Lohan Posture application

Hi all

Been a while since I posted anything remotely interesting....

but I've been practicing Xiao Hong Quan and am interested in your views on the Lohan Posture which Gene kindly demonstrates in the link below....

http://www.martialartsmart.net/45001.html

Any views on applications?

I've heard/seen various but mine is a pull down head/kneck control (lower hand) and knee strike

In Xiao Hong Quan this is followed by a downward diagonal punch which would hit the head positioned in the previous move.

Any views?

PE

That's a loaded one since it's one of the classic moves of traditional Shaolin. There are lots of variations and applications. It's a tribute pose to Jinnaluo Wang so it appears in almost every traditional Shaolin forms. I touch on it in one of my early e-zine articles.

Thanks for the reply Gene

Intersting point in your article that shaoling songshan forms commonly ending in
"hero posture".

Can I ask what the significane of the posture is in cultural terms?

Could the "heroicness" of posture also refer to the effectiveness of the martial application or is it purely cultural?

PE

Do you know who Jinnaluo is? Every Shaolin practitioner should. He's actually more important than Bodhidharma in some ways, at least to those of us who got that deep. ;)
Here's an e-zine article about Jinnaluo, to get you started.

Gene

Thanks for that link! The start of another interesting journey......

......a few googles later and it becomes a bit clearer

Vajrapani's "pratayalidha" stance is always shown with the right hand weilding the "vajra" - thunderbolt/diamond sceptre.

So I can now begin to understand the relevance of this posture in the shaolin forms and why it appears in most/all of them.

I suppose I come from the school of thought that says no movement in a form is wasted and I can definitely visualise vajrapani weilding his sceptre decisively when I perform the punch that follows this posture in xiao hong quan.

It would seem strange (to me...) for a purely symbolic pose to appear part way through a martial form. I would have thought a more appropriate place would be the start or the end.

Sorry for the annoying questions but this is really intersting to me now!

PE

BTW Gene

It is the "one legged" posture shown in the picture linked above that I mean

NOT the similar ending posture of shaolin forms performed in horse stance.

PE

In particular, you see it as a variation in the BSL forms. Songshan Shaolin tends to end with Hero in a horse stance but a few of the BSL forms end in this one-legged variation. BSL 8 comes immediately to mind as an example.

Note that we published a variation of Hero in a Horse Stance in our Jan/Feb 2001 issue in a photo-essay piece Busted! Kungfu Masters Reveal Their Favorite Military Police Attacks By John Brown and Martha Burr. Interestingly enough, it's an O-Mei version from my master, Tony Chen, and in the O-mei system, it's called Wu Song strikes the Tiger. Tony's interpretation of it is wild - he pulls a strike to the top of the foot, then to the groin, then a takedown and trap out of it. He also re-interprets it for knife fighting and bayonet fighting.

Gene

I am pretty certain that I have that issue somewhere in my "archive".....cough....."junk room"

I will see if I can look it out and then post back.......

Thank you very much for your help.

PE

Gene

I am pretty certain that I have that issue somewhere in my "archive".....cough....."junk room"

I will see if I can look it out and then post back.......

Thank you very much for your help.

PE

...it's still available in our back issues.

You see it in modern too as an empty stance.

Applications I have seen are not much different than those that are also done
for "Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg" famous move in most Tai Ji Quan styles.

Anyone got some clips on application of this posture?