GreytoWhite

Fighting without fighting - sounds like you should practice yoga. If you're going to practice fighting, you fight. The martial arts are just to program movement into your body so that when you do fight it is more effective and your body has a number of things to fall back on when shit hits the fan.

Welp, the mention of T Bone Burnett is enough to get me to watch it. Let's take a look.

It's part of the Stillness-Movement system's Gift of the Tao neigong. Sequential energy center activation, balancing, and dimensional expansion is what the acronym represents. There are far more qualified bums here that can tell you about it. http://store.qigongamerica.com/

I'm sure there are. China is far more culturally diverse than many of us give it credit. Not everyone does taiji or qigong in China, we have to remember that these are the lenses through which we who practice view the culture. I don't know how many Chinese I've met when asked about qigong, taiji, or gong fu will simply say, "My family didn't do that, you know more about it than I do."

You might like Systema.

Poor Non, at times I felt like he was channeling an earlier version of myself.

Trauma.

Mainly to straighten my spine and become a more stable but still emotionally free person.

The CCTV matches where one style fights another are rigged and most of the Muay Thai fights are not against top tier Muay Thai fighters. CCTV is a great propaganda tool for how great China is. Take these videos with a grain of salt.

I don't ever post about it simply because of the danger. Bad enough that these energetic practices are freely available for someone to read and mispractice - worse to empower someone untrained and perhaps unscrupulous who could cause much harm to themselves and those around them.

For those interested in video instruction PlumPub has been an excellent resource for many things martially Chinese. They also have some free videos that are a bit buried on their site. 12 Road Tan Tui http://www.plumpub.com/kaimen/2011/video-tutorial-12-road-tan-tui-1/ Staff Work http://www.plumpub.com/kaimen/all-things-staff/

If the Mexican judo comment flew over anyone's head. "Come on ese let's do this, I know karate." "Tha's OK, I know Mexican judo." "Mexican judo?" "Judo know if I got a gun, judo know if I got a knife..." I learned some aikido as a kid and the truly valuable stuff I took away from it were rolls, and knife/sword/staff work. I think there is a lot in the training of weapons in aikido that relates directly to martial neigong. Revisiting the "warm ups" and weapons work of aikido after learning some taiji - I can definitely see where the internal aspect of the art lies.

Yiquan

The weapons part is the worst, you must always remember that I know Mexican judo.

Trees in the Phoenix metro are some of the angriest creatures I have ever encountered.

The last time I ended up talking to someone who did martial arts we smoked some cigarettes, smoked a bowl, demo'd some forms and then had a full on kung fu brawl in a strip mall parking lot. http://www.azcorrections.gov/Inmate_datasearch/results_Minh.aspx?InmateNumber=152164&LastName=ZOTIGH&FNMI=L&SearchType=SearchInet&ReportLength=TOP_5

Kuzushi on contact.

I was just providing an alternate perspective and something that's a little different than lone standing. I also practice zhan zhuang in a solitary manner and find that it is extremely valuable to hold more "generic" postures to explore potential movements and aspects of unified movement.

The Chen village peeps didn't practice zhan zhuang until Feng Zhiqiang came to town. There is a practice of taiji zhuang which I was taught and in some lineages they'll call it "stance loading." First hold a posture from the taiji form in stillness. The teacher should then check the structure of your stance somewhat similar to what is being done at about 2:10 below. Once the stance has been checked for "leaks" the teacher should then start applying pressure in a slow, and directional manner into various parts of the person's body. After the teacher feels that the structure is sufficient with pressure then they will have you move into the next stance. Stance transition is important in taiji because that's where the jin lies. Eventually there isn't transition to another stance but rather the teacher will have the student hold stance under pressure and just tell them to apply jin.

Where did you find that picture of me practicing? I wish I could find the video of a Yiquan master that had been holding chengbao stance for four hours with his arms while walking around - one of his students brought him a cigarette at one point in the video. He then switched to shi li so he could smoke. Whenever someone asks me why I still smoke and practice my only response is, "I learned three styles of kung fu in two different cigar shops, never stopped me before." Although I have cut back from a pack a day to a pack a week, trying to get to that no cigarettes at all stage but life... is stressful.

I haven't regularly played chess since I was a child. I had asthma quite badly and had to be indoors for recess most days. I ended up sitting through most lunches with my science teacher playing chess - I despise the game now. I was rated 1600 with little to no application of myself to the game. If you find it mentally stressful then get out for a walk afterward.

Aye, strength training will be found throughout the martial arts, it's just a matter of training without the extreme localization that modern body building lauds.

I won't even do that to myself much less anyone else. Electric clippers are scary enough in some areas but razor blades... yeesh.

I'm OK with a woman that doesn't shave, I rarely do.

-How long have you been practicing? Almost five years now. Is it a daily practice? (Does it have to be?) Yes on both accounts but not everyone is disciplined enough. How much time do you dedicate per day? Including martial form practice perhaps an hour. There are tons of benefits, just look at this thread. http://thetaobums.com/topic/20672-living-proof-that-qigong-works/