the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

After watching the clip I will only reiterate, you must understand the creature.

1. Hardly ever! I've only learned it as the bengquan direction change.
2. Not really!
3. See #2
4. It's the whole point!
5. Kick
6. See #1; I've seen xingyi classmates do more complex versions, though, that I cannot imitate...

As for zashichui, that is a very important set with lots of hints inside...

the dragon is to teach rising and dropping energy .
the important points for the body to imitate are a coiling sineous body and use of the claws.
the claws include both the hands and the kicking foot which is used much more like a push than a kick.
as for the dragon and tiger being used together,dont confuse the simultaneous kick with the opposing hand and foot ie dragon above tiger below,with how the solo forms are meant to be practiced.
each animal should impart an energy ie snake flexability,tiger strength.
and they should be used to impart an energy the practicioner lacks.
the dragon can be used to impart stamina.

When I learned HsingI under Ray Wiley about 15 years ago, this was the first animal I learnt - for good reason, I think. More than any of the five elements, Dragon (with the kick and jump) is a tremendous plyometric exercise: A raw power generator. For generation of spring force, it is a superb technique

Re: Strategy and Dragon (as an animal)
I won't comment on strategy. Strategy is for generals and chess players; it has a little bit to do with ring fighting; and has even less to do with self defense. Granted, individual styles of martial arts have a (very, very general) overall strategy, but beyond that, for H2H fighting, tactics are everything.

Dragon as an animal - a more interesting question, particularly as this animal is referenced in so many CMA.

IME of dragon - a bit of HsingI, Chen Taiji and (for comparison) two snake forms of Hung Ga - I would say:

Dragon specializes in vertical (up-down) movement. This is visible in HsingI's dragon, Chen Taiji's sparrow ground dragon, and (to a lesser extent) in Chen's Blue Dragon Comes out of Water. This seques with many traditional Chinese visual representations of dragons spiralling and swooping down from clouds and mountain tops, or bursting up out of the ocean.

Dragon is more powerful than snake. Snake, as I have learnt it in Hung Ga, fires light, whippy movements to vital points using fingertips; this is equally the case in Chen Taiji's snake spits tongue. Dragon does not use finger slashes or strikes, it uses palms and fists (and maybe claws in some CMA). If the original dragon in human thought was a dinosaur skeleton, then this makes sense: A big, powerful reptile, very different to the lowly snake.

OTOH, the qualities of dragon - coiling and uncoiling like a serpent - are very snakelike. I wonder if the dragon is simply a bigger and more powerful but also more "noble" snake in the Chinese mind?

How does HsingI dragon compare to HsingI's alligator - a dragon-like creature in terms of its representation and skeleton, and an animal that in days of yore used to inhabit the Yangtze?

The one single most important thing my Teacher told me when teaching the animals was, we are human, we cannot imitate the physical structure and movements of the animals, we don't walk on all fours or crawl on our bellies or fly, to embody the animal we must try to understand the nature , the spirit, as humans we think , an animals life is strictly survival. I will go so far as to ad this, the dragon, a mythical creature, is the one animal to allow the human mind to take part, though the dragon spirit is real, as it has survived the test of time and spanned all cultural bounderies .

For someone whose handle is "Wandering Dragon" I was expecting more concrete information...

Wow Andy, there is nothing more concrete than "know the creature", but that's the same as "know the art" and that would lie in the training. My favorite scene in The Matrix, was when Neo opened his eyes and said " I know Kung Fu ", it just doesn't work like that ~haha~ the only other person that could pull that line off would have been Groucho Marx

Wanderingdragon wrote:The one single most important thing my Teacher told me when teaching the animals was, we are human, we cannot imitate the physical structure and movements of the animals, we don't walk on all fours or crawl on our bellies or fly, to embody the animal we must try to understand the nature , the spirit, as humans we think , an animals life is strictly survival. I will go so far as to ad this, the dragon, a mythical creature, is the one animal to allow the human mind to take part, though the dragon spirit is real, as it has survived the test of time and spanned all cultural bounderies .

in xylhq we actually seek to move like the animals and imitate each animals strength or "special power"

Try as you may we are human, you cannot walk like a tiger, to tap into it's special power is to tap into it's spirit .

special power just means comparative advantage by virtue of design and again we literally move and develop the body around ideas that one can see animals express in nature.

"never let another mans horizon be your own"

You make my point

Andy_S wrote:When I learned HsingI under Ray Wiley about 15 years ago, this was the first animal I learnt - for good reason, I think. More than any of the five elements, Dragon (with the kick and jump) is a tremendous plyometric exercise: A raw power generator. For generation of spring force, it is a superb technique

Re: Strategy and Dragon (as an animal)
I won't comment on strategy. Strategy is for generals and chess players; it has a little bit to do with ring fighting; and has even less to do with self defense. Granted, individual styles of martial arts have a (very, very general) overall strategy, but beyond that, for H2H fighting, tactics are everything.

Dragon as an animal - a more interesting question, particularly as this animal is referenced in so many CMA.

IME of dragon - a bit of HsingI, Chen Taiji and (for comparison) two snake forms of Hung Ga - I would say:

Dragon specializes in vertical (up-down) movement. This is visible in HsingI's dragon, Chen Taiji's sparrow ground dragon, and (to a lesser extent) in Chen's Blue Dragon Comes out of Water. This seques with many traditional Chinese visual representations of dragons spiralling and swooping down from clouds and mountain tops, or bursting up out of the ocean.

Dragon is more powerful than snake. Snake, as I have learnt it in Hung Ga, fires light, whippy movements to vital points using fingertips; this is equally the case in Chen Taiji's snake spits tongue. Dragon does not use finger slashes or strikes, it uses palms and fists (and maybe claws in some CMA). If the original dragon in human thought was a dinosaur skeleton, then this makes sense: A big, powerful reptile, very different to the lowly snake.

OTOH, the qualities of dragon - coiling and uncoiling like a serpent - are very snakelike. I wonder if the dragon is simply a bigger and more powerful but also more "noble" snake in the Chinese mind?

Good post.

I also have to disagree a bit with Wanderingdragon.

Bagua also uses the animal shapes (xing) but 90% of what's seen in bagua is only the Dragon shape but it's very similar to the xingyi dragon and the traditional northernCMA dragon martial art. Bagua's dragon is also more vertical up and down and it's why it's also called 'ping tuo zhang' (supporting up & lifting palm). Another key aspect of the Dragon in CMAs is using both hands to attack at the same time or double-handed strikes or pushes etc. Which leads to the snake body of the dragon where in Bagua the legs face more to the side but the chest needs to face forward and why the dragon does a lot of waist twisting but different from the actual Snake Animal shape which works like or imitates a constrictor type of snake- coiling, winding, and binding and the power and attacks are of a centripetal nature or coming back in towards one's own body, while the dragon is more centrifugal and the strikes and throws move away from one's own center. Dragon is also more powerful or puts out more force, the snake in bagua on the other hand never really puts out force or uses 'fa', it uses a strong strength in one arm to 'diao' or 'trick' the opponent into defending there, while using subtle attacks and presses points with the other hand.

.

i get the functional implications of being human, does not negate my point, our comparative advantage is intelligence and the methods I am talking about exemplify that in a very human and intelligent fashion.

I'm sorry, you cannot disagree with fact of reality, we are man. That which is absoluty unique about dragon, and that you argue right now, is that it is mind of man, it can be all creatures and always dragon, this to me, more than the shape, is Dragon.

i would say what we are is awareness, but that is another conversation.....not looking to argue, simply offering up another point of view.....in xylhq the idea of "chicken step" "bear back" are very real qualities developed through specific exercises designed to extract what is unique in the way these animals use themselves and thus how the developed and why they are the way they are.

cheers,
Derek