sangngak

The standing postures were very much used in ancient times. I practiced with two teachers in the early 60's and we used only the standing. For 7 years, I did up to 2 hrs in a standing posture each night. I've not seen any public schools that know the real art of standing, so "Yes" it is a high quality art, "No" it is not usualy available in public schools. Try I chuan schools they might still teach it the old way. A friend of mine who used to go regularly to the Chen village for Chen Tai Chi instruction said the old timers there told him that all Tai Chi came from Standing positions. This is the same thing my teachers told me. However I've never met but 2-3 students who could stand in a horse stance for 2 hours much less do the standing correctly. The standing, done the old way, develops intense inner energy.

Kata are a means of practicing when you are alone. When I entered Karate in the 50's, we did the Kata, but then we also do the "shadow" form. By that I mean look at the moves in a kata. Each one has you reacting (or acting) to an attack. So we'd learn the "attack" side of the kata. Then we could do a solo kata, or a solo "attack" kata or a two man kata. We actually learned a lot from this. When doing it solo, we visualized the opponent and we re-acted to his moves. IF you do this you keep getting faster and faster as you can visualize the opponent getting faster and faster. Today, kata are disassociated from combat. What we did was to practice each move in the kata (turns included) until we could do them as one-step sparring, and do them very fast, with power. When we began to learn jiyu kumite (Free Fight) we were made to do it using our correct stances and moves as in the kata. When we could do this, THEN we could move in a free manner. Today I see people do one thing in kata, another thing in one-step sparring and then free fighting contains nothing of what they had been learning.

Our Sensei used to tell us that a Black Belt is a student who now knows how to correct his errors and improve himself and his art through inner dicipline.

I began my search in internal arts in the late 50's. The problem I see today is you are deluged with mis-information. It sells books but doesn't produce much. You need to understand, first of all, that true internal art has very little to do with modern MA. If you look at the history offered for most internal arts, they usually refer to a Taoist or a Buddhist or a Monk who originally taught their schools founder. In most systems of Tibet or India you'll find discussion of internal channels in the body. (Nadis in India) Cleaning out these channels was the aim of internal art. Once cleaned out, their meditation was much more clear. If someone learned some physical moves, it is highly unlikely they also learned all of the inner exercises. Sometimes the moves sort of look like MA moves but actually aren't. However if you developed the idea that this inner energy could be developed and you could use it for the purposes of your ego, you'd actually be working in the opposite direction, and dirtying the channels instead of cleaning them out. In MA applications there is one law. "I, Chi, Lik" (In cantonese) and "I, chi, Li (in Mandarin). Which is to say what or where you intend, the energy wil appear and do the work intended. That won't help you much without correct moves to correlate to it.

Dr Xie Peiqi wanted to document the entire Yin Fu method. All 8 fists. Hehas passed on but his group(s) still sell his DVDs and they are the best I have ever seen for learning BaGua at home. They recommend you start with the Lion fist as it develops yang chi thefastest, then you select the fist best suited to your body type, which is the way it was originally done. I've retired from MA and have several of their VHS tapes. If you are willing to pay postage I'll send them to you free of charge. (Just as a favor to someone who trains under Sonny Emperado)