PLB

The stepping in the following video is very Yang style: Lots of gong fu here.

GreytoWhite, I found the the Liehue Quan video to be very interesting and helpful. The student in the video is obviously accomplished. Seeing the slight difference between him and the teacher is a great lesson in what can happen simultaneously. The style reminds me a lot of the aspects of the Dong family fajin form I am struggling to learn: the slower gathering and the quick release. Also the grounding of the downward strikes. When I push or spar, it seems to me the slow and the fast are both happening together; sometimes handing off something to the other, sometimes oddly knitted together like two different lines of progression that come together as a surprise. The most irresistable pushes I have received were almost leisurely in their expansion. The fast thing wasn't necessary right then. But it was right there. Not behind but side by side. That has become my model.

Negativity sucks, for sure. You are inclined to reject assurances that those experiences are a part of necessary process. I get that rejection and do not wish to struggle against your inclination. But you are the one who posed the question in the context of an obstacle you were hoping to get around. If you are all good to go with an answer for yourself, what are you actually asking?

One element I remind myself of often is how the time things take to happen has different kinds of consequences. At one end of the scale is the emergency that requires the quickest response. Life hangs in the balance. At the other end of the scale is the way decisions bring about results that won't appear for many years in this life or even after it is done. What I love about the practice is that it knits those two ends together. It changes things.

Manitou, I don't look at it exactly the way you do. I have this sensation and am more certain about it than how it fits in with other things But I totally get the meaning of: Thank you for your good listening and clear response.

One thing being grateful does is that it connects all these disparate and despearate moments in a way that is far beyond my ability to express or repair. I want to say thanks to many who would not welcome the expression, can't accept the message because they are dead, or would not think that is what I was actually saying. There is an element to being thankful that is one's own alone. A part of accepting the connection is not having to have other people prove it for you. It is a kind of faith: Not in the sense that all will be made right and one's hopes secured; But in the sense that appreciation is connected to others in ways one has barely begun to understand.

It is not that slow. From the perspective of a martial art form designed to train skills in real time as a fighting routine, it is super slow and laughably inapplicable. From the perspective of a standing practice, the opening and closing is very fast in the "slow" form and challenges the practioner to keep up by changing quickly enough inside to complete the form. Fa Jin is the suddeness of the change coming about. That quickness is not just about how fast you change position in space but something else. If you have had the oppurtunity to push with someone who is really fast, their changes and how fast they are is something you feel as the slower person. They aren't simply doing the same things you are doing at a faster pace. They are doing less than you are and finish sooner.

Something like that could work. It is worth a try.

How about: "Various things people want to talk about and this space is a good place to do that because nobody is calling what is talked about here a topic of conversation, per se." Okay. It is a bit wordy. How about: "Without Qualification." That captures some of it but the negativity ot the without is a turn off to those who do want to qualify, make distinctions, and maybe even argue with other people. I am hungry. I am going to cook something now. Oh, but my sudden impulse to completely abandon the discussion to satisfy my own personal needs gives me another idea: We could not call it anything. It would just be this blank space. And people would be saying stuff there.

Why can't I have dream experiences like that? In my dreams, I am never able to navigate from one place to the next and the humaniod creatures i encounter tell me: "Get a job"

All the real fighting I have done in my life, the kind that leaves one person standing and the other guy lying down, happened way before I found about tai chi chuan. So I have pushed and sparred with people but fortunately have not had to put the matter to the ultimate test. I know the art has made me very dangerous. But I also know people who could dismantle me while flossing their teeth. Accepting the martial core of the teaching has a lot to do with surviving. My teachers, very different in what they showed and trained, mostly said the same kind of things: "This might keep you alive."

One way to look at it is that knowing what is about to happen often has the sensation of being an experience that is being repeated. When using the I Ching to divine what to expect, the connection to the message is dependent upon parallel processes. The toss of the yarrow happens together with many other tosses made without looking at a book, or knowing what was written. That is not a metaphor but a simple acknowlegement of all those choices made when we are not sure what will happen next, The enquiry that would look to the future happens in a context of many elements moving together. The line between asking and demanding is an important boundary in the matter of knowing what to expect. It is not like asking what will happen no matter what. The multiplicity of different possibilities is expressed as the "ten thousand things" It is a large number. The mind (mine anyway) cannot hope to know how those things were all generated from smaller sets of changes. But ten thousand is finite. Beyond the capacity of the mind but not as out of proportion to the real as measuring items against infinity. Infinity makes everything equal to everything else. Once one accepts that the elements involved are just these incredibly large number of things, life is different. Not quite within reach but no longer an act of existential futility to bend toward them.

Keep at it. Don't try so hard.

The feelings of disassociation you describe could come from so many conditions. If I were you, I would consider the medical element. There are "qigong sickness" possibilities. As beyonder asked, what are you practicing daily?

I am about half way through the book. The author is on a campaign to take the kwa out of the region of taboo and that is a good thing. The different documents and videos he links to on the web are helpful and look into a broad spectrum of different practices. It is a kind of book that should only be purchased if you can read it with a web connection. What he has to say is always built on talking after one listens to someone else. I think the book is worthwhile but it is not the work of an original voice.

The separation of energies; that there are these different shapes to be experienced; that is what Taoism is for me now. If I get any better at that, Taoism will change to the next thing I can't do yet.

You should have a teacher if you can find one. Look for one but don't wait to start until that works out. Life is short. Maybe it won't be just one teacher. There is nothing about being "here" that is grounds for acceptance or denial. It is an internet forum, not a school. There are sharp differences of what "we" practice here. I don't share a lot of the points of view I read here. But I am really glad there is a place to listen to them. It is odd that you would combine the two questions you ask. One is completely about yourself and the other about people you have never met and most likely never will. If what you want is to find a completely authentic vessel of a centuries old process of practice and analysis then i get that; I want that too.

I practice because it is the only thing worth doing without qualification. I don't disagree with your remonstrance, balance But it is only myself who gets its ass out of bed everyday to do this stuff. My song to myself is not an adequate explanation of the universe. Yes, I presume that I lacked for nothing in the first place. That is what is I am talking about.

Practice is like chasing a crazy girlfriend. Feel a connection one day and the next day it is gone; Not only gone but paved over like a highway that will never be travelled by anybody after this time looking for what was being looked for by going along there. Or maybe the thing will be there again. Purity of intention is also a leap of faith. There is just ourselves doing it. One by one.

My mother said I was born while she was being transferred from a bed to a gurney. The gurney was for taking her to the "delivery" room. The timing was off. The people there at the time had to adjust. I like to think of it as being born in mid-air. Before seeing this post, I never thought to include that information in my resume. I just get more employable all the time.

I am a pilgrim so there is only my journey. I want to understand more but there is only my body. I don't know what the body is, there is only my experience. My experience is not given to me but reveals itself to questions. I have resolved to always be a question and that is my practice. A connection between past and future that doesn't presume to understand the connection. I look up and see my brothers and sisters on the same path. We mostly disagree when we speak.Our eyes fixed on the things we look at. Words are not the problem but they aren't the solution either. I hope this makes some kind of sense.

Giving up everything to follow a guy around is pretty hard core. And to do it because you know somehow that is what you wanted to be asked to do is even more extreme. It is less a set of beliefs and more of a crash site. That place is avoided by most for good reason. It is dangerous and offers no obvious reason why it would benefit anybody despite the risk taken on to see the event through.. I have no idea how that practice relates to other traditions. What set of Venn diagrams will help? Maybe it is just what it is by itself; Incommensurate with anything else.

As my teacher likes to say: "two martial artists, three opinions."

Walking is great because nobody needs to know I am doing tai chi chuan while doing it. Sometimes I coordinate breathe, other times I just go tidal and let the waves crash where they may. The transition of substantial to insubstantial with each leg is very fast if you are going at any sort of pace. That was overwhelming for me at first but it has been getting a lot better. The best thing still seems pretty far away. When the practice opens up the body, the walking is more like swimming. These are just my experiences. I wouldn't know how to start an argument about it.

What if I wasn't in a position to differentiate? The thing I want is there. It doesn't care that I gave the animals names or wear shoes. It doesn't promise that I will understand the borderline between philosophy and psychology if I look for it. It waits for me as patiently if I approach it with nothing or pour out what is most precious to me. If I draw a circle, it is outside of its circumfrence. Noticing that doesn't tell me what the finger is doing drawing a circle. But the situation is telling me something.