DynamicEquilibrium

From Yinyang five elements point of view, it is possible that a complicated arrangement of elements prevents you in the way towards the positive and healthy developement of your life. To tell more by taoist counselling require first to do a complete and thorough diagnosis and analysis of your individual inborn nature's structure before saying anything about the possible underlying reasons behind the problems in your life, and from there to begin to define tailor made solutions.

If efficiency in real fight situations isn't the purpose of one's practice, it won't work for it that's for sure. Another purpose doesn't makes it less real, an excuse or BS, but you are right, it's easy to believe doing one thing when actually doing another, what is BS IMO is when Taiijquan is sold as an effective martial arts whitout even just light free sparring included in the training regimen.

If we agree about the concept of individuality and that people have an inborn individual nature, then these traditionnal cultural heritages can serve as a common soil to support any unique tree in the vast human forest to reconstruct its own set of values and principles according to its inborn caracteristics, Xing and Ming. To me its very tricky, because if some natural principles are missed in the edification of individual ethics, it could change into absolute individual morals and rules enforced at the detriment of absolute common principles, so maybe no matter what someone practice, she or he is the one practicing it with her or his own content.

Very clear, thank you. Coming to Taijiquan from other martial arts background, i can say this is a common point to make these arts applicable in real situations. You point to an important and difficult problem, body/mind integration. It's so easy for theoretical concepts to stay stuck somewhere away from the body in the virtual space operated by our minds, even to make a set of 8 or 9 simple principles being clearly expressed by the movements is really not that easy. Same wishes to you on this infinite path.

Thank you for offering another perspective, how about Taijiquan being one of the practical methods to return to Taiji by the ways of Quan? There are sayings like "拳道不二 and 道拳同源 "Boxing and Tao are not two" and "Tao and Boxing have the same origin" something like that. I know i'm biased since what i'm trying my best to learn and practice is Quan taking advantage of the Taiji theory by embodying it, but of course any different point of view adds to the reconstruction of a wider picture.

Taiji means the state were Yinyang are about to differentiate but not yet, so if the practice cannot demonstrate a clear integration of opposites, there would be no Taiji in it, making it something else with a different purpose than the integration of opposites into a dynamic state of balance. Calling this something else "Taijiquan for such and such" is ok, perfectly fine, but from the above point of view it would remain a name whithout content if it fails to demonstrate the core theory of Taiji belonging to the wider subject of a "science of peace". According to the Taiji theory logic, "taijiquan for self-defense" makes no sense because where there is really a Taiji there are no opponents, if there is an opponent that means Taiji already differentiated into Yin and Yang and for some reasons one attacks the other, but yes martial arts can teach how to recognize and avoid dangerous situations and how to improve our self-control abilities to make better decisions in the struggle to maintain this dynamic state of balance, if that's what we are looking for of course. PS: just a point of view

No, from my own experience, when i was younger i used to travel back and forth to china to do static and dynamic exercices in my teacher's living room somewhere in Shanxi, during the weekends other students were coming to practice Tuishou and Sanshou in the backyard. Of course nothing is really coming to the melting point of metal. The point is how the mind affects the body and vice-versa? Through which interface ? And why doing something everyday to take control over various switches? For which purposes? At some point any of these practices will affect directly the psycho-behavioural patterns of an individual, so learning before doing anything might be safer than a leap of faith on a coin flip. Who wants to repeat the same mistakes over and over again and wrongly take it for a real knowledge and skills acquisition process when actually it's just some 'uncontrolled mouvements'? In a kung-fu movie the sword master tells his students "Think first before you move", really this is a verry good advice to prevent and avoid a lot of problems or to make those already existing worse.

https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/the-voices-of-sun-lutangs-teachers/ Part 1 of chapter 4 could be a good read.

Agree. We both know that subjectivity will always blur our conclusions, so how to come to the final one ? Some branches of martial arts still have Yijinjing embbeded in their fundamentals, at one point tendons feels like red hot steel wires and the bone marrow like boiling congee, later everything melts and the body seems like being filled with lead, yet extremely light and nimble with a feeling of deep comfort and peace. In application a natural side effect of such fundamental practice was also no holding or hurry in the breath, but whithout any breathwork involved anywhere along the process.

So opposite to: In my opinion, a scientific approach to learning, research and practice has to be rooted in the ability to constantly challenge one's own point of views, otherwise we would just be carving dogmas in the stone of our minds.

By such logic, it would mean that reversely the nervous system do not affect the breathing system in any ways right ?

So from your point of view intentional modifications of the natural breathing patterns do not affect the nervous system in any ways? Sorry to insist, just want to make sure i got your answer right.

Do you mean that to regulate or to control breathing has no effects on the nervous system ?

How do you prevent and avoid any autonomous nervous system disorders (走火入魔) to arise from your breathing practice ?

From another interpretation 'mountain skills' refers to any kind of natural environements and how to live there without external support. From the same interpretation, taoist psychosomatic practices should at least lead to the minimum consuming of energy by the body/mind system for better results, so going to live in the nature by oneself for some times is a good way to check the progess in real situation, but Qigong, Taichi, neidan etc may certainly not be enough without all the related knowlege and skills needed to live by oneself in the 'mountain'. Once again from the same interpretation, 'Mountain skills' always means something done by oneself to solve the problems of one's own life, so quite different than a passive treatment, healing, adjustment, repair etc done by someone else you pay to do it for you, but of course if someone is sick, depressed or is facing a water leak in her or his house it would be foolish to not seek medical, psychological or plumbing support from the other category of 'medecine'. The question is what should be the ratio between by oneself only and through external support since nobody can live completly detached and independently from the big network of Life. Another question is how to notice our own problems and what to do to solve them? The goals in our lineage are very low, higher spiritual goals are really too vague for us, we don't understand and we are so stupid that we only take Taoism as a traditional problem solving tool to live a better, more meaningful, valuable and sustainable life amongst our families and friends so that when the time comes we can go to a cave in the 'mountain' to 'close the door and fly away' without any regrets in our hearts.