Enskilment into the Environment: the Yijin jing Worlds of Ji

[Trick]

The (new?)word Enskillment actually work for me, sounds as something my unscholared(is that a new word too?) mind would have come up with. But lucky me I can’t open the OP link, I just had trouble reading through the little text in the OP, gave me a minor headache, or is that I’ve not had my coffee yet......Does this Elisabeth Hsu herself practice CMA ?....Elisabeth Shue in Karate Kid was pretty good although not doing karate.........ahh, my coffe arrived, I’ll try reading the OP again

[everything]

ok..... in ALL these years of collective practice here, we've just been missing NEW WORDS? now we get it? hahahahahahah yeah.

Elisabeth Shue was definitely great. I need some coffee now for sure.

[robert]

Google doesn't even define enskillment.
So it reads poorly.

Enskilment is defined within the paper.
There is a section entitled
The Yijin jing and the Notion of Enskilment

He notes that, rather than the acquisition of rules, learning a craft is “inseparable from doing it” (Ingold 2000, 416). This process, which he calls “enskilment”, requires an “education of one’s attention” (ibid., 22; Gibson 1979, 254) which typically happens through negotiating the materiality of the physical environment (ibid., 356).

Enskilment is learning through doing.

[Formosa Neijia]

This was a good paper but why didn't they consult nearly any book on the yijijing? 12 movements is usually the norm so a comparison of what they were learning with extant sources would have proved enlightening and resulted in a more informed paper.

Second, they don't seem to be cognizant of the fact that famous sets like the yijinjing are extremely dependent on the teacher interpreting them. There simply is no ONE agreed upon set for yijinjing, HuaTu's five animals, the baduanjin, etc. Instead every teacher re-interprets the "ancient" (is 17th century ancient? LOL) teachings in light of what they have studied in various traditions. Therefore each teacher really has re-invented the wheel with these sets according to what they think is correct. Whether or not the re-interpreted set is valid depends on if it produces the implied results or not.

The one writer who didn't get any verbal descriptions of what was supposed to be going on is in the same boat as most people --they are adrift without a paddle because dear "teacher" never stoops down to tell them what should be going on. The whole "just do it" thing is useless. Just do what? People only have so many hours in a day and these sets can eat 2+ hours a day easily. Without verbal or written prescriptions of what is supposed to be happening you have no way of knowing if you are improving nor how to improve the practice. And the implications from this thread and others recently seem to be that if you want to know what's going on, you're lazy and don't want to work hard. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hardworking people deserve answers and it isn't laziness to want those.

[HotSoup]

Interesting read - martial arts research sections
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid= ... MGM5M2IyYg

Thanks, it was an interesting and thought-provoking read. In general, the idea of working the sinews first and then using the focus on them as a basis for meditative practices is not new, effectively making both approaches quite compatible. It's still curious to know, however, how far one can get by skipping the foundation work ("jin1 and jin4", so to speak) and jumping right to the "qi" practice.

[Trick]

What does one hope to come out of a paper like this. Will it actually help to enskill the unskilled, reskill the deskilled, or will it even further enskill the skilled. Practice makes perfect, but maybe reading makes even more perfect ?