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Tomhands
08-19-2002, 03:03 PM
I'm new to the East Bay (Berkeley/Oakland) and would like to resume my bagua training soon.

Can I get some tips on bagua or bagua/xingyi clubs in the area? (Kick-ass taiji club recommendations are welcome too. )

Anybody have experience with the UC Berkeley Taiji Club?

Thanks.

GeneChing
08-19-2002, 04:52 PM
He has a school in Oakland and San Leandro, although mostly he's at San Leandro now. I've been studying Xingyi under himrecently and have found it to be quite enlightening. www.omeikungfu.com

I.M. Toast
08-19-2002, 06:45 PM
Greetings:
Ah, I see that I now have another East Bay Internal arts practitioner with me here on the board.

The group at www.stillnessinmotion.com come highly recommended. I haven't checked it out yet because Albany isn't very close to San Leandro/San Lorenzo where I live.
I wrote to Alvin Chew concerning his Wu style TJ teacher, and it is his impression that he does not teach it as a fighting art. I still intend on checking it out for myself.
I live about two miles form the O-mei acadamy, in San Leandro. I was going to check it out, but the terms wushu, taichi, and healing art kept popping up on the website and scared me off.
Also, I have a short list of chen Taichi teachers in Oakland and Livermore. If your interested, I can post them.

I.M.T.

Tomhands
08-20-2002, 10:51 AM
I.M., please do post that short list. thanks for emailing Alvin. sounds like a pass on the Wu teacher, if your interpretation of the email is correct. care to elaborate?

GeneChing
08-20-2002, 11:29 AM
Tony Chen has imported a stable of China trained instructors and his curriculam includes wushu and tai chi. But it also includes traditional Omei, kickboxing and more. Tony's Xingyi is very strong, but so far, I've only seen him teach it privately. He brings a lot of combat experience into it from teaching Chinese police and being kickboxing champ. To me, Xingyi really works best from a combat angle, as opposed to focusing on it as an internal, but maybe that's just me.

Walter Joyce
08-20-2002, 12:02 PM
Are you saying that practicing an "internal" and practicing a combat art are two different things?
If you are saying that, could you elaborate please?

I.M. Toast
08-20-2002, 11:27 PM
Tomhands:

My short list:
Chen TJC
Mark Wasson [mailto:markwasson@hotmail.com] (Livermore)
Terry Chan (Oakland/Berkeley)

Hmm, that list came out a little shorter than I thought; sorry about that. I'll see if I can dig up any more names. Please tell me if you find any as well.

Concerning Alvin's response, I will post my comment and his reply:

[I.M.T]
My main goal is to be able to fight and defend myself
with an
> > art that is based in the principles of overcoming the hard with the
soft,
> > so as far as I can tell, finding a good and understanding teacher
in any
> > of the neijia arts would be fine with me.

[Alvin]
> Mr Hong doesn't really teach fighting, so I don't think his
classes aren'
> t really what you're looking for. In fact, I don't really know of
any
> local neijia teachers that emphasize fighting. You may want to check
out
> George Xu in San Francisco as I've heard he used to be quite a
fighter and
> focuses on neijia styles nowadays.


Now this doesn't mean that Mr. Hong isn't the real deal; all sources say he is. It's just that his teaching doesn't focus on self-defence (according to my understanding of what Mr. Chew (Alvin) has said.

Keep us posted,

I.M.T.

Taijiren
08-21-2002, 12:47 AM
Gee, I should check out this forum more often. I think this is the second time my name has popped up.

At any rate, Mr Hong loves to teach push hands (and was 6 times push hands champion in Shanghai and Jiangxi), but even "free push hands" is a bit removed from a self-defense/fighting emphasis. Free push hands skills can be helpful in a self defense situation, but to bill it as such is a bit too misleading for my tastes.

A true self defense class will teach avoidance and awareness skills. It will also teach you some basic techniques that you can pull off in a high stress environment. At the very least, it should teach you counters for a variety of basic confrontational situations. While Mr Hong occassionally addresses the very last of these, it's most definitely *not* the emphasis of the class.

A true fighting class will teach you entry and finishing moves (among other things). Mr Hong has only shown these sorts of things once or twice in the last few years. It's not what he's interested in teaching. While he's had his share of less than friendly confrontations over the years, he doesn't have much "streetfighting" experience per se.

On the other hand, if you want to learn authentic Wu style from someone who can really apply it in a free push hands type environment, Mr Hong is your man.

-Alvin

Lincoln
08-22-2002, 01:43 PM
I went to Y.C. Wong's school about five years ago and asked him if I could study Bagua with him. What he told me, through an interpretor, was that if I did not speak Chinese he would not teach me Bagua.

Lincoln

GeneChing
08-22-2002, 02:25 PM
Perhaps my use of "internal" was ill chosen. What I meant by that was internal for health, longevity and qi flow, more like what many critcize as a "new age tai chi" emphasis. Mind you, I don't think there is anything wrong with that at all. It's very appropriate for many people, like the elderly, or those who just aren't fighters. My first venture into Xingyi was more health oriented, lots of time spent discussing elements and organs, posture, getting your position exactly so, etc. It was informative, but I lost interest and never got it. Now Chen Sifu has been introducing it to me as straight combat. He'll mention the elements, but his main focus is showing me the applications and having me work those against a partner or a thick padded pole. I can't say that I've really got any skill at it yet (only been doing it for a few months now) but it's really holding my interest.

Walter Joyce
08-23-2002, 07:17 AM
Gene,
Thanks for your reply. I'm sure you have heard this before, but there is a school of thought that believes that the true health benefits of any internal can only be dervied if on understands the martial applications of the forms, and practices accordingly. Of course, there is also the contrary position, no surprise there.
Thank you for your reply,
Walter

GeneChing
08-23-2002, 12:12 PM
I tend to agree with that on the whole. There must always be combat at the core for it to be a martial art. But I'll make an exception nowadays for therapeutic or elderly cases. If they gain any benefit at all, even just calesthenic, it is a positive thing, irregardless of it's lack of martial applications. Technically, this would fall more under the heading of longevity or medical qigong, but many people in the west are using taiji more like medical qigong. That's great!

It's a big grey area in my personal definations of internal martial arts. On a professional/academic level, it shifts to qigong. On a pop level, more people in the U.S. know tai chi than qigong. This becomes a little bothersome since it means that I have to shift definations depending upon my audience, moreso for the literallists that fail to see its relativity.