Hiddenbear
Newbie
Posts: 32
|
 |
« Reply #46 on: February 26, 2009, 12:00:05 am » |
|
Hi Rocketman,
Tricky subject, very tricky?
And the question remains?
What are your objectives? What do you want out of your investment in time and effort?
(The literal translation of gong fu (kung fu) is meritorious acts of endeavor over time)
So, I want to begin this conversation carefully. I am NOT against forms training or traditional styles. I have committed 30 years of my life to both endeavors. I still teach Tai Ji Quan (Tai Chi), usually outside in the warmer months; occasionally I will teach a small group a Ba Gua Chang (Pa Kua) form or two if there is sufficient interest and I have the time. And, as I mentioned, I even teach a basic Wing Chun Form (Sui Lum Dao) to people who are only interested in combat training.
At the height of my carrier (in one sense), I was training/maintaining 36 different forms that came from 6 different styles. At that time I had no other job but martial arts - all day every day, no family responsibilities, barely enough time for meaningful relationships, and no interest in social or political concerns.
As my life became more ?involved? I had to make some decisions. I had to lighten my load and make some hard choices. I asked a teacher/mentor/friend for advice and, of course, was asked a question?
What are you the most effective at teaching?
So, I looked at what I was doing/teaching and what most people were interested in doing, having fun doing, breaking through personal boundaries. What do I teach that keeps people focused on the lesson?
He also asked another question, ever so wisely?
What do you want to do for FUN, if you need to blow off some steam what do you like to do?
Play time - a few precious hours to express my inner nature, and to shake off any feelings of aggression or fear, shame or guilt. A place to cultivate awareness and friendship.
So, I chose full on, close quarter, almost/sometimes live, weapons included - applied combat training.
Imagine you have six months to prepare people for a parachute drop.
Six months to be make someone ready to contain 20 to 100 inmates.
Three months to subduing a suspect and controlling a small group or crowd, perhaps retain (take) a weapon away from someone. Law Enforcement, ? etc.
Three to ten years to train a martial arts student to be competent enough to consider training the above three scenarios.
So, anything I say about all this will come through the lens of
ARE YOU READY FOR COMBAT?? THE REAL SHIT
Having said that, I enjoy the forms I still practice and still teach.
But that is not why I am writing on this forum in support of a pragmatic relationship with martial arts training.
So, here I go?
The trouble with forms training in the Western world.
First off, I am writing this to support of people in the practice of traditional forms, just as much as to challenge Combat Tacticians who may choose an over-reliance on forms practice, especially for the first two years. After two years of Realistic training, I believe that forms are of significant value ? to those who require combat readiness in their lives or professions.
That?s my job? combat readiness?
So, the trouble with forms training, especially in the shopping mall of the Western world?
Here is a story.
In the 1960?s and early 1970?s, when Tai Ji was first made available to westerners, people would typically find an old Chinese gentleman (usually little english) ? and learn to imitate and memorize the movements of a seventy-year-old man. (In slow motion Combat/ Shadow Boxing).
This venerable Old One may have studied since childhood ? but at 70 you move like a seventy year old?
Around the mid 1980?s, when Chen style Tai Ji came on the scene, with younger teachers, in their 50?s ? willing to teach the whole system, tai ji quan became a true boxers art.
People?s eyes were opened up a lot ? to see the brutal combat side of Tai Ji Quan.
One of my favorite teachers, Xu Gong Wei (may he rest in peace), would point at his grey hair and indicate the height of his stances, then he would touch my hair and hold his palm at the height of my knees ? your sacrum should float just above our knees?
In Chen style, in old school Chen style Tai Ji Quan, you would spend months doing power generation exercises with a LOG, or a 40-60 pound metal rod.
At the beginning of training one wrestles with trees ? as your skill develops your expression of form changes to something very soft and alive ? made of sensitivity and speed, expressed slowly without physical intensity ? but with great attention to detail? including the strength speed and agility of youth ? although hidden.
So much is physically unexpressed and so much is hidden in the thousands of year old games of Chinese physical culture, aesthetics and Kung Fu politics.
Many forms that I have learned were gateways, only opened when I was accepted into a family system or lineage, or an inner door, or through skillful observation.
This is a great challenge for all westerners. What you are learning may not be what your teacher really has to offer. I have had this experience enough times to mention it. If you are not an inner-door student you may not be shown what really makes a certain form work, or why it is done at all. Besides tradition. And Tuition.
Another challenge, that many of us face, especially in the West, is that we are competitive and that we focus on our appearance. If your form looks like your teachers it is right and you are good, otherwise you have failed. This is how it is at the beginning, but sooner or later you have to move like yourself ? with your attributes, and your limitations. To move freely and instinctively, anyway.
Forms cannot teach you to move like an animal ? animals don?t look to other animals as to how to move. All Animals look inside, not outside. Although, once you can move instinctively you can bring that speed and agility into any form and express the movements in your own way.
Now, don?t get me wrong, I love monkey style, drunken monkey style, Praying Mantis, Tiger, Dragon, and I have done my best to imitate them (about ten years ago, and on the occasional Friday night;-) ) ? but, I am a human being, an animal without claws and without mythical powers.
Imitating other animals is just ME ? still looking OUTSIDE of Me, for how to move as me ? which is, well, the title of Adams book comes to mind.
After reading your post I feel that I must have mis-communicated something. I have never intended to imply that moving through a form, especially Tai Ji, especially for the first couple of years - is an experience of moving naturally.
Take an average athletically orientated person, interested in combat, and ask them to move slowly, with deep relaxation in a choreography that is repetitive and arbitrary and easily misunderstood. Is that person moving naturally to them?
I?m not sure that the word ?naturally? really covers the animal part. Perhaps the word instinctively is more precise.
Now I?m not putting down Taijiquan ? In my mind if you have been trained properly, Taijiquan is in the top 5 most brutally devastating approaches to combat ? but to be trained properly takes you beyond practicing a form. Training becomes true shadow boxing, moving fast or slow, never the same choreography; completely present, random, chaotic, and very precise, your body and the bad guys body, and the next one and the next ? just like combat. The form gets you through the first ten to twenty years ? then you really get to practice Taijiquan. If that sounds unlikely to anyone translate the term tai ji quan ? the expression itself defies form.
So form is form ? for me it is useful, kind of in the middle. After you learn how your body wants to move you around, and until you no longer need a coach about shape, structure and speed - forms are great. But not necessary.
I want to say again, I teach combat preparedness ? sometimes in a hurry. If I had ten years to train someone I would probably start with Taijiquan and Yi Quan, mostly for the body awareness of structure and momentum.
The individual movements of Yi Quan, that you mentioned, are taught that way for exactly the reasons I have said what I am saying ? no choreography.
In Yi Quan we take a movement or gesture that is an instinctive reflex. You repeat the movement at many speeds focusing on different attributes of structure or recovering momentum. Sometimes the context is defensive, sometimes offensive and sometimes as an antenna. Maybe twenty scenarios and 10,000 repetitions ? then see what it looks like on the outside. Then put the mirror away and do it again. This is a truly internal martial arts experience ? the form, although always changing, evolves from the inside out.
The concern I have with forms training, for any martial artist or anyone who needs to be combat ready in a hurry is that choreography and an external reference to your own body can profoundly change how you move and how you relate to physical violence.
In combat, every movement is happening for the first time in the history of the universe.
When the shit hits the fan, be the fan?
Mike
|
