Thread: Tai Chi Ruler
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Old 05-02-2010, 07:49 PM   #4
David Orange
Dojo: Aozora Dojo
Location: Birmingham, AL
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Re: Tai Chi Ruler

Quote:
Rabih Shanshiry wrote: View Post
Sounds like a great exercise - thank you for sharing. Do you have the means and inclination to post a video as illustration?

...rab
Yes, I do...but...I don't know when it's likely to happen. I did want to follow up with a couple of points.

First, what I've felt through tai chi ruler can only be good but I'm careful not to obsess on it or put too much effort into it or breath work until I can understand it better. I don't want to do a lot of it wrong.

And what I've recently seen through tai chi ruler is just a glimpse of what the hara/hand linkage can do for power: my actual practice of it is nothing near that, still very general and crude. Imagine what can be done by someone who has actually perfected that connection--foot to center to hand and can actually use subtle movement of the hara to produce a big shake in a 12-foot pole. And if they've already gotten a jin grounding of the person on the other end of the pole, to shove/shake them back wouldn't require much effort. And it describes a spiral movement from ground through one's own body through the pole to the other person.

And that makes sense in light of a lot of discussions about spiral energy in the IS threads, so it seems like I might be on the right track. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that it explains how Ark Akuzawa blasted me back so hard. But I may be wrong and I don't want to get too good at doing such things the wrong way...

Another point is that I've also been thinking of the relation of tai chi ruler to other practices, such as reeling silk. Instead of "rocking" forward/back, you pivot left/right. And instead of making a vertical circle in front of the body the hands go into a sort of horizontal circling...as one shifts and pivots side-to-side. It is also vertical, but sideways...

So is reeling silk maybe a morphing of tai chi ruler? Since I had that idea, I've seen that there are a lot of variant forms of tai chi ruler and I don't know how useful each of those might be. But it does seem to me that reeling silk is like a four-dimensional expansion of the very simple forward/back vertical circling.

Whether that's correct or not, it seems as if practice of tai chi ruler could be a good way to begin the body development to support development of internal strength.

Thanks.

David

"That which has no substance can enter where there is no room."
Lao Tzu

"Eternity forever!"

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