dwai

Get the Classics book. It is more than well worth it's weight in gold and will reveal different things to you, as you read it in different stages of your tai chi journey (one that never ends btw).

In Temple-style tai chi, we do mainly single form practice. Upward downward, over and over. Inward outward, over and over. Raised hand stance, taiji stance, ward off, roll back, press, push and so on. Each form is drilled over and over, on both sides. This acts as qigong, neigong, daogong and shengong. And also is used to implement martially. For that we practice the energies and flow, timing, structure, body-placement etc in push hands, and then eventually in free-form push hands and finally in sparring. This is, imho, the best way to learn tai chi. The idea is to understand the physiological as well as energetic mechanics of each form (so when we do the forms, we are feeling everything as a well integrated whole). Then we start tying a combination of these forms together into a short form (like grasp sparrow's tail) or even the long form (our long form looks a lot like CMC's long form). With the long form, the idea is that we can take the integrated feeling of single forms and continue it from one form to another, in a single continuous flow of energy. The long form too, we do in both left and right side.

Ling Kong Jin is real. Very few people who make it real share this stuff on Youtube however So Steve/starjumper, thanks for sharing... My friends and I play with it a bit on and off. It drains a lot to do so. Strangely enough, the body of the person getting "moved" seems to react in opposite direction of where the intent of the "mover" is in many cases. Our inference is that our Jin is kicking in and countering the energetic intention being projected by the mover. I saw my Master do this in a seminar 2 years back. He had one of us standing in the middle of a circle (of people) and he stood outside it. Without touching the other guy, he made him fall down. The explanation was that we can send our "spiritual mind" (Shen) into the other person and they will do everything they can to get it out, as a result wearing themselves down. That is the passive way. The active way is to put your shen into the other person and literally will them to drop to the ground, etc. Before we can get to this stage, we can play with ling kong jin and before that, play with issuing the power via lightest of touches from the finger tips only...

The direct method is to ask the question - "who is having this thought?" the answer comes back "I am" next question - "who am I?" Every thought that rises should be treated with the "who am I?" answer... try this for a few weeks and see what happens... afterwards ask the question "who am I?" and trace back to the source of that question itself...

Oh haha...I didn't realize i had typed "marital" instead of "martial" (freudian slip much?)

What other way is there to get good at something?

At the highest level taiji is Dao gong and Shen gong. It's lowest form is martial

Reminds of the Pink Floyd song - Brian Damage

Dao ke Dao fei chang Dao?

While Tai Chi is not a bastardization of Daoism, I can tell you that "Chai Tea" sure is a bastardization of Tea and Chai. Chai means Tea in Indian languages, Tea means Chai in English. So Chai Tea is the self-bastardizing entity of Tea and Tea or Chai and Chai

I feel it more like "expand"

And you can already bounce the hawk when it does pounce! Duck - Lu Bounce on the Pounce - Peng Drill - Zuan (XingYi) or Ji (Taiji) (I think they're the same thing...though I've not felt drilling jin of XinYi, I have felt the press of Taiji) Handsaw - Ming Jin? (Just thought we can agonize mr trollstoy with some internal concepts)

Whereas when I see a hawk and hear a duck quack, I duck under the handsaw so the hawk does not squawk and pounce on me?

That made me laugh Dao is your bear cub? Dao doesn't need protection. Dao doesn't need anything. Dao is Dao... What you should do is just Be. As long as you have ideas of ownership over the Dao, you are just an ordinary man pretending to be a sage

You have some good ideas but by putting on that cantankerous facade you undo what those good ideas do. Since you have already unlearnt, why not just be? Yeah taiji is manifestation of the void. When people do taijiquan they are learning to not do, because doing is all we learn as humans. Most people don't get it. You don't get it either it seems Doing is artificial, thinking is artificial, mind is artificial. Better to just be, do without doing, know without knowing.

The problem with Science leading to enlightenment is that, "science" as we know it, predicates Matter upon Consciousness/Awareness. So long as consciousness is treated as being a property of matter, it cannot lead one to "enlightenment". Enlightenment essentially the cessation of identification with the body, mind or other objects and resting in Pure Awareness. The scientific method IS objectivity. You observe, study, measure, hypothesize theories based on observation and understand phenomena that rise and fall in your awareness. How can this method work with that which allows the method to exist in the first place?

Some things don't need to be publicized that way. One little example is here --

Sometimes we have to just "empty" their cup for them Haha my Master did it to many folks like that. Two fingers projecting someone several feet (> 200 lbs usually) in the air into a re-inforced wall (specially made to withstanding bodies slamming into them) will usually do the trick. And my Master weighs 120 lbs.. Mostly though, these cup-full folks never come back. Most profoundly impacted are those who think taijiquan is "woo woo" or don't believe in Qi or Jin. They get such a massive shock (cognitive dissonance) that they run away fast.

It's my experience that people do tend try too hard to "grow" a root in internal martial arts like Taijiquan. Root doesn't grow like that. Mind (not the same as Yi) and energy are actually opposite. So wherever the mind goes, the energy flows in the opposite direction (mind is substantial, energy is insubstantial in comparison). Crownpoint suspension feels like hanging from a point in the space above the crown point. The higher the crown point suspends (mind sort of pins the energetic connection from a point above the bai hui), the deeper the root. Yes, there has to be a release of "doing", and the doing we do in tai chi (at least how we practice it), is limited to letting the mind rest far away from where the energy is going/meant to go. If mind and energy overlap, it is called becoming double-heavy.

Richard Clear is very good and also very patient his taiji caliber shows in how he handled the young guy...

Wow! Yes!!! If mind is used too much, a heaviness sets. It feels very powerful, but is not a very good thing to cultivate. My Master told me that when that happens, it's best to distract the mind. Ask someone a question or look at something outside. I'll sometimes look at the birds in the backyard or the trees etc. Even a brief moment is enough to lighten the energy. The second is to maintain the crown point suspension. People obsess over developing the "root". However, real root happens when the crown is properly suspended. One cannot drive one's mind + energy through the feet deep into the ground and be healthy, imho. When the crown is suspended, a lightness of being develops and we don't feel any weight/heaviness at all. In my experience, we will keep refining and remembering these things, as over time, we tend to focus too deeply on specifics and forget about the basics. Although the foundations/basics do become ingrained, we still have revisit them from time to time and rediscover (progressively subtler but also progressively more intense) what these basics entail...

As I was reading through my teacher's notes recently, I came across this concept, which I thought I should share -- This comes back to the concept of Dao and De, and how De really is not different from Dao. If you connect with your De, you connect with Dao. Furthermore we are told, in Tai chi practice, we have to become aware of that which gives us the ability to think, feel, smell, taste, hear and see. Instead of focussing on the process of thinking, feeling, smelling, hearing, tasting or seeing, we should become aware of that which gives us the ability to do those things. That which gives us the ability to do all these things, is essentially empty, but full of potentiality. When we become aware of this "source", we are connected with the source of the universe too.

Neither is this life real, nor any we have in dreams. Only that which experiences both is real