Clear Tai Chi?

[JoeWood]

Do any of you gentlemen have first hand or even second hand experience training/seminar/demo with Richard Clear? I am new to the world of internal martial arts and am interested in branching out from my karate regiment. So is this guy legit? Why or why not?

Here's a link for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb4GxGDCVAI

I have viewed a handful of his material, however he has more videos on his channels than I care to sift through.

Thanks,

Joe

[XiaoXiong]

I've had him recommended. It seems that his ideas can be useful, I am not that familiar myself, but I would check it out.
Jess

[JoeWood]

Thank you Jess. I was lurking on this forum for about a week waiting for my account to activate. Your posts have been especially helpful for my understanding of some of the basic concepts of internal martial arts.

I watched through Mr. Clear's push hand tutorials. It is definitely different than any other push hands clips I have seen, however, it gives me a good idea on how to start building a foundation of new skills to integrate into my martial training.

Joe

[XiaoXiong]

Hey Joe, check out the video I just posted in the Great Taiji Stuff thread, with Mark Rasmus. He's got some good stuff I think.
Jess

[chud]

There have been several threads on him over the years, I think the summary was that he did spend some time in China with some good teachers, but some here don't like his style of marketing. I like his videos though.
Good clear instruction (no pun intended).

[Dale Dugas]

Ive met Richard and can say he has some skills. Go see him rather than listen to what some net rabble says.

Enough said.

[JoeWood]

Jess,
I watched the first one you posted in the other thread. Great resource, thanks!

Dr. Dugas,
My gut feeling was that Mr. Clear is the real deal. I just wanted to take in some net rabble as a second opinion. Thanks for your input.

Joe

[Bao]

He has Clearly had some great teachers, but I am unClear about his focus. For me he seems to teach too much stuff, but if you are going to live on teaching martial arts, sometimes you might have no choice to do something else. But he seems to have a great enthusiasm and some good teaching skills. Judging from his vids, he goes from Clearity to Clearity.

Bad jokes and puns intended.

[JoeWood]

*UPDATE*

I just got back home last night from a 3 day intensive Chi Energy healing workshop with Richard Clear at his school. The dude certainly has a unique feel/quality in his body. I got to push hands with him for a few minutes, he felt ghostly & rock solid at the same time. He let me feel his abdomen while he sank chi and it literally felt like his entire guts dropped out into the floor.

The nature of this workshop exposed me to "empty force" but the application was anything but martial. I felt it inside my own body and used it to feel inside other people's body to clear energy blockages and such. It was very much a practice requiring you to be receptive, every time I thought about blocking someone out while they were working with/on me neither of us could feel anything. I felt enough to see the progression from what we were working on to using this kind of method to physically make somebody move. There were a few times when I felt like my partner touched/lightly slapped/gently pushed me when I could clearly see both of their hands several inches away from my body.

I was also impressed with a few of his students that have been training with him for 4-5 years being able to demonstrate a degree of the same sort of body quality that he has (nowhere close to his level). I did not get the chance to spar with anybody while I was there and the guys that I chatted with gave me the impression that they don't do much contact sparring but they do tons of push hands.

To sum it up, I experienced a whole lot of the kind of shit that you don't generally run around telling everybody that you know about because they'll think you're f'ing nuts! The soft power quality that one can gain from his training methods seems legit and I was able to see a distinct progression in skill level between the guys that have been there for 1-2 years and the ones that have been there 4-5 years. I didn't meet anyone that had been training with him for longer than 5 years but he said he has guys that have been training under him for 10-20.

[windwalker]

To sum it up, I experienced a whole lot of the kind of shit that you don't generally run around telling everybody that you know about because they'll think you're f'ing nuts!

yep

let me try this.

now that you've felt something different does it change the way you might
have viewed some of clips posted here?

just curious

[JoeWood]

yep

let me try this.

now that you've felt something different does it change the way you might
have viewed some of clips posted here?

just curious

Heck yes!! I had 11+ hrs on the road driving back home and spent a lot of time reflecting on some of the clips that you and others have posted recently. I haven't had time to go back and watch them again tho with Thanksgiving coming up. I have a decent foundation now for this kind of practice and already have a few people lined up to do some energy healing work on.

[shawnsegler]

[willie]

Do any of you gentlemen have first hand or even second hand experience training/seminar/demo with Richard Clear? I am new to the world of internal martial arts and am interested in branching out from my karate regiment. So is this guy legit? Why or why not?

Here's a link for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb4GxGDCVAI

I have viewed a handful of his material, however he has more videos on his channels than I care to sift through.

Thanks,

Joe

Hi Joe, I have not met Clear himself, But I did get to do some push hands and push hands with striking with one of
his guys Jeff, Jeff has like 40 years of taiji so I don't think it's all from Clears. I think it's from Uncle Bill's William De Thouars.
Who from what I heard is real good. Any way's yeah, Their good! Would recommend...

[JoeWood]

;)

I'm sure that's what I looked like on the last hour of my drive home!

[Michael]

I just got back home last night from a 3 day intensive Chi Energy healing workshop with Richard Clear at his school.

Hi Joe, what's your interest in this? Does it relate to your martial arts? Just curious.

Thanks