the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

The thing that makes dragon is the unity of upper and lower
The one above is quite different in upper body use
More like snake
The same stance is used in Tai bird with totally different upper body mechanics

wayne hansen wrote:The way I was taught is 5 types of movement
Metal top to bottom
Water bottom to top
Wood straight thru
Fire diagonal
Earth horizontal

An ax kick would be metal
A hook earth
And so it goes it dosent just handle hsing I attacks but any attack that follows those
5 modes of movement
There are no others

That is what I would refer to as a broken analogy. Saying metal is top to bottom, etc. makes sense to me, if we're talking about the same thing, but the moment you add "an ax kick would be metal," I know we are talking about something else. Not that it is a bad thing, but I wonder what analogy you are using that lets you link those two in this way? To be honest, I don't understand it.

Appledog wrote:

wayne hansen wrote:The way I was taught is 5 types of movement
Metal top to bottom
Water bottom to top
Wood straight thru
Fire diagonal
Earth horizontal

An ax kick would be metal
A hook earth
And so it goes it dosent just handle hsing I attacks but any attack that follows those
5 modes of movement
There are no others

That is what I would refer to as a broken analogy. Saying metal is top to bottom, etc. makes sense to me, if we're talking about the same thing, but the moment you add "an ax kick would be metal," I know we are talking about something else. Not that it is a bad thing, but I wonder what analogy you are using that lets you link those two in this way? To be honest, I don't understand it.

The directions are how I learned the utility of the elements as well. Metal is up and down, so the ax kick, being that the force part of the kick is the downward arc, is metal.

There are hints in the names too, right?
Metal - splitting - down - pi
Water - drilling - Up - tsuan
Wood - crushing - straight - beng
Fire - pounding - angles(? this one is complex, need to think on it) - pao
Earth - crossing - side to side - heng

It's similar to the swordwork patterns that everything posted in the other thread, and I learned a Da Dao form that illustrates this perfectly.

It translates well to any two-handed weapon.

And like the ax kick and the empty handed PI, metal rises and then falls with power.

Now where I WILL say the ax kick is different is that generally the rising portion is empty, whereas with proper Xingyi, the main thrust of the idea of the power/technique is down, but the rising power should still be full of intention and power.

That might be more of my Taijiquan brain though. Xingyi is just a foil for my Taiji.

piquan has the drilling up before the downward, right? if you can drill up, you can go straight forward. drilling/turning already has inside-out and outside-in. hence piquan is the "mother". yes, i'm mini-obsessed with boiling everything down to the "mother palm" so to speak. it makes sense why Bruce Lee or Wang Xiangzhai wanted to "reduce" to "formlessness" or "void" (to reference a different 5 elements term).

I believe the way I've heard it is that beng is the mother and pi is like the fully developed child. Beng here being straight punch and the rest being ways you can throw that in different planes.

Most people who do metal leave out the upward drilling and go for hard power with a straight hard forward movement like wood
People asked why there was kicking was not included
That’s why I used the example of an axe kick
I could have just as easily said roundhouse kick was earth

As I learnt it earth is the mother of all the others
Just as it is in tcm
St 36 the earth point in the earth meridian takes everything back to square one
In tai chi it is dong zing central e
The san ti of tai chi

I think it's interesting that the qualities that Li Cunyi attributes to heng are elasticity/springiness and uniting/unifying. Also, when associated with the hetu the arrangement of the five elements is interesting. Heng, crossing is the center of the spiral of yin and yang.




And some people say this is the source of the yin yang diagram.

robert wrote:I think it's interesting that the qualities that Li Cunyi attributes to heng are elasticity/springiness and uniting/unifying. Also, when associated with the hetu the arrangement of the five elements is interesting. Heng, crossing is the center of the spiral of yin and yang.




And some people say this is the source of the yin yang diagram.

That's really cool, actually.

When you consider Earth/Central Equilibrium in Taijiquan, it's that point in when Yin and Yang are balanced and neutralized and unified and from which we can apply that proverbial 4 oz of force to achieve some effect.

Adam Mizner has a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0xIIsdWgNE

Doc posted a graphic one time too that sort of clicked for me. Tai Yin and Tai Yang with Tai Ji right in the middle, that line or ridgepole where they meet and transform into each other. That's the central earth we hold in Taijiquan, but the symbolism here with crossing is pretty cool.

origami_itto wrote:That's really cool, actually.

When you consider Earth/Central Equilibrium in Taijiquan, it's that point in when Yin and Yang are balanced and neutralized and unified and from which we can apply that proverbial 4 oz of force to achieve some effect.

I think it's cool. I got it from Chen Xin's book. The Chen Ancestral Temple has an emblem related to this on an outside wall. In his manual it's called Diagram of Taiji according to the Yellow River Chart. Chen Xin writes -

In fact, the chart of He-tu represents the internal organization of the energetical body, whilst the concept of energy regeneration is contained in the metaphor of reeling a silk thread from both ends around the Taiji circle.

robert wrote:

Does this have anything to do with combat?

wood = east
metal = west

Can it be the other way around?

wood = west
metal = east

robert wrote:

Does this have anything to do with combat?

wood = east
metal = west

Can it be the other way around?

wood = west
metal = east

It differs here in the Southern Hemisphere

everything wrote:piquan has the drilling up before the downward, right? if you can drill up, you can go straight forward. drilling/turning already has inside-out and outside-in. hence piquan is the "mother". yes, i'm mini-obsessed with boiling everything down to the "mother palm" so to speak. it makes sense why Bruce Lee or Wang Xiangzhai wanted to "reduce" to "formlessness" or "void" (to reference a different 5 elements term).

actually Heng is often considered as the mother, but im with the Pi on that.
all the elements has a couple of variations, but with Pi its own variations extends quite clear into the other elements and explored further in the animal shapes.

edit - i see wayne mentioned Heng already.

Appledog wrote:

wayne hansen wrote:The way I was taught is 5 types of movement
Metal top to bottom
Water bottom to top
Wood straight thru
Fire diagonal
Earth horizontal

An ax kick would be metal
A hook earth
And so it goes it dosent just handle hsing I attacks but any attack that follows those
5 modes of movement
There are no others

That is what I would refer to as a broken analogy. Saying metal is top to bottom, etc. makes sense to me, if we're talking about the same thing, but the moment you add "an ax kick would be metal," I know we are talking about something else. Not that it is a bad thing, but I wonder what analogy you are using that lets you link those two in this way? To be honest, I don't understand it.

Dragon shape - a variation of piquan, the kick in dragon is not your conventional ax-kick , but the kick goes high and drops low with intent