Story behind the warrior pose
Hi all,
Trying to increase my knowledge of things Shaolin. I remember Gene mentioning that the warrior pose (http://www.martialartsmart.net/45001.html - one on the right) had special significance and was a signature pose for Shaolin.
Anyone remember/know what the significance is?
'Warrior's pose' honors Jinnaluo
You'll find a discussion of Jinnaluo in Meat, Wine, and Fighting Monks: Did Shaolin Monks breach Buddhist Dietary Regulations? by Dr. Meir Shahar. Note that in the images, Jinnaluo is depicted with one arm raised characteristically grasping a staff. Many Shaolin forms end in a posture that echoes this. All the traditional Songshan forms do it. Most of the BSL forms do it too. However, it's not strictly a Shaolin pose. If you look at Busted! Kungfu Masters Reveal Their Favorite Military Police Attacks By John Brown and Martha Burr in our 2001 January/February issue, you'll see Sifu Tony Chen doing the same move under the name 'Wu Song strikes the Tiger' out of the O-Mei system.
A true practitioner can find applications to everything
Here's an old thread that asks a similar question. We taught applications of the BSL version back at Lam Kwoon. If you ask me about the one-legged version now, I'd play it as a knee strike, mostly because I'm generally amused by hidden knee strikes in single-leg moves. Whether or not that is the original intention of the move, I can't say, but I think I could pull it out of it with a small tweak to the dynamics of it.
For me, it's not so much about what our ancestors put into it, although unquestionably, they put in a lot of good stuff. It's more about what we can pull out of it. As long as it works, it's valid.
hitting Jason a little hard in the kidney
aaaahh, Ravenshaw, those were the days, weren't they? ;)
Sadly, I don't remember all those apps now anymore either. I have a similar move that I do every once in a while in a xingyi broadsword set - it's quite like the conclusion of the BSL broadsword set with the dao cradled in the left elbow - but that's not my favorite xingyi broadsword set so I only do it when forced (or when I think I might be forced to do it soon). The core dynamic of the movement appears in a lot of styles. It may be expressed quite differently, the the essence is the same.
Give every move much thought...
Warrior's pose with a sword cradled can easily be interpreted. First, you must assume that you're starting from a position where you haven't drawn the sword. Then you can play it like the 'literal' interpretation we've discussed above. Of you can look at it like a break grab, as if some one was trying to restrain you from drawing your sword. Actually, if you think about it from such a starting position, all of the applications still work.
As for it being in both O-Mei and BSL (and xingyi), you could debate origins until you're blue in the face, but that's really hard to prove. You could also argue parallel development, but on the whole, I see more common threads in CMA then parallel, which implies some sort of cross-fertilization. Otherwise, if it were some kind of universal, you'd expect to see more parallel development across styles from other cultures. Perhaps if you traced it back to one of the early texts, like Qi Jiguang, you'd have a decent argument for common origin. That's just a bit to trivial for me to want to pursue at this time.