Hey Tim
Gao Liu De is he still teaching in Taiwan?
Or do y know any senoir student of gao liu de?

I don't think he is teaching anymore.

I don't know of any of his students that are teaching either, he stopped teaching publically quite a while ago.

http://www3.youtube.com/watch?v=W044EQiBI6w

Does any one know what form xingyi this is?

That is the famous Iron Butterfuly, Chang Tung Shen, the infamous Shuai Chiao player from Taiwan. I believe he learned Hebei Style Xing Yi, but not sure from whom.
Nice clip.
Thanks
Jake

Notice the posture, head up, chest lifted and lower back arched. Old school fighters knew the secret.

dear tim,
i was reading this book by B.K.Frantzis,
he was actually saying that the shoulder should be rounded forward to cave in the chest,and the tail bone tucked in to kinda round slightly the lower back.that really didn't made sense to me
and most likely to anyone who ever did squats!
but why is he saying that?isn't he one of the "best" american IMA guy?
what do you think of him?
ps. i wasn't really impressed with the form,
some guys look better just doing shadow boxing!
but that me!

Marc
How can you tell form from a photo,
I can take a still of someone shaodow boxing and if he in the wrong place a wrong time photo/form will not look that good maybe, but a second later photo might look very enigmatic?

Are you saying you see a video or just referring to a photo from a book?

Marc,

you're starting to ask good questions now, finally, thank god.
I have Kumar Frantzis' book, and it's very entertaining, very informative, and I'm sure that a lot of what it's in it is true. There's also a lot in it that I don't know what to make of; I'd have to see it, or it would have to be well documented, before I'd believe it myself.
I'm open to the possibility that Kumar is a great liar, too.

I'm not sure why you think he's "one of the best".
You're always asking if IMA people have fought in UFC or whatever; I'm not aware of Kumar having done that. He's a big guy, he was a karate champ in his teens (so he says), and he's been practicing martial arts for decades, so I imagine he can fight. Gotta to be better than David Carradine, anyway.

Kumar has DVDs, I think, and does workshops. If you really think he might be on to something, go check him out.

There is this bodywork method called cranio-sacral therapy, that's all about something called the cranio-sacral pulse, which orthodox medical science has not heard of. I was very curious about that, so I went and took a 4 day workshop. I was very quickly convinced that there is a such thing as the craniosacral pulse. I can feel it, anybody can learn to feel it in an hour or two. You can do things with it too. Whether that actually has any health benefits is another question, but my point is, if you really want to know about this stuff, you can go check it out.
In the meantime, you might try what I call "Bogen's Law", which I learned from Joe Bogen, one of the great neurosurgeons of all time.
He said "I'll believe anything if it doesn't matter". The things you're wondering about do matter, but what I got out of that is, even if it matters, it doesn't matter until you actually come across it. You can waste a lot of energy believing, not believing, scoffing at, or wondering about stuff that you haven't had the chance to find out the truth about.

btw, Marc, I can't figure out why some taiji and internal arts people talk about tucking the tailbone under, bow out the ming men, and all that stuff, either. I've asked Tim about it and didn't get much satisfaction. Best I can figure is that some people are really telling you to tuck your tailbone under and stoop your shoulders and go around like that all the time, and they're wrong, and most of them don't actually do it.
Others, I think that what they're saying isn't really what they mean.
Maybe what they're saying is you have to be ABLE to tuck the tailbone under, in order to develop hip joint mobility ("open the kwa").
The part about sinking the chest is just wrong.
It's a mistranslation or something.
What's really important, anyway, is to be able to root yourself and transmit force.

Hi Marc,

I disagree with collapsing the chest and using force to tuck the tailbone under.

I believe in natural alignment (look at a small child's posture for reference) with the head up, the chest lifted and the normal curves in the back. I believe using anything according to its natural design is always more efficient.

The above described posture is "neutral," but it is malleable (for example, you will have to round your lower back if you dive into a roll, you may have to arch your lower back to a greater degree if you apply an armbar...).

The "intent" of natural posture however, never changes.

I was discussing the issue of posture with an experienced taiji player who has been to China to train and compete a number of times and he thought that the obsession with rounding the chest and tucking the tailbone was due, in part, to some hard-stylists teaching taiji as a secondary art to their main art.

In some of the southern styles they use a similar posture as a way of 'spitting' out their hand techniques. Can't remember the names of the styles that he mentioned but I have seen demos in the past that used an exaggerated rounding and straightening of the spine to power punches.

In any case, good posture is good posture and provides the best framework for efffecient body movement.

I had BKF's book, but it went into the circular file if you know what I mean.

Hi Tim
Who were the Yiquan people you met in Beijing?
thanks

thanks jerry!i do have a mind, but it just hurts when i use it.
seriously i'm not a BK fan by no means.
i just saw a lots of his books and videos,
and read some of his bios stuff(probably autobios)
and was curious to hear what you guys thought.
but,if you pull the shoulders back and arch the
lower back,it will compress the spine.
making it more stable and strong.
but if you round the chest and tuck the tail bone
it elongates the spine making the spinal fluid
flow better.
does it work better for fighting,most likely not!
except maybe at the end of a punch,when the chest
contract(meaning rounding a little)and the abs
tighten also,if the abs get tight, the lower back
will round slightly.
but i don't think it a posture at all!!!

"f you pull the shoulders back and arch the
lower back,it will compress the spine.
making it more stable and strong.
but if you round the chest and tuck the tail bone
it elongates the spine making the spinal fluid
flow better."

Marc, where do you get this stuff? I mean, what's your evidence for those statements? How do you know they're true? One minute you're sarcastically attacking people who are saying reasonable things, the next you're quoting off the wall ideas you heard somewhere as if they're the gospel.

Regarding the flow of spinal fluid, I'm a faculty member in a medical school, in the neurology and neurosurgery departments, and I can assure you the flow of spinal fluid is not a problem. Or if you do have a problem with it, you need urgent medical attention.

I could tell you many things about the origin and flow of cerebrospinal fluid. Much more than you could possible want to know.

Craniosacral therapists might disagree with me, but even they wouldn't say that rounding the chest and tucking the tailbone is what you need to improve it! (Maybe 5 treatments at $150 a pop would do it).

Maybe the flow of qi works better when you tuck your tailbone. I wouldn't know. I'm not a qi expert.

Doing strange things with your shoulders to "compress" the spine, whatever that means, will not make it any more stable and strong. Is that the way you did those squats?

You need to stick your butt OUT a little when you're lifting heavy weights; you need to curl it under the other way when you roll. When you're standing up and moving around, it should be free to move around and participate in the movements.
"Pulling the shoulders back and arching the lower back"... well, I guess you need to do that when you do bridges and cartwheels and things like that. I don't think it's a good idea for walking, standing or general use.

just try it!
pull your shoulder back and down,then arch your lower back.doesn't it feel like your spine is tightning up on itself and slightly shortning?
then relax the shoulder forward and down,then
roll the tail bone under the body.you'll
feel your spine straighten and elongating.
relieving the pressure on the discs
it will relieve pressure on the nerves too.
sometime things can be felt by the owner of the body that your medical books can't attest for!
but since you know everything,how could you be wrong?

"Tightening up on itself" and slightly shortening-- well, no not really, but this is good, at least you're looking for evidence.
The business about "relieving the pressure on the discs" doesn't make a lot of sense, let alone the part about relieving pressure on the nerves.
If you have pressure on a spinal nerve, you'll have pain, weakness, numbness or other symptoms in a specific part of the body served by that nerve.
Just tucking your tailbone under won't help.
You might need surgery.

You could read up on spinal anatomy. There are lots of pictures and articles on the Internet.
I can give you some references if you want.

Marc, I don't know everything, and sure, I can be wrong. And certainly a lot of people who do know a thing or two have a lot of different theories about posture.

However, I do know some stuff, and the anatomy and pathology of spine and nervous system is directly related to my work. Also, what I do is, and you should try it sometime: I DON'T POST ON SUBJECTS I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT! So when I say something on this board, I usually know what I'm talking about.


I don't think we have space here to debate epistemology, but I'll just say that I can't argue with you about your subjective experiences-- so don't tell me about them!
If there's some objective evidence for what you're saying about posture, let's hear it.

Hi Mitchell,

I never met any Yiquan people in Beijing.

Sorry, guys.
I got kind of carried away there.
Marc, I have no right to tell you to shut up.
Rave on! Pollute every thread on the board forever if you want. It's your right, unless Tim decides to step in again. I can always go back to Plan A, just skipping over your posts. It is very annoying, and I usually think that the annoyance value is all you're looking for. I started to realize that you actually are curious, and thought maybe I could relate to that.

I've pretty much said what I had to tell you; I don't plan to carry on a flamewar with you.
Say something civil, or something interesting, I'll respond. Otherwise, be well.

Problem is, I don't think you want to hear the boring truth, which is that internal arts are real martial arts, they're not necessarily more or less effective for fighting than others, they don't give you magic powers, and none of the regulars here claim that they do. I understand it's more fun either to scoff at the magic powers, or believe in them, than to just let that go.

But if you could just rein in your exuberance a little bit, behave like a real martial gentleman, stop scoffing and spalling and insulting everything and everybody all the time, and only post on maybe HALF the threads instead of ALL of them, it would be much better.

And I still recommend you check out Tim's workshop, or another good internal arts teacher, and see whata it's really about. I realize it isn't easy to find a good internal arts teacher.

The "intent" of natural posture however, never changes.

there you go again confusing people mr. tim, remember, these guys are simpletons.

on the other hand, i have intelligents, lots of em.

IMA,

I'm relieved to hear at least one person is on board.