Taomeow

Chen village, formally thirteenth generation through Chen Zhenglei. I've never heard that Tongbei Quan was an influence, could you tell me more?

"Through the back" sounds right -- in any internal MA nothing is initiated from the arms ("there's no arms in taiji!") and there's many moves in taiji where transmission through the back is rather obvious too (e.g. the Single Whip). In Chen Laojia, we use the middle finger (i.e. the Pericardium meridian, internally speaking) to guide the form, the little finger to sweep qi in, the thumb to sweep it outward, but just like it's not the steering wheel that moves the car, it's not the hands/arms that move taiji et al. This is not understood by people who watch but don't practice... hence one hears a whole lot of nonsense when folks watch this or that video and then pass a verdict ("real/fake," "powerful/weak," "you can't use this in a real fight," "it's fast and aggressive so it's external" and on and on.) Of course those who have practiced for a short while (or incorrectly from the start) can't see what's really going on when they see a body that seems to be flailing the arms when in fact "there's no arms."

Not true about consuming lots of body energy. It is an internal MA (which of course can be practiced externally if taught/learned incorrectly -- just like taiji, bagua and xinyi). Every move of the arms back toward the body, e.g., returns qi and shen to the heart. (Arms flying far back, if the movements are coordinated with the lower body and footwork and breathing and the lower dantien, will help open the heart and enrich the heart shen. That's what I saw right away, but there's lots more there to look at qi-wise.) The teacher who showed it to us the other day is in his 50s, looks 35, moves like a hurricane without his breathing being affected in the least... and has cured himself of a spinal injury he got in an accident, followed by a surgery that removed a chunk of his vertebrae. The doctor told him he would never be able to practice again. He was, however, back in his pre-accident shape within a year, and the doctors told him they had never seen anything like it. So whatever you have observed externally doesn't have much to do with the internal dynamics of this art, looks like. As for your question: why yes, I do want to be a good fighter. Even though I got interested in MA too late to gain much fighting ground fast, I want to pursue them in this direction, absolutely. Even though I did all my real-life fighting as a kid (a lot of it), and then was brainwashed into believing that it is "not ladylike" to be able to fight, I hope to make up for all the lost time and keep getting better at it. I don't seek situations where I would have to use it. I just want to know I have something up my sleeve should the situations ever find me. But that's not the main motivation. The sheer joy of movement is. I'm too lazy to do anything that will consume energy without giving it back with a vengeance, so the very fact that I'm interested proves it won't.

Thank you, Friend. Did you mean you read that one has to be good at ALL THREE -- taiji, bagua and xingyi? or will one of them suffice? I'm a Chenster. The style is indeed rare, the master I'm thinking of learning it from is doing a workshop at our school. (He teaches taiji and qigong for real-life fighting in Dalian.) I'm skipping the qigong part (got my plate full for the moment) but tongbei (which I saw a very mind-blowing live demo of the other day) looks like such a good match for my physical type (as is Chen, actually -- which is why I'm thinking of breaking my self-imposed rule that goes, Thou shalt not collect forms . I am a believer in customizing the practice to the practitioner... although of course I've seen very impressive exceptions too.)

I humbly thank you, ChiDragon, but what I asked is if anyone practices it and can share their thoughts. I have an opportunity to learn it from a visiting master from China, and am trying to decide if I should go for it.

Owledge, please do not derail my poll. I didn't create it to find out what you think about the holocaust. If you have been called by the spirit to tell the world, do start your own thread.

The interesting thing I've discovered with dreams (which I get very seldom, maybe a few times a year, not counting dream-visions which I get about once a year -- but these are a different story) is that they can be fractal-like (like everything else). Meaning, on a smaller scale they relate to your own inner processes, emotions, unconscious memories emerging ("creatively" re-processed into a story by the neocortex when they reach it -- e.g. I recognize birth dreams instantly when people describe them, having spent a considerable amount of time on the receiving and giving end of primal therapy), personal lessons to learn, etc., but it's not necessarily the beginning and end of their scope. They are not flat like that. On a different scale, the same dream that tells you stuff about you may be telling you about things that have to do with the "bigger you" -- e.g. members of your group, whether social, occupational, emotional, intellectual, gender, age, state of health, etc. -- and then on the level of a "still bigger you," about your species, where we're all at as members of that. (E.g., I've read some books on assorted dream studies and found out that invariably, in at least 95% of cases, all dreams in which animals appear involve some kind of violence. Since then I've asked people many times and had a chance to confirm the truth of this assertion. So, if "everybody" in any actual real-life relationship with animals (including none at all) gets them to visit dreams only in a violent context, it tells you something about the relationship of our whole species to the animal world (likely based on what we've really done to it as a species, not as an individual), rather than merely one's private and personal subconscious context.

Just came back from taiji. The teacher introduced his guest from China, a master who will be doing a workshop with us over the weekend. The master doesn't speak any English. He was there to take a look at how we're doing. At the end of the class, he picked up this weapon from the corner and turned into a human tornado rotating it mightily and slashing left and right. Uh-oh, I thought, were we THIS bad?.. Whoosh! The blade came loose off the pole, went flying across the room and chopped off three or four students' heads... ...almost. At least it looked just about to. At least that was the title of the article people were planning to write about the event. In reality, the master had to stop his demo and show everybody that the weapon, on account of being a rather cheap (made in China but not the way they used to make it ) and flimsy thing, was about to fall apart if used any other way but for decoration.

Oh, thanks for telling me. I added the N/A answer to the choices of the second question.

By the way, advertizing that relates to the subject matter of this forum is allowed without having to be paid for. The mods were told by the owner it's cool to let people advertize their (or someone else's) schools, systems, masters, services, etc. -- and therefore have neither the authority nor the reason to disallow it. Just FYI.

Not really, not "negative stuff." Personal attacks, insults, unsolicited medical diagnoses, porn, spam, stalking, threats -- this kind of stuff will either disappear or be moved to The Pit. Very specific stuff. As specified in the forum guidelines. Nothing else.

Mine has just arrived!! I will open the package in exactly 5 minutes at 2:22 and then let you all know what I think.

Title: God as Architect/Builder/Geometer/Craftsman From: The Frontispiece of Bible Moralisee Style: Gothic Date: mid-13th C. Location: France Codex Vindobonensis 2554 (French, ca. 1250), in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. Famously used as the first color illustration to Benoit B. Mandelbrot's The Fractal Geometry of Nature... ...but of course "God is a geometer" was proclaimed much earlier, by Plato, in a dialog with Aristotle.

Here's a cartoon in its entirety, it's from the 70s, Russian (don't worry, there's no words), and one of my all-time favorites. http://www.youtube.c...h?v=yrRIsxcWRwg Illustrate "She does not compete, and therefore no one can compete with her." (Laozi)

"An ancient text, The Spring and Autumn Annals, states that in mythic times a great flood covered much of China. Stagnant waters produced widespread disease. The legendary shaman-emperor Yu cleared the land and diverted the waters into rivers by dancing a bear dance and invoking the mystical power of the Big Dipper Constellation. As the waters subsided, people reasoned that movement and exercise can similarly cause the internal rivers to flow more smoothly, clearing the meridians of obstructions to health. Qigong-like exercises are found on ancient rock art panels throughout China. Chinese shamans used these exercises and meditations to commune with nature and natural forces and to increase their powers of healing and divination." (copied from Ken Cohen's site) You can read up a bit more on that in Eva Wong's "The Shambala Guide to Taoism."

In very old martial sets, there's moves named not even after animals but after natural phenomena -- e.g. Level Clouds Slice the Peak (which I think is an open-palm blow to the Great Yang points on the temples) or Yellow River Breaks its Banks (no clue what that entails but sounds quite disastrous ) -- so it's not limited to qigong, it's all over the place. If you think of taoism as a living entity with "roots," and the "roots" are of course shamanic, it's easy to understand why one can travel back and forth between taoism and shamanism like sap travels up and down the tree trunk. Any system with no shamanic roots is a tree cut off from its roots -- in wuxing terms, "dead wood" (symbolized aptly by, e.g., a wooden cross stuck into the ground.)

Light finds there's no clock in the Forbidden City. The hour of the Owl!

Let alone count? Where is there time to think, Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind, German tanks break through

Life's surprises, joy, the smell of green dollar bills, ATM fragrance.

Now, there is no now, there's only meow, meow, meow, meow -- hungry cats' real time

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Yes. This one.

Good luck "approximately" not placing your bed on a Killer Line.