B.K. Frantzis fa jing video

I bet IMA kungfu people don't put their best stuff on the web. They have to save that for their videos and dvds. Some videos I've found on various sites:

http://www.chentaichi.org/hunyuan/Videos/PosturalAdvantageWeb.mov
http://www.chentaichi.org/hunyuan/Videos/How3JointsWorkWeb.mov
http://www.chentaichi.org/hunyuan/Videos/AppliWCalandra03Web.mov
http://www.chentaichi.org/hunyuan/Videos/StretchHeel1.mov
http://www.kungfu4u.com/Tai Chi/Tai Chi Videos.htm
http://emptyflower.stanford.edu/video/wailunchoi_xingyi.mpg
http://www.brainsalad.com/mov/clip06.mov
http://www.taiji.de/taiji/head5e_17/chensi-2.ram

And there are short, but limited clips at these sites:

http://www.blacktaoist.com/intropage.html
http://www.taijigongfu.com/gallery.html
http://www.hsing-i.com/pics/index.html

 

ATTN- I found a clip of competitive push hands on WKK's forum

http://www.taiji.org.hk/_video/whgpushand.wmv

 

Is it me, or does competitive push hands look like sumo for skinny folk?

I mean it starts out fine, but then seems to descend into a contest of strength. Who's yang is bigger. I've seen a fair amount of this, and it doesn't give me a lot of faith in what is being practised. Most of the time it has me reaching for the FFW button on my remote.

Please note that I am not trying to get at anyone who does do competition push hands, I am sure they are skilled at competition push hands, I just sometimes wonder how good the 'taiji' actually is.

 

The immediate problem as I see it is that Push hands is a training method for skill development(learnt and practised in cooperation not domination) from which learnt skill can be utilized into fighting/ combat but also life.By making it a competition with rules and a goal of dominating another proves little and negates the skill developement.If winning something in reguards to dominating others is what your after then, (Desire to prove your better then someone else on a given day) get in a FC comp circuit .
"Fighting for pussies the real challenages are in the ring(actually he said Mat but I'm parapharsing)"
Otherwise use it as a method of skill development,but hey if someone thinks its good to win that sort of comp, well good for him.To me sounds petty pointless.

I agree,I propose that this isn't representative of TJQ skill rather it could be its own sub branch(look at all this labeling).Again largely motivated by one person wanting to prove they are better then another in an isolated event.Which I feel has little to do with principles or practise of TJQ.

 

yeah, it does seem to go against the priciples doesn't it?

To each their own.

 

I agree with you guys for the most part. I am not so sure about this video however. In the slow motion at the end I saw some interesting stuff from the guy in red. Sometimes it is very hard to tell what is going on in the dynamics of pushing without being part of it. It can look very strange at times. I do question the need for competition push hands, but I don't question the need to do push hands with as many different people as possible. Even if the other player has terrible form and their principals are less than perfect, you can still benefit from the exercise. In fact I would go so far as saying that these are some of the best people to push with if you really want to try to stay relaxed and make these principals work for you in the path of brute force. I just wouldn’t be to attached to the idea of winning something like this or loosing it for that matter.

 

I agree totally. It's the desire to win that gets in the way.

Also agree that you've got to push-hands with as many people as possible, otherwise you become able to push so-and-so, and not anybody.

I also saw the slow mo stuff, and the red guy clearly had skills. The yellow dude didn't stand a chance!

 

I've been putting some old footage onto DVD this week. Here's a clip showing some application work - basic stuff from demos and us playing around. Sorry for the quality, most of this is 10+ years old.

http://www.innerbalance.info/images/TC3.WMV

 

What style of Taiji is that, that you practice? Is it Yang style? That would be my first guess, although Taiji is Taiji.

 

Yes, that's mostly Yang style stuff, though I don't practice it now.

cheers

 

Competitive push hands almost sounds like an oxmoron. I have seen footage of one of Willem Detours students at a pushhands contest and it did look like alot of hardwork, efforting and muscle contraction. I think there's an online article of master Wang Ha Da(Wu style Taiji) saying that the thing he respects above all in a taiji player is "listening" and that for something like 30+ years everysingle time he did tuishou(push hands) people knocked him over, now(at least untill is death in 2002, I think) when he touches hands people go flying.

I'm been "pushed" by one of kumar's former top students on many occasions. It feels like I've been lifted by a big breeze or wave, sometimes suddenly, sometimes gently. It feels like sometimes I could maybe ground it, but the momentum would have to be transferred somewhere else, and he's told me that if it doesn't go through(as in being tossed) you it'll go IN you(as in internal damage).

I've also been pushed by one of Willem Detour's students, and was pleasantly surprised, because he seemed like a hardcore shoalin guy really into body hardening and things like that. He touched me, got real still and quiet, and with very little perceptible movement uprooted me about 6ft back and maybe 1"-12" in the air(at best a guess from memory). The diffrence between this guy and kumar's guy was he basicly needed to quiet down, go into a state and then after quieting down enough apply it. Kumar's ex-student could launch you in mid-conversation, well looking the other way, in motion & at speed. It was as natural as breathing and I had no doubt he could apply it combatively. I've also seem him launch someone 6ft something, about 240-60 lbs, about 3ft in the air-verticly-on contact, I'll also got the sense he was being a little bit gentle or controlled, like he had alot more he could of done when he lauched him but was appropriately controlled..

 

I guess that's just it. Go into a competition and you have to leave principles at the door. You could be an amazing push hands player, but as soon as you enter the circle and start pushing hands where the only goal is victory then taiji goes out the window.

If your idea in push hands is to push or not be pushed then it is not taiji. Not sure of the exact quote, but Cheng Man Ching is quoted saying that. As soon as the desire to win gets above the desire to 'listen' then you are no longer doing taiji.

 

I think someone with real "listening" would be fine in a push hands competition, I doubt its the place to go to cultivate listening though.

 

But would a guy with real "listening" actually want to enter in the first place?

 

understanding ima vocabulary...

this is a matter of semantics really, different kinds of jing, "fa" being one kind....fa jing is an "emitting" force. fa jing can be expressed long or short. with the big pushes it is very long, with bone shattering or liver pulverizing strikes it is short.

some people need to study more chinese before making absolute claims and statements.

little does montague know that a push is also an emitted force....so, by definition, also a "fa" jing.

and i wouldn't use number of students as a sign of actual skill in ima, frequently peole actually want to be bs-ed, too many people love having their minds filled with all sorts of gobbledygook, they actually seem to prefer it, and if you're good at giving them what they want.....well, i guess that might be one definition of a "good" teacher, certainly not mine.

pure speculation of course, i don't know the man. i've also heard loads of negative about Frantzis, seems both men are good at ****ing people off.

doesn't really matter though, i don't go to martial arts teachers for their spiritual or emotional abiliity, i just go to get the difficult-to-develop-on-your-own internal physical principles.

 

I am SO SICK of this "fa-jing" nonsense started by Earl Montaigue. "Fa-jing" just means "release power." That's IT. It's not some magical Taiji thing that causes your opponent's organs to explode. You have to classify at as peng-jin, cui-jin, cun-jin, etc. He also doesn't know the meaning of "dim mak," but that's another story. Maybe he's actually a great martial artist who just has his nomenclature mixed up. I've never fought him so I don't know. But these arguments about what fa-jing is are pointless. It's far too generic a term. You can argue about the correct way to perform peng-jin, or the correct way to perform chansi-jin, but there are too many different but equally correct ways to "fa-jin" to even discuss.

I personally think the idea of a push hands competition doesn't make much sense as it is, in my understanding, only an exercise to developing "listening" skill, an important part of being a competent Taiji fighter. It isn't meant to replace sparring or be proof of how good your Taiji is. If you want to compare whose Taiji is better then just have a fight! Whoever wins was better.

 

**stands up, applaudes and whoops**

I too am getting fed up with people trying to say Jing is a mythical energy. It isn't. When I think Jing I think Trained Force. Full body movement directed to an area which would destroy the balance.

If an oponent is trying to pull you then hit him, with all your well trained movement to get the whole body into it, in the same direction as his force (backwards as he is trying to pull you) - thats Jing.

Trying to pull him back, resisting his force, is just using Li, and the one with the more will win.

Jing is always Li.

Li is not always Jing.

Don't be afraid of you muscles people, you do need to them to issue force! Wether that force is Jing or not, that's another issue.

 

http://www.taijiworld.com/Articles/fa-jing.htm

Firstly, fa-jing does not send people backwards. Fa-jing explodes inside of people causing them to simply shake and fall to the ground either unconscious or dead!

Why do people buy this ****? I don't give a **** if people claim he is a master, he either has no clue, or more likely, he is an arsehole who is trying to con and decieve people.

It's amazing how people can throw all logic out of the window when confonted with such ****e.

This is akin to what I saw on a problem once. Some skinny wee japanese guy who claimed to kill small birds with his Ki power. He stands a few feet away, stamps his foot and shouts and his opponent, who happened to be a student, fell down as if all power were removed from his body.

Apparently because the body is mostly water his Ki send ripples in this water and ruins your ****.

It's the same ****e this Earl Montaigue clown is trying to pass off. He is making a joke of Tai Chi Chuan, turning us into the jesters of the martial arts world. I read a few paragraphs of that article and got so angry I had to stop.

 

Emptyflower.com is good site if y'all dont know