Who is the Bad Boy of KFM?

[BGZ BadBoy]

cerebus,
No, but if I ever do, I'd be more than happy to meet with you. Of course, the invitation is always extended to you to feel free to do the same.
Again (if you can read) the title was given to me by someone else. This is not something I simply "crowned" myself or arbitrarily choose to call myself as you have so mistakenly insinuated. I have alot of respect for Ike Stafford..I carry the title partially in honor of our friendship, as well as in the spirit of mutual respect with which it was given.
Any other questions, are are you simply running-off at the mouth to hear the sound of your own voice? You bore me..lol.

[taai gihk yahn]

Not to get off topic from what is turning out to be a wonderfully entertaining flame-thrower of a thread, but I wanted to speak to the whole "natural" / "unnatural" movement issue, because I find it interesting in general;

first off, I would like to actually propose to eliminate the distinction between natural / unnatural, because I personally believe it is a fictitious demarcation; simply put: Nature™ includes all things on the planet, including humanity; the existence of humanity is due to the workings of nature; therefore, humanity is, as a product of Nature, part of Nature / natural world; therefore, anything that is thought / done by humanity is still part of nature; as such, there is really no movement that someone can make that can be apart from Nature; therefore, IMPO, all movement is "natural"; of course, this does not mean that all movement is healthy, efficient, etc. - but these are highly context-dependent variables that are so relativistic as to almost be worthless to make distinctions about; the problem is that when you get down to it, what one person may consider "natural" and another "unnatural" probably has to do more with a set of tacit criteria that they may not even be articulating clearly to themselves; it's like the argument about "good" posture: there really is no such thing, because "good" is a relative term that means different things to different people; there are, rather an infinite number of possible postures / alignments, that will yield results that may follow some general trends (because we are bipeds operating erect in gravity and in context of the principle of "regression to the mean", you will see a lot of variables that tend to coagulate around certain outcomes); so anyway, I personally do not find the distinction to be a useful one;

that said, however, I do think that we can look at certain aspects of movement more discerningly; as such, I would propose to sub-divide movement into three main categories: intrinsically generated, extrinsically generated and a combination of the first two;

Intrinsically generated:
I think that this is what most people mean when they describe movement as "natural"; meaning that it is instinctual, non-cognitive based; for example, a baby assuming a "fencer's pose" (a.k.a. the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex or ATNR) while lying on it's back at ~1-2 months old is a reflex that creates an opportunity for a baby to see it's own hand stretched out away from its body; this is a totally spontaneous, non-purposefully initiated (cognitively speaking) movement - it's hard-wired into the system such that if you turn a 2 month old's head to the side, the arms will spontaneously assume that position; now, like most infant reflexes, the ATNR eventually gets integrated by the nervous system so that it does not manifest any longer than is needed (although in certain CNS pathologies it persists into adulthood); other reflexives movements are related to balance: straightening the arms when you fall is one that first occurs at about 6 - 8 months and persists for life; similarly, when we walk (or prior to that, crawl), this is another sort of intrinsic movement, one which is mediated at the spinal cord level, and as such is also "instinctual"; it operates under by what in neurophysiology are termed as "central pattern generators": the famous experiment by Sherrington ~100 + years ago demonstrated that if you severed the connection between a cat's brain and it's spinal cord and put the cat on a mobile treadmill, the cat still moved its limbs in response to the motion of the treadmill (or something like that, I forget the specifics); likewise, balance responses in standing are automatic and are not "learned" per se (although balance itself can be trained - more on that below) - when one encounters a force sufficient to move one' center of gravity (COG) outside of one's base of support (BOS), the postural system engages in a coordinated series of highly specific / context dependent muscle firing sequences to keep us upright (mediated by proprioceptors in the ankle first and foremost, then by vision and only afterwards by the inner ear); finally, things like flinching, putting your hands up in front of your face if something is thrown at you, etc., these are also automatic, instinctual and not "learned" per se;
moving up a level, one can also "learn" certain movements spontaneously, but that are necessary to fulfill some sort of external requirement: running and jumping are two that come to mind; of course, one could take it a step back and consider that these movements might spontaneously arise for no reason other than for the experience of it - skipping, galloping and one-footed hopping could also be considered in this vein;
in regards to fighting, certain reactions such as ducking, lifting a hand, striking / kicking, wrestling without technique per se could also arise, but again, these would be in response to the demands of a given context (again, see below);

Extrinsically generated:
in brief, this would be any movement that is necessarily learned or that the odds of picking up spontaneously would be so remote as to essentially constitute an impossibility; this would involve most "learned" systems - yoga springs to mind here, as most asanas one would never come up with on one's own; similarly, most content of martial systems could be considered in the same vein;

Combination Intrinsic / Extrinsic:
this, to me, is the most interesting area, and, quite frankly, I believe encompasses the majority of movement that people engage in on a daily regular basis; for example,
throwing a ball: 1) it can occur "naturally" - someone can spontaneously pick up a ball and throw it using "correct" oppositional movement without ever having seen someone else do it; 2) but can also have been seen and copied /modeled; 3) it could also be taught, either in its entirety or refined through cognitive means; so what he have here is a movement that on the one hand could arise spontaneously but also could be acquired completely via instruction by another person;
as I mentioned earlier, balance is also something that can be looked at as a combination: initially, we "learn" to balance, although it is not a cognitively mediated process: from the moment a baby rolls onto it's stomach, it has to maintain functional alignment: it starts as a series of intrinsic reflexes, then moves into being context dependent to the demands of the given environment (e.g. - things like parent's availability, the way a baby's home is laid out, etc. can directly influence how and when a baby independently walks); point is that these are al things that you kinda figure out for yourself; however, balance can also be taught and drilled in a way that one might never come up with on one's own - yoga postures, for example, train balance, but the odds of one spontaneously coming up with "tree" or "eagle" pose are pretty slim; so balance movements are another good example of how you can have cross-over;

[taai gihk yahn]

Part II
so what about something like Bagua, which, on the one hand, is supposed to be "natural" movement but at the same time also requires a great deal of detailed instruction in order to get "right"?: well, one has to consider that one of the major components of bagua, the circle walking, is based directly on Taoist meditative walking (which may well have been based on Buddhist walking meditation); additionally, it follows principles of posture that were either "invented" by Taoists, although they may also have been derived from yogic practice - if the latter, they may be more related to a relatively stationary practice than dynamic movement; nevertheless, they do follow relatively sound principles of biomechanically efficient anti-gravity bipedal organization / alignment; at the same time, they are an artifact, meaning that for someone to spontaneously arrive at suspension of the head / swallowing chest, etc., are pretty slim; although, in recent history, at least two people did: a quick perusal of the works of F.M. Alexander and Ida Rolf reveal systems of postural organization developed by individuals, and, at least in Alexander's case, without any prior training (although some argue otherwise); in fact, Alexander talks about the head being "free and away"; however, bearing in mind that he came up with his system to cure his chronic laryngitis which, as a professional Shakespearean actor in the 19th, was preventing him from performing - so he basically use a 3-way mirror to assess his posture when eloquating - what he saw was that he was contorting himself in various manneristic ways when delivering lines - so he basically stopped doing that and "discovered" a pattern of alignment that freed up his voice; Rolf, OTOH, hung out with osteopaths, but then took what she learned and came up with a way of assessing and correcting posture far beyond what the osteos were doing at the time; point is that both came up with ways of concertedly working with posture that helped people who were in pain - so was what they were doing "natural" or not? this is why I don't like the term, because you could argue that it was "natural" because it relieved discomfort, but you could also argue it's not because of the manner in which it was both created and systematized;
now going back to bagua: another very important thing to consider in relationship to this, and taiji / qigong as well: a lot of Taoists advocated doing nothing more than what Scott is basically talking about: go live "naturally", and you'll be fine; their contention was that any contrived system of movement was just another "corruption" of living in a "natural" state: even in Chuang Tzu, he waxes on about how the men of antiquity didn't need to do anything in particular in order to be complete (meaning no breathing exercises, no meditation, etc.); you got up with the sun, slept through the night, drank when thirsty, ate when hungry, lived your life without too much concern for it, etc., etc.; no need for elaborate qiogongs, circle walking meditation, etc.;
so, in this context, a "system" like bagua is inherently unnatural, because it is, by it's very nature, a non-spontaneous practice (I am not arguing this, just using it as an example); at the same time though, fighting aside, one can examine it in context of its stated postural principles and, with a little judicious application of contemporary knowledge of biomechanics and physiology, understand without too much difficulty why it could be a good idea to do circle walking with the spine rotated (basically, it's a great way to encourage lymphatic drainage, among other benefits); again, not saying anything about fighting, just looking at it from a "health" perspective; so in this regard, it is "natural", because it supports the body's intrinsic drive towards homeostasis, at least anecdotally; of course, this is where al the contention starts, well, contending; and therefore, the "answer" is to get away from that subjective term, and examine it in context of the above three parameters: is bagua intrinsically or extrinsically generated, or is it a combination of both? to a large extent, it's extrinsically generated: the odds of someone spontaneously coming up with it on their own are pretty much zero; as Scott points out, there is really no activity of life that would require one to walk a circle with the torso twisted; similarly, a lot or even most qigong would be the same way - although I would argue that certain moves may be closer to intrinsic than others - certain moves you see are not dissimilar to the spontaneous movements we make in the AM when we wake up and spontaneously stretch - but of course, they have other task parameters superimposed on them, such as specificity of movement, breathing pattern, etc.

on a side note, to consider ontologically that we were originally designed to move about on all fours either all or part of the time, the whole idea of "natural" v. "unnatural" movement comes to bear in the sense that one can ask the question, is standing on two legs more or less "natural" than on four? it's not what we were originally designed to do, but we made the shift based on intrinsic modifications, although extrinsic factors may have participated in this change;

so anyway, that's where I stand on all this and I think that to say anything about bagua / taiji, etc., we have to look at the specific context within which it's being utilized and how: bagua in a fight will look a lo different than bagua being practiced in a school; although the skills are acquired in an "unnatural" manner, they can still have an impact on the system in a way that is "natural", meaning that it drives it towards homeostasis;

ok, that's about it; back to the flame war!

[cerebus]

cerebus,
No, but if I ever do, I'd be more than happy to meet with you. Of course, the invitation is always extended to you to feel free to do the same.
Again (if you can read) the title was given to me by someone else. This is not something I simply "crowned" myself or arbitrarily choose to call myself as you have so mistakenly insinuated. I have alot of respect for Ike Stafford..I carry the title partially in honor of our friendship and mutual respect for each other.
Any other questions, are are you simply running-off at the mouth to hear the sound of your own voice? You bore me..lol.

Blah, blah, blah, whatever. I've been called a variety of complementary things by various instructors. I don't go around using those as my monikers or bragging of them. I'll definitely see what I can do about getting to your location either later this year or early next year. Right now I'm training for a variety of different fights here in the SF Bay area. When I have the time & money to show up at your kwoon I'll let you know. I'm interested in seeing just how "BAD" a so-called "BAD BOY" really is.

[BGZ BadBoy]

cerebus,
EXACTLY the answer I expected..lol. You're nothing if not predictable.

[cerebus]

cerebus,
EXACTLY the answer I expected..lol. You're nothing if not predictable.

As are you "BAD BOY"....

[cerebus]

Actually, I should simply modify that to "you're nothing..." and leave out the rest. Far more accurate...

[Scott R. Brown]

Not to get off topic from what is turning out to be a wonderfully entertaining flame-thrower of a thread, but I wanted to speak to the whole "natural" / "unnatural" movement issue, because I find it interesting in general;

first off,......

What?

That sounded an awful lot like a definite-maybe!

[BGZ BadBoy]

cerebus,
It's amazing how personally threatened you are by this supposed "nobody" from Joplin MO..lol.

[cerebus]

In the end it all comes down to the fact that everyone with any level of intelligence can see this Tyson Durr for the loud-mouthed, braggart, keyboard warrior fool that he is.

He makes the serious error of thinking (as have so many failures before him) that "any publicity is good publicity" (he even SAYS so! What an idiot!).

So... okay, even if he has received 8 "correspondence course" fools (he thinks people can learn Bagua be correspondence course?! WOW!) since this thread began, he seems to be deluding himself that this happened BECAUSE of this discussion. What he doesn't realize is that there were probably 18 people who were GOING TO pay for his garbage UNTIL they saw what a tool he is on this thread. Then say said "screw that" and ignored him as they should have.

[cerebus]

cerebus,
It's amazing how personally threatened you are by this supposed "nobody" from Joplin MO..lol.

Terribly, yes, terribly...

[BGZ BadBoy]

Obviously..you wouldn't be so preoccupied with me otherwise..lol.

[Scott R. Brown]

The world is intimidated by Tyson, in his own eyes!!!

Now we know why he needs to self medicate, he has delusions of grandeur!

[cerebus]

Obviously..you wouldn't be so preoccupied with me otherwise..lol.

Yes, yes, of course. You are the center of the universe... "lol"

[cerebus]

It's actually hilarious how he gets his feeling hurt and then tries to make it out that everyone is all infatuated with him. Poor wittle tyson durrrrrrrr........ try not take it too personally there little one....