oragami_itto wrote:Also thank you for sharing your perspective in such detail and with passion. You can tell that you care a lot about your art and your study.
There are many things that I agree with in your explanations.
One thing that stood out, though, was the skepticism concerning a lack of apparent motion with a large effect.
What is your take on invisible circles and techniques large enough to fill the universe but small enough to hide in your sleeve?
willie wrote:oragami_itto wrote:Also thank you for sharing your perspective in such detail and with passion. You can tell that you care a lot about your art and your study.
There are many things that I agree with in your explanations.
One thing that stood out, though, was the skepticism concerning a lack of apparent motion with a large effect.
What is your take on invisible circles and techniques large enough to fill the universe but small enough to hide in your sleeve?
That is a really good question so I will answer it the best that I can. In order to get to the very small circles or no Circle at all you have to go through the large circles first then the medium then smaller and smaller and smaller without skipping a step then you will really have it. Recently I ran into somebody who claim to have no Circle. Yes he had no Circle but he had no power. Basically it was only shoving . So There is no shortcut. My teacher is pretty much an expert on short power, I only have some of it. It was the questions that I asked that gave away people who were basically acting like they were flying. As I had stated there must be internal power somewhere or it is basically fake.
oragami_itto wrote:No short cuts! I want my money back!
They told me the short cut was training every day the lying bastards!
Bao wrote:Nice vid on "body connection", indeed an important part of the puzzle.
Appledog wrote:willie wrote:The good, Not everyone who tells others exactly what they want to hear are their friends.
The bad, Not everyone who tells others the things that they don't want to hear are their enemies.
The Ugly, Everything in between...
My interpretation of real taiji. ...
The fall was quick and fast, and happens between 0:49 and 1:17. The climax being 1:14 where you say it's all BS.
You're also wrong when you say there is only one way. Nope, there are many ways. Two points make a line, willie, not a 'right' and a 'wrong' -- that comes later.
Actually when I first learned to fajing it had nothing (apparent) to do with circles and everything (apparently) to do with being empty. It's like a negative charge repelling another negative charge; there wasn't any visible force I decided to create. I simply became empty, and whoosh--out came the force. Saying that I became empty or created emptiness or 'relaxed' are all very very accurate descriptions I could give you about what I did 'directly'. None of it would help you do it though, but it would help you do it IF you did the work and was ready to express the skill but just hadn't came to the realizations you needed first, or perhaps if you just had one or two blockages left to remove in some other area.
Now, there are prerequisites that I later figured out you would need. And there are rules, and ways that A, B and C all work together to create various effects. Just speaking generally; it's what is required to make links between arts to see how they are connected. And how they are different. It may very well be that only I can understand what I understand because I pieced it together myself; but I tend to think otherwise because I am not really covering new ground here, am I? I'm actually at a very basic level.
The point being that if the explanation didn't make sense that's on you not the explainer (unless he's lying, but let's assume you're smart enough to realize when someone has a modicum of skill and when they don't). So when I asked how it was done I listened to the answer and I searched for the meaning and did not think that it was BS at all. It was this process which allowed me to discover that if I turned the idea this way or that way, I could see what I was looking for, I found the connection.
Back in the day, before modern distractions, western science, and critical thinking, a younger Chinese gent living in the middle of nowhere or in a smaller farming community would not have the luxury of rejecting an elder's explanation or immediately coming up with his own (flawed) side-door explanation. He would be left to ponder, maybe for years, because that's just how it was understood, and it was on him if he didn't get it. Maybe he just had to practice harder.
That is the problem with making up your own analogy -- "like ball bearings" -- for example. It comes with a host of additional baggage and is missing a host of "standard additional baggage" that was intended to come along with the previous/old/in-door way of explaining things. Go too far down that path and you will end up somewhere else. You still have no way of discerning the end-truth of what you are shooting for by going down that road. Helical gears is another one. I might as well say "A big fat stick". Or using physics explanations. Ok so you're telling me that if I use a stick to perform rollback, or cai (pluck) or any similar technique, it is based on physics. Sure! But what's going on inside the stick? So you see even the very definition of internal and external hasn't been grasped properly, it seems. And if it has, just go and do the work. Don't add on all this additional stuff and make up your own stuff, it won't work. Or it will and you'll end up with something that for better or worse is "like a different religion" -- some kind of different power generation. And it's not traditional and that means it's basically untested. Then again this has happened before, and sometimes leads to a new art, sometimes even a better art. So it's not all bad.
But it ceases to be "tai chi" or whatever art you are learning and becomes something else. And if you find yourself in the unenviable position of not knowing the real and believing the fake is real because it works or because it feels special, I'm not sure what to say about that. Maybe you get lucky and figure out something from another art and start buying into that, and you end up practicing some other art, or a hybrid. At worst you will end up embarrassing yourself. The way out of that is testing what you know, being humble and allowing yourself to invest in loss when appropriate.
If you find yourself in a situation where you feel stuck or that you are not making progress, there are two solutions.
The first solution is to increase your practice time. You want to be a master? No? Okay fine, go do your hobby when you have time, i.e. you didn't wake up late after a party, or whatever. Fine. Oh, you want to be a master? Fine, go train four or six hours a day. Now if you find yourself in that situation, that you are dedicated and getting some kind of benefit, but it's not enough for you, then find another teacher. If you stop making progress don't sit there in a rut for years, get out there and get involved. First remove the easiest obstacle -- yourself. And if there is still a problem it is the teacher's problem.
It is possible that in your area there is a teacher, an older Chinese gent perhaps, who can feed you the energy you need right away and pull you up. Sometimes all you need is a fresh perspective. Be giving and humble. Get away from too much of the modern world.
Appledog wrote:willie wrote:I just had to quote this one. This one will keep me laughing for quite a while. Apple Dog you don't know how fortunate you are to even be able to see that. Get over yourself.
Ok, then I'm wrong. Can you tell me where I went wrong and how I should train in the future? The only question I would have is if I just sit here being wrong and you never help me or guide me, in such a case wouldn't it be better to follow my own advice (that you laughed at) and look for another teacher? That's why it's so confusing. I'm wrong -- okay -- but now what?
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