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Dan Harden wrote:
Not to get in the middle of you and Mike's love fest.....Your not going to get it from trying to copy some motion of fishermen or silk drawing in a river of even in the Taiji exercise. The motion without mentally moving and connecting things is pointless -other than getting some mild exercise.
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I think it's like everything else: there's a source, an inspiration, and then there's development. I don't have the slightest illusion that the surface movement is the inner depth. The problem for me is Mike's changing stories--throw the insult, then, when the proof emerges, disparage it and throw another insult--and all really unnecessary because we did get back to the likelihood that the movement was originally derived from laborers, then refined. So I know that silk reeling is internal and very subtle. Mike just isn't.
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Dan Harden wrote:
What is connecting and moving is not in "winding your muscles" while pulling on something.
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Those comments all relate to Mike's "crude" illustration of what he meant by "pulling" silk as opposed to "reeling" silk--which was just some obfuscation to cover his being caught in a weak spot.
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Dan Harden wrote:
The winding isn't some "body shape" you take, in motion.
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From looking at the videos, it's obvious that it's not just external movement and that that form of movement is very important in tai chi. I have no argument against that.
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Dan Harden wrote:
When it comes to this topic, don't hate the message because of the messenger.
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Not at all. Most of the past several comments have just been chastening the messenger for muddying up the message--and apparently intentionally.
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Dan Harden wrote:
Try to look at it instead with a joy of learning something new. There's nothing wrong with not knowing a thing or two, right? Even when we learn things by rote, there is always a definable mark of individual accumen. Look forward to breaking new ground and gaining power for yourself in your old age...Hah!
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I'm with you there. I've gotten a lot to think about in the last several days. I'm setting up a "nine-palace" post formation in my back yard to work with.
Thanks.
David