Originally Posted by
Lohanhero
....Sooo.... five animals gongfu.....
dont know how much you can realy discuss a style on a forum, you will always get people who have different ideas. and if that different idea is incorrect in your veiw you have two options, think to yourself "you do what you do and i will do what I do." or defend your veiw point. the only problem with the last one is the "winner" isnt always the correct one, but the loudest person. no real winners there. offends your masters to fight against eachother in this way.
5 animals of shaolin, Leopard snake crane tiger Dragon. I have heard that some teach as dragon first. originaly formed for health, while had defencive ability it was later that was reformed into a fighting art. from my study each 5 animals where seperate through out the time when it was hard to find good and responcible students to teach, the master sometimes had to wait till old age to find this student worthy of teaching. but as the master is old could only try and teach as much as posible before the master dies. the students wishing to continue what their masters taught, took what they knew and formed 5 animals combined, calling this 5 animals fist. *realy short my appologys*
on effectivness, who is another to speak of effectivness. humans seem to be naturaly deffencive, wishing to pull down things that are not the same as what they have learnt or grew up learning. so we have people who have studied different arts coming up with what they see as bad. even if they have not seen much. *nothings realy wrong with this ofcause, but all comes down to what you see as correct*
as has been said on many topics, it comes down to the person and not the style. the style gives the person many opitunitys to learn many things, but the same as in your younger days of school, how much do you remember or use of your schooling, art, history ect...
"divert the opponents strikes/energy and attack openings this leads to"
from here you have the different "ways of attack" from clawing and tearing of tiger to quick stabing of the snake.
5 animals frolic methode as was spoken earlyer are not the same as the shaolin 5 animals as these are the Deer, monkey, Bear, Tiger and Dragon. each one is the play of the animal, I have a VCD on this and is quite interesting as the guy in it, sleeps lyes down like each animal, climbs trees like the monkey, ect... As Mr Gene Ching has mentioned in different words, it comes down to mind/thought of the person playing these, becoming back to nature. also as I had read in your issue along time ago with the master of qigong from taiwan (iron crotch master) sorry i forgot name. in this he spoke that animals are interesting, they are naturaly able to heal themselfs faster then humans. look at the way many of them walk, on four legs. for us moving on two legs all of our organs are being pushed downwards and ontop of eachother. by doing some excercises of the animals we can help this pressure... (i hope i am remebering this correctly)
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just on another note, iv noticed more and more latly. people seem to be so wraped up in exact wordings of things and need to be told the meanings. as with the animals it comes back to thought. look past words and see what you feel is the meaning. dont over think it, just read and feel what is being said.
"a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet"
sorry, iv writen all over the place. now i shall vanish again :P
have fun everyone, train from your heart, with whatever your goals are and you will be doing yourself a good deed. but dont push your goals on others.
unless your the sifu/shifu or gao lin/jiao lian then its the student that needs to learn from what you know :P