Origins of silk reeling Qigong in Chen style taijiquan

[wayne hansen]

Please forgive me for my slowness I can no longer tell who is playing and who is being serious

[BruceP]

Please forgive me for my slowness I can no longer tell who is playing and who is being serious

Playing 'dantien' in solo training - polishing mirror and prayer wheel

Serious 'dantien' in partner work - corn grinding

[everything]

agree 99% with appledog and charles.

I could have 10,000 jazz teachers and just never "get" jazz. that breaks down into two opposing views
1. i just don't have the talent. I don't "get it". I'm not that good at music, plain and simple. I'm better at sports.
2. but it's easy enough even at meh level to understand that ultimately you have to "get it" in your own mind/body. those same jazz teachers could teach us all, and I would be one of the ones who don't "get it", sadly. it might be that way with IMA as well for many people.

[twocircles13]

Chen Zhonghua used to say, "There is no point in keeping [Taijiquan] secrets because even if I GIVE the material to students they don't get it."

Chen Zhonghua has indeed said this, and he was quoting Hong Junsheng’s 1986 Memoir, where Hong was quoting Chen Fa-ke, "Master Chen [Fa-ke] never kept any secrets from his students. To quote his own words, “Even when I don’t keep any secrets, they still won’t learn it right. If I try to keep secrets from them, they will learn nothing at all!”

@appledog, I have some thoughts on your predicament, which is almost a normal eventual circumstance for serious students, but I’m having trouble organizing my thoughts.

Maybe some questions will help me with your specifics. In what part of the world do you reside? Do you currently have a teacher? How are you currently learning? What are you trying to accomplish with your training?

[wayne hansen]

YCF said basically the same thing

[Bao]

My teacher thought it was urgent to spread all of the "secrets", or methods, and to keep it open for everyone. Some knowledge and skills are rare today, he thought that it's our obligation to spread the knowledge. He said that these things don't belong to certain people, but it belongs to everyone, to mankind.

[Appledog]

@appledog, I have some thoughts on your predicament, which is almost a normal eventual circumstance for serious students, but I’m having trouble organizing my thoughts.

Maybe some questions will help me with your specifics. In what part of the world do you reside? Do you currently have a teacher? How are you currently learning? What are you trying to accomplish with your training?

Well first thanks for your posts and thanks to charles, both of you have so much interesting information to share. As for me, I live in Taiwan, my teachers taught me Sun style, Chen style, Xinyi, and so forth. I prefer Chen style. One of the major reasons is because I am interested in push hands and they seem to have a comprehensive set. The Chen style is from He Binquan, and the other arts are from what I would say are good teachers as well, without running through a list of names here.

My problem is easy enough to understand, I don't think it is my teachers, it is just me. My teacher told me, 'you must do this movement 10,000 times before you will understand it' so, that has been my goal. The problem is I only did it 5,000 times. Sure, I got some results, but looking back I surely cannot blame anyone but myself. I am sure I will feel better in another six months of training.

As a learner I am always interested in learning new stuff. From what I have seen I could easily learn from a Ma Hong, FZQ or ZXX DVD. After all, most of what they would show, I already know. The only other problem I have is that I have been shown so much material (such as qigong, and various sets of tai chi) that it would take a good five hours a day to practice everything, fully and properly. Since I teach kids this has put the hurt on my Chen style and this is a conundrum I am considering deeply. Plus, there is literally no one in Taiwan that knows this material, and this can make you feel very alone. I have been able to put a small class together and keep working on this 'homework', because otherwise I would find it hard to get up in the morning. I am probably going through a process of refinement where I will eventually feel like dropping some extraneous practices I don't really need to do.

The one fear, perhaps irrational fear I have, is that I am doing one little thing wrong which will spoil everything. Such as not using the right intention. Or forgetting something in a wild and unexpected way. I'll give you an example. My teacher taught me one of the moves from Hunyuan qigong. of course it was not from hunyuan qigong but part of a set of other qigongs. But the move itself is found in hunyuan. Anyways, he gave me a type of intention to think of during the exercise, breathe in through this point, fire shoots out from that point, etc. -- So, two weeks later I ask him a question about the move and he says I am doing it completely wrong and teaches me another way. he said he never taught me the first way. Did I really make such a mistake? As it turns out the "new" way is exactly like one of the hunyuan exercises. But there is no way to mistake what I was taught because he attached intention to it and it fit the "first" way. That kind of memory lapse has never happened to me before and made me think I was losing it. If I make a mistake and don't do something right then as it is said I will fail at the whole thing. I find this hard to believe. I want to believe if I just mindlessly do what my teacher said thousands of times I will win. But apparently that is not the case? Hmm! And so, I feel I must do it another 5,000 times to see what will happen.

[Quigga]

That might be so, but there are a few methods that shouldn't be taught to everyone for good reasons. Methods of initiating someone into a lineage, or to trigger very rapid growth for example.

There's already enough faulty, incomplete, unripe, unreflected etc stuff out there that can harm not only the individual, but their victims too. But well, what's supposed to balance it out if not for the sharing of good stuff?

@Bao btw

[Quigga]

Appledog, IMLE at some point you have to make the system your own. 'Steal the knowledge'.

Sounds to me like your teacher wanted to save face by not admitting the mistake. Or he simply forgot that he showed it to you this way.

Usually keeping practice as simple as possible is good.

Do you have the feeling that your teacher has what you want and that you progress towards that? Is he convincing enough?

[Bhassler]

Most CMA teachers suck at teaching. If someone really wants to pass something on, maybe they should figure that out instead of being lazy and blaming students, or just shrugging and saying it's impossible to teach reliably.

[Quigga]

Why is it so hard to teach?

First you need to be a decent person to begin with. That will mean wildly different things for many different people. Staying out of trouble and being respectful of others are good signs imo. Not holding extremist views, nor judging people in a shallow way.

There are many good baseball, basketball and singing coaches. The outcome of correct teaching is easy to observe. You get good at your sport. Hit the ball harder or score points easier or play your position better. In singing, your voice sounds better according to the genre and style you're learning. Or it sounds closer to someone you want to imitate. You have better control.

So what is the goal of one's training?

1) get better at fighting - competitions, types of sparring, 'on the streets cliche', bouncing / security, military drills that result in better weapon handling and mobility

2) increased health and well being - feeling more vital and clear headed, balanced emotions, healing from trauma, getting sick less often, helping with lifestyle changes aka abstaining from drugs, feeling more ready to take on life and it's challenges, sense of ease and not constant struggle, increase in love and building healthy relationships that pour back into you, increased stability

3) get more wisdom - what's the place of a single human on this Earth, reflecting one's attitude and stance on all things, cultivation of humility respect and love, being able to discern right from wrong action, get insight into why the world and the existence on it is the way it is, continuously growing as a person, reducing personal biases to best of one's ability, how to live a peaceful prosperous life without getting into mischief

4) esoteric / psychic abilities - knowledge about their wise and proper usage so as not to harm yourself and others, satisfying one's curiosity, discerning the reasons why one would certain skills in the first place

5) being better equipped for one's own journey of growth and personal development in all aspects

So if you want to know if you have a good teacher, you need some kind of metrics to measure your progress. Else you might end up chasing dragons and wasting a lot of time and effort. Not in a way that your Kung Fu will suck, but just in general.

[Bob]

My understanding is the label " hun yuan" qi gong is not unique to Feng Zhiqiang material as I learned a qi gong/nei gong exercise labeled hun yuan and it was from Taiwan. What I learned was way before I was aware of Feng Zhiqiang. I also learned a qi gong system from a TCM doctor from the mainland and he also referred to material as being hun yuan qigong although it was titled differently

[wayne hansen]

Why is everybody blaming a teacher they don’t know
You should never know more than you can practice each day
To be a learner! You don’t need to learn new things just to learn the same thing each day
10000 times is like the 10000 things in Taoism it just means deep study

[charles]

Why is it so hard to teach?

A snow plow driver is sitting in his snow plow at the airport in the middle of a blizzard. He receives a message from the control tower stating, "An airplane is landing on runway number 4, clear runway number 4." Upon receiving the message, the plow driver starts his plow and proceeds to clear the snow from runway number 4 in preparation for the incoming plane's landing. The plane lands on runway number 4 hitting the snow plow. What the control tower meant was to leave and evacuate runway number 4: "clearing" that runway could be - and was - interpreted in ways contrary to the intention of the control tower.

At the heart of teaching is communication. Effective communication between one person and another or between one person and a group of people is difficult. It requires skill. In the case of Taijiquan, the means of communication can be through spoken words, written words, by seeing/viewing someone doing something or by first-hand feeling of something that someone else does.

Given that Taijiquan is a primarily an experiential endeavour, words - spoken or written - cannot adequately convey/communicate the endeavour. Similarly, simply watching someone do something in which the physical actions are very small - and largely unobservable by the uninitiated - isn't a very effective means of communication. Feeling something that someone else does, by itself, is often also not a very effective means of communication. Hence, Taijiquan can be difficult to effectively teach and difficult to learn. The common, "watch me and copy" isn't very effective. The common, "listen to all this academic theory" isn't very effective. And so on. An effective teacher needs a specific blended approach that effectively "reaches" his students.

First you need to be a decent person to begin with. That will mean wildly different things for many different people. Staying out of trouble and being respectful of others are good signs imo. Not holding extremist views, nor judging people in a shallow way.

Years ago, I had discussion with a fellow student about whether or not a teacher needed to be moral or ethical to be an effective teacher. He said yes, I said no, it is irrelevant.

In my experience, an effective teacher is one who has three characteristics, as follows:

1. the teacher has to have sufficient knowledge and skill in the subject being taught.
2. the teacher has to have a well-developed pedagogic method.
3. the teacher has to actually want his students to understand the subject.

My experience has been that having all three characteristics is quite rare.

So what is the goal of one's training?

In my experience, what is more important than the goal of one's training is matching one's specific goals with a teacher who can effectively help achieve those specific goals, be they improved health, spirituality, martial ability, etc. For example if one has an interest in spirituality, a teacher who is primarily interested in fighting isn't likely to help one effectively reach one's goals. (That's not to say that those who are primarily interested in fighting don't or can't have interest in spiritual things, but it isn't their focus.)

[charles]

My understanding is the label " hun yuan" qi gong is not unique to Feng Zhiqiang material as I learned a qi gong/nei gong exercise labeled hun yuan and it was from Taiwan. What I learned was way before I was aware of Feng Zhiqiang. I also learned a qi gong system from a TCM doctor from the mainland and he also referred to material as being hun yuan qigong although it was titled differently

The term "hun yuan" is not unique to Feng or his material.

https://www.qigonghealing.com/post/huny ... -its-roots