Taiji, 大道 Dai Dao, 魔道 Evil Dao

[johnwang]

From Adam Hsu's Chinese MA discussion - just to prove that not everybody in Taiwan share the same view as Miro's. If Miro's statement could upset many people, I'm sure this statement could upset even more people.

Today many people train Taiji. It's spreading Chinese culture and that's very good. But most people who train in Taiji love to dig into theory and not on training the body. Their Ying-Tang, 5 elements theory has nothing to do with combat. Some Taiji people transformed Taiji into Taiji exercise. It's good for health and help human being and that's very good too but it still has nothing to do with combat. As far as the true Taiji masters who can use Taiji in combat, I haven't met anyone yet in my life time so far.

The reason that Taiji is in our current stage because the lacking of step by step prorgress. When people love to use Ying Yang, and 5 elements those fancy words to fool others, and also love to hypnotize themselves, soon or later, they fall into the 魔道 evil Dao. not only you can't wake them up, they will bite you back if you try to help them,

Taiji's Huai Jin, Faijin, sticky, follow, yield, lead into the emptiness are all university level (high level) skills. It's not that easy to obtain. Today most of the Taiji people who didn't have high school and elementary school basic training and try to jump right into university level training. I just don't see how that could be possible?



I don't expect everybody will agree with Adam's point of view but If Taiji is the university level training then what's the grade school, high school training that should come before Taiji?

Adam did give high opinion for Taiji (university level training). He just don't agree with how people train Taiji.

It's so funny that What Miro called it 大道 Dai Dao, Adam called it 魔道 evil Dao.

[klonk]

Well, he certainly states his case strongly!

Back on the previous board, I was trying to figure out what the deal was with taiji as fighting art. I think, based on the above, that Adam Hsu would say the theory is all right but the practice has gotten all messed up. That is encouraging in that it says we still have a valid theory to work with.

As to what you ask, what kind of practice is needed, I would say we need to be obvious before we can be subtle. You need as of first importance to be able to stick and responsively follow. What training leads most directly to that first of all needs?

There is more besides, but that will do to start with.

[Kurt Robbins]

I highly doubt Adam Hsu can fight with his Taiji (or at all for that matter).

[Strange]

"not only you can't weak them up, they will bite you back if you try to help them"

the chief symption mutual masturbation

[C.J.Wang]

In a way, I feel that the downfall of CMA in the past century has a lot to do with the misinterpretation of ideas from the popular Taiji classics, namely "being soft" and "not using strength." Everybody starts judging all systems of CMA with those two principles. If you style is not soft or uses strength, it's low level.

The two ideas cater to the laziness in human beings and lead some into believing that without having to train very hard or break much sweat, they can become invincible fighters just by practicing the forms for 10 minutes every day.

It's like the ultimate marketing strategy.

[johnwang]

"being soft" and "not using strength."

You have just defined the Taiji elementary school and high school training requirement. If all Taiji students are required to

- transfer 1,000 gallons water from the river back to the house for 3 years before their 1st Taiji lesson, those fancy words will never be mentioned by them for the rest of their life.
- be sent to fight Iraq war for 3 years before their 1st Taiji lesson, those word "fighting is low level" will never be mentioned by them for the rest of their life.

[SPJ]

Agreed that what is described in Tai Ji classics is the "ideal" situation or "high" or "optimun" level. university or graduate school levels if you will.

For most of us, we are not that good at all.

There 2 main things here.

1. neutralization of the opponent's jin or hua jin, yes all styles deal with this topic, which styles do not? however, it is very elaborate in Tai Ji. even within the Tai Ji school, there are 3 levels, 1 understanding jin of one's self and that of the opponent. (leng dong, be able to understand), 2 listening to jin (be able to pick up the "cues" from the opponent) 3 moving in and out at will (shen ming, we know everything as if we are gods). most of us are stuck in one and maybe a bit in 2.

2. issueing power or Fa Jin. this part is not soft at all, we have to practice hard and harder conditioning of our body parts and endurance. usually we practice with an extra long staff or da gan. or extra long spear. hitting back, chest, elbow, knee, shoulder etc on pads and punching bags. practicing grabbing powers by catching 5 # flour bag in the air, etc.

agreed that, if you only do soft, you are only half way there.

--

[jkuo]

Attaining skill in anything requires a lot of focused effort and foundation training. You can't develop higher levels of skill or understanding without having more basic and fundamental skills, conditioning, understanding, etc. in place. I liken it learning a sport. Let's take basketball for example. A good point guard should have excellent court vision, court awareness, and be able to setup his teammates to score. But you can't just step out onto the court expecting to do those things. You have to learn how to dribble the ball, pass the ball, learn to read defenses, play defense, develop a jump shot, understand your teammates tendencies, know how to flow with game while still exerting control, understand your role in the context of the team, etc. If you don't have the fundamentals down, you won't really elevate your game. You'll be able to play moderately effectively, but you'll most likely get schooled when pitted against someone who does have sound fundamentals, deeper understanding, or maybe even just more explosive athleticism. Perhaps sports aren't the best example for an TCMA/IMA discussion, but you can easily draw similar parallels in any number of fields.

My thought is that a lot of what is called "Taiji" training isn't completely wrong. The fundamental principles behind those high level "university" skills are sound, but students' short attention spans and the underqualified teachers result in insufficient training in fundamentals and misinterpretation of principles and concepts. One possible solution is to implement curricula with clear progressions and methods of testing levels of achievement. Students could start off with basic exercises and form work to establish some baseline conditioning, body awareness, and body control before [hopefully quickly] progressing to various stages of partner interactions to understand flow, defense, and offense. Of course, standardized curricula seem to be an anathema to a lot of TCMA systems and ultimately quality of the curriculum depends on having strict quality control and competent teachers.

Anyhow, that's my rambling two cents.

[klonk]

Yes. Well. If taijiquan is going to perform as advertised, you need a few things to work every time, and at combat speed.

1. Stick and follow. This is the really ingenious part of the theory. You use your own weight and inertia to bog down what the opponent is trying to do and slow it down enough to deal with it.

2. Fajin. This is in common with the rest of ICMA. Taiji's offensive counters are a buffet restaurant of techniques. As already noted in somebody else's post, you've got your strikes, you've got your projections, your locks, your throws. All of it is predicated on the idea of using the previous step to deflect and interfere with your opponent, take away his balance if you can, and make him vulnerable.

If we were to start from scratch to create a training curriculum, it seems to me that we would need to concentrate on #1 before #2, but today we see many people pursuing fajin (especially push fajin), and even doing a pretty good job at it, but doing so without really having much stick-and-follow ability. That''s not good because #1 is the setup for #2.

Remember that your stick-and-follow has to work at the same speed as the opponent, and in the real deal fighting scenario, he is going to be moving pretty quickly. This is where, I think, the training has developed problems over the years. Either that or the whole scheme never worked in the first place!

[DeusTrismegistus]

From Adam Hsu's Chinese MA discussion - just to prove that not everybody in Taiwan share the same view as Miro's. If Miro's statement could upset many people, I'm sure this statement could upset even more people.

Today many people train Taiji. It's spreading Chinese culture and that's very good. But most people who train in Taiji love to dig into theory and not on training the body. Their Ying-Tang, 5 elements theory has nothing to do with combat. Some Taiji people transformed Taiji into Taiji exercise. It's good for health and help human being and that's very good too but it still has nothing to do with combat. As far as the true Taiji masters who can use Taiji in combat, I haven't met anyone yet in my life time so far.

The reason that Taiji is in our current stage because the lacking of step by step prorgress. When people love to use Ying Yang, and 5 elements those fancy words to fool others, and also love to hypnotize themselves, soon or later, they fall into the 魔道 evil Dao. not only you can't wake them up, they will bite you back if you try to help them,

Taiji's Huai Jin, Faijin, sticky, follow, yield, lead into the emptiness are all university level (high level) skills. It's not that easy to obtain. Today most of the Taiji people who didn't have high school and elementary school basic training and try to jump right into university level training. I just don't see how that could be possible?



I don't expect everybody will agree with Adam's point of view but If Taiji is the university level training then what's the grade school, high school training that should come before Taiji?

Adam did give high opinion for Taiji (university level training). He just don't agree with how people train Taiji.

It's so funny that What Miro called it 大道 Dai Dao, Adam called it 魔道 evil Dao.

Elementary school is the "external". Basic stances, basic strikes, basic throws, basic stepping, timing, strength, speed, power, and all kinds of things. If you can't land a solid right cross, how can you ever expect to be able to use a more complicated technique? The elementary and middle school is basic fighting training, taiji is like a specialty training learning how to use certain skills very well. A person with a Phd will not be an expert in everything cholarly, just on a few things.

John, you say you haven't met any true taiji masters who can use taiji in combat? Didn't GM Chang practice taiji? Could he use taiji in combat? I don't know if many people would consider my teacher a taiji master but I have been on the receiving end of some taiji techniques he has used when we were sparring pretty hard (hard for me anyways) and he can make them work.

[Sprint]

I always hear plenty on this board about so called advanced taiji methods -university level - as has been pointed out. I never hear anyone talk about the basics. So how is a new person to taiji supposed to benefit from the discussion board. So I will ask now: in your opinion what are the absolute basic essential training methods of taiji that must be learned in order to be able to achieve university level?

[shenme]

Most today train the taiji health dance that is all. I believe Chen Xiaowang said he felt Taiji as a martial art was pretty much going extinct because if you compare the number of people doing taiji for health to those doing taiji for martial arts it is virtually dead.

As to basics, I cannot speak for any style and I only have experince with Yang Style but for fighting, basics would include doing the long form for a few years prior to any MA applications and for basic MA applications in Yang style you need to understand the 13 postures which I noticed was not mentioned by Adam Hsu.

If you want to know the actual fighing side of Taiji, in my opinion, the very BASIC thing you need is patience and LOTS of it.... you cannot rush things.

I have a lot of respect for Adam Hsu but to me he is Baji and Xingyi not so much Taiji.

[novamma]

Evil is a primitive way to look at it. Its very dualist. It is somewhat childish to look at it like "Good and Evil". I wouldn't use the work Evil. I like the analogy of 'Pure vs. Impure' a lot better. Pure being-qualified by example of true skill attained through hard work and effort. Impure- lacking the real skill because they didn't train hard and are under qualified.

From Adam Hsu's Chinese MA discussion - just to prove that not everybody in Taiwan share the same view as Miro's. If Miro's statement could upset many people, I'm sure this statement could upset even more people.

Today many people train Taiji. It's spreading Chinese culture and that's very good. But most people who train in Taiji love to dig into theory and not on training the body. Their Ying-Tang, 5 elements theory has nothing to do with combat. Some Taiji people transformed Taiji into Taiji exercise. It's good for health and help human being and that's very good too but it still has nothing to do with combat. As far as the true Taiji masters who can use Taiji in combat, I haven't met anyone yet in my life time so far.

The reason that Taiji is in our current stage because the lacking of step by step prorgress. When people love to use Ying Yang, and 5 elements those fancy words to fool others, and also love to hypnotize themselves, soon or later, they fall into the 魔道 evil Dao. not only you can't wake them up, they will bite you back if you try to help them,

Taiji's Huai Jin, Faijin, sticky, follow, yield, lead into the emptiness are all university level (high level) skills. It's not that easy to obtain. Today most of the Taiji people who didn't have high school and elementary school basic training and try to jump right into university level training. I just don't see how that could be possible?

Image

I don't expect everybody will agree with Adam's point of view but If Taiji is the university level training then what's the grade school, high school training that should come before Taiji?

Adam did give high opinion for Taiji (university level training). He just don't agree with how people train Taiji.

It's so funny that What Miro called it 大道 Dai Dao, Adam called it 魔道 evil Dao.

[/quote]

[shawnsegler]

When people love to use Ying Yang, and 5 elements those fancy words to fool others, and also love to hypnotize themselves, soon or later, they fall into the 魔道 evil Dao. not only you can't wake them up, they will bite you back if you try to help them,

It's true. I'm permanently fucked up on that stuff.

S

[charles]

I always hear plenty on this board about so called advanced taiji methods -university level - as has been pointed out. I never hear anyone talk about the basics. So how is a new person to taiji supposed to benefit from the discussion board. So I will ask now: in your opinion what are the absolute basic essential training methods of taiji that must be learned in order to be able to achieve university level?

I respectfully suggest that most of what is discussed here is the basic method, rather than "advanced" Taijiquan methods.