Dichotomy of CMA into Wu Dang (daoist) and Shao Lin

[SPJ]

in the central kuo shu academy in nan jing in 1930's

the class structure was grouped into wu dang ke and shao lin ke.

for example; Ba Ji has yi jing jing and breathing methods and is grouped into shao lin.

Tai Chi has the Tu Na daoist breathing methods and theory of tai chi. it is grouped into Wu Dang.

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is it out of conveniences or nessicities?

your comments?

:D

[SPJ]

we know nothing is outright black and white.

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it gets more complicated if you consider shao lin is external and wu dang internal.

so Ba Ji is external.

and Tai Chi is internal.

etc etc.

for some people. there are neigong and a lot of internal methods in Ba Ji, too.

for some, they would say no, Ba Ji outright external.

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:D

[SPJ]

there is the third dichotomy.

soft/gentle and hard.

Ba Ji is hard and extremely hard like a steel rod or Kang.

Tai Chi is soft and gentle arts like water or cotton or Ruo.

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:D:eek:

[lkfmdc]

"internal" vs "external" is essentially a fraud, a recent invention, a marketing scheme!

read the intro to translated Sun Lu Tong Xing Yi book, the intro chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

I don't really buy that. From my experience, there is a distinct difference in the type of body mechanics used by internal artists.

From my own observations, internal arts generate power form the core body on out, external arts on the other hand, seem to use the core body to transmit power generated in the limbs, from the lower body, to the upper body.

Both types of power generation use the same structure, such as rounding the shoulders, sinking the chest, tucking the tail bone and opening, and closing Kua.

The internal adds an opening, and closing of the core body in timing with the breathing, sort of like an accordion expanding and contracting. This action is not seen in external arts at all.

On breathing, the internal arts, in my experience, time the breathing with the movements of the core body. Movements of expansion breath in, movements of contraction breath out. The external arts on the other hand time the breathing with the movement of the limbs.

All of this is irrelevant in regards to hard, and soft methods. You can have hard, dynamically tense internal arts, like seen in Hakka style San Zhen practices, and you can have really soft external arts where relaxation is at a high level as well.

The real difference between the two is in the over all power generation methods, and those are pretty specific and easily identifiable. Are the muscles of the limbs the source of power? Or the torso?

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Oh, one mre thing I noticed is that in internal arts, a far, far greater amount of attention is spent to refining bod structural alignments to a very high degree, where as the external arts don't seem to do this too far beyond the minimum needed to accomplish the job. It's very common for this part of the training to be highly neglected. This is why you often see external artists with good shoulder alignment, but poor lower spine and tail bone alignments.

These factors are just not needed to any great extent when the body mechanics are external, however the internal mechanics will not function well at all unless these aspects of skelital alignment are correct.