It's just a step to the left...

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby wayne hansen on Tue Nov 07, 2017 11:40 am

Yes
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby Steve James on Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:33 pm

I think that brings up some points.
One can turn left while advancing left or right.
How do the spins fit into the system?
Consider the movement from cross hands to embrace tiger return to mountain. Is it advancing diagonally to the rear?
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby origami_itto on Tue Nov 07, 2017 4:28 pm

Steve James wrote:I think that brings up some points.
One can turn left while advancing left or right.
How do the spins fit into the system?
Consider the movement from cross hands to embrace tiger return to mountain. Is it advancing diagonally to the rear?

It seems simple and obvious, and certainly can be, but the more you delve into it...
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby zrm on Tue Nov 07, 2017 4:45 pm

Just to play devils advocate, I thought this passage from Xiang Kairan's Taiji book was highly controversial.

https://brennantranslation.wordpress.co ... xperience/

" As to whether these eight techniques should be taught to students to supply them with practice material, I know that all noteworthy teachers of Taiji Boxing do not use this “postures” description. We can only go as far as calling them “eight kinds of hand techniques” and are really not able to consider them to be “eight postures”, because the “postures” do not have fixed postures for people to adhere to. But if we step back from such a description, then each technique has its own ingenious method.
As for the five “postures” of stepping forward, back, left, right, or staying in the center, this is even more nonsensical and silly. As if any other kind of boxing art does not have moving forward and back, moving left and right, and staying put, just what fixed postures are there to Taiji’s forward, back, left, right, and center? When ancient people named a kind of technique, surely they did not do it this way with something unrelated to reality. There had to have been another “thirteen postures” and its techniques were lost or the names got changed. Indeed, let us from now on spread the Taiji solo set without calling it “thirteen postures”. "

Xiang's book was written in 1936 after he had spent time training with a number of well known masters from both Yang and Chen schools. He seem's to imply that that original meaning behind the five stepping postures was lost long ago and that for the most part any interpretations of these five postures are modern ones - it doesn't necessarily follow that these relatively modern interpretations have no value though. This sounds similar to Xing Yi's three poisons, for which interpretation also varies wildly between schools.

Just throwing it out there for discussion.
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby origami_itto on Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:57 am

That's a good point, how much of what we have is reconstruction?

But on the other hand, almost every time I talk taijiquan I find that something I consider basic knowledge some others see as new or advanced. The 13 postures (is a native Chinese speaker honestly getting hung up on the name?) Have been well established within the transmission I received. I feel comfortable finding obvious errors, but I'm not quite arrogant enough to suggest they just made it up for busy work.

I am arrogant enough to play with the wording some and try to reframe the ideas on my own words.

The 8 Gates have definite concrete meanings though the concepts themselves may straddle the abstract.
The 5 steps also have established meanings but you don't hear most folks talk about them beyond this superficial forward backwards left right paradigm. Alchemical systems in general use correspondences to convey multiple meanings simultaneously. Instead of a word or symbol meaning one thing, it takes on multiple meanings depending on the context it's considered in.

Cheng Man Ching assigning the weapons to the various elements is an example of that, it's just a way to build pneumonics for memorizing large amounts of intricate data. You can also use the same context of martial arts to consider the medicinal aspects of the elements and this was surely part of point sealing practices.

The interplay of the five elements I'm considering is how to use the eight gates with an opponent from a strategy perspective.

1. Advance is advance, not attack. It's taking territory and establishing a dominant position, that in itself may include an active or passive attack, but they all contain attack. We don't directly attack first. Got example we meet a young straight punch by advancing and putting Peng on the forearm. The punch completed against our frame, all the power goes into the attacker and they fall down. When we can advance we advance until we can't.

2. Advance destroys retreat. We don't retreat unless we're done and escaping or unless the retreat is a hidden provoke.

3. Counter/gaze left destroys attacks, specifically advance, and is an evasive counter attack. When they attack, we move out of the way and attack.

4. Provoke/look left provokes an attack to or defensive flinch to protect a false target, opening up an attack possibility where the opponent is not focusing. It can be countered. We make them attack where we are not present or defend where we are not attacking to take advantage of the opening it creates.

5. Center is the stillness in movement and mental/physical/emotional balance needed to see clearly and act correctly. It gives birth to all the other elements.

That said, clearly I'm embellishing, but I don't feel that's wrong. If concepts were originally established with Chang san Feng, Chen village, or the first few generations of Yangs, or just made up in modern times, provided the keep to the principles of the classics, they're advancements. In my case here at most I'm guilty of picking up concepts laying around the system and hanging them on the five elements as a way of remembering them, but I do believe this is a large part of the original use
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby Subitai on Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:32 am

Oh my gosh..... This thread.... So many different points of view. Haha. Good job. And good grief, well that's definitely some other ways to look at the subject.
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby everything on Wed Nov 08, 2017 11:46 am

I don't like the bagua theory overlay on IMA, especially on taijiquan. FMA seems to have a more practical and common sense description. E.g. http://www.fmapulse.com/content/fma-cor ... is-escrima

Off topic, the "V" shape is also the main change of direction/feint footwork in football/soccer. Almost all "moves"/feints go along this V shape, individual or team. There is sometimes some spinning, but that is less frequent.
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby wayne hansen on Wed Nov 08, 2017 11:46 am

In the Malaysian CMC tradition I was show in detail where the 13 postures lay by very good teachers who could apply them all
They are all between the start and white stork and they insisted that was all the form we needed to know
The rest of the form was just variations on a theme
The solo San Shou forms and Ta Lu were to work the 4 corners
When these things are explained by good teachers and shown in a no nonsense way there is little room for doubt
When they are read from books with no hand to hand contact they become devoid of reality
Last edited by wayne hansen on Wed Nov 08, 2017 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby origami_itto on Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:25 pm

Five of the thirteen postures of the system being nothing more than forward backwards left right and center is very no nonsense and direct. You are correct.
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby everything on Wed Nov 08, 2017 5:45 pm

may as well say that or nothing, then. trying to overlay "5 elements" just seems silly. I love taijiquan as much as about anyone, but it doesn't seem famous for footwork (like say, baguazhang is).
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby Steve James on Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:53 pm

I think it's more important that theory can be matched to the practice, even if it can be matched to the animals or elements. Nothing wrong with that because traditional Chinese theories are self-referential and consistent.
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby origami_itto on Thu Nov 09, 2017 11:57 am

everything wrote: I love taijiquan as much as about anyone, but it doesn't seem famous for footwork (like say, baguazhang is).

But footwork is the foundation of taijiquan.
"If correct timing and position are not achieved,
the body will become disordered
and will not move as an integrated whole;
the correction for this defect
must be sought in the legs and waist."


Steve James wrote:I think that brings up some points.
One can turn left while advancing left or right.
How do the spins fit into the system?
Consider the movement from cross hands to embrace tiger return to mountain. Is it advancing diagonally to the rear?


So getting into these questions a little...

How DO the spins fit in? You've got inside spins and outside spins, on one foot or using more distinct stepping. If we're looking at it from a simple "direction of rotation" perspective, then the outside spin would be "look right" and the inside would be "gaze left".

What is Embrace Tiger? Is the step to the diagonal getting around a leg, reacting to a rear attack, training the kua, all of the above? More? In terms of steps, is it both look right AND advance? Does it have to be?

This is part of why I think it makes more sense to look at the five steps (powers) as mental energies or strategies than physical footwork. The form itself, then, as with the eight gates (powers) can be fueled with any specific combination of those energies in the context of a particular expression, and the transitions between them occur constantly in intervals of microseconds. Considering the strategies like this is similar, to me, to the Micheal Jordan video the other day discussing how to get around a defender.

Considering them just as the directions is perfectly valid too, I just think it gets a lot harder to stay consistent with it as you progress through the movements. Kind of like the first movements in the form that bear the name of the energies as good representations, I think the five steps as steps is just a sort of low level getting the idea in at a gross level that practice and study refines. Ultimately all words fail to transmit the experience, but what else do we have?
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby everything on Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:57 pm

well we have specific training methods. baguazhang (for example) seems to be explicit about where/when/how/why to step in certain situations. almost every video (like in that recent thread) will explicitly talk about the steps. much like the MJ jab step explanation.

taijiquan just says "5 blah blah" which is almost as abstract as yiquan seems to be. "no forms" "no methods". stationary, no stepping push hands. as if the rest is an "exercise for the reader". this is probably why some people tended to study the "big 3" as complements. the arts have relative strengths. baguazhang footwork/circularity, xingyiquan blast forward, taijiquan listen/stick/follow, etc.
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby origami_itto on Thu Nov 09, 2017 1:51 pm

That's why the five steps somehow representing all the footwork is so insufficient for me. We break down each stance used in each posture and each transition between them with exact precision and test structure at each of the test points during the transitions. People don't really look at taijiquan and say "wow such footwork" but I think that's a function of nobody fights with taiji.
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Re: It's just a step to the left...

Postby everything on Thu Nov 09, 2017 2:13 pm

yeah totally agree. I love taijiquan, anyway. It has plenty of cool "art" in its own right. I guess if baguazhang were widely available I'd study it, too, but heck the most MA I do now is talk to RSF people. :-\ :)
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