Attn: themeecer

[Serpent]

So, why are you ignoring me then? I can see that you're online and that you're reading the topics with my questions in them.

[SanSoo Student]

I wonder if he is starting to realize that you cannot possibly master Hsing Yi, Tai Chi, and Chi Kung all in 10 years; as Shaolin-Do claims you can. Maybe his art is false after all..:eek:

[Evad]

Maybe not false, maybe just oversimplifying an obvious truth that you can't master anything in 10 years or 100 years. Maybe in 10 years you might start to get good at one technique, or gain an understanding of a concept.

One of the things said of tai chi, it takes 10 years to learn the movements correctly, 10 more years before you feel chi, 10 more years to learn to move that chi and make it grow, and 10 more years to learn how to use that chi to achieve something. I believe this is from the Bill Moyer's special called Healing and the Mind. It's a great documentary and book, it does a great job of covering internal stuff from china. Again there are bozos in everyones dojo, and anyone in SD that has made the claim of mastering a particular style in 10 years is not only ignorant and egotistical but foolish to expect someone to believe it, I'm surprised that anyone would even dignify such nonsense with a remark or response. Somethings are just plain old common sense, a veritable DUH is in order for sure, but a conviction of an art being a false...no.

[taijiquan_student]

"One of the things said of tai chi, it takes 10 years to learn the movements correctly, 10 more years before you feel chi, 10 more years to learn to move that chi and make it grow, and 10 more years to learn how to use that chi to achieve something."

That's bull****.

[brassmonkey]

lol we need to combine Shaolin Do's, Huang's, TWS's, Erle Montaigues and Royal Dragons words to write new classics

[Evad]

sorry bout that taijiquan_student wasn't trying to lay down any gospel there, that's just something that I've heard said of tai chi by some old masters trying to explain to a western doctor the concept of 'time and effort' on a learning channel documentary.

It does however take approximately 10 years for a surgeon to learn his craft right, 4 years degree, 4 years post grad, 2-4 more internship, I think the statement is illustrative of the amount of time needed to become what you'd call a master of something, and in regard to tai chi, time and effort only make you better right.

There's thing called metaphor and abstract thinking involved with the statement that as you put it is bull****.

[taijiquan_student]

I'm not saying it doesn't take a lifetime to become a "master". I'm just saying all that stuff about taking 10 years to learn anything in taiji is BS.

[Evad]

your right it doesn't take 10 years to learn anything in tai chi, who said it did? I'm not advocating that in anyway, it's one of those cliched statements you'd read on a t-shirt somewhere, you know like you can teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime blah blah blah

You agree though that you can't learn tai chi in it's entirety in one day right? The point is, it takes time to learn anything, whether it be 10 minutes or 10 years.

[Shaolin Shi]

One of the things said of tai chi, it takes 10 years to learn the movements correctly, 10 more years before you feel chi, 10 more years to learn to move that chi and make it grow, and 10 more years to learn how to use that chi to achieve something. I believe this is from the Bill Moyer's special called Healing and the Mind.


I think you're confusing a statement made by Ma Yueh Liang:

Moyers: How long did it take you to discover your chi?

Ma: It took me ten years to discover it. But it took me thirty years to learn how to use it.

[Laughing Cow]

Originally posted by Evad
One of the things said of tai chi, it takes 10 years to learn the movements correctly, 10 more years before you feel chi, 10 more years to learn to move that chi and make it grow, and 10 more years to learn how to use that chi to achieve something. I believe this is from the Bill Moyer's special called Healing and the Mind. It's a great documentary and book, it does a great job of covering internal stuff from china.

First time I heard that one.
Never heard of Bill Moyer what style does he study?

Yang Lu Chan the FOUNDER of Yang TJQ studied at Chen Village for 18yrs.

Cheers.

[Oso]

Bill Moyer is/was a journalist, I think.

<blurry recollection>PBS backed him in doing a study of asian health practices in the early 90's which resulted in a book and a 5 part series that debuted in 92 or 93.</blurry recollection>

I've seen parts of it but not the whole thing. Pretty good, imo.

It may have been the lead off media event to the last decades trend towards holistic medicine. I happened to be managing a book store at the time and senior citizens ate it up.

[BeiKongHui]

Maybe in 10 years you might start to get good at one technique, or gain an understanding of a concept.

Yet Sin The' calims to have learned 900 forms in ten years.

Amazing.

[Laughing Cow]

Oso.

Thanks, for the info.

[Oso]

wanted to check the dates...it was 92/93


From Publishers Weekly
In this intriguing companion volume to a PBS TV series, Moyers explores the roles of thoughts and emotions in illness and health through interviews with 16 doctors and scientists. He visits stress-reduction clinics and a cancer patients' support group, and he investigates the new field of psychoneuroimmunology, which emphasizes the importance of patients' attitudes to optimal immune-system functioning. He also travels to China to study acupuncture, therapeutic massage and chi gong , the manipulation of vital energy to ameliorate chronic neurologic and muscular diseases. Among those interviewed are University of California physician Dean Ornish, who has reversed heart disease in patients with treatments combining meditation, stress-reduction exercises, group therapy, walking and vegetarian diet; neurobiologist David Felten, discoverer of nerve fibers that link the nervous system to the immune system; and Thomas Delbanco of Harvard Medical School who seeks ways to transform the doctor-patient relationship so that patients are more actively involved. Color and black-and-white reproductions of art by Kathe Kollwitz, Rene Magritte, Norman Rockwell, Paul Klee and others interact suggestively with the text.


and here's a link to an article blasting the book and series

http://www.hcrc.org/special/media/moyers.html

just to keep things even:D

i still thought it was pretty cool and certainly opened doors in peoples minds about other, albeit questionable, methods of healing.

[GLW]

Thanks OSO.

I was hoping someone would point out how Moyers did things.

While Qi Gong for health is a good thing, Acupuncture, herbs, and other Chinese Medicine treatments DO work on a large number of things...grouping them in with the "Qi Healing" and the pushing of a "Taiji Master" the way Moyers showed it only cheapened the VALID points he was making.

You have to know how to separate the fly sh!t from the pepper...

[Evad]

Originally posted by BeiKongHui


Yet Sin The' calims to have learned 900 forms in ten years.

Amazing.

The key word in this statement being LEARNED in 10 years. I totally diagree with that claim from from Master Sin and some of his senior students. And in fact I have talked to him about it, which didn't go over well, I got in trouble for mentioning it, and it's understandable that it would grit the teeth of everyone who hears that claim.

There are three things that obfuscate the claim.
One - the meat of the statement is the fact that when you say 900 forms there's no definition of 'form.' Is there a universal standard measurement for the length and content of a 'form?' Some forms are really long, some forms are really short but they still fall under the 'form' catagory. There are subsets of larger forms, for sake of argument and to prevent more ridicule, I'll call a form we study a generic 'bird' imatation kata; it's a single kata approximately 1.5 minutes in length, but it's broken down into three sections that are relatively short, and each section has it's own name, and can be studied and praticed independent of the larger whole, but when you perform all three sections consecutively then we call that three kata set a name. So should we classify that as one kata or three? Also, if you learn how to block and counter a punch on the right side in a one step technique, you have to learn the left as well, so that doubles that one small kata right there, and then there's what to do against both hands, so in one technique there's three pieces. Most of the material that comprises the 900 kata are groups of these types of kata broken down into component parts to sound impressive, which is Bullcrap as anyone will agree. Divide 900 by whatever number makes up what Sin actually knows and you get a much more reasonable claim, the problem getting is Sin to own up and come down to earth in universal terms. I've read posts on this forum requesting information on particular Praying Mantis points involving something like 16 forms, multiply those 16 into there component sections and how many 'forms' do you get? I don't know and I'm generalizing.

second - how many total hours make up the content of training, most us starting out may only get new material during the few hours/week that we're at our respective classes. So if you attend a two hour class five days/week, do you spend the entire two hours learning new material or in combonation of revue and new stuff? Assume you spend half the time on new material, that's five hours/week learning a new form and five hours/week revue and practice. Assume your teacher or teacherS have something to teach you for 10 years in this manner. And you could somehow manage to maintain that routine for the whole 10 years, how many 'forms' could you learn compared to how many you would actually be proficient with and master. All the old masters spent countless hours with their teacher's some practically lived with them. Master Sin and Hsiang's family owned a large textile plant in Indonesia they were the typical rich asians in Indonesia, so they had time for private instruction in their schooling as well as having a Grandfather along with several colleagues who themselves were accomplished teachers. According to Master Hsiang, he would learn what he wanted, whatever he was interested in he would sit in on the class, sometimes they would teach things that he didn't care for so he would play hooky and go pick fights with local kids or whatever. Master Sin being the the oldest son and heir to his fathers business and his grandfathers martial arts had to learn whatever was being taught, similiar to a private school education that your rich parents make you go to, I'm sure he hated some of the material taught but learned it anyway or get thirty lashings. So if you have the time say four to six hours per day to practice and learn, and you have six to seven days/week and your around 8 years old with little say in what your assigned to do, at the end of 10 years what could you have learned? What would you do? If it was me I think I'd be ready to get the hell out of the country and study engineering, I'd be sick as hell of martial arts. Master and Hsiang both started training at 8 years of age, Master Sin had his last lesson with his teachers at the age of 25, so that gives him 17 years to learn a bunch of stuff, Master Hsiang spent four years more than Master Sin learning one specific set that was available, he chose to "Major" in bird systems, his last lesson with his grandfather was shortly before he died, and he continues be in contact with another teacher to this day.

third - while highly unlikely and nearly impossible to duplicate, and since no one can deny that in other areas of study such as medical, musical, engineering, and others; it is possible to LEARN 900 PIECES of material. The real problem is the ego stroking and unrealistic nature of the claim. High school teachers in 10 years will learn the names of 1000's of students, and they may know each students name and face while they have them in class those four years, but in 15 years they won't know anybody from adam, but they'll have annuals with the mug shots and names to go with them forever, and looking through those annuals will jog memories of the popular class clown but faintly recall the quiet geek in the corner. So Master Sin may have learned a lot and exaggerated the issue by saying I know 900 kata, but only the stuff he likes is what's out, the rest is locked away in a foot locker for reference.

Finally, who gives a crap that someone claims to know 900 pieces of whatever, I'm mean really how many different ways can there possibly be to flail your arms and legs and body? You can know 90,000 it doesn't mean anything unless you specialize in something and condition and train and keep up with it, no matter your style or system or whatever.

So I disagree with the statement profusely, but I concede that it's possible maybe not believeable but POSSIBLE. Before a dude named Roger Banister no one could run a mile in under 4 minutes either, and since his time 1000's of ppl have broke the 4 minute mark, including high school students...what changed gravity? Besides maybe Master Sin spends a lot of nights at a Holiday Inn Express...

:D

[Shaolin-Do]

lol.
GM sin holiday inn express commercial...
There are a lot of ignorant folks who believe in that 900 kata crap, but theres a lot of us who dont.
Then theres those of us who dont give a good god d@mn.

[Serpent]

Kata, eh?

In a Shaolin system?

[joedoe]

But how many of the current SD students were impressed by that claim enough to get them to join up? It's all marketing, and from what you guys are saying it is false marketing.

[Serpent]

And how can anyone have any faith in a system where you have to repeatedly admit that everything you're told is not actually true, just a confusion of words, just a mistake, just a misunderstanding, etc. when it's all blatant lies.

And as for the video of masters (was that this thread or one of the others?) Do a web search of great masters and you'll see photos and videos galore. Sin The' is just afraid that people will see him for the fraud that he is.

Of course, that's just my opinion. Oh, and just about everyone else not studying Shaolin-Do.