This review by a Chen taijiquan practitioner on yiquan class by Yao Chengrong republished over on Formosa Neijia is totally fascinating. Focusing on “essence”, “internal power” as a shortcut approach to skill in internal arts – I don’t see how one could go wrong if that is indeed possible… there is plenty of time to learn other externally more difficult things like taiji forms, xingyi animals, bagua palms, etc. later, after gaining some fundamental “power” and skill… I wish I could go train at this school starting tomorrow…
October 10, 2007
October 11, 2007 at 12:39 am
I agree that it’s an interesting method. That’s why I posted it. I’ve always been a bit interested in yiquan for its clear progression of training.
But in the past few years, I’ve learned that some schools see the “externally more difficult things” as the vehicle to develop and express internal power, as well as fighting skills.
Yiquan seems to go in a bit more linear progression. The other IMAs seem to develop more in a spiral — you get a lot of stuff at a more superficial level and then refine over a period of years. Different path, same goal.
October 11, 2007 at 9:07 am
Thanks for the comment, chessman. Right now I’m impatient for a clearer progression. The externally – and I assume internally – more difficult things can wait until I’ve made a little basic progress. I think I’ve worked on a lot of forms and techniques very suboptimally. Some of them seem to work but not smoothly enough with whole body power. If I can start over with zhan zhuang, at least in parallel, I think I’ll do better. “Back to basics” is always good. I’ve been thinking lately that the taiji classes I attended long ago were trying to get us to do just that, but I couldn’t understand it. Like many people, I was impatient for forms and associated applications and treated those very “externally” (which does seem to work somewhat ok). Aargh! A lot of false starts – maybe spiral development is a kinder way to reframe my progress (albeit slower relative to what it seems it could be and what I’d like it to be).