the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

I agree, the freedom went missing somewhere along the line. The freedom to (really) use it too.

How can an art be free from creative expression, that's a lot of the problem right there.
people don't compete with it therefore never express it for what it's meant to be about.

then they cry about it or go do bjj instead.

Bhassler wrote:I think there is enough divergence between the various lineages that they can be considered totally separate arts. Compare Chen Zhonghua with Chen Yu - both could be considered grand-students of Chen Fake, but they have totally different foundational methods to their practices. Comparing Chen style to Yang style, etc. the differences can be even bigger. One could argue common origins and some similarities, but the same is true for Wing Chun, White Crane, and Karate, yet no one considers those all to be the same art.

Just food for thought, as I didn't want to derail another thread.

This is one of those similarities vs. differences double sided measuring sticks or semantic merry go rounds. Pick your thrill.
Are they more similar or more different, how much, which should we push to the fore?
Sometimes we call arts styles and styles arts; shoot to kill, the bastards that do such things to us!!

willie wrote:

wayne hansen wrote:What do you think of it Willie
How old is he in the clip

I think that he has a wealth of knowledge that is fast becoming lost forever.
I personally don't know him, But I can say that he is more like my teacher and less like the many.

It's seems that most people are just trying to acquire good peng jin, They have forgotten the waza.
"My teacher has mastered the waza".

What about how he looses his balance on nearly application on a cooperative student from a standing start
If he is the apex of Chen style like many say that explains a lot

willie wrote:"My teacher has mastered the waza".

What's "waza"?

johnwang wrote:

willie wrote:"My teacher has mastered the waza".

What's "waza"?

It's a Japanese term, It means techniques.

There was this guy named, Shooter, who used always say that there are as many styles of tai chi as there are players...

wayne hansen wrote:

willie wrote:

wayne hansen wrote:What do you think of it Willie
How old is he in the clip

I think that he has a wealth of knowledge that is fast becoming lost forever.
I personally don't know him, But I can say that he is more like my teacher and less like the many.

It's seems that most people are just trying to acquire good peng jin, They have forgotten the waza.
"My teacher has mastered the waza".

What about how he looses his balance on nearly application on a cooperative student from a standing start
If he is the apex of Chen style like many say that explains a lot

Again, That's expected of you.
First off, I've watched a whole lot of his applications. He appears as a living textbook and probably has spent his entire
life keeping those applications for the next. But hey perhaps That's a bit over your head?

Thanks for the reply, Brian.

Been working long days this summer so time is limited, but I'm going to drink beer on Saturday night and post jibberish in this thread.

When does a language depart from dialects into own languages? An interesting thing to answer. Swedes understand Norwegians perfectly well, our languages are extremely similar. The Danish understand Swedish perfectly well, but we often don't understand them. And then if we go to China, there are dialects who can't understand each other just as if they were different languages. But still, they are one family. So for martial arts, if the expression and interpretation of basic concepts in different lineages seem to be very different, does that really mean that they are so far apart? Like these dialects they still share the same origin and much of their history before they separated further apart.

If you think someone loosing his balance on nearly every application is a living textbook willly
You are rightly named

wayne hansen wrote:If you think someone loosing his balance on nearly every application is a living textbook willly
You are rightly named

There's nothing wrong with my name.

Are you upset that they didn't invite "YOU" to the ceremony to show "THEM" how it's done?

Perhaps he looks like he loses balance because he's not a big fat guy and probably is 100 lbs soaking wet.

Let's put it this way: tai chi is pretty diverse. I don't mind that, I quite like that actually. I think for some people it can feel too diverse or so diverse it feels or looks like something else. Or so diversified away from 'the source' they think it's lost and can't be found, or something like that.. Both, by and large, wrong IMO.

cloudz wrote:

Bhassler wrote:I think there is enough divergence between the various lineages that they can be considered totally separate arts. Compare Chen Zhonghua with Chen Yu - both could be considered grand-students of Chen Fake, but they have totally different foundational methods to their practices. Comparing Chen style to Yang style, etc. the differences can be even bigger. One could argue common origins and some similarities, but the same is true for Wing Chun, White Crane, and Karate, yet no one considers those all to be the same art.

Just food for thought, as I didn't want to derail another thread.

This is one of those similarities vs. differences double sided measuring sticks or semantic merry go rounds. Pick your thrill.
Are they more similar or more different, how much, which should we push to the fore?
Sometimes we call arts styles and styles arts; shoot to kill, the bastards that do such things to us!!

Not sure why you're so fired up about this-- it's an opinion, not moral theology. I think that arguing nuances of definition about peng or ji, or body mechanics, or whatever, is pointless if one person is doing Beijing Chen style and the other person is doing Ching Man Cheng Yang style. They're just totally different arts, with different training methods and goals. The same can be said of the whole "4oz" idea-- what that means and how it's applied is vastly different among schools. At some point, you just have to say "they're doing something different" rather than "they're doing what I'm doing, but wrong".

If you (general you) really think there is something that uniquely defines all of taijiquan, then articulate it. What is present in all styles of taiji that is also absent from all other, non-taiji martial arts? I don't think you'll find anything.

BruceP wrote:There was this guy named, Shooter, who used always say that there are as many styles of tai chi as there are players...

That's crazy talk! I hope the good and decent people of the community shouted that character down with the appropriate level of righteous indignation...