed to have used everyday?

One thing to consider is that Chinese medicine doesn't really use herbs as "daily supplements." They are used in Chinese folk culture and folk-medicine, but not in the clinical practice. Herbs are used to make changes, and the closest to the use of a supplement is the long term administration of a formula for a chronic condition. The next thing is that weakness of the kidneys includes such a vast range of possible etiological manifestations and levels of severity. The very first thing to ask is how old are you? This is critical to even beginning to suggest herbs. While rhemannia 熟地/生地 is used in processed and unprocessed forms, it is rarely given to anyone under 30 and only then if you are spilling ejaculate when you sleep or display impotence, otherwise its too sticky. That stickiness means it is never used alone in practice, its mixed with draining herbs to balance out its effects. If the kidney deficiency is a relatively simple condition in a person of middle age with the most obvious manifestation being weakness and soreness in the low back, perhaps extending to the backs of the knees, then a typical formula would be 六味地黄丸 Liuwei DiHuang Wan (Six flavour Rhemannia pills). Its a basic kidney and essence tonifier based on a balance of three tonifying herbs (熟地黄，山药，山茱萸/shoudihuang-rhemannia, shanyao-dioscoreae, shanzhuyu-fructus cornus officinalis) balanced by smaller doses of three draining herbs (泽泻，茯苓，牡丹皮/ zexie-alisma plantain, fuling-poria, mudanpi-peoniae suffriticosa). Its an time tested formula that is the basis of a large number of other formulae. Truly one of the genius formulations of herbs within the whole of herbal medicine. I would hope that no student of mine would practice to kidney depletion, but your practice and goals are your own. My advice is get a complete diagnosis from a well trained Chinese medicine practitioner (not just an acupuncturist) and have them prescribe something based on a good interview and look at your tongue and pulse.

Dagon, the OP was clear about what they were hoping for in this thread. Its not that you are not welcome to ask questions. Perhaps if your question was not like a smart-ass comment from the kind of disruptive hipster that populates the back row of thousands of intro-philosophy classes, then your query would have been better received. I'm not saying anything about you, only the nature of the question. I have only one piece of advice in the world of cultivation. Be honest. Most of this world of Qigong and Neigong is a heavy mix of self-delusion and wishful thinking laid on top of crude folk models of ancient wisdom that make up a vast constellation of metaphysical assumptions and ignorance. The majority of so-called "Masters" are shining examples of the power of fake-it-til-you-make-it. The thing is that the profoundly complex nature of existence means that we must lie to ourselves much of the time, and that our coping mechanisms are necessary to survive, despite that fact that most of our models of the world are complete fiction. Acting as if you can do it, especially when grounded in some kind of traditional version of wisdom, does very often result in positive physical cognitive and emotional changes (and, dare we say, spiritual awakening). So the lying, pretending and magical thinking is kind of needed to move forward to a greater or lesser degree in these practices. In my experience the teachers that I have met, and sometimes studied with, that really seemed to have their finger on some kind of pulse of existence were the ones who were the most radically honest about their practice. Know what you do not know. Don't confuse an experience with being experienced. Be honest about both strengths and weaknesses. Be honest about how you train, are you present or do you go through the motions or what is the mix? Be honest about your sensations; do you really feel it or do you just really want to feel it? Be honest about whether you are doing your own practice or just following your teacher; three years of classes without time spent on your own is plenty of teaching but zero training? There is a lot of compassion to be found in radical honesty. Its hard for the ego to pop up too much if you recognize that you are largely faking your own life. Once we start to learn how hard it is to reach a standard of honesty in our own lives it sheds a clearer light on the struggles of the others around us. The more we can recognize that our teachers face the same struggles the sooner we can stop imposing upon them the pedestal of perfection to which no human can actually rise. Honesty grounds the lessons we give and receive into fruitful soil and reduces the risk of heading down a path of error and perhaps even risk.