Cady,
What if my standards are high? What if it's the case that because I really want to learn internal power I focus on people who are KNOWN internal masters, CXW, Chen Bing, Chen You Ze, Chen Qingzhou, Li Tai Liang, for example (I've seen all except CXW) rather than others who may or may not be internal but whose posts don't make sense to me given what I know of internal power?
And you again seem to take offense at a simple statement from my observations. You may be right, maybe I'm being too dismissive...but let me tell you a little story. Within about six months, maybe more than twelve years ago, I first saw chenstyle master Chen Qingzhou and xinyi master Li Tai Liang. I first saw Chen in Golden Gate Park. The first words (translated) out of his mouth were that the taiji was about the Dantien powering movement. He said Westerners seemed to think the Dantien was this mystical energy thing but that in fact for martial arts it was a real physical thing. And then he showed us...he let us feel his Dantien while he issued power. Months later Li does a workshop in Seattle and I attend. He tells a wild story about the mystical aspects of qi. Then he says, if you want to use qi in martial arts its about certain physical training. And he shows us and we spend the morning doing squatting monkey, training the Dantien (store and release, store and release).
What struck me was that the styles they practice look different, but what powers movements in each style is the Dantien. You try to figure out what internal power is about by focusing on unambiguously skilled practitioners of the neijia and there is less room for confusion or distraction. Anybody else, you're taking chances.
JLB
Quote:
Cady Goldfield wrote:
That you could read Dan Harden's posts "over the years and not been able to make ANY sense of the many different things he has said and claimed..." speaks volumes about what you comprehend and consider to be "internal" or not. Maybe, once again, people here are using the same terms to define very different things. You can't know until you go hands-on. Please just go out and touch hands cordially with these people --- Dan Harden, Sam Chin, et al. You already seem to be forming opinions despite your protestations to the contrary.
"Let's say he's powerful. I'll go feel him and see if that power is coming from internal methods. Really."
There. Fixed.
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