Taomeow

Well... creation is a complicated matter for the likes of us (yes, this can happen to women too ) but you already know it. What is it you want to create? for some of the arts I might have a practical method in mind, for others, some generic guidelines (e.g., don't create what depletes your main wuxing phase... I'd offer a 4P reading to specify but I already promised someone and keep delaying, made myself busy getting into too many threads here -- see how we do this to ourselves? -- but a bit later, I might re-offer it.)

Steam, thanks for the pole-shaking videos! I just made a bamboo pole like that for myself, but haven't used it yet. (My cat, however, tried to use it by knocking it over from the corner where it's standing and onto my head. Luckily there was no serious damage, I'd have a hard time otherwise explaining in the ER that a cat hit me on the head with a stick.)

Apepch, "qi is a pattern of space-time configuration" means my understanding of what qi is. According to this understanding, very different from many more popular ones which I find incorrect, but fully corresponding to its descriptions found in the classics, it is not "force" and it is neither "normal" nor "suprenatural" because it is not "force" to begin with. Different types of qi used in taijiquan are well-delineated in taiji classics. You are describing what one of them, observed externally, looks like. I know of eighteen (there may be more though) and can use a few but not all of them, my own experience being limited, and then there's some I know of and know how they are generated theoretically but can't use them efficiently yet because I don't have enough experience to master this particular space-time configuration of my qi when doing hands-on taiji -- e.g., peng, the signature of Chen style (the specifically developed type of qi generating spiral forces, which makes practitioners of other styles with little experience misunderstand Chen due to either observing it from the outside without realizing what it is they're looking at, or practicing it themselves as an external art-- Steam, this, to your objections, you are talking of Chen as an external style, whereas in reality everything it shows on the surface is the outer manifestations of its spiraling peng-qi INSIDE -- and by the way, I stick with laojia because I cannot generate enough peng yet to practice xinjia as an internal art, and I'm not interested at all in surface taiji of any type... if the outer form doesn't connect to the movement of qi inside, it's an external art and will be useless against any hard MA -- which is absolutely the opposite case scenario for taiji done with this internal connection.) Anyway, I digress... Try finding Songs of Taiji online -- if you don't I'll look them up and post what I'm referring to.

Reading comprehension is another useful skill to develop, my friend. Those familiar with my style (of writing, not of taiji) might know I like to use metaphors on a fairly regular basis. This is the first time I have to explain a metaphor -- and it's worse than explaining a joke because the punch line of a metaphor is obtained via aesthetic sense, more elusive than a sense of humor and more subjective -- but I'll have to try. The form demoed is commonly known to Chen practitioners and observers as Cannon Fist. The name of the form itself is thus a metaphor. No cannons are used in reality, and fists don't turn into cannonballs, but the explosive nature of the art has caused its creators to give it this metaphorical name. Following their line of imagery, I used another image along the same lines so as to enrich my writing style -- cannonballs of qi. This was hoped to be appreciated as apt, not taken literally. As for "stop feeding your fantasies" -- besides this being an order (and I don't follow orders except at gunpoint), it is authoritative without authority to back it up. My understanding of qi is my own business, as is your understanding of metaphors which I can't order you to develop, much as I wished you had it. Anyone else who thought "cannonballs of qi" refer to a fantasy of mine, please rest assured they don't. No cannonballs. Just qi and its immediately perceived expressions and impressions (NB -- these are not qi, anymore than love of chocolate is chocolate), transformed into a written image out of a sense of metaphoric similarity, a ganying of images, so to speak. (Please nobody start explaining to me what ganying is and isn't now, OK? )

This is fun, bums, thanks for guessing! keep guessing... By the way, try to guess someone more mysterious. In Moscow, I lived at my friend's place (someone who was my best friend and roommate in college) which is located waaaaay far from where the seminar was taking place -- three different subway lines away and a long walk to and from besides that, and the weather was nasty, I'm a Californian shrinking violet not the Siberian husky I used to be by now, and driving in Moscow is the craziest I've seen anywhere in the world and it is one of the most expensive cities in existence so I decided against renting a car -- so, two days of a miserable commute, then on the third day this guy shows up and starts talking to me after the practice and asking where I'm staying and, long story short, it's where he's going to so he offers a ride. And it turns out he doesn't merely live in the same direction or vicinity -- he lives in the same building my friend lives in. So he was giving me door-to-door rides that were zero trouble for him for the rest of the seminar. Now then. The number of participants at the seminar was 45. The population of Moscow is 14 million. What are the odds that two random people from the seminar, one of them a resident of another country, will wind up living in the same house by sheer chance?..

I didn't make a peep about anything "magical" -- why did you assume that? I meant a combo of speed arising from slowness the way motion arises from stillness, alignment of a single-unit, thoroughly connected body expressing outward into all its parts simultaneously, flow, congruence and explosive softness that come together to make Chen Bing's qi. What do you think qi is -- "magic energy?" I don't think so. Qi is a pattern of space-time configuration. A harmonious pattern usually produces a harmonious sound, whether audible to the human ear or not. You mean you don't hear anything but the feet?.. Really?..

watch closely witch, witch closely watch... why am I stammering? -- yes, many from his feet, but listen closely... some are from his sleeves and his pant legs. During the workshop, it was the shooting pants that especially blew everyone's mind!

Here's the Chen Village style xinjia erlu, aka cannonfist, performed by Chen Bing. He did a workshop at our school a couple of years ago. The sound you hear in the video -- that's his clothes shooting off cannonballs of qi (no, qi is not "energy," just to reiterate for whoever hasn't heard this mantra of mine ) In a completely open and windy environment it's still loud enough to wonder if it's a special effect like they do in the movies -- it isn't, and in our small gym it was deafening! (Mouse, don't bother watching, I already know... Chen Chen Village style is the direct opposite of what you believe taiji "should" be like.) 9sXCoIox2TE

We're talking apples and oranges again. The smaller the jin the better if you want to do harm to an enemy, but not if you want to teach someone what it is and how to develop it. You don't start with the fine details in anything, you start with the bigger picture and then zoom in, and then zoom in more... You don't hide the power from the student you teach. You hide it from the enemy you fight. In my taiji class you're taught everything -- to hide, to display, to use short jin and long jin, to feel, to see, and of course to use whatever you like out of taiji's inexhaustible martial arsenal as a weapon. There's many ways to use a weapon. My personal favorite is the use of the opponent's strength vs. my own in the 100% to 0% proportion. I don't need fajin for that at all. I do fajin for bone health, not for fighting. If I were to want jin for fighting, the way you work on shortening it is lengthening your meditation -- ideally your taiji routine-based meditation -- if I go through my form in 15 minutes I will never have it, if I take an hour and 15 minutes for the same routine, every day, I'll have it in a year. We are taught how to use the routine itself as a standing-moving-standing-moving etc. meditation -- each and every position -- your tendons explode with short-wave jin by themselves if you do that... have you ever tried?..

Um... no. Merely substylistic differences between xinjia and laojia, younger practitioner and older, the same practitioner in different moods, and so on. It's all one snake. The snake can reveal itself or conceal itself, it's still the same power -- it's either there or it isn't, and how much someone wants to make graphic for a student to see has nothing to do with how powerful it is. Xinjia reveals it all, doesn't become less powerful. Laojia conceals much though not all of it, doesn't become less powerful. Yang style conceals more than laojia. Which may be the root of much misinterpretations out there -- 95% of all taiji in this country is Yang, we chensters are always misunderstood. The Chens started teaching to the public only some 30 years ago, and in this country, less than that, so most Americans with some "tai chee" don't understand Chen. They see good or great of immortal Chen and think it's bad Yang or something. My teacher once said that Yang is like a river flowing over a smooth bed of sand, and Chen is like a river flowing over a rocky bed, over rapids, sometimes cliffs, sometimes even waterfalls -- there will be sudden explosions all over the place, but that doesn't make the river any less powerful. Same flow, different river. OK, now lemme watch what you posted...

Guys, you can't ever tell empty force from a-very-good-fake-empty-force from a demo. It's like an orgasm -- easy to fake, but the fact doesn't mean the real thing doesn't exist. I pushed hands with an emptyforcer for four hours straight at one point, and it's another world. Can't be told, can only be experienced. I'll tell it as best I can though... at least a few things that happen when you're up against the real thing: 1. Cognitive dissonance. You touch him/her (OK, I'll stick with "him" because it indeed was a he in this case), you look at him, you see him, you see your hands touching him, but you can't feel him. There's nothing there. You push against this nothing and it's still nothing. You break the contact, you reestablish contact, it's all the same -- you're touching air, nothing there, but all the while your eyes are registering his physical presence, your ears, his words or laughter... and your hands and your body, nothing. You start going slightly bananas from this. 2. Gravitational confusion. All of a sudden you feel as though you've stepped on ice -- solid ground under your feet turns slippery, you slide uncontrollably and you don't feel as though you've been pushed or lost your balance, you feel as though all traction disappeared between your feet and the earth. 3. Kinesthetic illusions. You suddenly go flying when you thought you just redistributed your weight between your left foot and right, because somehow he did something that caused you to redistribute all your weight into your head instead of into your right foot. 4. and on and on, the rest I don't know how to put into words but it's every bit as weird. 5. and things that DON'T happen: electric "qi sensations," jolts, stabs, jerks, smacks, cracks, crackle-pops.

Yup, it's the Red Phoenix, and many found they can't handle it, but then, many found they can't handle kunlun without the Red Phoenix either. And kunlun is a downward flow. I used to believe what BKF asserts -- that a downward flow is safe vs. the upward. I don't believe it anymore. I believe what I posted in my first ("epic" LOL) entry re my first kunlun seminar: "there's efficient practices and there's safe practices, but a practice that is both safe AND efficient doesn't exist." However, the ones that start with the upper brain before the lower brain and the body are ready are among the most dangerous ones. I loved the Red Phoenix, by the way, and asked Max if I can intensify it with full lotus, which he OK-ed... it's sublime this way. But then, I had my dark-night yada yada long before, by way of other methods, and resolved that, so there were no obstructions whatsoever with either kunlun or RP.

That was pretty interesting, thanks. One quick note -- the Chens of the taiji clan outside Chen village branched out to Beijing some of them, and one of the more famous ones among those was actually a Hong -- Hong Jungsheng who taught one of the Four Tigers. (There was a long maoist period when taiji went underground, and its 20th century story is every bit as convoluted -- maybe more so -- as that of its prior centuries, with many distortions introduced on purpose. Researchers who repeat maoist "denouncings" of historical figures as "myths" on a firm foundation of Communist Scientific Materialism without thinking twice ought to be ashamed of themselves...) Many of the top chensters live abroad today, but some are still in Beijing and some, in Chen village. My teacher studied with them both in Beijing and in Chen village, and the substyles of the two places are different, and differences apply to both laojia and xinjia (another misleading label, by the way -- xinjia is not "new" anymore than laojia is!) But at his current level, after 45 years of taiji, there's a distinct flavor to his art that is his own and no one else's. However, he asserts that if he wanted to actually change something in the way it is done beyond sheer flavor, he would have to create a new taiji style (in fact he did, a couple of them, but if he decides to make them public and official he won't name them after anyone but himself) because neither he, nor any other authentic master, can modify a style without losing face if he is not a blood relative -- lineage is not enough to take these liberties, you have to be a son or daughter or uncle or else you're an usurper, traditionally. And "no lineage" and "not interested in lineage" "styles" are not taiji at all... whatever it is may be awesome but it's something else.

Laozi is right, as usual. Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. And those who know and still speak... well... the best they can do is regret having spoken, and delete. ^^ - - ...../ /..... / \\ \\

After several years of this kind of discussions on taijiquan forums, with arguments and counterarguments, sources and countersources, haha and haha yourself and so on, I don't pick them up anymore, sorry. I will take Chen Zhenglei and Chen Xiaowang's (both regularly do workshops hosted by my teacher) and Chen Bing's (who did once too) word for it instead because I don't much care but someone who embodies taiji seldom strikes me as a fantacising dufus or a self-serving liar, unlike many who embody armchair research. And mouse, we're talking apples and oranges... or is it cheese and mice?..

Thank you, Immortal Sister! Which one are you though, been wondering -- not Sun Bu-er by any chance? She's my favorite! because if I ever do this immortality thingie I've been meaning to do I'll have to do it her way... your way?..

ok, sorry I misunderstood and send some good vibes my way please 'cause I left mine across the continent and in a house under renovation at that... no wait, there's a maoshan mudra Max teaches to retrieve lost objects... gotta try that

It's part of a wuxing-based routine that is part of lingbao bifa that is part of what I was told not to tell ...This is not water-fire but a snapshot of a water-wood-fire-earth-metal sequence.

^^ - - ...../ /..... / \\ \\

^^ - - ...../ /..... / \\ \\

Right, yin is the pull! yang, being expansive in its nature, tends to dissipate into naught unless there's the pull of yin to concentrate, condense, and contain it -- which is what actually creating something rather than being creative in one's head is all about. As to the chromosomes -- well, yes, one needs the other half in order to manifest something new (which was my original point -- male chromosomes provide variety, novelty, i.e. modulate life, make it more interesting to itself, so to speak), but if you simply double up the chromosomes of the ovum (parthenogenesis) you do have all the machinery to get a new live organism -- I don't mean you personally, I mean a woman does -- which however will be "more of the same," a copy of the mother. You can't copy the father this way though because the machinery isn't there to develop the fetus. So was my paternal grandmother.

of course, but I was talking about who creates babies specifically, who creates life, and yang is present in the process universally -- once there's four cells after the the second division, the fourth one will rotate on top of the other three, forming a pyramid, and that's a yang move right there -- but sperm is optional, it does sound crazy but it is a theoretical fact of biology with hard empirical evidence for at least the less complex species than ours and nothing but current limitations of technology that are theoretically non-prohibitive stands in the way of doing it this way in our species too. On the other hand, estrogen is a metabolite of testosterone, strictly the next metabolic step the human body takes in its transformations -- which might explain the hardwired inequality in the brain functions of sexes -- women have more of the actual material that constitutes the next -- i.e. "advanced" in the true biological sense of the word -- step in the evolution of sexual distinctions in the species. (Men have some estrogen too of course.) However, conversions of estrogen back into testosterone also happen in the woman's body, levels fluctuate (being the lowest right before the period, at which time, Witch, you would be as good as the best men with spacial math tasks, since it is the estrogen that suppresses spacial orientation in women, on evolution's purpose -- making sure we don't run away from hubby and children for fear of getting lost! while men, who had to go out and far to bring home the meat, must express rather than suppress this ability... hence your Ivy Leage frustrations... my mom who went to the Russian equivalent of an Ivy Leage school complained of the same thing, that she was better at all of math except stereometry than her male peers... but that's merely the legacy of our natural hunter-gatherer specialization.) In the classical taoism yang inspires and yin manifests (nevermind Wilhelm's translation of "the Creative" and "the Receptive" repeated by many since, he was generally peculiar in his approach in that everywhere the I Ching has "person" in the original, a word that is gender-neutral in Chinese, he translated it as "man.") Yang is the spirit, yin is the embodiment. Yang is the idea, yin is the application. If you look at the Circular I Ching diagram, you can see they arise simultaneously (shaoyin and shaoyang) from wuji, which in its turn is neither. The primal mother is neither yin nor yang... but contains the potentials of both. She is mother rather than father though because she is ovum-like, symbolized by a circle, a zero, or a "cosmic egg" in pretty much all ancient cultures besides taoism, not snake-like with a little tail like a sperm. Snake-like, male, comes later; egg-like, female, is primordial. Why men started taking offense at the idea and coming up with all-male creator arrangements like the happy gay family of Father, Son and Holy Ghost but no Mother in the picture is something I could hardly wrap my lil'brain around...

No problem. Here goes: I know my teacher's lineage because it is meticulously documented and his teacher endorsed him to transmit the art with a personal signature, the way it is traditionally done, generation after generation, so not just any "practitioner" or "student" of a master can claim he or she "embodies the art" but the one who the teacher says does. You can find this document on his website. Where can I take a look at this kind of endorsement of Sifu Mizner? Li Deyin was President of China's Wushu Federation from before and till after China "opened up," so he was not making claims but rather occupying the official post of a decision-maker in this matter. Zhang Sanfeng is "grey area" to taiji outsiders but not to residents of Chen village who all know who is related to whom. Now the disagreement part... hey, are we playing cat and mouse? you're one brave mouse! "The ability to mobilize jin from a dead halt" and "authentic taiji" have as much in common as "the ability to sneeze" and "authentic fire-breathing dragon." The video I posted was a sample lesson, not a sample of "abilities." The lesson was "fajin." Fajin is authentic at all distances when it's authentic. True that an inch-long release is far deadlier than a foot-long release, but my teacher doesn't use that on his students and no one could demo a technique for this in a video without cheating. I've experienced it though. I am not sure a millimeter-long jin (your "dead halt") or an even shorter one will ever be shown to me by anyone till I'm ready. (I asked two of Wang Liping's senior students and a few of their students, when they were fooling around with electroshocking each other across the room, to show me hands-on what they were doing, and they refused, explaining that they don't know me well enough to know what it might do to me. I can assure you they weren't putting on a performance for my benefit -- I was the only outsider there and walked in when they were already at it. Any responsible high level master would put a very short fajin on hold this way till the student is ready. Useless and dangerous otherwise.)

The climate is not what it used to be, but when it was hotter and the oceans were saltier, it happened -- Australian aborigines assert that's how they were born for the bulk of their history. Whether they're telling the truth I don't know, all I'm saying is, nothing in our biological state stands in the way of this being physiologically possible, whereas nothing in our biology supports the possibility of men being able to beget life without women. Exactly, if in the category of "women" you include "mother nature" or as Laozi puts it, The Great Mother of All Things. Personal example: my daughter did everything she could to be different from me -- I'm a fairly strong influence and she sensed early on that if she doesn't resist all she can become would be a copy of me, and she wasn't interested. Whereas my son, who by virtue of being a being of a different gender was at no risk of turning into a copy of me never had a problem learning from me -- it was safe for him because he would be different enough by default. (As one result, he knows and follows things taoist to a much greater extent than does his sister. ) Very useful for knocking the socks off certain followers of certain doctrines but not entirely safe... proceed at your own risk!

What is your personal experience with taiji, mouse? Who is your teacher and what is his/her lineage? My teacher's teachers in Chen village trace theirs to Zhang Sanfeng, the inventor of taiji. His other teachers are all in the "top ten taiji masters of the world" category and his main one, Li Deyin, is THE guy who actually made taiji available to the world outside China. If the way these people do their taiji is not authentic enough for you, what is?.. Please share.