Any other teachers like He Jinghan?

[Bao]

Body-Mind refinement until the Body is completely open so one can fully understand the Mind and what its exact role is.

So you need to do everything below before you can understand the "mind"?

In the meantime, internal organs must be cleansed and remain in a state of balance; all joints must be opened, tendons stretched and supple; muscles are softened as Spleen is working correctly, creating and distributing the Qi, blood and fluids efficiently (more energy is produced at a lowered energy/food intake).

I don't agree. You can't separate mind and body this way. You understand mind through the body and the body through the mind. There's always a continuous process involving both body and mind, they are inseparable. There's never clear stages or a distinguishable point where you sudden understand everything as a sudden enlightenment.

Focus is on hard work not form let alone fighting others since this kind of work is enormous and it requires a lot of effort, energy and dedication. Grounding, grounding and more grounding; this can't be emphasised good enough.

HJH provides the tools for this type of work and it's up to the student how far they are ready to go.

Any others?

Seems like what other said, that you are mainly interested in neigong. If you want to look into standing practice, you have various xingyi, bagua, taiji and obviously yiquan. If you really want to open up the joints you can look into the Xie Peiqi –> He Jinbao lineage Yin bagua. Drills and forms are also important for coordination and learning how to balance your body while moving.

What I like with HJH is not the exercises he teaches, but the way he teaches them and that he talks a lot, that he really wants his students to understand what they do. He is a good and generous teacher and seems to have a very good knowledge about Chinese medicine and about the human body in general. This is what I would look in a teacher. Too many speak about Yi, qi and shit, but it’s mostly all jibberish, more to confuse or mystify than to actually teach. So what I would look for is a teacher who actually cares about his students and want them to learn. Exercises and tools you'll find scattered all over the place. Just pick what you think you need and practice.

[johnwang]

Am I the only person in this forum who believes someone's solo form performance has nothing to do with his MA skill/ability?

[GrahamB]

No, I think that too. But I wouldn't go as far as to say "nothing to do with...", but don't judge a book by its cover, and all that.

[wiesiek]

me too,
like add:
that my shot is,
- if you practise MA in connection with meditation,
sooner or later it become internal or even very internal.
Particularly, when you pass 70.
Using the Chinese terms is justified, we are practising something with the roots deep in CMA.

[wayne hansen]

There is no aspect of martial arts that doesn’t require full attention
The longer you correctly practice the deeper it gets on all levels

[windwalker]

Am I the only person in this forum who believes someone's solo form performance has nothing to do with his MA skill/ability?

You among others are one of the few to show their work, among even fewer to none,
showing demos of it in use..

Why would this not extend to how people evaluate...or write about what they don't show...

Solo performance, a good indicator of a persons level of possible type of power generation...
Similar to demonstrations of breaking objects.

Historically the accent changed from usage to performance among what are called internal arts.
Less so among other CMA methods and styles....Shuai jiao "摔跤" for example.
Most demos, are of usage..

Taiji demos, of usage tend to focus on "type" of power not really "usage" of power
While a little better, they tend to be questioned by many on line mistakenly inferring the demo to usage of power.
even among those doing the demos, this can happen..
Not a good outcome when what is expected to happen, does not happen when called to use..

Leaving only, performance , ie playing the form as a way of gageing level or ability..

[origami_itto]

Am I the only person in this forum who believes someone's solo form performance has nothing to do with his MA skill/ability?

There's a lot of different things you can see in someone's form that speak to the results of the training. Focus, concentration, strength, control, across all three levels of influence, may or may not be displayed. May or may not be perceptible to you or me or any given person based on their level of exposure to certain things. All anyone can really say is they can see a certain thing or quality present or not. Whether or not someone can or even cares to learn how to use that for fighting in various contexts is a different question. Whether or not it represents the entirety of their skill is still yet another.

Might be a side note but I prefer to not think of the "martial arts" expression of Taijiquan in terms of "fighting". I don't want to use my art in any situation where I might not emerge safely. If someone were to approach me to try to do me harm, the mindset I try to bring is the same I would in dealing with a feral hog or rabid dog on the property. We do not engage in a struggle on equal grounds. I use whatever tools and advantages I may have at my disposal to as completely as possible eliminate their desire or capacity to do me harm.

Anything other than that is just playing and training.

[everything]

form

when you do your 5k runs and kicks, are they the way you would actually kick? when tyson shadow boxes, does anyone here actually want to get in the ring with him? yeah yeah nobody here is afraid of the weirdos in their PJs looking "graceful" - totally agree.

gibberish

hmm, yi, qi, jin are kinda the main point, aren't they. if it comes across as gibberish, maybe the teacher(s) are failing to communicate? or do not understand something?

[Bao]

gibberish

hmm, yi, qi, jin are kinda the main point, aren't they. if it comes across as gibberish, maybe the teacher(s) are failing to communicate? or do not understand something?

I meant what I wrote, what most teachers say about these things is nonsense. If they understand what they are doing or not, they are still not interested in their students learning anything of value. I know this is true of at least most public teachers and YouTubers, because I keep hearing the word "fascia" all of the time and from most of them.

[everything]

agree with your reply 100%

[johnwang]

If I were to think "going deep" I would probably think first of Liu Jishun

Does "deep" means one truly understand the application of what he is doing?

At 0.30 - 0.35, he has both palms facing out while he turns to his right. Do you know what the application there?

In this clip, CMC's both palms face down. I also don't know the application there.



In this clip, GM Chang's 1 palm face down (grab the wrist) while 1 palm pace up (grab the elbow), 双履 (Shuang Lu) - double pulling. I can understand the application there.

[everything]

i think the OP said "nvm the fighting for now" so we've rejected / ignored his premise altogether, but still agree 100% that should be part of the "go deep" definition

imho you should be deep in your applications under resistance, deep in your neigong, deep in the the intersection/combo. first two are easy to start, hard to master just on their own, third seems almost impossible (and this seems to be empirically true or else we wouldn't complain about IMA being dead).

[origami_itto]

If I were to think "going deep" I would probably think first of Liu Jishun

Does "deep" means one truly understand the application of what he is doing?

At 0.30 - 0.35, he has both palms facing out while he turns to his right. Do you know what the application there?

In this clip, CMC's both palms face down. I also don't know the application there.



In this clip, GM Chang's 1 palm face down (grab the wrist) while 1 palm pace up (grab the elbow), 双履 (Shuang Lu) - double pulling. I can understand the application there.

Application training is useful, sure, but that's not really what is going on in the first clip there. That's not even the same movement

Cheng man ching never described an application there, even Yang Cheng Fu didn't bother. They're just turning and keeping the arms unified with the waist. You could consider the arms there to be in a guard position, or it is a way to accomplish a taijiquan throw. You connect through the arms but the power comes from the waist. The palms, wrists, forearms, whatever, are unimportant, any point of contact works.

Thinking about Taijiquan in terms of applications gets useless pretty quick. Too limiting. Like saying "what cut is this knife good for".

Compare them with Dong Ying Jie here, around 58 seconds in, see how the power starts at the feet and goes all the way out to the palms. GM Chang's palms are down but it looks like the movement is powered more by his shoulders and biceps than his waist and legs. He did great with it, but it is a different thing when you get down to it.
https://youtu.be/b4WwTVNqXAk?si=qlMsjh3c1qwbuNLd&t=59

[johnwang]

GM Chang's palms are down but it looks like the movement is powered more by his shoulders and biceps than his waist and legs.

I did ask him about why he didn't use his entire body to pull in his Taiji form. His answer to me was he tried to borrow the counter force to move in. In other words, his intention was to move in toward his opponent. Whether he could pull his opponent off balance or not is not important there. This may be contradicted to the body unification principle (all body parts function as 1 unit). But it's just like the "foot sweep" that your upper body turn into one direction while your low body turn into the opposite direction.

I believe there are situations that you use your

- whole body to pull (off balance your opponent), and
- upper body to pull back while your low body (waist and legs) moves forward (move in yourself).

Here is an example that you pull yourself into your opponent. Your arms are pulling back, but your body (waist and legs) is moving forward.



Here is another example that pulling uses only the shoulders and biceps. The waist and legs are not function in the pulling (because the waist and legs are doing something else).

[origami_itto]

There's nothing that says you have to use your whole body for every movement... or is there?

It speaks to what we see Taijiquan as, or rather what differentiates a Tai Chi form from Taijiquan, the system that uniquely integrates a particular body method and strategy.