I recent comment on chessman’s entry got me thinking, it was his post on an IMA view of BJJ, and in it he wrote:

Wuji and sword,
That’s why I like you guys. You have varied backgrounds like me that show you some fo the IMA weaknesses I love to discuss. That’s probably why you put up with me too.

This reminded me of something I felt and realized early on. My first wushu teacher commented that he thought it was great that I had a wushu background coming to taiji b/c it gave me the first-hand-experience of sparring that most taiji folks don’t encounter. If the goal of taiji is to remain centered and relaxed in any situation, how can this be fully achieved without putting oneself in varied situations.

In relating back to chessman’s thoughts on Brazilian Jujitus (BJJ), I think most people will become quite shocked and surprised how much energy it takes to grapple on the ground for just 5 mins. Not only that, but how much patience and planning it takes to survive. To me, BJJ is really a lot like a game of chess in that you have to try and plan 3-4 steps ahead in order to get you in that effective position.

Is taiji the same? I believe most advocates of taiji feel the goal is to react spontaneously thru conditioned training, but really, where/when is this conditioned training? In this regard, I think taiji could be slightly different in that you don’t necessarily have to train the specific applications/counters. For instance, I was showing a former coworker once my form and he asked about applications and such, so I showed him that taiji helps to develop sensitivity and showed him the one-handed push hands sequence. While we were doing this, he decided to test me, without my knowledge, and tried to perform a qinna he learned from aikido on me, but luckily due to my sensitivity, I was able to neutralize it using some of the silk reeling found in chen taiji. Did I specifically train for this type of attack, no.

While I did not train for this type of attack in any of my previous external arts, I feel that my exposure to sparring in the other arts prepared my mind to not lose centering. I did not get excited or scared, I was calm enough to just react accordingly. I guess what I’m thinking about is, would’ve I behaved the same way without my previous experience in “high stress” sparring situations? Would’ve doing the taiji form alone produced similar results?

I feel we really need to vary things around. In my own training, I do this by varying the way I face when I do the form. Sometimes closing my eyes, sometimes going faster, slower, higher, lower during the set. One of the things that has really helped is doing the form on non-flat surfaces like a backyard with rocks, grass, bumps, etc. This really exposes your body to potential circumstance and scenarios that may not be idea. Like my first wushu teacher noted,

True martial artists can do their whole form in the space of a cow sleeping.

What was his point? Learn how to react and behave in non-ideal conditions. Work the corners, train the footwork, don’t get locked in patterns, learn how to react when you don’t know what to do.

Robi Sen writes about his recent experience in a workshop with Chen Xiaoxing. Reading his entry reminds me of my own experiences in a workshop with Chen Xiaowang, in that both entries relay the importance of touch. A lot of what’s written about taiji is really philosophical and esoteric which much chatter about universal energies and what not, but I whole-heartedly agree with Robi when he wrote:

Chen Style has a tradition of teaching via touch.

I must admit out of the 8 taiji schools I have trained at over time, I received the most tactile feedback from only about 2 of them and both of them happen to belong to the chen village line. Is this just coincidence? I don’t think so.

When I asked questions at some of the other schools, I often got answers of “just relax” or “use the dantien”, or “just follow me and do what I do”, but very few of them ever got to the point that when I asked, the teacher would have me do the move I questioned and then provide hands-on, instant feedback, which often resulted in answering my question not with words, but with touch. I felt how I should move, or where my hip should be. I felt what it was like to “feel aligned” in such a way that I felt the burn almost instantaneously due to correct alignment.

Looking back, I sometimes have forgotten the importance of touch and what I learned in those private lessons. Sure, I did receive some physical corrections in the public clases, but that was merely a drop in the bucket compared to the time spent on tactile corrections and feedback found in private and/or small group (2-3 people) classes. Imagine having the teacher guide every inch of movement from the smallest weight shift to the extension of the fingers and the alignment of the hips and you’ll kind of have an idea what hands-on corrections feel like. I never knew what this was like until I took some private lessons with my recent chen taiji instructor.

The reminds me a a current article in Journal of Asian Martial Arts in which Stephan Berwick is on the front cover and it chronicles his journey to chen taiji. There’s a comment in there from Bow Sim Mark where she talks about being physically strong in order to handle the minute nuances of internal martial arts and I really must agree with this. Correct alignment and posture HURTS. There is quite a bit of pain and for those who think that taiji is all flowing-rainbow-universal-energy-harnessing stuff, I would advise you to reconsider.  I think there’s some value in all those stories of Yang Luchan’s children trying to run away due to the intense pain of training, holding stances low to the ground to build up the strength, zhanzhuang stance holding in pools of sweat. Taiji is gongfu, and gongfu is effort, time, and skill in training.

One of the major take-aways I got from this type of training is the importance of feeling. After/while receiving a correction, I would often look down, only to be told to maintain the correct neck alignment and try to *feel* the correction so that I could later self-correct on feeling.

After applying the Hemingway theme to my blog, I had the sudden inclination to wrote a long well-thought out entry due to the simplicity of the theme and what the theme made me feel. Not sure if it’s the outer appearance of the theme or the name of the theme itself, but it’s a very nice theme that makes me feel calm inside.

This got me thinking about taiji and noting how I personally feel that style affects execution. When I do the yang set, I neither feel rushed nor too slow, I can easily do the form and just focus on the current movement. However, when I do yang, at times I feel that I have to consciously slow myself down to work on the postures. This reminded me about a previous entry of mine in which had a quote from Wai Lun Choi (WLC) that I will reiterate here:

“you must understand the Principles-don’t talk style, only one style-human style! You must analyze and understand the physics and physiology of movement.”

Hmm.. This is rather interesting b/c Choi teaches many different styles (taiji, bagua, xingyi, liuhebafa, lama, shaolin, etc) and often talks about understanding the principle and essence of said style. When doing the crane animal form of LHBF, think of the way a crane moves and how the crane swoops in for an attack. Think of bagua as going around the center, xingyi as smashing thru the center and taiji as becoming the center. These are all quotes I have heard to come from him, but what about the notion of not thinking in stylistic terms.

Maybe it’s really a “characterist of movement” issue? I’ve posed a similar question to a long-time-training taiji friend of mine and I noted how I felt more connected in the yang than I did in the chen. My friend commented feeling more connected in the wu than the yang, but also noted of having received a lot of very detailed corrections on the yang and not so much on the wu. I fall into the same situation as I’ve received WAY MORE in depth corrections regarding structure, dantien rotation, yi/qi intentions in the chen than the yang. Perhaps that’s the reason why I feel more connected in the yang b/c I can see all of my flaws and shortcomings in the chen?

Whoa.. decided to sit down and pull some of the martial arts posts I’ve done over time. The earliest “from the archive” is titled Competition Taiji written on March 6, 2006, with the oldest one being, One Path or Many? written March 20, 2003!

Since I did the pull manually, I didn’t really fully read what I wrote, just went thru my old martial arts entries that were more than a couple of lines with some “original” content and posted them. So, have a browse at the archives or just start the the oldest one (above) and work the way forward to see what I’ve pulled. I do plan on going back and revisiting some of the entries to see if I still feel the same way.