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I had an interesting discussion with my Choy Lay Fut Sifu the other night over dinner. He said in any close contact Chinese martial art there are 4 energies, Float, Swallow, Spit and Sink. I thought about it and these sounded alot like Peng, Lu, Ji and An. The four energies of Taiji. He does Yang Taiji on the side and he said that these energies were basically the same thing. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Fu Pow:
Recently saw reference to a technique used in baji called swallow and spit. Done by Liu Yun Qiao in a fight (Pa Kua Journal written by Jason Tsou's student).
This came up on emptyflower forum a while back. Try visiting there, ask Ken Fish, he posts there regularly. My memory is that there are difference between the concepts you are comparing.
IMHO, Tun (Sallow) To ( Spit) Fou (Surface/Float) and Chum (Submerge/Skin) in Close quater arts (ie Bak Mei) are more linear and abrupt [snap off the root] While the Peng Lu Ji An in Taiji are more coiling and twirling [tear off the root]. It's like getting zapped by static charge with the TTFC while it's like getting bounce off a sphere surface or got caught in a whirl wind with P L J A. It's not a question of which is better but of stylistic differences.
Mantis108
Fu-pow, it's been a long time.
Float, sink, swallow, and spit are common ideas with in TCMA, and are not incompatible with neijia principles. I have seen Li Tai-liang discuss using spit swallow to destroy your opponents bridge (I also had the opportunity to have him do this to me). That being said I've never heard these terms used in taiji, nor would I expect them to be (I'll explain shortly). Of course one could point to the results of an action a taiji practitioner took in for instance push hands and say that's swallowing, spiitting, floating or skinning, but from a taiji perspective none of these would be energies, they would rather be the outcomes of the standard energies. Why do I say this? Because, the essence of taiji training is that all techniques are abstracted. Thus, if we wanted to be extreme we could say there is only one technique in taiji-- peng ( as in neijin not peng, lu, ji an). Of course it would be impossible to learn taiji if we approached it with this level of abstration. So we break peng down further into different ways we can direct it. These are peng (ward-off usually used to describe an upward manifestation of jing) , lu (inward) , ji (outward) ,an (down). these energiescan be used individually or in combination to spit, swallow, floating, or sink our opponents, but they can be used for other effects as well. For instance it's very common to use an to break the bridge, and deliver a kau. I hope this explaination helped.
--josh