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Mike Sigman · 01-13-2010, 01:52 PM

I'm having trouble seeing much special in what he's doing because of the student factor. More or less what Chris H. said. If you (as a student/uke) really put your arms lightly on someone but disconnect them from your center, no force is going to do anything like what was shown in the video. So there was a cooperative-student aspect to what's on the video. In a lot of "tai chi" schools, students are trained (sometimes unconsciously by peer pressure, just in the same way a lot of Aikido schools produce a lot of dive-bunnies) to hop backward to small impulses.

Incidentally, what he's doing is not "fa jing". Fa jing is a whole-body shaking release of power. Something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_vcWq2GYXs

There are a number of fa jing videos on YouTube that support the idea of the shaking power of fajing, so either all those Chinese are wrong and Phillips is the only guy that knows the truth... or he's just misapplying the term.

IMO, Phillips can't do that kind of body shaking (looking at his body movements), so what he's doing isn't fajing. It's more like "poop jing"... small pressure pulsing or crowding his jin into the student, adding to pressure that the student is applying onto him.

What he calls "closing" isn't quite what I'd call pure closing, but it's in the general direction. However, you can see the same general use of the middle working the back-gate "hole" of Uke in this video of Saotome Sensei using David Goldberg as uke (does it twice in the opening seconds of the video).

http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=61...v=133112591037

So anyway, before I'd want to get into any discussion about what Phillips is doing, I'd want to stipulate that it's not "fajing" and his students are too cooperative.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

01-13-2010, 01:52 PM	#11
Mike Sigman Location: Durango, CO Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 4,123 Offline	Re: Mysteries of tai chi I'm having trouble seeing much special in what he's doing because of the student factor. More or less what Chris H. said. If you (as a student/uke) really put your arms lightly on someone but disconnect them from your center, no force is going to do anything like what was shown in the video. So there was a cooperative-student aspect to what's on the video. In a lot of "tai chi" schools, students are trained (sometimes unconsciously by peer pressure, just in the same way a lot of Aikido schools produce a lot of dive-bunnies) to hop backward to small impulses. Incidentally, what he's doing is not "fa jing". Fa jing is a whole-body shaking release of power. Something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_vcWq2GYXs There are a number of fa jing videos on YouTube that support the idea of the shaking power of fajing, so either all those Chinese are wrong and Phillips is the only guy that knows the truth... or he's just misapplying the term. IMO, Phillips can't do that kind of body shaking (looking at his body movements), so what he's doing isn't fajing. It's more like "poop jing"... small pressure pulsing or crowding his jin into the student, adding to pressure that the student is applying onto him. What he calls "closing" isn't quite what I'd call pure closing, but it's in the general direction. However, you can see the same general use of the middle working the back-gate "hole" of Uke in this video of Saotome Sensei using David Goldberg as uke (does it twice in the opening seconds of the video). http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=61...v=133112591037 So anyway, before I'd want to get into any discussion about what Phillips is doing, I'd want to stipulate that it's not "fajing" and his students are too cooperative. FWIW Mike Sigman Last edited by Mike Sigman : 01-13-2010 at 02:01 PM.