Josh _f
06-05-2001, 02:21 AM
In my personal opinion if there is one thing which holds people back from learning the neijia arts it's a failure to approach the information they receive critically. To often people figure any book written about taiji or other neijia arts as valid simple because the author is chinese. In reality their are as many if not more Chinese grifters trying to turn an easy buck. Taiji is especially prone to this. Mainly to following common misinformation:
taiji is physically easy, taiji is meditation in motion, taiji takes 20 years to learn, taiji is for old folks, taiji can cure diseases, everything is taiji,if you're good at competition push hands your good at taiji, there's no difference between internal and external,just do the form and you will be able to fight, our art is just like taiji...
This is just the tip of the misinformation. The reason why i bring it up is that if one really wants to learn the neijia arts its important to learn what they are and why the Chinese thought it was important to distinguish between neijia and waijia.
I personally believe that this is an exciting time to be studying the neijia in the west. Up until about eight years ago there was
very little information available in the west; today highly recognized masters like Chen Xiao Wang, Chen Zhenlei, and Yang Zhenduo visit every year. Given the availablity of both good and bad information it is important to be able to distinguish between the two. For instance about five years ago I studied with a very famous taiji/southern kungfu master. At the time I was impressed with his and his students fighting abiities, however I always maintained my critical thought and compared his teaching to information I researched elsewhere. Ultimately I left his school because despite his talk of his lineage to Yang Chengfu, qi development, and the taiji classics. What he taught didn't jive with the information I found in my own reasearch. I'd read peng is the most basic element of taiji, and my teacher would then tell me peng is an advance technique. I'd read it takes five years to be able to fight with taiji, and my teacher would tell me it takes ten. Ultimately I left, but know I can look back see that my teacher took the taiji form and then applied skills and power generating techniques of his southern art to it. Ultimatley I was able to find teachers who really knew taiji but it took a lot of research on my part to distinguish them from the pretenders. What follows is a list of the best resources I've found and some comments on each one. I hope that they will help those genuinly interested in learning about neijia arts.
Do not attempt to share your interest in martial arts with pedantic, narrow-minded scholars. As soon as they find out, they will quote from the classics and regale you with all kinds of irrelevant non-sense. This is infuriating. You can deal with this by either avoiding them or keeping your art secret.
--Ch'ang Nai-chou
taiji is physically easy, taiji is meditation in motion, taiji takes 20 years to learn, taiji is for old folks, taiji can cure diseases, everything is taiji,if you're good at competition push hands your good at taiji, there's no difference between internal and external,just do the form and you will be able to fight, our art is just like taiji...
This is just the tip of the misinformation. The reason why i bring it up is that if one really wants to learn the neijia arts its important to learn what they are and why the Chinese thought it was important to distinguish between neijia and waijia.
I personally believe that this is an exciting time to be studying the neijia in the west. Up until about eight years ago there was
very little information available in the west; today highly recognized masters like Chen Xiao Wang, Chen Zhenlei, and Yang Zhenduo visit every year. Given the availablity of both good and bad information it is important to be able to distinguish between the two. For instance about five years ago I studied with a very famous taiji/southern kungfu master. At the time I was impressed with his and his students fighting abiities, however I always maintained my critical thought and compared his teaching to information I researched elsewhere. Ultimately I left his school because despite his talk of his lineage to Yang Chengfu, qi development, and the taiji classics. What he taught didn't jive with the information I found in my own reasearch. I'd read peng is the most basic element of taiji, and my teacher would then tell me peng is an advance technique. I'd read it takes five years to be able to fight with taiji, and my teacher would tell me it takes ten. Ultimately I left, but know I can look back see that my teacher took the taiji form and then applied skills and power generating techniques of his southern art to it. Ultimatley I was able to find teachers who really knew taiji but it took a lot of research on my part to distinguish them from the pretenders. What follows is a list of the best resources I've found and some comments on each one. I hope that they will help those genuinly interested in learning about neijia arts.
Do not attempt to share your interest in martial arts with pedantic, narrow-minded scholars. As soon as they find out, they will quote from the classics and regale you with all kinds of irrelevant non-sense. This is infuriating. You can deal with this by either avoiding them or keeping your art secret.
--Ch'ang Nai-chou