What is the point of silk reeling - to you - ?

[Quigga]

No thanks bud, my own practice is keeping me busy enough. Appreciate the effort tho

[origami_itto]

No thanks bud, my own practice is keeping me busy enough. Appreciate the effort tho

I do want to apologize for being rude about your punching power. I haven't seen it so can't say.

[Quigga]

It's alright. It was me who started attacking people for no good reason. Kundalini gives me swift karma for that by forcing me to work through the underlying triggers that caused my attack.

All's good. Let's just move on.

[origami_itto]

I get it. Very good of you to own it.

[Quigga]

Thanks. Anything else would just make it worse.

[origami_itto]

That would be a good topic for another thread. "unpleasant" byproducts of training? I dunno. It's something that you go through, like sore legs. Long dark nights of the soul in spiritual work. Change requires adjustment that can cause pain in the short term.

[Quigga]

Depends on how much baggage you have haha. Somewhere along the way I genuinely lost my desire to be a good person and to keep on working. But I can't stay stuck.

[everything]

“Dispel ‘bad’ Qi” and “refill with ‘clean’ Qi”

I don’t know about the karma part.

Maybe part of ‘bad’

[Quigga]

Back to topic. The point of silk reeling is to end up with a beautiful material that can be skillfully woven into fine garments for both women and men .

[BruceP]

Wow

Anyway...

D_Glenn, all I was trying to say is that Bao Fali is a product of cause and effect of Bolang Jin in the same way as the 4th corner of the map to SR is a product of cause and effect of folding. But since we're talking about two different things regards folding it probably didn't make much sense to you. And my attempt to point that out was poorly worded and not proof read before posting so the sentence looks like a drunk wrote it.


Then again, we'd probably agree on what that 4th corner is if terminology wasn't getting in the way.


I think the reason "...the word Chansijin which is essentially useless now with all the interpretations and being dumbed down..." is because all those different interpretations and ruminations are given by people who have never actually tested their SR beyond friendly push-hands, against people who know what it is and are really trying to break it.

The great thing about Bao Fali is that it can't be faked, and can be demonstrated on inanimate objects in ways that it's observable and unmistakable.

Thanks again for linking your article. I've bookmarked your blog as your work in translating is really commendable and a quality resource.

I’m not really following what you’re saying?

To Bao Fali you must use the Bolangjin or Fanlangjin movement, aka the Zhedie movement. The Bolangjin movement is moving the lumbar from its normal position to rounded with the tailbone tucked. Fanlangjin is moving the lumbar from tailbone tucked back to its normal position. You can do consecutive strikes going back and forth with the two

[BruceP]

The Folding I mentioned is not just using elbow stroke
It is a whole strategy used with high level body awareness
I am not talking about the tailbone body bow thing
I learnt dragons back in Ba kua that is a whole other animal

Wayne, I know you know what we both know as 'folding'. Never meant to imply that you were refering to 'elbow-stroke', or bows, or arrows in flight (archer's paradox?). A dumb old arrow actually shows and 'knows' folding better than most of those posting in thread.

[D_Glenn]

Bruce, thanks for bookmarking it. But I stopped posting on my blog years ago and all my new stuff is on my Facebook group. Some re-editing of the blog but mostly new stuff. It’s basically my blog, but with more feedback in the comments.

I should have been more specific. I don’t know what the 4th corner of the map is?

Purely just for reference, and to try and better show what I’m talking about, here’s a video of me moving my spine in the Bolangjin method to Bao Fali in my strikes. Using Fali in our strikes and forms is just one of the ways we practice. We also practice really slow, both with moving the lumbar and tailbone through the motions, and without. We also practice at full speed where we specifically do not move the lumbar and just keep the tailbone held in its natural position. We call this way of practicing ‘Containing the power’ and there is no stopping of the strikes, being it’s Baguazhang, we just change it into the next strike. All our standard forms are designed where the imagined opponent is highly skilled and our next move is adapting to the best course of action that a highly skilled opponent would make to defend themselves. So our ‘Containing the power’ is the closest approximation of moving in a fight. Of course the forms are just the intro, there’s a ton more work after that in order to hone one’s ability to change/ adapt. Also though, it’s important to actually have the ability to Fali (issue power), in order to ‘Contain’ it.




.

[BruceP]

Also though, it’s important to actually have the ability to Fali (issue power), in order to ‘Contain’ it.

Yeah, also that one has a 'developed and connected' dantien.

[D_Glenn]

Yeah, also that one has a 'developed and connected' dantien.

Exactly.
That’s called Zhuanhuan in Chen Taiji.

If I borrow their terminology then our ‘Containing the Power’ is only using Zhuanhuan. But practicing ‘Issuing Power (FaLi)’ is using both Zhuanhuan and Zhedie.

.

[Trick]

This is completely off-topic. I’m only including it here because I don’t think it will swim as a topic on its own. I thought Graham would find it interesting. Others might too.

That's interesting about Chinese freemasonry - I remember finding a website once about Chinese Freemasonry and it went back a lot further in time than the established 1940s founding - it came in along the silk road. Annoyingly I can't find that now. Esoteric secret societies were very prevalent around the time all these people like Chen Fake lived. It would be almost weird if people like Yang LuChan and Dong Haichuan weren't in one. But we wouldn't know because they were.... secret

Probably 80% of what I know about Chinese secret societies comes from a single source, The Hung Society: Or the Society of Heaven and Earth, 1925. I had access to a copy decades ago through a university library. I don’t remember the printing year, but the book was quite old. I periodically look to see if there is a copy available online. The last time I did it was nearly $200.

However, I just searched and someone has republished it. It’s on Amazon for $54.95 in paperback. This one says it is a new release. There are others too that are facsimile reprints. This one may be too. Here’s the link.

https://www.amazon.com/Hung-Society-Hea ... 1494122820

The focus of this book is the Hung Society preparing for the Boxer Rebellion. It gives some behind the scenes information. The Hung Society did not die after the Boxer Rebellion. The channels it had formed to raise funds for the rebellion morphed into an organized crime syndicate.

One of the premises of the book was that these secret organizations were not cultural cross-contamination from modern European Freemasonry. They had ancient roots. IIRC, the authors had an appendix showing independent Freemason-like rituals around the world pointing ancient sources.

My interest in the book was piqued when I read that initiates had to be "trained in the martial arts” to qualify. There may have been an explanation of how the Society recruited through martial schools, families, and sympathetic instructors. Or this explanation may have come from a different source, and I have just mentally linked them.

The ritual theater connection comes as the initiation rite is described. I would call this ritual theater with the initiates acting a part in the story. We know, of course, that Opera (ritual theater) groups in Hong Kong had ties to both martial art schools and the triads.

Esoteric secret societies were very prevalent around the time all these people like Chen Fake lived. It would be almost weird if people like Yang LuChan and Dong Haichuan weren't in one. But we wouldn't know because they were.... secret

Dong Haichuan lived before this time, but secret societies of various kinds were ubiquitous for hundreds if not thousands of years in China.

The Chen Family's place in the Boxer Rebellion is unclear. There may have been divisions within the family or rogue members going one way or the other. The Chen Family History records no members participating in the Boxer Rebellion.

Yuan Shikai became Governor of Shandong Province in late 1899, and by 1900, he had hired Chen Yanxi, Chen Fake’s father, as head of his household security and as a tutor of Chen Family martial arts to his oldest son, Yuan Keding, who was 22 year old, the oldest of 32 children. This started the famous "more than three year” period where Yanxi was absent and could not teach Fa-ke as he started to learn taijiquan.

As organizer and commander of the New Army, Yuan has been called the Father of the Modern Chinese Army. He was part of a modernization movement both before and after the Boxer Rebellion. He supported the conversion of temples, where ritual theater was performed, into modern-style schools. Whereas, the Boxers represented a return to the rituals and traditions of the past.

During the Rebellion, Yuan disregarded a declaration of war by the Empress Dowager against the foreign armies and influenced other governors to do the same. He quelled the Boxers in Shandong by massacring tens of thousands of them, so foreign armies had no excuse to invade Shandong or the other provinces who had taken similar action. Yuan later played other pivotal roles in Chinese history. You might call him pro-China and pro-modernization but not pro-Qing Dynasty nor pro-tradition.

The Boxer Rebellion officially ended in September 1901. Chen Yanxi returned home around 1903 as Yuan’s activities took him to Beijing more often. There is no evidence one way or another of Chen Yanxi’s sympathies. However, as the Qing Dynasty ended and the Republic was established, the Chen Family seemed quick to embrace modern practices and values.

for some time now i have been dragged into the realm of freemasonry.
this little article theorize on how （western）freemasonry initially might have been inspired by Chinese culture before the ”Egyptomania” took the lead. - https://earnshaw.jimdofree.com/

also the symbology of the ”square and the compass（circle）” in Chinese culture goes back at least to Confucius