Hi all. I sent Nassem a link to this thread since I thought he might be interested, and in return he asked me to pass on this message. So herewith...
... And I'll just point, once again, that most of the basic exercises we trained in the German seminars did not involve 5 Fists but were even more 'basic' than that. This in a positive sense.
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Hello MA Friends,
Giles showed me the link and I was very surprised that people are talking about my videos and our ZRM on an English board, so I'd like to set some things straight here before people misinterpret stuff, because it relates to my teacher and my Gongfu family.
“Can you explain the connection with Hsing I because there is clearly one” What you see isn’t the 5 Elements fist and in that way you will not find it any Xingyi lineage. Why ? Because it’s better ? No, because Xingyi is a concept and the 5 Elements are among the tools used for my ZRM, too. ZRM is a concept that’s very different from Xingyi (not better or worse just different ). For example we say the Yi should be empty and that we don’t practice anything related to the term of dantian.
But Yes, because at first glance our 5 Xingquan looks quite similar to a Xingyi set and that’s because we are in Dalian. Just about all martial styles in Dalian have a 5 Elements set. Some call them 5 Elements, some give them other names but all in all they can be very similar in terms of the physical appearance. And yes there was a great Xingyi fighter once who went to Dalian and mixed it up with Tongbei and so on (no disrespect here).
But all in all our whole system, method, style or whatever u like to call it, is ZRM. There is no part of Xingyi there and no part Bagua here. It’s 100% ZRM
“Serge Augier's Ziranmen looks different to the Wan Lai Sheng school and seems a bit closer to what is shown above.”First of all Ziranmen is just a Daoist term, it does not describe a Martial Arts Style, so this is how it happens to have the same name as the things we see in Wanlaishang ZRM. Same name but have nothing in common historically, and are two different styles. And yes, very few people are practicing it nowadays. Why ? 1. Because it does not really fit into the expectations of practitioners in China: no taolu, no famous names and lots and lots of foundation training. 2. Dalian is in Northeast China and was heavily impacted by Sino Japanese and Russian Wars … But who knows … .
I had some chat with Serge students and with himself (a little bit ) and they are all nice people and I believe they are also working hard and their stuff is good, but it’s simply not the same (and again not better or worse ).
My teacher and I are not aiming for big popularity and fame (being popular in China is not always a good thing), nor do we want to claim that we are masters of all classes. We are just practicing and we like to share our knowledge with those who like to learn and work hard. If you would like to know more about what we do, you can contact me and I will see if I can answer your questions or not. I for myself just don’t like Internet forums/boards because I don’t think boards are the right place for me to discuss Martial Arts. So I would thank Giles for sharing this on my behalf
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Thank you all