CMA and qigong

A hypothesis forming in my mind about CMA and qigong is that most Chinese martial arts would typically have barely scratched the surface of what qigong can really offer. There are a few reasons I have this hypothesis:
1. a full understanding of qigong seems incredibly complex and difficult
2. someone who is busy as a bodyguard [...]

Taijiquan battle plan?

Great thread here. This guy has a very good blog called “First Principles” that I need to go back and read a lot.

Core or dantian?

Last night I did a few taijiquan movements and I noticed if I concentrated on movements initiating from the dantian, the qigong aspect was much stronger. Which leads to some confusion about whether I’m really doing “core” movement, whether it is “internal” qigong induced movement from the dantian, or both. I think it’s both, but [...]

Adhere and stick

Usually in English descriptions of taijiquan, there are four words translated roughly as adhere, connect, stick, follow. The ones I’ve been confused about are “adhere” and “stick”. Those English words seem like synonyms. I’m not sure if 黏 - nian - is translated as “adhere” or “stick” or if 貼 - tie - [...]

Press 擠 or squeeze

擠 - the character ji is usually translated as press or squeeze, which I’ve always found a bit confusing.
Ji also means crowded, or to crowd, or to squeeze. It could have a connotation like the attendants pushing or squeezing or crowding people onto the Tokyo subway. It could also mean something like “it’s crowded in [...]

Yang Chengfu selected comments

A few comments from Yang Chengfu’s book Essence and Applications of Taijiquan (Taijiquan Tiyong Quanshu), translated by Louis Swaim.
On the wuji standing posture (update: some mention on EF that he may not be talking about wuji…hmm…):
People all too easily neglect this posture, and really do not know the method of its practice or its application. [...]

Good article on best practices in taiji

Here is an interesting article called “Overview of Best Practices in Taji” by Dr. Yang Yang, a scholar and practitioner of taijiquan. His site seems to have much more information and he seems to have done extensive scholarly and practical research. His expertise confirms some of the conclusions I’ve been arriving at via my much [...]

Yiquan and taijiquan pt 2

I think there are several reasons why I seem to be drawn to yiquan. For one thing, I’ve been around taijiquan all my life, sometimes learning a bit of it, sometimes not. Since I grew up around my dad and others practicing it, I doubt my fascination with it is the same sort of fascination [...]

Yiquan and taijiquan

This interview is quite an amazing read. In several parts, Yao Chengguang coments on yiquan and taijiquan. In one section, Yao says:
Yiquan develops hunyuanli via zhanzhuang (standing post) practice, while Taijiquan seeks hunyuanli via the form practice.
I think that is probably true for most serious students of taijiquan who are mainly absorbed with form [...]

Throws and gyroscopes

It occurs to me that when I was thinking about smaller circles, I was not only thinking about smaller circles but also very small degrees (say one degree) of a larger circle. I suppose those two patterns can be combined whether into spirals, figure 8’s or some other movement combination. An interesting pattern I’m trying [...]