Taiji fights

[Nungali]

27 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

 

I heard that one too. One version was that he let them all sort it out amongst themselves and he had a few drinks outside away from the mayhem, then came in after the fight was over, or something like that. 

 

There is (supposedly ) a rough red neck pub at a town nearby here , a lot of loggers and such .   One night I was going to go there as an out of area friend was passing though there and we where going to have drinks together .   Lady friend here goes "Oh , dont go, thats a really bad, rough pub."

 

So anyway, half way through the night there,  this idiot decides he is tough and starts mouthing off at this guy,the other  does it back  .... back and forwards ... so me and mate and some others joined in ;    " Boring ..... BOR - RING  !  If ya gonna fight do it .... shut the fuck up .... you are disturbing my drinking ....  etc "    So they go " Right then I will .... so will I ... step outside then  ... you're gonna get it . ... "

 

So we all go outside and these two idiots on the footpath are wildly swinging, slipping over, grabbing and pulling at each other to the cat calls of the audience "  Dont do that!  ... that was silly .... punch him properly ....  you fight like girls .... do you want me to show you how to do it   .... etc "

 

Effin hilarious !    

 

[Earl Grey]

31 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

There is (supposedly ) a rough red neck pub at a town nearby here , a lot of loggers and such .   One night I was going to go there as an out of area friend was passing though there and we where going to have drinks together .   Lady friend here goes "Oh , dont go, thats a really bad, rough pub."

 

So anyway, half way through the night there,  this idiot decides he is tough and starts mouthing off at this guy,the other  does it back  .... back and forwards ... so me and mate and some others joined in ;    " Boring ..... BOR - RING  !  If ya gonna fight do it .... shut the fuck up .... you are disturbing my drinking ....  etc "    So they go " Right then I will .... so will I ... step outside then  ... you're gonna get it . ... "

 

So we all go outside and these two idiots on the footpath are wildly swinging, slipping over, grabbing and pulling at each other to the cat calls of the audience "  Dont do that!  ... that was silly .... punch him properly ....  you fight like girls .... do you want me to show you how to do it   .... etc "

 

Effin hilarious !    

 

 

Here's one from my cousin when he moved to Wagga Wagga for six months. 

 

Some rednecks wanted to beat him up for being one of the four Asians in that town. He turns to them indifferently while at the bar counter and says, "Listen, you idiots: I'm the only trauma surgeon in town right now. You do anything to me, and the next time you get your dicks caught in your weed whacker, I'm not going to be there to fix you up. So get lost if you want someone to save you from your next inevitable screw-ups."

 

They listened and left him alone. 

[moment]

Good self defense, at its' higher levels (physical or otherwise), is like jazz.  Smooth improvisation, based on a lot of training.

Edited April 9, 2020 by moment

[gatito]

8 hours ago, moment said:

Good self defense, at its' higher levels (physical or otherwise), is like jazz.  Smooth improvisation, based on a lot of training.

 

 

And here's the true history of an event, which circulated between aikido cognoscenti by word-of-mouth.

 

Unfortunately, it seems to have been plagiarised by some Chinese Whisperers who don't actually grasp the significance of even their own versions and who are certainly unable to teach the core of this basic lesson to their students:

 

Quote

The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty, a few housewives and their kids, and I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty hedgerows. At one station the doors opened and suddenly the afternoon quite was shattered by a man bellowing violent incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car, he wore laborer’s clothing and was big, drunk and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby, and the blow sent her sprawling into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that the baby was unharmed! Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the end of the car. The laborer aimed a kick at the retreating back of the of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the middle of the car and tried to wrench it from its station. I could see that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. And as the train lurched ahead, it’s passengers frozen with fear, I stood up. I was young then, some 20 years ago, and in pretty good shape. I’d been putting in a solid eight hours of Aikido training nearly every day for the past three years. I liked to through and grapple, I thought I was tough. But, my marshal art skill was untested in actual combat. As students of Aikido we were not allowed to fight. I could hear my teacher’s words, “Aikido is the art of 1reconciliation, he who has the mind to fight has lost his connection with the Universe. If you try to dominate people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it.” The words kept going on, over and over in my mind. I tried hard I even went so far as to cross the street to avoid the “Chemperas”, the pinball punks who lounged in the train station. But my forbearance exalted me, I felt both tough and holy. In my heart however, I wanted an absolutely legitimate opportunity where by I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty. “THIS IS IT!” I said to myself, getting to my feet. “People are in danger and if I don’t do something fast they will probably get hurt.” Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized his chance to focus his rage. “Ah-Ha! A foreigner, you need to learn some Japanese manors!” I held on tightly to the commuters strap overhead and gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I PLANED TO TAKE THIS TURKEY APART! But! He had to make the first move. I wanted him bad, so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss. “All right, you’re gonna get a lesson!” he said as he gathered himself for a rush at me. In a split before he could move someone shouted, “HAY! HAY!” It was ear splitting, but I remember the strangely joyous lilting quality of it.2I wheeled to my left, and the drunk to his right, and we both stared down at a little old Japanese man well into his seventies; sitting there, immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me but beamed delightfully at the laborer as though he had a most important, most wonderful secret to share. “Come here! Come here! Come here and talk to me.” The big man followed as though he were on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman and roared above the clacking of the wheels, “Well why the hell should I talk to you anyway?!” The drunk now had his back to me, if his elbow moved so much as a millimeter I’d drop him in his socks! The old man continued to beam at the laborer, “Wat’cha been drink’n?”, he asked, his eyes sparkling. “I been drink’n Saki”, he said. Speckles of spittle spattered the old man. “Oh! That’s wonderful, simply wonderful! You see, I like Saki too, every night me and my wife, (she’s 76 you know) we warm up a little bottle of Saki and we take it out into the garden and we sit on the old wooden bench and we watch the sun go down, and we look to see how our Persimmon tree is doing, my great-grand father planted the tree and we worry about weather it will recover from the ice storms we had last year, our tree is doing better than I expected though, especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It’ s gratifying to watch when we take our little Saki and we go into the empty of the evening - even when it rains.” And he looked into the laborer’s eyes, his own eyes twinkling merrily. The drunk struggled to follow the old man’s monologue as he slowly began to soften and his fists began to unclench. “Ya, I love Persimmons too.” “Ya? And I’m sure you have a lovely wife too!” “No, my wife died.” And, very gently, slowing with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob. “I don’t got no wife, I don’t got no home, I don’t got no job, I’m so ashamed of my self.” And the tears rolled down his cheeks as a spasm of despair rippled through his big body. And now it was my turn, standing there in my well scrubbed youthful innocence; my “make this world right for Democracy” righteousness. I suddenly felt dirtier than he was. Then the train arrived at my stop and the doors opened. I heard the old man cluck sympathetically, Tish, Tish, Tish, Tish, Tish. “My, My, My. My, My, My. My, My, My. Very difficult predicament. My, My, My. You come here, you tell me all about it.” I turned my head for one last look as I stepped off the train. The laborer was sprawled on the seat, his head in the old man’s lap; the old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair: “My, My, My, My. You tell me all about it. Such a difficult predicament. You tell me........... “. As the train pulled away I sat down on a bench. What I had wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words. I had just seen Aikido used in combat and the essence of it was love. I would have to practice the art with an entirely different spirit from this day forward. It would be a long time before I could speak about the resolution of combat.

 

- True Story by Terry Dobson, the first American Aikido Master trained in Japan -

 

http://www.heartinspired.com/TerryDobson.pdf

 

 

This history also appeared on Terry's website but the website disappeared some time after after his untimely death at the age of 55.

 

Wondering if you (or anyone else perhaps) can guess the identity of the old man and who taught the core lesson of aikido to Dobson Sensei?

 

[doc benway]

1 hour ago, gatito said:

 

And here's the true history of an event, which circulated between aikido cognoscenti by word-of-mouth.

 

Unfortunately, it seems to have been plagiarised by some Chinese Whisperers who don't actually grasp the significance of even their own versions and who are certainly unable to teach the core of this basic lesson to their students:

 

 

This history also appeared on Terry's website but the website disappeared some time after after his untimely death at the age of 55.

 

Wondering if you (or anyone else perhaps) can guess the identity of the old man and who taught the core lesson of aikido to Dobson Sensei?

 

 

It sounds like a Ueshiba story but Dobson's teacher was Ueshiba and he was already training at that point.

I would think he would have mentioned him by name if it was him.

The other I might guess is Gozo Shioda.

Another possibility is Funakoshi Sensei, not aikido, but the inspiration of several such stories... although not sure if he was in Tokyo or Okinawa at the time.

[gatito]

I was informed that it was Ueshiba himself (but I didn't hear that from Terry himself).

 

As an aside, here's a before:

 

 

and an after:

 

 

Interestingly (perhaps), Terry was quite open that he had serious difficulties dealing with his youthful aggression and also that that dojo-time alone wasn't enough to help him to resolve those issues.

 

My understanding is that witnessing Ueshiba deploying virtual atemi in an street-situation to to freeze an attacker then entering and resolving this incident was the nexus of his own Path to Peace.

 

However, perhaps I was misinformed and perhaps the old man was some other sensei.

 

[doc benway]

2 minutes ago, gatito said:

I was informed that it was Ueshiba himself (but I didn't hear that from Terry himself).

 

As an aside, here's a before:

 

 

and an after:

 

 

Interestingly (perhaps), Terry was quite open that he had serious difficulties dealing with his youthful aggression and also that that dojo-time alone wasn't enough to help him to resolve those issues.

 

My understanding is that witnessing Ueshiba deploying virtual atemi in an street-situation to to freeze an attacker then entering and resolving this incident was the nexus of his own Path to Peace.

 

However, perhaps I was misinformed and perhaps the old man was some other sensei.

 

 

I put less stock in the details than in the lessons of such story-telling.

Not much different than the bible or any other form of ancestral teaching.

Stories abound about our masters, our ideologies, etc...

Very hard to really pin down the who, what, when, and where; many seem archetypal.

The why is what counts for me.

There are usually good lessons to be had regardless of the details.

[Nungali]

The aikido stories used to abound in martial arts mags  many years back .

 

One was about the magic kiai  that saved a kids a life ;   dude saw kid racing along a track on his bike and he was heading for a cliff or some type of danger , dude  'kiais' so powerfully  kid falls off bike, this averting disaster, mother realises and rushes up to dude to thank him , and dude  goes ...

 

.... wait for it ...

 

... " Dont thank me , thank aikido !  "

 

 

Some may not realise but Aikido started off as a VERY radical cult .  And nowadays , i some  groups, like Aiki-kai , maybe the biggest one , it is very cult like . 

[gatito]

It's still (technically) "a very radical cult".

 

[Nungali]

Here is another one  ( 'tai chi' fights )

 

I am assuming there is a move like this in Tai Chi ;  its a simple evasive turn, to let a person that is rushing you head on 'pass by'.

 

A mate wanted to learn some SD off me . We live far apart and visit rarely so I had little time and told him I could not show him much but would show him 2 or 3 basic moves which might help . We practised that turn , drilling it , over and over .

 

A couple of months later he tells me some agro guy was trying to upset him in a bar , so he left. But the guy followed him outside..  he ignored him and went to his car to drive home but the guy rushed him as he was about to get in after he opened the door . he did that turning move and the other stumbled forward, overbalanced and  fell forward hitting his temple on the top corner of the open door and ripping a huge gash up his head .  He didnt have a clue how that happened, thought he must have slipped or tripped, mate got a towel out the car and wrapped his head up and took him to  emergency ward .  Dude ended up thanking my mate  

 

.... and ....

 

wait for it

 

 

 

Mate goes ; " Dont thank me , thank Nungali ! "

 

 

(nah .... I made that last bit up    )

 

 

.

 

 

Edited April 9, 2020 by Nungali

[shunka]

On 4/9/2020 at 4:24 PM, Nungali said:

Here is another one  ( 'tai chi' fights )

 

I am assuming there is a move like this in Tai Chi ;  its a simple evasive turn, to let a person that is rushing you head on 'pass by'.

 

A mate wanted to learn some SD off me . We live far apart and visit rarely so I had little time and told him I could not show him much but would show him 2 or 3 basic moves which might help . We practised that turn , drilling it , over and over .

 

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I have to ask...

tenkan? kaiten ?

 

walk in beauty

shunka

[Nungali]

Something like that .    My friend probably did some type of  tenkan  as the agro guy tried to  kaiten him .  

 

 

 ;

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

Since some people have not been getting my sense of humour lately ....

 

Kaiten  -  a manned torpedo with a suicidal pilot .

 

Edited September 14, 2020 by Nungali

[Cleansox]

A Coffee-table? 

 

Does yours also tick sometimes? 

[Nungali]

16 minutes ago, Cleansox said:

A Coffee-table? 

 

Only one that 'goes around'   ,  to put sushi on     

 

 

'Kaiten sushi '

 

 

16 minutes ago, Cleansox said:

 

Does yours also tick sometimes? 

 

 

     < looks down >    errmm     ....   no   .

[Vajra Fist]

Adam Mizner is probably the most divisive when it comes to taiji applications. I happen to believe he has real skill but he definitely has his detractors. 

 

I think I laughed for a good half an hour at the title he gave this video. 

 

 

 

[Nungali]

Yeah .... that  looks like woo .

 

 

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo-woo

[Earl Grey]

4 hours ago, Vajra Fist said:

Adam Mizner is probably the most divisive when it comes to taiji applications. I happen to believe he has real skill but he definitely has his detractors. 

 

I think I laughed for a good half an hour at the title he gave this video. 

 

 

 

 

It looks like woo to some people, but I've seen the same thing with several teachers...there's actually a little more technical development that has very little to do with qi and the more with the rewiring of the body according to Xin Yi principles that are also overlapping with Taijiquan. 

 

Case in point: the MMA people who have come to my teachers have experienced the same thing both seated and standing in attempts to try to prove my teachers were fakes and ended up enrolling later when the results were not what they were expecting. 

[thelerner]

I did 13 years of Aikido.  It didn't save my life, but I think it improved it alot.  Kept me in excellent shape.  Before classes you'd be standing, rolling backwards on the floor a few dozens times, then hundred or two throws during class.  You needed flexibility and whole body strength.  Fair amount of awareness to keep others from rolling into you.  Weapons training also honed awareness.  Techniques required split second timing.

 

It included much meditation, some healing techniques.  Best of all when work was very frustrating it allowed me to punch, kick and choke hard, with people who could take it and give it.  After a hard day, this full force, somewhat mock battle was what I needed to stay fresh and sane. 

 

Plus loved the special training, the misogi's.. the people in it were nice.  My friends in other martial arts and boxing got the shit beat out of them regularly.. I got a fair share of bruises but rarely shit kicked.  In real life I dealt with teamsters and gangster disciples and kept my cool and managed to.. if not win without fighting, then at least stand my ground and create peaceful terms. 

[doc benway]

I can’t speak for Mizner’s skills or lack thereof but the guy he’s playing with in the video is intentionally making him look good. Videos like this are embarrassing IMO.

[Earl Grey]

12 minutes ago, steve said:

I can’t speak for Mizner’s skills or lack thereof but the guy he’s playing with in the video is intentionally making him look good. Videos like this are embarrassing IMO.

 

I can tell you that it's precisely the opposite of that based on my experience with Xin Yi--but I don't hold my breath that anyone will believe it until they feel it, and only when they've trained it can they see what's actually happening with fajin. 

 

It's the same thing as this...which is verified both by my teachers JR Rodriguez and Terry Dunn as being the real deal. 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Earl Grey

[doc benway]

I’ve trained it, felt it, and also debunked a “master” or two trying to demonstrate with me at tournaments. Demonstrations with one’s own students necessarily bring multiple factors into the equation beyond martial skill alone. For me they are rarely impressive. Not denying there are masters of internal power but they are few and far between and a video will rarely, if ever be adequate evidence for me.

[Earl Grey]

33 minutes ago, steve said:

I’ve trained it, felt it, and also debunked a “master” or two trying to demonstrate with me at tournaments. Demonstrations with one’s own students necessarily bring multiple factors into the equation beyond martial skill alone. For me they are rarely impressive. Not denying there are masters of internal power but they are few and far between and a video will rarely, if ever be adequate evidence for me.

Yes, a video can be easily faked. The above both look fake unless you know what to look for.

 

From a Xin Yi framework: Fung and Mizner both have the skills of linking, rooting, competing, contracting, contradicting, song, and fajin. This is seen in their muscle chains, tendon and joint strength, and the lower back movement. 
 

Outside of a Xin Yi framework, I can’t describe what else they are doing relative to their practice.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Earl Grey

[dwai]

1 hour ago, steve said:

I can’t speak for Mizner’s skills or lack thereof but the guy he’s playing with in the video is intentionally making him look good. Videos like this are embarrassing IMO.

I’ve heard from reliable sources that Mizner has real skill. 
 

Here’s a little demo by my Sifu — 

 

 

The video is part of a live lesson he gave us last fall when we visited him. 
 

But then he also says that fajin ability doesn’t mean someone can fight. To know how to fight, one has to practice fighting  

 

[Nungali]

1 hour ago, steve said:

I’ve trained it, felt it, and also debunked a “master” or two trying to demonstrate with me at tournaments. Demonstrations with one’s own students necessarily bring multiple factors into the equation beyond martial skill alone. For me they are rarely impressive. Not denying there are masters of internal power but they are few and far between and a video will rarely, if ever be adequate evidence for me.

 

So .... you didnt jump up in the air or stamp your foot  or fall down on the ground becasue your hand went lower than your hip ?   

 

 

Bad student !    

[Nungali]

1 hour ago, Earl Grey said:

Yes, a video can be easily faked. The above both look fake unless you know what to look for.

 

From a Xin Yi framework: Fung and Mizner both have the skills of linking, rooting, competing, contracting, contradicting, song, and fajin. This is seen in their muscle chains, tendon and joint strength, and the lower back movement. 
 

Outside of a Xin Yi framework, I can’t describe what else they are doing relative to their practice.

 

 

I see good movement and what you describe in the 'master'  , what I am observing is the reaction in the 'student' to those movements of the 'master '  .