Wu Yu Hsiang's Four Character Secret Transmission

[Steve James]

Well, I think saying that they give an advantage suggests it's they're effective methods. However, what you call ass-backwards is still the tradition, long before push hands tournaments. Using your argument, why teach the form at all. Or rather why do Grasp Bird's Tail?

Anyway, what I consider "peng" is required to prevent someone breaking one's arm with "lu" (or lie, jou, even kao). So, I'd argue (just for shits) that the squares are taught for defense, and the angles are taught for offense. I don't really think it's that simple because one can find the corners in the squares and the squares can always be done to the corners.

I totally agree about "push hands" being emphasized as an end point, and I'm not a fan of phs competitions. I also don't care whether tcc has a good rep as a fighting art or not. I often think it's better that way.

[D_Glenn]

I had to go back and see if I had posted anything with the Bagua perspective, but I came across something Wuyidizi wrote, and basically that Treatise on the Four Corners that Origami posted is accurate, but it doesn’t really explain why.

It’s about how movements transition from one thing into the other. It should be round, curving, smooth and flowing- a Circle. But inside that circle is a square and the corners of the square can poke out if need be. But it doesn’t have to be a hit. A corner can be something like an arm drag. It’s an erratic but necessary movement.

Maybe a car analogy would work: say that your martial movements are like the suspension of an expensive car. It’s like you’re floating across the road, not feeling any bumps or imperfections. But then your wheel rolls over a rock or a pothole in the road and it jars you, the whole car shudders, but then you just resume rolling down the road.

.

[Steve James]

I agree it's about transitioning and adapting, not just attacking. Graham said that it comes down to yin and yang, but that eventually generates the 10000 things. So, they have to be specified. For ex., I'd argue that the "push" hands exercises deal with handling (and delivering) pushes, and the "da lu" exercises deal with handling and delivering pulls. Of course that's a super duper over-simplification.

In the Yang "Forty Chapters," chapter one is about the "sides" and "corners" or "eight gates."

The compass points and "eight gates" demonstrate the principle of the cyclical exchange of yin and yang that operates unendingly in its course. Thus it is indispensable to understand the "four sides" and "four corners." The "four sides" techniques are ward-off, roll-back, press, and push; the "four corners" techniques are pull-down, split, elbow-stroke, and shoulder stroke. Combining the corners and sides techniques, we derive the trigrams of the gate positions.

I don't think it's necessary to derive trigrams. Then again, I wouldn't know how.

[BruceP]

Using your argument, why teach the form at all. Or rather why do Grasp Bird's Tail?

Are you asking rhetorically, or because you don't know?

Form follows function. How can a form be useful if the practitioner doesn't have a functional understanding of how to apply tjq's principles and methods under pressure to failure? <- not rhetorical since we're already deep into a discussion of the tactical/fighty aspects of tjq being practiced as an Internal Martial Art.

Yeah, what I call ass-backwards is still tradition. Meaningless. Whose tradition? Yours? Some founder I'll never meet or lean from, hands-on? Tradition will always be at least as much miss as hit in terms of someone 'getting it'. Like Wayne wrote in another thread; "internal martial arts is almost dead might as well drive the last nail in". Tradition...

"Dont let a lack of knowledge stop you"

[Trick]

it makes me think of those FMA angles of attack and footwork charts

Come to think of “helm of awe” and runes - https://cn.bing.com/images/search?view= ... ajaxserp=0

More a symbol for protection with supposed similar effect of what is spoken in the OP

[Trick]

Much talking of four corner - did we misread “four character” ?

[origami_itto]

I agree it's about transitioning and adapting, not just attacking. Graham said that it comes down to yin and yang, but that eventually generates the 10000 things. So, they have to be specified. For ex., I'd argue that the "push" hands exercises deal with handling (and delivering) pushes, and the "da lu" exercises deal with handling and delivering pulls. Of course that's a super duper over-simplification.

In the Yang "Forty Chapters," chapter one is about the "sides" and "corners" or "eight gates."

The compass points and "eight gates" demonstrate the principle of the cyclical exchange of yin and yang that operates unendingly in its course. Thus it is indispensable to understand the "four sides" and "four corners." The "four sides" techniques are ward-off, roll-back, press, and push; the "four corners" techniques are pull-down, split, elbow-stroke, and shoulder stroke. Combining the corners and sides techniques, we derive the trigrams of the gate positions.

I don't think it's necessary to derive trigrams. Then again, I wouldn't know how.

I don't think the original word was "derive" but what is important to understand is that we aren't necessarily talking about the corners like we would talk about boxing techniques.

Li Yi'bu (sp?) gets into a lot of detail in his writing in the Lost Classics of the Late Qing Empire. Like which gates for which attacks, etc.

In there, he talks about the specific pairing of gates and techniques and what to avoid and what to try to do. The song of circulation of Qi is also pretty damn good if you're trying to work that bit out for practical benefit.

But the thing to remember is that that these things are like primal forces. It's not that we train the punch, we train to create the conditions that allow the force to arise.

Peng, Lu, Ji, An is our conditions manifested and stable, arising from central equilibrium. When they are compromised, we don't switch to doing zhao, kao, lieh, cai, they degrade into zhao, kao, lieh, cai what we're training is how to do something useful when you get there.

The ba gua isn't a menu, it's like a periodic table. You have these things, you are merely refining them through training.

As someone mentioned, yes, the corners are plenty to base a whole fighting system on, but by the philosophy of the Yang style pedagogy to do so would be to build up your second string at the expense of your first. As someone smarter mentioned, you could also build a whole system off of just fair lady.

Do what makes you happy.

Adam Mizner says exactly the same thing as Bruce here, you should train the corners more initially since everything sucks, you want to invest in your fallback. You guys probably have a whole lot in common.

I had to go back and see if I had posted anything with the Bagua perspective, but I came across something Wuyidizi wrote, and basically that Treatise on the Four Corners that Origami posted is accurate, but it doesn’t really explain why.

It’s about how movements transition from one thing into the other. It should be round, curving, smooth and flowing- a Circle. But inside that circle is a square and the corners of the square can poke out if need be. But it doesn’t have to be a hit. A corner can be something like an arm drag. It’s an erratic but necessary movement.

Maybe a car analogy would work: say that your martial movements are like the suspension of an expensive car. It’s like you’re floating across the road, not feeling any bumps or imperfections. But then your wheel rolls over a rock or a pothole in the road and it jars you, the whole car shudders, but then you just resume rolling down the road.

.

Refer to Chang Tzu's "Strength and Physics" chapter for more explanation on the square and circle, but he explains the square as a triangle first. The free circle then places the center where ever you like.

Then the question is what can you do with a ball.

In 3 body, at one point the alien species sets up their whole race as a living computer.

They all stood in a vast array, Each individual holds up a black or white card, and then does binary math based on what the one next to them was holding up.

What they are doing was trying to solve the 3 body problem of predicting the path of 3 masses locked in an irregular orbit around each other.

If you were to tell any of the individuals that, they would say you're stupid, they're holding up a card based on input, they aren't calculating any stupid physics problem.

Still worked. They didn't solve the problem unfortunately, but all the calculations were solid.

[origami_itto]

Much talking of four corner - did we misread “four character” ?

No, Appledog wanted to show off by flexing his weiqi knowledge and Bao conflated the corners of the board with the yang style "four corners" with the result of the original point is lost lol. Oh well. Not for them I guess.

If you can do it, picking up a few students to teach xiangqi or weiqi is a nice passtime when you are not training. Piano teacher is good too. It's something I would like to pursue but, time is always against us. But then if we do not take time, how can we ever have time?

I think I might, cautiously, get back into weiqi these days. You can meet a lot of friends with these games.

I know many Tai Chi people who play weiqi. Some believe that it balances their practice. Actually, in more recent years, I have found that you can translate weiqi strategy to push hands. For instance, you want to control the four corners in weiqi, as well as the middle point at the two sides. In push hands, you want to control the shoulders and the centerline of yourself and your opponent. If you focus on dominating the four corners, you will have an advantage and can more easily dominate the rest of the space. Remember also that there's a "four corner push hands". The name is there for a reason.

I started trying to learn when I found out Dong Ying Jie was a fan, figured I'd slavishly imitate whatever he did.

I want to say that I think that's a good strategy, but that it is not what the Yangs mean by the corners.

[Bao]

I want to say that I think that's a good strategy,

Great, you got what I meant

but that it is not what the Yangs mean by the corners.

Yeah, I know.

[everything]

this is a very odd thread for the "visiting aliens". it seems some humans just keep saying circles, squares, corners, triangles.

[origami_itto]

I want to say that I think that's a good strategy,

Great, you got what I meant

but that it is not what the Yangs mean by the corners.

Yeah, I know.

FINE THEN, we'll just have to disagree to agree.

[wayne hansen]

The four corners are the 4 lesser techniques
They are the reboot to get you back on the straight and narrow after the 4 cardinal points have been compromised
This should be clear from how you are taught pushing

[BruceP]

I want to say that I think that's a good strategy,

Great, you got what I meant

but that it is not what the Yangs mean by the corners.

Yeah, I know.

You're both confused about what they are and how they're applied...slanty this and diagonal that sprinkled with more contrived deference to the classics.

I kind of agree with your notion that they pertain to the body/bodies, but not the way you're generalizing it.

And Graham claims to have helped someone who's further off the track than he is. Lorde help that child.

We all know WHAT 'it" is, but nobody has described HOW it's trained/explored for practical purposes.

So, Bao, why not break it down for us as a simple lesson where peng can be understood as transmutations of the corners?

How, for instance, would you introduce tsai/pull-down to beginners? Kinda like peng 101? Just pretend you're blogging and let 'er rip.

Maybe others would like to take a stab at outlining their lesson of the idea and energetic that tsai represents?

[GrahamB]

yeah, I just prefer getting hands on with people instead of endlessly harassing them online in broken English to reveal their training methods, then ignoring what they say and telling them their wrong Kind of grows tiring after all these years. Still stuck, and not moving on.

Anyway, If you have a problem, If no one else can help and if you can find them. Maybe you can hire, The A-Team.

[origami_itto]

nobody has described HOW it's trained/explored for practical purposes.

...
The Da Lu and San Shou...

If you knew Yang taijiquan you would know this.