Quote:
Cady Goldfield wrote:
Teaching this stuff with words is difficult. Telling students to "move the hara" is not descriptive enough. You have to tell them -how- to move the hara. This requires a break down of actual physical movements of muscle/connective tissue groups. Very few methods seem to have such an approach, and those that do tend to be Chinese systems. Japanese internal arts still seem to be based largely on feel (with vague terminology that draws on metaphor and analogy to familiar actions, such as rowing or lifting up and setting down a tea tray) and person-to-person transmission through touch. Through this applied sensory-learning approach, an individual eventually is able to replicate the internal actions. But then, the recipient does not have the words to transmit what he now can physically do, and so must also use physical transmission to teach the next person.
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Cady, I think I have discussed this with you in the past. my very brief experience with internal Chinese martial arts left me with the impression that training is intellectually driven. The bit of bagua and tai chi I have done involved the teacher instructing me in movements to perform by myself, and offering corrections in the form of images to use as I performed them.
Japanese martial arts are based on the paired kata, and corrections are more utilitarian - your feet should be here, your sword should be held like this, you are still not making that cut right, try again, and look, that did not work, do this instead.
In other words, your own knowledge or understanding is not as important in the learning process. I think trying to graft a Chinese approach onto that is a recipe for extreme confusion, if not disaster.