classical confusion...

[ashe]

Ashe,
Very nice writing, and high-lighting an almost perenial problem faced by anyone wishing to communicate in words, what is almost incomprehensible without the experiential understanding that comes from the practice itself.

which was my real point. the example of the classics could've been anything. like the confusion about what exactly my Sifu means when he talks about the ankle.

[jafc]

The IMA community needs more of this kind of talk. The tendency has always been to think of all this as mysterious & mystical when what is really going on is speaking in metaphors to aid understanding of real physical principles. The culture & language gap only worsens the problem. Once it is out like Ashe pointed out, it really opens a whole new world.

Just thursday, I had a real nice patient from Tennessee who described everything thing with animal metaphors. first his leg pain was like a squirrel was running up & down his leg, then it started biting then it changed into a bear had him in its jaws. It took several minutes & me actually witnessing his "bear attack" to get to a common language that I could put his complaints in my frame of reference. Squirrels = nerve pain. bear = deep muscle spasm & nerve pain together.

IMA language can be the same way. Either easy to dismiss as silly talk or easy to misunderstand the principle behind the metaphor (including the basics like when my sifu refers to the hand as basically everything from the elbow down)

JC

[johnrieber]

i don't know why folks equate the taoist boxing stuff with mysticism. it's hardcore practical and no-nonsense. the vocabulary that's evolved for describing the no-nonsense stuff only seems mystical if you'd rather look at it that way.

[ashe]

how else would you describe things like vectors and tangents (and their corresponding feel) when your essentially illiterate and before the the codification of newtonian physics?

[bailewen]

Excellent article Ashe.

Your writing is getting better. I think the hard work you have been putting into your site and your blog has been paying off a bit.

[ashe]

Excellent article Ashe.

Your writing is getting better. I think the hard work you have been putting into your site and your blog has been paying off a bit.

why thank you sir.

i feel like steven king though.

i'm no good with the endings...