Poison Dragons and Goofy Uncles

Today I came across a post in one of the Yang Taijiquan Facebook groups.

“What really is Jin? 🤔

(for the record Jin is just a Chinese word used in taiji for how it feels when someone manhandles or hits you)

As usual there were hundreds of contradictory comments from a multitude of people all trying to sound like eclectic taoist murderpopes.

One user even broke out a chart, detailing over 40 types of “energy” one can express through touch.

This violent overcategorization is nothing but a useless mental exercise that keeps us away from the real work.

Questions like this seem interesting, but they accomplish little, even when answered correctly, because there’s so many different perspectives on this, most of them wrong, and no one can ever be told otherwise in the taiji community.

Look no further than these very comments. We see everything from “breath and electromagnetism” (lol Jesus Christ come off it you goober), to physics formulas, quotes from the classics, and banal platitudes like “movement with breath” (congratulations, you read the classics once and got carried away 🤷)

Ultimately practitioners love to be heard but hate to be seen and hate training even more. They would rather pretend to sit on their pristine mountaintops and gospel down to us all while holding mudras they found while googling taoism.

99 percent of people who will train this stuff will never get any accomplishment, because they’re so hung up on pseudomystical garbage they can barely tell what planet they’re on, much less what to do when someone tries to punch them in the face.

One need look no further than the pathetic insecure reactions of men and women, who are quite advanced in years, who will immediately dip back into egoism and dick measuring.

I love taijiquan, but 99 percent of it is a waste of time.

Oh, possibly on a related note:

Stop taking life advice from 40 year old balding men named Stan who practice yoga and complain about the rising prices of organic hummus.

You’re not wise, you’re creepy. Stay away from my kids.

Fake Humility and Feigned Enlightenment: How Relentless Positivity Blinds Us to Growth

This bears reading, especially for “esoteric” type martial artists. Yes. I’m looking at you, Taijiquan, Aikido, and all self titled “internal” stylists.
A vast portion of the community has an overrun with new age style thinking in the last few decades. People who read modern spirituality texts, and frequent their local yoga studios in search of peace and clarity are bombarded with encouragements to engage in what I call “relentless optimism”.

This is a deeply sick way of thinking. People who engage in blind positivity, avoid conflict, and simply “agree to disagree” with others, are doing themselves and the martial arts community no favors.

It blinds you to new facts
To self improvement
To growth
To an opportunity to develop your emotional and psychological resilience

It’s not brave at all to engage in blind positivity. It’s running from the realities of life
It’s shutting yourself into a very narrow world
An echo chamber
A place where you’re always warm, and safe, and the people around you shower you with endless Love and validation.

I’d say this is like living as a child, but even a child has to overcome challenges, to see the world isn’t always about them, and to be told “No”, in order to see the bigger picture that is real life

You’re worse than a child, you’re an emotionally crippled adult hiding behind vacuous friends and imaginary truths.

You’re sick, degenerate, and deeply in need of more regularly scheduled struggle and suffering.

So the next time you find yourself thinking you’re clever for coming back in an argument with

“Ah, I see you are on a different place on your path, I will pray for you, brother, blessings and be well ❤️❤️🙏🙏✌️🙌✌️🙏🙏❤️❤️?”

Instead, consider seeing a therapist, or booking an appointment at a local MMA gym, so you can be punched in the face and shown the Yang to all that Yin thinking.

Traditional Movement, Modern Mindset

Borrowing a comment I saw on Martial Arts Nerds! today.

Why were punches ever chambered? My thoughts are, like wing chuns patty cake drills, they got too obsessed with one small aspect of combat training and then everyone started fighting weird.

Like “hey if we use this aspect of yoga to build str in the legs and can block things from chamber with out having our hands up, and still hit people while overly telagraphing what we’re gonna do next” then we can easly fight normally.

But I also feel like its really hard to tell someone, “hey did you know the way you should try to hit someone is by keeping your hands down and overly telagraphing what you’re gonna do next by chambering your punches.”

But then again people are really stupid, so I could see why you could convince someone that.

Like I could just lift something impressive and then start teaching you punch.chambering and tell you its the key to my inner str. And you’d belive me cuz no else around could do that thing I did, that had nothing to do with fighting.

Just like if ur 6foot 8 and teaching small people how to fight.

Wow this guys insaine he must know everything, and then it wont work, because 6 foot 8 techneque is to be 6 foot 8 and they don’t need to understand the subtleties of martial arts because they’re 6foot 8.

I once watched a 6foot 8 dude teach a small girl a standing arm bar, where he just pushed down on the arm (basically focing it)

Like man a small girl is gonna be able to hit an arm bar like that too for sure all 90lbs of her.

Every day im reminded of how stupid people are, that these types of people can just get away with charging ass tons of money to teach half assed karate, and sell black belts. They’re also getting paid 100 grand a year or more to train the police and military. Mean while real martial artists basically have to take over the world before someone looks at them seriously.

Just ruining real martial arts for the rest of us, who teach real shit and then have to try to explain to ordinary people that kims, bullsheeto isn’t actually teaching them anything and they’re paying out the ass for a social club.

I was going to write a correction to them on the spot, but I think you get the gist of it.

I still train chambered punches in forms, I work stances and body position, moving from the legs and spine.

People forget that all of these things are there for a reason. Some better than others.

Maybe we stand one way because a hundred years ago a master had a bad knee and was lazy

But maybe at the same time, chambered punches remind us to move with our backs. To engage our core. To be aware of what our spine is doing, how our knees are aligned. Are my hips open or closed?

Traditional movement should never be done simply because you’re told that’s how it’s done. Or because “it was invented by those better and older than ourselves”

Test things. Get into your body. Know how you move and why.

Or don’t. 🤷

Sparring. Touching Hands as a conversational piece

A lot of us enjoy doing forms.
They are interesting, and while performing them it gives us a feeling of awe.
They help keep us in shape and teach important concepts about our art.
But beyond forms, there is much more out there that we may neglect.

For example, a lot of practitioners place an exuberant amount of focus on performing forms and exercises outside of actually testing said exercises against a resisting opponent. A lot of faith is placed into the theory but the application is left as a side note rather than the main goal.

One of the most beneficial aspects of training against a resisting opponent is the conditioning of the mind and body in unison. Heart rate accelerates, adrenaline courses through the body, the instinctive flinches becomes more controlled and much more. All this to help us become a more efficient martial artists. Able to handle tougher training sessions and benefit more from less thus allowing us to be more time efficient in our own training. To drive us to excel once the resistance is met, and it becomes an obstacle to overcome.

Get out there and let’s be more proactive in our training. Have a goal other than memorizing forms and doing martial games. Find an opponent and grow from each other. Out do each other and in the process let’s aim to out do ourselves.

Below is an example of Wing Chun’s “Bread and Butter”, Sticking Hands.
I too love this exercise but it is just that, an exercise.

Radical Energetics: Qi(ć°”), Taiji Body Mechanics and the Power of Rice…

ć°Ł Part 1: Radical Energetics
So, let’s get into the idea of Qi ( ć°”). One of the most important things, in my opinion, to keep in mind when talking about Qi, is that the idea of Qi as a life sustaining force doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an actual invisible energy that surrounds and binds us and gets Ben Kenobi all excited. It’s not some destructive “empty force” that can drop a man from across the room or explode his organs with a gentle touch. That’s all aggressively marketed for weak minded students to steal money, and is perpetuated by people getting information about Chinese martial arts from Hollywood and Hong Kong Cinema.
The concept of Qi comes out of Chinese spiritual and medical (sometimes those are one and the same) practices that date all the way back; way way back before the Daoist Temples, Buddhist Monasteries, and Medical Colleges that sprouted up as far back as the Warring States/Spring and Autumn Periods. I don’t have any sources cited here, feel free to contact me for more, but I’ve even read from a few teachers that the idea of energy sustaining and healing the body dates back as far as the Shamanic Wu people ( See Damo Mitchell’s Daoist Neigong: The Philosophical art of Change). The idea that something that ennervates us all, a life essence, isn’t new at all, and it’s not all that special. It’s really just a bit of Chinese culture and old school cosmology. Hell, it’s not even exclusive to Chinese culture.
To the Chinese, ć°” has so many different meanings. Air Qi, Fire Qi, Electricity Qi, Heaven Qi, Pre birth Qi, Acquired Qi… It’s really no surprise that Wade Giles and other translators made the logical choice of translating Qi as “Energy” to westerners, it being so ambiguous and vague at times. But dig a bit more into Chinese linguistics, and Chinese thought as a whole, and one can see that the Chinese view of the world is seems vague because it’s such a weird combination of holistic, superstitious, and pragmatic, at least in regards to this particular character. So, looking at the modern, simplified form of Qi, 气，we get all the standard definitions: Gas, air, steam, cloud, etc. And that’s great, that’s what it means and contextually it works very well in Chinese. But for the martial conversation I think it bears to take a look at the slightly older, traditional character, ć°Ł
Here we can see another radical has been added to the character, 米, pronounced Mi. This radical means rice, and is one of the 29 kangxi radicals. Rice, as we all know, is a deeply important staple grain for everyone. It’s the starch that fuels their entire society. I use the world fuel for this very carefully, because to many Chinese, if you ask them to describe the character 氣, out of context( remember guys, Chinese is a very contextual language, and all of its words are created by the juxtaposition of radicals), especially if they don’t have any martial arts experience, all they’re going to see is the characters 气 and 米 next to each other. I’ve tried this on a couple of people and gotten a similar answer between about a half dozen of them, a steaming bowl of rice. As Neil said over in his article, nothing says comfort, fuel, and energy like a simple steaming hot bowl of rice.
With that, one can easily see why the guys over at (Red jade martial arts website) don’t go into the esoteric too heavily when it comes to the internal styles. Neil has put it best, I think, describing Qi as a relationship, rather than an actual Midichlorian fueled superpower that lets you blow people across rooms and root yourself against the charge of an oncoming bull. Instead, we look at Qi as a relationship, an interaction between the polarities. After all, isn’t that all Tajiquan and the other internal arts are, a study of the interrelationships of Yin and Yang, and how we can embody those relationships and changes? We see it talked about most in the Three Sisters: Taiji, Bagua, and Xingyi, but also to some degree in Wing Chun.

ć°Ł Part Two: Energetic Boogaloo
So by now you’re probably thinking, “Finally the crazy bastard will stop rambling and get to the point!” and indeed, I shall. You see, for all the convolution above, all I’m really trying to tell you is this: Don’t get caught up in hocus pocus and esotericism. Rather, ask yourself very straightforward, mechanical questions. To use wing chun as an example:

  • “Why is my shoulder tense when I lift my elbow vs when I thrust it forward to create my Tan Sao/ Pak Sao, etc?”
  • “Why do I feel like I can transfer my power from my feet to my hands better in this position vs that position?”
  • “Why do I get tired so quickly during sticking hands, despite being in better shape than my partner?”
  • “Why can my lighter partner force me to take a step here”
  • Or even simple introspections like “Where is my weight in my feet” and “what is my waist doing during this movement”

It really is that simple guys. These tiny fixes and the attention to detail is the difference between slogging through your form for years, with no results, and that new guy who showed up to your class, and despite not having all the forms, pushing you around like a ragdoll! Getting all of these little things right, and having MINDFUL movement, can add years to your perceived skill.
Qi, as far as I’m concerned, is just the relationship of mechanics, muscle contracts, joint rotates/hinges, and body position. If your leg moves or is planted with improper alignment, energy isn’t transferred to the ground well, force can’t be absorbed or delivered to opponent efficiently. It’s not rocket science… well, maybe it is. It’s closer to rocket science than say… the idea that facing a wall in a cave on a mountainside will confer martial abilities after 9 years (Sorry Da Mo, your Yijinjing is amazing, if it’s really yours, though!). It’s all physics. It just seems magical to someone at entry level because they haven’t built up the conditioning, strength, muscle memory, and proprioception, to achieve the desired effect.
The point being that it’s more important to stand up, do the work, have someone press on your structure and shove you around. You can visualize and theorize all you like, but there’s really no replacement for throwing hands.
So, to paraphrase my Taiji teacher, Terry Price. “Yes” would be my answer to you, Menno. Cheers
That’s all for now folks! Stay tuned and thanks for reading. Contact us if your interested in Kung Fu lessons!
John
PS. For more information, and for the sake of proper credit, check out the guy I get most of my internal ideas from, Neil Ripski, on facebook and youtube. Below are his own rants on Qi and Qigong.

Many Paths Up the Mountain, Here’s Mine.

Hi everyone, and thanks for joining me on my first ever web page and blog. Here I’ll be discussing my martial arts journey with you, discussing theory, taking advice, and occasionally stirring the pot within the community (though, hopefully not too much). This first article is just a quick introduction to who I am and my mission statement.

My name’s John, and I’ve been a martial artist for about 13 years now. I started in the usual way one does in the United States, walking into a Karate Dojo at the behest of my parents. Sadly, that was never to stick. Though I stuck through my first few years of college, earning some belts in Karate, Kobudo, Aikido, and Kendo, I never really found my passion in what I was studying. Eventually aggressive injuries sustained in my old job as a ground crewman for an arborism company, and in the training hall at college, saw me looking elsewhere for my training needs.

Floating around my hometown for a few months, I tried other Karate schools, some Krav Maga, and even a fencing club. None of these were a good fit for me; It wasn’t holistic, all encompassing, or deep enough for the obsessive, hyperfocused study that I tend to pour myself into. After a long day of driving around, frustrated, from about 6 in the morning until about 4 in the afternoon, on a Tuesday in the spring of 2010, I came across a little after school tutoring center, tucked away behind a shopping center. There I met Mr. Siu.

I walked in the front door to what looked like a daycare center. The room was covered in those 3/4 inch Century puzzle mats, about 40 feet deep and 30 feet wide. Not huge, but definitely a step up from the converted chemistry lab we were always knocking lights off the ceiling in with our Kendo training. A strong looking Chinese guy with a strong jaw, cropped hair, and very genuine eyes greeted me at the door. John Siu was a New Yorker by birth. Easygoing, family oriented, and focused, he greeted me with a handshake that felt like iron wrapped in tire rubber, and a professional smile. “Welcome to Riverstone”

What happened next felt like something out of a kung fu movie, maybe because i’d watched too many. We sat down over a drink and talked about his school for a little while. He’d just opened, and was offering a curriculum in Wing Chun, a style I’d never heard of before, having grown up on Jackie Chan and Jet Li movies in the 2000’s. He explained the concepts and history of the style to me, how it originated in Southern China, and the Myths of it being founded by an Abbess Named Ng Mui.

“Certainly sounds like the perfect advertising for a self defense class, but can something invented by a nun over a hundred years ago really work today?” I asked.

He finished his drink, smiled, and said “Show me what you know so far”

Needless to say what followed was pretty predictable. We stepped out onto the mats, I bowed and brought my hands up. After ranging in a few times, I fired off a few shots. Immediately my hands were bashed off center or crushed to my body, and there was a fist hovering about a millimeter from my nose. I smacked the hand aside and tried again, mixing up my combination to try and throw off his defense. Same result, hands trapped on my chest, knuckle brushing my nostrils.

“ok, it’s fast, but can it really DO anything?”

The last attempt wasn’t so nicely responded to. this time, my hands couldn’t even get out from my guard position, and a fist connected solidly with my chest, blowing the air out of me and knocking me down. I got up, a little winded but definitely impressed. I spent another hour with Mr. Siu talking theory and concepts, and by the end of the discussion, I was asking to come back for another lesson.

I spent almost 5 years there, some of the best years of my life, if i’m being open. It was a small school, never more than me and 3 or so brothers coming in and training for an hour or two, but it was a fantastic time. Lots of drills, lots of sticking hands and sparring, and even some conditioning. I was stronger and faster in the first year than I had been in ten years, and it was noticably easier in sparring against my old brothers and sisters at ODU.

After a time, that place closed down, and I found myself without a school. I had fallen in love with Chinese martial arts by that time, and couldn’t bring myself to go back to the stuff i’d been practicing before, so I went out on my own. I was very lucky in that time to have developed a good relationship with Neil Ripski, a really high level Neijia (internal style) player, who runs the Red Jade guys up in Alberta, Canada (Check out his wordpress here: https://neilthekungfuguy.wordpress.com )After about 2 years, I got tired of doing form, wall bags, and having to drop in to other schools to train, so I took Neil’s advice to go get a real teacher again and found my next home with Terry Price

Terry’s a big, happy, beer drinking, rock and roll loving hippie that the 70’s were absolutely designed for. The guy has the best sense of humor and is absolutely laid back. He’s a perfect Taiji teacher for those of us who can’t simply relax when a teacher smacks us and says “Fang song” (release tension/make relaxed, in Chinese).

Terry is an inner door student of Chen Yun Ching, the son of Grandmaster Chen Pan Ling, who fled China to Taiwan during the revolution, charged with a mission of preserving the internal arts until the mainland was safe again (Martial arts were basically taken over by the State). The Chen Pan Ling system encompasses Taijiquan, Baguazhang, Xingyiquan, some Shaolin sets, and weapons forms. I’m about a two year student there, but I’ve already seen tons of similarities in terms of body mechanics, structure, and power generation between this, and my first Chinese style of Wing Chun.

I won’t get too much into theory here, but that’s what i’m doing lately. I’ll be posting more on the mechanics of these styles in the future. Thanks for stopping by and stand by for my next post soon!