Does anyone know anything about the combative aspect of this style? Most websites have only vague descriptions.

Hey Mike,
I've never heard of it (there are many thousands of styles/systems -- most I've never heard of & probably never will). Just out of curiousity, what do you know about it?

Hey dudes..

Ziranmen / Tzuranmen is Natural Boxing.. it seems to be a system based on lots of small energy drills with techniques of it's own and borrowed from the other neija arts..

I'm learning Ba gUa from a Tzuranmen teacher in the Wan Lai Shan lineage and it seems to be an effective, destructive and complete system.. there is a lot of videos/info at

http://www.zuranmen.com/

ok.. hope this helps

stc

Hey, Save the Child (when throwing out the bath water),
Thanks! I'll check it out.

i thought i should come on-line and part a little of my knowledge about Wan Lai Sheng's ziranmen system.

firstly, and i know this may be a bit controversial, but Serge Augier is not any sort of inheritor or lineage holder to Wan Lai Sheng's Ziranmen System. so sorry to the guys who happen to be learning from him, but you should probably look elsewhere for a teacher of this system. your best bet is either Xiamen or Fuzhou cities which are both in Fujian Province. CHINA. i know it's disheartening to hear such info. it seems like all to many people want to go out and claim to be a lineage holder of this and that system.

anyway here are the facts of the situation. the Ziranmen System can only be authentically traced back to the Dwarf Xu who was from Sichuan province he taught the ziranmen system to Du Xing Wu. he passed the ziranmen lineage to him. Du Xing Wu decided to teach Wan Lai Sheng not only because his martial skill was already very high, but that he had the intellectual ability to understand the deep taoistic philosophy underpinning ziranmen. (also, Du Xing Wu happened to know 'Zhou Xin Zhou' who had taught Wan Lai Sheng the entire Liu He Men system, and said he would be the boxer of all boxers). Wan Lai Sheng had many students but only a select few became "ru men di zi" (inner door disciples) one of them happened to be Hong Zheng Fu, who became the inheritor of Wan Lai Sheng's Ziranmen lineage. it is important to understand that the lineage of this system is only passed to one student WITH NO EXCEPTION. Hong Zheng Fu died recently in Xiamen, Fujian Province. he left the lineage to his son, who immediately passed it to Liu De Ming in a formal ceremony before the funeral of Hong Zheng Fu. so now Liu De Ming is the only authentic lineage holder. this information is respected and accepted by the family of Hong Zheng Fu, the "Wan Lai Sheng research institute" in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, and the organizations that teach the Ziranmen & Liuhemen systems in Fuzhou,(also in Fujian Province). So, nowhere in this authentic lineage is Serge Augier's name mentioned.

it is likely that Serge Augier trained with Wan Lai Sheng, as did many people, including westerners, during the eighties. however for him to claim to be the lineage holder of the system is not only disrespectful to Wan Lai Sheng and Ziranmen system but is absurd after so little training in such a philosophically based high level internal boxing system.

i am a formal student of Liu De Ming and have trained with Hong Zheng Fu in Xiamen, China. i have studied nature boxing for many years under his close supervision. i continue to train the Ziranmen system with Liu De Ming in Australia. we both teach this authentic lineage of Ziranmen and will be organizing seminar tours throughout the U.S.A and U.K. in 2002. this year Liu De Ming is writing a book on the 0 and 1 philosophy of nature boxing. and we are considering translating Wan Lai Sheng's WUSHU HUI ZONG (the root of martial arts).

for more info on Ziranmen go to our website

www.liuswushu.com.au

where we will be slowly inserting the training and philosophy for the whole nature boxing system.

if anyone wants more info on the training methods and ziran philosophy jump on this discussion site and tell me. i'm happy to impart what i know but wont bother if no one is interested.

forgive the abrupt nature of my entry to this discussion board, but, Ziranmen is a very complex and rare system of boxing and it's lineage should not be corrupted so that someone can promote themselves as a great boxer or a student of a great boxer.

Hey Tao Jianyun,
You wrote:

"forgive the abrupt nature of my entry to this discussion board, but, Ziranmen is a very complex and rare system of boxing and it's lineage should not be corrupted so that someone can promote themselves as a great boxer or a student of a great boxer."

When you publish anything on a martial-art system there "automatically" will be con-artists who will claim to know & teach such a system. That's just the way it is.
I'm curious to see if this system is an art with a philosophy attached, or if it's a philosophy with a martial art stemming from it. I'm interested nevertheless (that is I'm curious & will read well-written/understandable English-language books on internal systems when the systems are designed by small-statured or "disabled" individuals). If you were to publish the entire system today, then (if it met the above-listed parameters) I would read it.
Note that if the philosophy is too deep for me (that is, if I can't readily see it's martial application), then I probably won't read much of it [like Sun Lu Tang's Ba-Gua book -- all of that philosophy wasn't teaching me (the out-of-the-philosophical-loop reader) diddly-squat]. You also wrote:

"if anyone wants more info on the training methods and ziran philosophy jump on this discussion site and tell me. i'm happy to impart what i know but wont bother if no one is interested."

So I'll hold you to that (please impart to me via this discussion board what you know -- which I suspect should be quite a bit since you wrote:

"i have studied nature boxing for many years under his close supervision. i continue to train the Ziranmen system with Liu De Ming in Australia. we both teach this authentic lineage of Ziranmen"

-- as both your art & your generous offer has peaked my interest).

0 and 1 philosophy? How complex could that be?

Just a note, Du Xin Wu was one of the most well respected boxers of his day, and served as Sun Yat Sen's bodyguard.

Hey dudes..

sorry to be a contrary but the info above, about Serge Augier being a fake, is inaccurate.. talk of con artists and interlopers may be accurate about certain members of the neija marketing bandwagon.. but the lineage of Serge can be indep. verified ..

As I understand it Wan Lai Shen had THREE inner door disicples who studied Tzranmen... and lots of other students who studied the Six Harmonies Shaolin... one of his inner door guys emigrated to France and worked for the Augier family.. where he taught Serge from age nine onwards.. (i'll get the details and email them to you if you want) .. Serge did train extensively with Wan but this was like one of Tim's disciples going to study with Lo de Xiu to complete his education..

btw i think Terry Chan (Chen?) has an outline of Wushu Hui Zong on his website

ok ..peace, harmony and less of the my teacher is the only authentic one without checking the facts please

stc

p.s i am not a student of Dr Augier and I do have one bone of contention. You are right in saying that Tzuranmen is not suppoosed to be an artform for the masses. This is one of it's core principles and yet you yourselves are doing publlic seminars...

Does Ziranmen and Ba Gua Zhang share any similar principles, training practics, etc.? Do we know of much interaction between the two styles?

Best Regards,

Rick Maz

There are many different opinions on what constitutes a lineage holder, a (grand)master, etc. -- these things differ so much from system-to-system & even from person-to-person that I really don't care (but I remain curious of what I can learn that I will find useful).
Tao Jianyun has made a public offer to publicize all that he -- a teacher no less -- knows about his art in this forum. I for one am both curious & highly interested in reading this promised information regardless of the author's opinion on what constitutes a lineage holder.
I just visited www.zuranmen.com & found it interseting (I'm going to have to download Real Player though since I want to see their video of Xing-Yi's "Splitting Fist"; I didn't agree with everything I read (such as calling Ba-Gua a "very ancient" art), but, nevertheless I found food for thought at the website. I also enjoyed reading that it (zuranmen) is based in the three well-known divisions of Chinese internal arts: Xing-Yi, Tai-Ji, & Ba-Gua.
Tim's comment above concerning Du Xin Wu has just made me even more interested in hearing from Tao Jianyun [& any others who wish to help enlighten me concerning internal practices; I prefer serious info., but I also welcome the comic versions of the likes of BBB -- even if there's two of them (aren't two balls better than one?)].

Hey Mike et al..

yeah just lurking around today.. maybe i was a bit petulant with the above message.. Tao Jianyun has been open and I, grudgingly, respect that...

i shouldn't speak for other people .. so i'll see if i can get a message to Serge.. maybe he can resolve by contributing... but knowledgeable practitioners here in the Uk verify his authenticity and skills...

and as to oneBBB... i can't believe you think that poor man's affliction is comic... i mean.. big one ball betty.. tragic...

stc

Hey Save T.C.,
U.S. Jarheads (er, Marines) can usually find the humor in tragedy (it comes from constantly making the best of a bad situation). Look at how many ex-jarheads have become comedians or at least have acted in comic features (Don Adams, Don Knott, Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin, Jonathan Winters, & Drew Carey -- to name some). Navy Corpsmen are also this way (after all, they've got to hang around us nutballs).
I'm curious/interested & would like to hear from Mr. Serge Augier as well as from Tao Jianyun concerning this art form. Good Luck!

hi everyone,

i was peacefully living in paris, doing my sites for fun...
i am not a professionnal teacher, i just have 2 or 3 friends who are my students only because i have more info on martial arts.
i never wanted to be part of politics, i just wanted to do a site for the people to enjoy our training !

then, one morning, mister Tao Jianyun wrote me a very aggressive letter on telling me who he is and who i am not...well, well...

i do not care about mr Tao Jianyun judgment on who i am, i manage this myself with enought trouble like all of us.
the thing is that he critisize my training by someone who do not know me!
if you come to train with us, try our natural boxing, and then say"it's not good", i think it's fair.
but if you look at a video ,on a site, and say i'm not good because "i don't have shooting stars in my eyes" as he wrote.

secondly, who is mr tao is not my problem!
i am very happy that he told me he was the real master but i did not ask anything!
i do not see my friends go around telling people they don't know who they are.

can you picture yourself going in the street telling peolple:"i'am the king of the world...", i hope not!

but the real thing that irritated me was because this mr tao told me he will "tell"...please!
he told me about this place and i came to see you all which is something i will do again.
but he told me he would told Dr YANG Jwing Ming i was a fake.
Dr YANG is a very dear friend of mine since more than 10 years and i see him twice a year, every year.
but Dr YANG does not know who is Mr tao...he told me to ignore him because it's not worth it.

well, seing all these good and bad things about me made me want to talk to you all( in my bad english writing)

you can write to me and i will be happy to publish something on my site on the natural boxing internal and external training.

serge augier

What a shame ! here we have in france a man who has trained intensely for years , quietly and humbly sharing his knowledge (without asking ever a penny!) with three or four close students , and whose boxing has the unmistakable mark of the old masters.

mr. tao please keep your lineage and title.i will keep the brotherhood of someone who we trust and respect for his actions , not words. anyone seeing his boxing ,sharing time with him , feeling his energy , receiving healing , no need to question anything......lineage is something inside that links you to the Source , and with Serge that quality is beyond doubt.

mr . tao , i pray you replace ego with the spirit of brotherhood !

alex kozma

Hey Mr. Serge Augier,
Thanks for the post. While your English may not be "proper," it's quite understandable -- & in communicating, that's what counts! Is www.zuranmen.com your website?
I'm still waiting to read about what Mr. Tao Jianyun has to say about Zuranmen. He said he would share on this website all he knows. So far nothing.
I would like it very much if you would share your knowledge of Zuranmen (Xing-Yi, Tai-Ji, & Ba-Gua) with the public (in writings on your website).
Oh, if you do ever get "shooting stars in [your] eyes," then please be sure to visit a doctor -- & quick!

P.S.: Your credentials were never an issue with me as I know some respectable martial artists who respect you (& that's plenty of "credentials" for me). Oh, & I agree that martial-arts politics suck hind teat (& are therefore better off side-stepped). I eagerly await more information on Zuranmen from you & others (thanks again).

Hey Mr. Augier,
Me again (still). I found the link to your website -- www.whitecraneinstitute.com -- & I read your letter (I'll re-visit & read more later when I've got the time). Your letter reminded me about one of the laws of physics:

FOR EVERY ACTION THERE'S AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE CRITICISM.

So naturally you box & others criticize.
Take care.

hi mike,
my provider changed some things on my site,but now you can check out the zuranmen training syllabus.
i will put a link to each and single exercices and put explanations and video.
no more secrets or mysteries !
i do not think that secrets are real, they are a way for teachers to keep some for themselves and to not awserd questions.
thanks to alex kosma for his letter from china!
yes, mike, these are my sites and i do everything by myself. i do have some friends to correct my spelling in english and make sure people understand what i say!
i will talk a lot about forms and the danger of only doing forms.
i do believe that forms without exercices can not make you effective for combat.
all the internal arts and some exercices to develop each attributs physical and energetic.
after years of looking around i can see how important are the exercices.
every master became a master doing the exercices of his own style.
forms are just a reminder of these exercices and a memento.
i will discuss this in detail in my sites.
take care,
serge

Thanks Serge,
I should have read this post first (I left some lengthy answers to your questions a some other posts first, much to Meynard's loathing) -- you & Tim are thinking alike in respect to power exercises (they are primary to becoming proficient); also, my Tai-Jitsu instructor also feels that there should be no secrets (& I'm pretty certain Tim feels much the same way, but he may also believe that there's a time to withhold & a proper time to tell -- but I should let him speak for himself).
I will visit your site often as I'm very interested in learning. Thanks again!

that's my pleasure to share and talk about the arts.
serge