by Taste of Death on Thu Jul 29, 2021 4:39 pm
Xingyi is supposed to utilize the five elements fists and the various animal forms but when the fight starts, the fighters revert to their own natural movements. This is the problem with the prettiness of kung fu. If I could fight like a dragon I would but it's not practical beyond a practice method. The type of dragon stepping that I do begins with a kick to the opponent's knee or shin while splitting the upper torso, my back arm capturing the opponent's lead arm and my lead arm striking the opponent. I use the word "arm" rather than "fist" because the capturing and striking may be done by my forearm, wrist, palm, or fist. I then would step forward and hit them with beng quan with my back arm now transitioning from capturing to striking while maintaining the low stance that my initial dragon step put me in. As I execute this move I would then return to standing more upright.
Fighting should be natural. My yiquan is natural. My taiji and xingyi are not, the dragon stepping being an extreme example. I do not nor should anyone rely on all their forms or fists or whatever one wants to call them. Like in judo where they find two throws that they excel at and use only those two when fighting in competition, cima practitioners need to focus on the bare essential of their art. Know how to apply all that you know but then forget about it and train the few things that are most effective. By forgetting about them I mean to act naturally in a fight. This is hard to do and something I didn't understand until studying yiquan.
We do "body conditioning". Now we do that in track and field and rugby and whatnot as well. But in yiquan's case we are training the body to respond naturally, without the mind interfering. This is a dichotomy because while we have no intention in terms of what we are going to do (I just let my body respond by taking what they give me, their energy and weight, and giving it back to them), we use our mind's intention in everything we do. This is, of course, using the word "intention" two different ways. In the first case, I literally have no idea how I'll respond to an attack. If, on the other hand, I strike first I do have some intention but maybe not in how I execute the attack but simply to attack if I suspect that there's no backing down from the fight.
The mind's intention refers to the ability to lead the body with the mind. As an example, even though someone has grabbed my arm I still lift my hand and pick the apple from the tree. My intention is in my fingertips, beyond my opponent's grasp. If I try to resist at the point of contact, they've got me. I don't know if what I look like when I respond will look like yiquan to an observer and I don't care. Because I have limited my arsenal to a few trusted moves that correspond to how I naturally move I may well look like an yiquan fighter but that is not as important as feeling like one. I try to capture the "feeling" and hold onto it. As long as I do that I'll be giving myself my best chance no matter what it looks like.
Last edited by
Taste of Death on Thu Jul 29, 2021 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"It was already late. Night stood murkily over people, and no one else pronounced words; all that could be heard was a dog barking in some alien village---just as in olden times, as if it existed in a constant eternity." Andrey Platonov
