ways of control

[windwalker]

the "Way" seems quite difficult to explain and quite difficult to follow. when we see various teachers explain what they are doing, they all say very clearly that it doesn't work if they try to "use force". this is probably frustrating because they are trying to say something works by "not doing something else that you would typically do". kind of defining the +, by saying it's "not the -". people have a big discomfort with that, the double negative or the only seeing the thing by looking at the negative space, but after a while, it feels quite apt. it's very "Taoist" ... the "doing by non-doing". i think this is why people give up and say let's talk about "physics" or "language" or a bunch of other red herrings, possibly to never get it w/o knowing.

"Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a loud shout: some­one was repeating the dervish call. ‘There is no point in that,' he said to himself, 'because the man is mispronouncing the syllables. Instead of intoning ya hu, he is saying u ya hu.'

Then he realized that he had a duty, as a more careful student, to correct this unfortunate person, who might have had no oppor­tunity of being rightly guided, and was therefore probably only doing his best to attune himself with the idea behind the sounds."

[Appledog]

the "Way" seems quite difficult to explain and quite difficult to follow. when we see various teachers explain what they are doing, they all say very clearly that it doesn't work if they try to "use force". this is probably frustrating because they are trying to say something works by "not doing something else that you would typically do". kind of defining the +, by saying it's "not the -". people have a big discomfort with that, the double negative or the only seeing the thing by looking at the negative space, but after a while, it feels quite apt. it's very "Taoist" ... the "doing by non-doing". i think this is why people give up and say let's talk about "physics" or "language" or a bunch of other red herrings, possibly to never get it w/o knowing.

"...some­one was repeating the dervish call. ‘There is no point in that,' he said to himself, 'because the man is mispronouncing the syllables. Instead of intoning ya hu, he is saying u ya hu.' ..."

Maybe then, the difference is not in actually how he is moving but something a little different.

Almost as if literally the only difference in the movement is that in one instance he is using qi and in another instance he is not.

As if that was the actual difference between what the student did and what he should be doing.

(maybe) there is nothing else which is required to fix at that moment? Maybe he student's external movement was sufficiently good, and the teacher just pointing out the one simple deficiency, the last step they need to achieve?

[twocircles13]

I’m getting a "bad gateway" error when I try to quote, so I will just reference the post.

Comments on prior comments
Please. These are short videos, just snapshots of what was shown and explained over hours and days, so if the words you're hearing do not agree with your understanding or worldview, it is probably because you do not understand the context in which they were delivered. Please don’t assume, then get critical based on your assumptions.

Further, the teachers are using teaching tools and terminology they think will help the seminar attendees. I use my own set of terminology. I hope it helps, but often it does not. Some of the terminology in these videos would not help me, but that does not mean they would not help anyone.

Getting the most out of these videos
Because these are just little snapshots, if you want to glean knowledge, I thought @Bao gave the best advice in the second post, watch through once to get the general gist, but watch segments again at regular speed with the sound turned off.

Then, watch in frame-by-frame or at least slo-mo. Watch what they are actually doing. Watch what the students are doing. Watch what happens to the students, in particular, where they step or land, and how their structure collapses. Then, look at the instructor to see what he did or is doing to create that response.

Do not try to do what the instructor is doing while you are watching, but imagine yourself doing it several times. Then, turn the video off, and try it from memory. Go back and watch again without the sound. Try to do it again, improve it without the video playing. Repeat.

With these kinds of videos, you eventually need a partner. It would be better if they were not watching the videos and trying to learn with you, so they are like the students in the video. But, take what you can get partner wise.

You do not need to analyze this, figure out the biomechanics or any other how, or come up with verbal answers. This is training at a deep subconscious level using the mirror neural system, monkey see, monkey do. It’s the only way we all learned until we could start understanding language, so the learning pathways are still there. Just start using them.

After you can do what they are doing consistently, you can go back and try to understand their explanations if you really want to.

For the record, I have done or can do about 85-90% of what is being demonstrated and taught 50% or more. There are a few things I have not tried and like other videos some skills have been polished to a high gloss that I have not even tried to attain on that skill. But, by the very nature of the seminars, these are rudimentary skills. The control skills of taijiquan are much broader and deeper and include counters to all of these skills.

[Giles]

@twocircles

Good post.

[Bob]

old post

Science confirms what internal martial artists have known for years!
___________________________________________________________
New York Times

December 1, 2009
Observatory

People Hear With Their Skin as Well as Their Ears

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

We hear with our ears, right? Yes, but scientists have known for years that we also hear with our eyes. In a landmark study published in 1976, researchers found that people integrated both auditory cues and visual ones, like mouth and face movements, when they heard speech.

That study, and many that followed, raised this fundamental question about speech perception: If humans can integrate different sensory cues, do they do so through experience (through seeing countless speaking faces over time), or has evolution hard-wired them to do it?

A new study that looks at a different set of sensory cues adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests such integration is innate. In a paper in Nature, Bryan Gick and Donald Derrick of the University of British Columbia report that people can hear with their skin.

The researchers had subjects listen to spoken syllables while hooked up to a device that would simultaneously blow a tiny puff of air onto the skin of their hand or neck. The syllables included “pa” and “ta,” which produce a brief puff from the mouth when spoken, and “ba” and “da,” which don’t produce puffs. They found that when listeners heard “ba” or “da” while a puff of air was blown onto their skin, they perceived the sound as "pa” or “ta.”

Dr. Gick said the findings were similar to the 1976 study, in which visual cues trumped auditory ones — subjects listened to one syllable but perceived another because they were watching video of mouth movements corresponding to the second syllable. In his study, he said, cues from sensory receptors on the skin trumped the ears as well. “Our skin is doing the hearing for us,” he said.

Dr. Gick noted that it would normally be rare that someone actually sensed a puff of air produced by another, although people might occasionally sense their own puffs. Either way, he said, the stimulus is very subtle, “which suggests it is very powerful.”

“What’s so persuasive about this particular effect,” he added, “is that people are picking up on this information that they don’t know they are using.” That supports the idea that integrating different sensory cues is innate.

Dr. Gick said the finding also suggested there might be other sensory cues at work in speech perception — that, as he put it, “we are these fantastic perception machines that take in all the information available to us and integrate it seamlessly.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated which two of the syllables used in an experiment by researchers produce a brief puff from the mouth when spoken. They are “pa” and “ta,” not “ba” and “pa.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/scien ... f.html?hpw

[everything]

it's always interesting to find alternative or partial or related hypotheses. I think when you "fake someone out" in sports, combat sports, combat arts, etc. these "mirror neurons" probably play a part. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... 's%20brain.

but none of that explains the very "interesting" ima things ime.