GrahamB's blog

Most people are surprised to hear, or would disagree, with the statement that XingYi is primerily a weapons art. It is. The historical record of its origins is that it comes from spear fighting, yet in the modern age it's done almost exclusively barehand. While XingYi is a proven martial art for barehand fighting, many of the techniques of XingYi still make a lot more sense with a weapon in your hand.

A quick heads up about Michael Babins new "Tai Chi Studio" blog. Some funny stories from his years running a Tai Chi class - worth a giggle.

Shaolin and Zen are intimately connected. It's all part and parcel of that heady mix of passive/aggressive ultra violent/hippy sensibility that was captured so well in the original Kung Fu TV series. While it's rare to get a lesson in Buddhism at your local Kung Fu school, it's well worth investigating Zen practice if you practice a Buddhist-influenced martial art.

I've noticed that some enterprising young fellow has uploaded all 10 parts of Master Lam Kam Chuen's Stand Still Be Fit program onto YouTube. It's a beginners guide to Zhan Zhuang originally shown on British TV back in the '90s. It's split into days, and they showed each episode on subsequent days, the idea being it enableing you to 'stand along' with Master Lam as he goes through the 5 basic health postures of the Zhan Zhuang system.

All Chinese martial arts that are considered "traditional" have interesting and disputed histories. The history of XingYi (one of the three main Chinese internal martial arts) is particularly interesting because its verifiable history is so incredibly long. We can (pretty) accurately trace it hundreds of years back to the 1600s when a man named Ji Long Feng was recorded as practicing Xin Yi... and that's where another particular problem starts - are Xin Yi and XingYi really two different arts, or the same thing?

Hebei XingYi 12 Animal postures

Some pictures of postures from Hebei XingYi's 12 animals. Interesting to compare the similarities to photos of Dai Xin Yi's 10 Animals featured here:

http://daixinyi.blogspot.com/

Chicken (Ji Xing)

Dai for comparison, here.

It's often written in Tai Chi books that we should attempt to mimic the natural movements of small children. The Tao Te Ching frequently admonishes us that to become a great sage we must become more like children, chapter 55, for example:

"He who is in harmony with the Tao
is like a newborn child.
Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak,
but its grip is powerful."

Following on from my last post (Push hands is not fighting) it's time to ask the next logical question. What is? What's a "fight" supposed to look like if you do Tai Chi? It's an interesting question, and to some extent I'm thinking out loud here, so please bear with me.  Practicing applications from the form to work on your technique is fair enough, but when it comes to actually applying your art in a free situation against a resisting opponent what would it look like? Would you expect to see picture perfect Single Whip poses?

One of the early pioneers of Tai Chi Chuan in the West was the noteable Cheng-Man-Ching. Like many modern day Tai Chi mavericks he divides opinion, people in the Tai Chi world seem to either love him or hate him. He looked like the stereotypical "Tai chi master" - a small, elderly Chinese gentleman who could push around much bigger, younger and stronger opponents with ease. True to his image as the Taoist sage he extolled the vrtues of Chi over using muscular strength, the soft over the hard and yielding over force.

This week in class we were working on Peng Jin (Ward off energy), the fundamental Yang energy (Jin) of Tai Chi Chuan.

A lot as been written and debated about Peng Jin in Tai Chi circles, but I think the following quote sums it up pretty well, for me at least.

From the classics:

“The Song of Peng