Shen Fa?

[Raphael]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to Empty Flower and am also new to the Chinese internal martial arts, Xing Yi especially interests me. I've been reading a few books trying to find some details on techniques and chi gungs for Xing Yi. But I keep coming across this term "Shen Fa." I've seen the term mentioned several times now, but not properly defined. So I was wondering what exactly is Shen Fa and how exactly does it apply to Xing Yi? Is it one thing or several things, I think it apples to Taiji and Bagua as well but I'm not sure.
Any help would be much appreciated.

[kreese]

Sounds eerily familiar...

[Dmitri]

what exactly is Shen Fa and how exactly does it apply to Xing Yi? Is it one thing or several things, I think it apples to Taiji and Bagua as well but I'm not sure.

It does, in the same way that it "applies" to xingyiquan.

Translated as "body method", it refers to the subset of movement patterns and joint alignments as utilized in IMA training, which result in efficient body movement and ability to generate high levels of non-committed whole-body power while maintaining good proprioceptive sensitivity, balance and mobility.

[Raphael]

I see. That makes more sense now. Thank you. But how it would apply to the five fists of Xing Yi. Of course I understand now that it applies to everything, but I mean more specifically?

[Dmitri]

Even though I don't practice XY (although I had some exposure), I would say your question is extremely vague and cannot be answered in its present form with any reasonable level of common sense.

But you know what, why don't I just let the XY guys tell you that.

[GrahamB]

It's not vague at all. Xing Yi's basic body requirements are defined by San Ti Shi. They are (as I understand it)

Chicken leg
Dragon body
Tiger embrace
Bear shoulders
Eagle claw
Thunder sound

Anything beyond that is a new phenomina known as marketing IMHO

[mixjourneyman]

I never heard the word shenfa bandied around until I came to ef.
The way I like to think of ideas like this is in quality of movement.
The way that applies to xingyi: you have your structure first, then you put in the small movements, then you make it all smooth, and that gives you the "xingyi" quality of movement.

Of course I could be completely wrong here, since I've never actually heard any of my teachers refer to shen fa

[GrahamB]

It's not vague at all. Xing Yi's basic body requirements are defined by San Ti Shi. They are (as I understand it)

Chicken leg
Dragon body
Tiger embrace
Bear shoulders
Eagle claw
Thunder sound

Anything beyond that is a new phenomina known as marketing IMHO

[mixjourneyman]

It's not vague at all. Xing Yi's basic body requirements are defined by San Ti Shi. They are (as I understand it)

Chicken leg
Dragon body
Tiger embrace
Bear shoulders
Eagle claw
Thunder sound

Anything beyond that is a new phenomina known as marketing IMHO

Woah, double post.

Must be pretty important eh, Graham?

[GrahamB]

Damn iPhone frigged up

[JoseFreitas]

Raphael, I had pretty much the same experience as you some years ago when I first started browsing around in EF. This was compounded by the fact that at the time I was not up in the terminology of CMA because my teacher doesn't really speak Portuguese and my chinese is virtually non-existent. For example, I never learned the names of the Taiji psotures until I started buying books and coming to EF (I still have trouble with some!).

I think "shen fa" is frequently used in EF to mean the particular flavor or movement style of a given martial arts style, which can be assessed simply by looking at a practitioner's movements. You could look at someone and see whether he has a specific shen fa or not.

[Raphael]

Now that the Shen fa answer has been given, it seems more questions have come. San ti Shi, i know thats a kind of standing meditation (though it sounds different and really hard, not like Aikido at all). You meantioned: Chicken leg, Dragon body, Tiger embrace, Bear shoulders, Eagle claw, Thunder sound. What do they mean. i assume it's something to do with the quality of strength used, but i have a feeling that thats not right. Would you care to eloborate please?

[JoseFreitas]

I'm sure many others will give their answers too.

San Ti Shi is just standing in a specific posture. Obviously, there are instructions on "what to do" while you're "just" standing, from breathing to concentration and so on. The posture is the traditional on-guard posture, same-hand same-foot forward, the rear hand in front of the belly button, about 60 to 70% of your body weight on the rear leg. Lots of variations are taught from teacher to teacher, and many schools teach added supplemental postures. Standing will train your body and "unify" it. In my experience, coming from Karate initially, even though I had Taiji experience, the fact that Taiji was done slowly "patched up" a lot of my inability at concentration and "feeling inside the body". Xingyi required horrid amounts of attention to minute details of stuff happening inside your body, and San Ti Shi was the way for me to train inner awareness so that eventually when my teacher said things like "now, as you jump step forward you need to connect the bouncing up of the front foot landing with the twist of your forearm as your back slightly arches... etc" I could start noticing these things.

Standing is somewhat boring, but once you can plow through the boredom and through the pain in the legs and body (which should take 2-3 months of more or less daily training for 10-20 minutes at least) it gets a little more interesting as you can send your awareness through the body and observe stuff as you make slight shifts in your weightedness, breathing and so on. It is said to be important for acquiring explosive force.

As for the other expressions you mentioned, they relate to the qualities of the body you must strive to cultivate and when doing Xingyi. Legs like Chicken means the capacity to move fast in any direction while retaining to ability to stop suddenly, reverse directions or suddenly stand on one leg only easily. Like chicken, just look at them running around and you'll see they're really good at moving around. Dragon body means your body is completely connected, movement at one end being transmitted to the other end easily, you can twist and coil snake-like and have tremendous flexibility and force in your back to connect the whole body. Etc...