Taiji Motion study
 

Interesting

http://www.qigonginstitute.org/html/...20Stanford.pdf

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Great article.

Thanks. I will pass it on.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Interesting article. Makes me want to take up tai chi. I wonder what they will find if they do the same test on an aikidoka.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

On the same note, I'd be very interested to read any publication made after Mike Sigman's collaboration with the University of Colorado.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

There is a video that was put together from that study:

http://move.stanford.edu/08/downloads.html

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

An extemely talented martial artist.
Thanks for the link.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

It's interesting to see that kind of acceleration up close and personal. Chen Xiang was in Seattle teaching in early May. He can move from standing still to full-blown fajin with frightening speed and relatively little store/release. A number of the top Chenshi taiji guys can (Chen Xiaowang, for example). Chen Xiang's movement seems more relaxed, perhaps a little looser. He's also a very open, pleasant person to work with.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Direct link to the WMV file: http://move.stanford.edu/08/podcasts..._subtitles.wmv

Jim

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Watch out... there may be a trojan downloader associated with that file. My AV software immediately started a quarantine of a downloader at the time the film was running, so I'm assuming that may be it.

Mike

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Even worse -- it may refer to a viral meme -- optimizing angular momentum .:D

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Hmmmm.... you're sort of like Charlie Brown kicking the football with your "angular momentum", Erick. You keep kicking it and you keep winding up on your back.

If you take a look at what they're referring to in the "angular momentum" discussion, it's functionally no different than talking about a "hip twist" (to simplify) in a karate punch. All motion can be described, from some perspective, in terms of angular momentum. To say something is "angular momentum" is to say nothing. Or at the very least, there is no distinction by saying "angular momentum" in terms of "ki" or in terms of football.

The Stanford people did publish one thing that is true and important (I ain't sayin'... you figure it out), but they mis-read the force-vector directions. A little statics analysis would have cleared it up.

Still, I'm glad the study was done. Oh... I should note that the "famous Tai Chi master" they used is a student of Feng Zhiqiang whom Feng treats as his number two because this guy can fight and take challenges when they're made to Feng. But his initial training was in Bajiquan and it's very obvious that he uses the power mechanisms of Baji, rather than Taiji, in his power releases.

FWIW

Mike

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Looking, at my feet at this moment ... Yep, firmly planted on terra firma. C'mon, when's a tweak not in good fun ?

A gold star to the guy in the front row... And all potential motion can be described, from some perspective, in terms of moment...

Aaah. ... Does realization truly dawn ? :p

Are you saying either a football, or, say, a noseguard -- has no Ki?? A good quarterback has a keen, (if highly specific) appreciation of the manipulation of the Ki of a football.

Next thing, I suppose you're going to scandalize the Japanese by saying that Hideo Nomo's fastball has no Ki ... ;)

Or that in the one case the football has its Ki manipulated, whereas the noseguard can learn (in theory, at least :hypno: ) to manipulate Ki. Some of them even manipulate the Ki of others as well as their own, rather intuitively, if haphazardly. (N.B. - I'd love to be in the lockerroom for THAT half-time lecture ... )

Which image should illustrate the point -- having a neutral, western reference does away with needless esotericism. The odd noseguard may be just as intellectually clueless, depending. But if it is in empirical terms he has at least heard tell of, he cannot then so cluelessly wave serious points into mumbo-jumbo territory. They get physics, if not math, generally speaking -- hitting somebody with a heavy chain is a concept the average noseguard might relate to with surprising ease ... ;) . Pinning 'em down or snatchin' 'em off their feet with related principles is not nearly so mysterious after that ...

Or, perhaps .. everything.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

If you'll go back and check it, I long ago posted that your angular momentum explanation had not value because of that very reason. I also said there were a number of generalities that could be used to explain anything you wanted and that they were of no use to us, either. I'm not getting into the silliness, Erick. It's obvious that you don't understand what ki means, once again. And once again, let me remind you that because you don't understand something that no one does and therefore any theory flies. Your problem is that you need some instruction. I previously suggested that you try to find someone who is still willing to show you and it's still a good suggestion.

Regards,

Mike Sigman

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

I think that you will find that the levels of specificity that can be achieved in these terms at least as detailed as any of the terms you typically prefer to use to address them. In fact, I think we just watched a video to that effect, ... although mainly on the "what" not the "why."

I would have expected better by now, but on little evidence for the hope, it must be admitted.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Erick,

Your methods can't explain the "how" either.

Tim

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

You mistake what I am doing. Ki as traditionally understood explains the how. Now we must explain Ki in other terms.

It is not like there is not a general sense that this needs doing -- look at Rocky Izumi's current (and laudable) effort toward that end. He is laying out principles in the form of what craftsmen call "rules of thumb" highly pragmatic rules of structure and execution. They are very valuable, and they also have a long tradition in technical crafts and even engineering (East and West). But there are other tools we have in physics, to do a similar thing, that East and West now equally share.

An analogy: The first step, by the French Jesuits, later again Wades-Giles, and then again in the pinyin system was to transliterate the sound of Chinese for the benefit of the sound/symbol languages to enable them to "hear" it in writing, and then begin to associate concepts from the writings with the primary sense data of hearing. The second step was to take the "heard" writing and then make it accessible in terms of its concepts.

This is in hanzi:

一狗可以久在馬房睡覺但是他也不是馬的.

This is the same in pinyin:

Yī gǒu kèyǐ jiǔ zài mǎfáng shuìjiào, dànshì tā yě bù shì mǎ de.

A reader may not know what the first or the second things are saying (the same thing FWIW) but the reader is closer to it in being able to sound it out, and can memorize the raw sense data, and then find a Chinese speaker to explain it. But if all the reader has (to the reader) is meaningless stick figures, he is able to make NO sense of it at all, nor even know what to ask later when he finds a native speaker.

Hearing is the primary sense of language, and the primary sense is necessary to internalize it. That's why kids read out loud. Written images that are closest to the actual primary sense (in a given culture) are most effectively learned. Alphabetical languages are easily "heard"; a Westerner can more easily internalize the sound than the pictogram, because pictorial languages require much rote learning to internalize sound from the image. Alphabetics are analytic, and less foundational work is necessary to work it out. Ki, as a conceptual system, and physics have a similar distinction in their approaches to physical problems.

Aikido is a physical "language." Its primary sense is touch and movement. Touch and movement are no more directly perceptible in the written page than hearing is, but a representation of it can be made if the representation makes the primary sense datum accessible to the sense memory of the reader.

Two systems, physics and ki, may equally represent the primary sense data. They are not, however equally accessible in talking about or writing about the primary data, depending on culture. You may analogize what I am trying to do with the transliteration that various systems have attempted with the sounds of Chinese. Pinyin is NOT Chinese -- it is a Western point of access to Chinese.

Aikido, in western terms, is somewhere between steps one and two, above. For those that get it in traditional terms as those terms were meant (and not as fancifully imagined) they need no more. For those who do not easily get it in traditional terms some transliteration is necessary into a different system of understanding, to get it in terms they can use their own physical sense memory to access and internalize it.

And anyone who merely defaults to "you just have to feel this stuff" as an exclusive retort is simply complaining that "pinyin is not Chinese." While not wrong, it simply misses the point (apart from tending to be condescending and presumptive). It would be like saying that Shakespeare's written work is good for nothing but wiping up spills simply because it is not in its "intended" directly spoken form, as though people are incapable of "hearing" in the head when reading what is written.

Once you have access, have learned the alphabet and basic grammatic structure of the language you can start to puzzle out the place and meaning of essential words, and then in comparing what you hear and seeing what is written, you can get on to nuances of grammar, inflection and more elegant forms of expression.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Nah, as has been repeatedly show, you don't want to "explain Ki in other terms", Erick, you want people to explain Ki in terms that must agree with your criteria. Period. In other words, you've set yourself up as the sole arbiter of what is the correct way to explain something that you know nothing about. ;)

Regards,

Mike Sigman

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Mr Erick,

I agree on many points. When I started teaching my daughters to read from "100 lessons for Teaching Your Children How to Read", by Haddux; I had an epiphany.

As the story goes, the guys who wrote the book in the late 1970's were IBM employes. They were concerned with the fact that "Johnny Couldn't Read". As such, they looked at the method of "teaching reading" in the schools. They found that teachers were in fact, habitualizing children to "never read" properly.

They created an alphabet that used phonics (learning to state the ABC's in fact becomes a barrier to reading words.) They used arrows to tell the children which direction to read in (teachers had assumed that kids knew to read from right to left). They placed dots at the bottom of her phonetic letter (to employ touch, with sound, with sight). Lastly, with the arrows they employed a method of "connected" sounds.

My epiphany was that "I was teaching martial arts" in this same way. I was using the modes of "data intake" (i.e. sight, sound, touch, taste and smell) to multiply the ability of my students to learn.) Lastly, instead of "particle" (1 separated by 2, separated by 3), I in my practice was teaching "wave".

I am curious. Do you have any videos of your practice? My opinion is that one's intellect should take root in one's body motions. More interestingly, one's body motions can add to the epiphany of intellect.

Sincerely
Joseph T. Oliva Arriola

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

There aren't too many languages that read right to left. Of course, maybe you're just making your point in a particularly dry fashion....

Best,

FL

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

What is the point of all this...:D

William Hazen

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

My son learned to read at about age 3. We taught him simply by reading to him everyday over and over again. He figured it out on his own simply through the direct experience of reading. We never had to tell him anything directly, or to break it down into small parts, or anything, he did it simply through the experience of reading.

Now because he can read, doesn't mean he can spell or write, or talk about the theory of how letters evolved or the mechanics of how words are formed in the brain as concepts from the transmission of the eyes to the optic nerve etc.

He simply reads.

I think martial arts work this way in many ways. You can learn simply by doing it over and over again until you simply can do things.

some can do, some can talk about it, some can do both.

but I am ultimately with Mr Hazen...what is the point of all this :)

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

[quote=Kevin Leavitt;206455]My son learned to read at about age 3. We taught him simply by reading to him everyday over and over again. He figured it out on his own simply through the direct experience of reading. We never had to tell him anything directly, or to break it down into small parts, or anything, he did it simply through the experience of reading.

Kevin,

The point is that my 10 year old is taking high school algebra and my 7 year old is in 5th grade math. Yes, they knew how to read at 3, also. But, we endeavored to teach them to "think about what they were given to read". We are teaching them to ask "why and how" which is beyond what, where and when.

The point is that the result of the theory and concept is in its utility. I study martial arts "theory and concept" to win in combat. I study it to win in life.

I talk about my children's "wins" because they are an extension of my family's values.

I judge a martial arts expert not simply on his natural ability. I judge him on the successes in his life. I judge him by not only his actions but by the way he thinks.

Perhaps, one day you and I will be able to "cross hands". Next, summer I will be in D.C. Perhaps then, you can judge for yourself whether or not my stuff is for real. However, surely I would hope you could see the extension of my expertise in all aspects of my life.

Sincerely
Joseph T. Oliva Arriola

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Not my criteria. Bishop Berkeley, Sir Isaac, and one or two others you may have heard of. There is nothing to arbitrate except the correspondence of physical principles to physical actions. If one understands the principle one can see the action that corresponds or does not and make one's own judgment.

As to Qi, the terms of Qi are this:
Yin qi condensing forms quiescent matter, earthly shapes. Yang qi, dispersing becomes invisibly active energy, heavenly phenomena, all cycling from one to the other.

Mass, velocity, cycling around a center or mean 中.

That is angular momentum -- when yang phase is dominant.
That is moment (potential for angular momentum) -- when yin phase is dominant.

What's your problem with the correspondence in the traditions here?

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Simple. Both. China was dominated by scholars for 2200 years during which 80% of the population was illiterate and 20+% of the Chinese remain illiterate today, and for the same reason. It may be that the analytic way of doing things can be more accessible to those who have little foundation and little time to build one.

Whether it should be more accessible is a different question, and one that, based on his prior statements, and his holding of a closed nei-jia forum, seems to underlie some of Sigman's objections. But they should be asked separately, and I am simply laying some reasons for keeping them separate.

Re: Taiji Motion study
 

Oh please. Signal to noise ratio is the reasoning behind that forum's closed nature, not to mention not throwing pearls before swine (if you will pardon the expression). ;)

B,
R