Is Shaolin-Do for real?

[DPL]

Thanks for the responses to my question. Lots of info since last night so I'm going to try to digest it then see if I have further questions.

[lkfmdc]

Cheers. I was thinking meridians as in TCM, but this is meridian as in lines of longitude (North-South lines). In Cantonese it sounds like "jee ng" - I got thrown off by the romanization.

OT: In Wing Chun circles, the centreline is called "jee ng sin".

I often do stuff in Toisanese, sorry

[TenTigers]

wow! Is that you? I take back all I've said. You ARE good.
where do ya want the flowers sent?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=R1dkR7c7rHQ

[brucereiter]

Their forms lack any movement that can be considered TCMA, yet the practitioners seem to think it looks and functions exactly like TCMA.

hello,

if you are talking about shaolin do when you say "their" with the above comment i think your generalization might be wrong.

http://youtube.com/profile?user=brucereiter
here are some examples of my limited understanding of shaolin do i have posted these links many times before.

i have not heard many specific comments as to why my expression of form "lack any movement that can be considered tcma"

you will see examples of tai chi chuan, pakua chang and hsing i chuan as well as some push hands, stance training and a few other forms etc ...

let me know specifics of why it is not "tcma".

each time i ask these type of questions in response to that kind of comment the nay sayers do not say anything or the say something about "flavor" and "karate"

best,

bruce

p.s. to all the nay sayers while some of you do in fact share your identity i commend you for at least that.
the anonymity of some posters makes its hard to understand what some people base their opinions on

it is hard to respect people who speak negative about others so openly.
is it practical first hand knowledge some of you are spreading?
would you speak so disrespectfully to another person face to face?

i am sure i will get only a few if any comments about why what i presented is not in the opinion of several people here tcma. i am also sure that very few if any other people in this debate will put their stuff out their for people to see.

carry on :-)

[sean_stonehart]

My implication is it is imported not originating from SD.

Then the fact is it was lost from SD.

[sean_stonehart]

Let me ask you something Sean. Do you think karate, TaeKwanDo, Capoeira, and say, Shaolin-Do miss out and throw inferior roundhouses because they don't have foundational training in the occult Chinese
harmonies?

Well no because I was talking hands, not feet. But compare the roundhouse kick of TKD against MT & you'll see what I'm talking about. The TKD is specific to TKD, MT to MT. IF one cross pollenates with the other without the basic foundation for it but says to the world "It's just a roundhouse kick" then the person has missed the whole thing.

I can paint and draw like a mofo, and I've had schooling all the way through a BA in them. But there are people that are 1,000 times better than I at painting and drawing, and it's not because they have names for all the techniques, wrist flicks, etc. I have those names, and I understand color theory pretty well. But hell, they're better because they do it more often than I.

Dude that's great but I can't write my name in a straight line... doesn't mean I can declare myself a calligrapher just because I write the same letters as a calligrapher.

[TenTigers]

The Hsing -Yi looks like it was learned from a James McNiel tape. it says you are just beginning, so that is the reason I suspect you are disconnected between your stance and your back (yeu-ma) and are chest-heavy.
The Tai-Chi is also disconnected. You are not aligned,the hands are not connected to the body, one hand stops and just sits there while the other is doing, I don't know what...you completely lost all connection during your transitions, no awareness of dan-tien,example-single whip-you are showing zero expansion,shoullder strike into white crane spreads his wings, no rooting,
it looks as if it were learned from a tape. I'm not saying you learned from a tape, but maybe whoever taught you did. When a teacher is teaching Hsing-Yi, Tai-Chi, or any TCMA for that matter, they should be spending alot of time making sure that the underlying structure is correct before teaching a bunch of moves and forms. Otherwise you are building a house on sand.
I actually liked the striking drills. If you could get the same connection that you have with those into your forms, you will be onto something.

[sha0lin1]

This is a toughie..........

Oh, yeah. His school in Lexington was called the Sin The Karate club.....

Phew.

I nearly broke a sweat on that one.

So then would it be safe to assume that since he called his school a karate club then surely this answers everyones question as to whether this is karate or kung fu. Seems like you have just solved this whole question.

[godzillakungfu]

Yes, this really needs to be merged or closed. It is slowly heading to stuff answered in the other thread.

The basic explanation is everyone knew Karate. So, to get people in you had to advertise as Karate back in the day. Kung Fu and Shaolin were not known or popular at the time.

This is the explanation I was told.

[Shaolin Wookie]

Well no because I was talking hands, not feet. But compare the roundhouse kick of TKD against MT & you'll see what I'm talking about. The TKD is specific to TKD, MT to MT. IF one cross pollenates with the other without the basic foundation for it but says to the world "It's just a roundhouse kick" then the person has missed the whole thing.

There was a reason I left that one out. It's a completely different kick. The other 3 are the exact same.

Dude that's great but I can't write my name in a straight line... doesn't mean I can declare myself a calligrapher just because I write the same letters as a calligrapher.

Sure you can. But some people will pay more to get the same thing, b/c the other guy has a piece of paper, which someone else wrote, that says "Hey, man. You're a calligrapher, for sure."

[Shaolin Wookie]

So then would it be safe to assume that since he called his school a karate club then surely this answers everyones question as to whether this is karate or kung fu. Seems like you have just solved this whole question.

Not really. He called it karate back in the 60's, before "kung fu" became the official term for chinese martial arts in america. He called it karate because that's what martial arts were here, by name, for the most part. Everyone knew what karate was. Fewer knew what Shaolin was. Remember, most people only know of Shaolin b/c of David Carradine. BTW, in Indonesia, his school (GGM Ie Chang Ming's school, to be more precise) was called Chung Yen Shaolin, meaning something like "Central Shaolin". No karate there. So the karate was definitely a marketing thing, so he could make it identifiable as a martial art. It wasn't called Shaolin-Do. That was what GM The named it when he became its inheritor, for the most part.

[Shaolin Wookie]

wow! Is that you? I take back all I've said. You ARE good.
where do ya want the flowers sent?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=R1dkR7c7rHQ

Different vid, not Shaolin Do....LOL. But I can't believe another dude filmed himself to Dancing Queen........

And no...I've never videotaped myself and put it on the net. Not really interested in it.

[brucereiter]

The Hsing -Yi looks like it was learned from a James McNiel tape. it says you are just beginning, so that is the reason I suspect you are disconnected between your stance and your back (yeu-ma) and are chest-heavy.

thanks for the observations regarding my expression of hsingi ... i did not learn it from a tape, i learned it from a few different people in our system :-) but i am very much a beginner with hsingi chuan.

do you like james mcneil?

The Tai-Chi is also disconnected. You are not aligned,the hands are not connected to the body, one hand stops and just sits there while the other is doing, I don't know what...you completely lost all connection during your transitions, no awareness of dan-tien,example-single whip-you are showing zero expansion,shoulder strike into white crane spreads his wings, no rooting,

interesting observations but i disagree with the way you see that ... but that is fine, i am just trying to show that our art does in fact have some "tcma" "flavor" and not that i am a expert or anything, i am just a student who practices hard and will share his knowledge with anyone ... ... :-)
sometimes subtle things are hard to see so maybe you are missing some possibilities ...

it looks as if it were learned from a tape. I'm not saying you learned from a tape, but maybe whoever taught you did.

:-) my teacher learned it from his teacher ...

When a teacher is teaching Hsing-Yi, Tai-Chi, or any TCMA for that matter, they should be spending alot of time making sure that the underlying structure is correct before teaching a bunch of moves and forms.
Otherwise you are building a house on sand.

i agree! and this is a common problem with students from many systems.

I actually liked the striking drills. If you could get the same connection that you have with those into your forms, you will be onto something.

thanks ... those drills and others like them have been very helpful to me.


i tried to look at your website for some background but i could not find it. do you have a link?

best,

bruce

[Black Jack II]

Seems to me, if you go through all these Shaolin-Do threads, is that maybe at the core, at one time, it was a kuntao system, that has changed for monetary reasons in certain respects for the modern populace.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Seems to me, if you go through all these Shaolin-Do threads, is that maybe at the core, at one time, it was a kuntao system, that has changed for monetary reasons in certain respects for the modern populace.

Reply]
That has allways been my thoughts too. It's certainly not Shaolin, and certainly much of it's history is falsified.

At this point, it's Sin The Do, which is a mish mash of stuff he learned, made up, or took from books.