The Shamanic origins of T'ai Chi Ch'uan

[GrahamB]

[quote="Pandrews1982"]Graham - Ed Hines reviews the book Possible Origins here http://www.i-bagua.com/book-review-possible-origins-a-cultural-history-of-chinese-martial-arts-theater-and-religion/

Thanks - nice review Mr Ed.

[Strange]

Have you read it?

ROFLMAO

[Strange]

Please, find a real master Graham. Stop thinking for yourself.

I was not born to follow. It seems to keep getting me into hot water

Stubborn pride sure to get one into hot water
is there some other outcome you expect?
for real.

[Yeung]

He called this Tai Chi dance "Tiao Wu", I didn't know what this meant but more recently I have become more interested in the Chinese language so I looked it up.

Chuangzu, Tiao wu in chinese means dancing. Thats all.

Maybe it should be Da Wu 大舞，The latest Qigong Exercise published by the Chinese Health Qigong Association.

[taiwandeutscher]

OMG

[BeerlessBoxer]

...

For those interested in Shamanism my student Josef Sykora somehow managed to get my mentor and Xing Yi teacher Damon Smith to talk about his shamanic training and understanding in a series of podcasts. Damon does occasionally touch upon aspects of martial arts and Xing Yi training in the series but it is mainly focused on his understanding of shamanism. He was lucky enough to encounter a number of mentors that taught him various traditions with shamanic aspects. His first Xing Yi teacher was a Malaysian of Chinese decent (apparently his grandfather was taught Xing Yi by Guo Yun Shen) and he was heavily animistic. He was also taught Mongolian wrestling and fighting arts by a Mongol who was his supervisor at university including further understanding of Mongolian shamanic traditions. He studied shamanism at university academically. He was taught by a Japanese guy Japanese martial arts including some really interesting Japanese traditions with shamanic aspects. And he has another Japanese teacher (that is also another mentor of my own) from a Japanese tradition which was based on shamanic methods (though today has become more ritual than real practice). So all in all he's got a shed load of experience with esoteric and shamanic traditions and the podcast is worth listening to. He's a really private guy and listening to the first episode or two he's a little reluctant to talk freely but as the series goes on he gets into it and can't stop talking, telling people stuff that took me years to weed out of him, things like Daoist Yuan Cheng teachings which he explains in one episode but wouldn't tell me about until years into my Xing Yi training!! Anyway link is here https://wovenenergy.com/

Thank you for the link!

After listening the first podcast, at least I am very intrigued about what else Damon Smith has to say about the subject. He seems to have been able to put the wide subject in very coherent and logical (if you can use that word with this subject, haha..) package, a lot of what I have read in the past makes a lot more sense now. Not that I have read a lot, or have been involved in shamanism, but it has always been interesting subject to me nonetheless.

The podcast also made me think about "shamanistic" remnants in ways and rituals of modern culture and religions. Since the earliest human cultures were animistic/shamanistic hunter/gatherers before agriculture and civilization, newer cultures/religions must have been built, or evolved, from what was before. I think many people have quite rigid view of what shamanism and shamanistic techniques actually are/were. It could be possible that the IMA might be closer to "shamanistic" practices than we would think, at least when you think of the more energetic/internal/mental aspects of the art..

[Rhen]

Huang Di, Shennong, and Fuxi are the Shaman kings of ancient China, each having an impact on chinese thought, culture, and history that would later affect the Han dynasty schools like school of Yin Yang, etc.



http://www.rupestreweb.info/china.html

[yeniseri]

Recently saw a translation of Li Family input pertaining to taijiquan but their hagiographical beginnings do not really reflect such origins. Perhaps degree and intent are the clues.
Will try to link when I find again

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/501 ... REVIEW.pdf

[Strange]

Wang ZongYue's Taiji Classis any mention of this shaman thing?
if not, what are you talking about?

[Strange]

do this and that
learn this and that
cannot concentrate on one thing
and that one thing you also dun fully understand
then you want to add more complexity
when fore-masters with 1000 times (let's make it 10,000 to be accurate) more skill never say anything about
cos one guy with a beard has a book and a youtube say so
yeah you shaman-altered state of mind alright
cannot think think logically and get the common sense straight
yeah you altered-state of mind yeah crazy

how about one guy that stay in Japan come up with Noh origin of Taiji, all moving slowly right?
how about one guy in India come up with Hindu origin of chinese martial arts, Damo came to China mah, you see?
how about one guy from islamic holy city come up with Islamic origins of Xinyi in Henan, sure tha connection with muslim mission
how about one guy who like the number 8 come up with links of bagua and muay thai the art of 8 limbs, 8 and 8 you see? you see? man i have a Youtube Channel
or how about you focus, forget about all other nonsense and train
now that's an original idea!

[Strange]

Yeah, Tom you are right

last night cos i had nothing to do
i impersonated a traffic police
i pulled over a tall old guy with long white beard
he was mumbling non stop
and when i asked for his drivers license, his name was Wang ZongYue, occupation: Shaman
he was high as feck
when i tried to frisk him, the guy pulled some kinda taiji move
he was fast, but not faster than my taser, i tell you
when i got him to settle down, i found a bad of magic mushrooms, spanish fly, marijuana, ecstasy, heroin,
opium, and also new stuff like pink, AK-47 and brown-brown
he told me being a shaman is like martial arts, its all in the combinations
then i asked him why the hell did he not include this in his Taiji Classic
he said you can't teach them everything you know

so there you have it, looks like this shaman origin thingy is teh legit
you guys ought to contact that street corner guy asap and have him come over with some supplies pronto
i mean bongto

[Strange]

what can happen if you talk crap and dun train
remember you heard it straight from Strange

[willie]

That's the second time I seen that video. Although i liked it, I think that it might need some verification before it's excepted as fact.
A more likely story is "They were farmers" "They needed to use the whole body to move the dirt" "They transferred the techniques of
whole body motion into martial application"

We may see an example of this line of thought from this example.
If one of the farmers had to fight while they were farming, Their weapon was a shovel.
What if they were in a situation where they had no shovel?
" Even though there was no shovel in their hands, they still had the mechanics "