Epanchin

Oh, what a convincing argument. I don't even see what the huge disagreement is about. Martial Girl said that Tai Chi is the oldest of all martial arts and I claimed that all evidence points to its founding around 800 years ago. Shaolin arts and Pentjak Silat arts have been around for nearly 2000 years. Last I checked, 2000 is greater than 800. Aside from that, I simply asked a few questions that Martial Girl never answered. So what exactly am I so wrong about?

Erle Montaigue has a rather different approach to martial Tai Chi than what I'm used to, but nevertheless his system is efficient (through its use of Fa-Jing). Tai Chi Chuan (Taijiquan) is one of the three internal martial arts of China (the other two are Hsing-i Chuan (Xinyiquan) and Pa-kua Chang(Baguazhang)). Tai Chi is often associated with the idea of softness while Hsing-i is associated with hardness and Bagua with change between the two. Tai Chi focuses on using jings, or "energies" (more accurately, a type of intention, body type, or something similar) to build root and immense power. Ultimately the goal of the master of tai chi is to be able to project chi through strikes into the opponent to disable or kill swiftly (On a side note, for those who think I'm getting too "mystical" or something with my reference to chi, please go to the Internal Arts forum and read my explanation of chi). The internal arts are powerful, there is no doubt. Perhaps they are the most efficient means of producing great internal power. But they are slow going, and usually very difficult and tedious. The old masters thought it took 20 years to really get a handle on any of the three arts (Bagua being the most difficult due to its circular movement and constant changing of direction). Even now though it takes several years to really have a good feel for an internal art martially. Every subsequent year it gets better, and ultimately there is no peak as the source of power for the internal practitioner is chi and the mind, not the muscles and the bones.

1. Tai Chi was designed as a martial art. Its healing aspects are side effects which have become very popular in recent times. 2. Tai Chi is old, but not ancient. Its roots can be traced back about 800 years. Shaolin kungfu and Indonesian Silat has been around for nearly 2000, and even older forms of fighting have existed (though less sophisticated as those 2). 3. Tai Chi is powerful in the right hands, but what makes it the most powerful art? What criteria do you use to judge that?

I share the opinion that any art can be effective in a true combat situation, but I feel that the attitude must be trained that there are no rules. This is why I think a lot of sport training does not translate as well to true defense as well as training for true defense alone would. This I find a strange statement. Tai Chi is a martial art as much as Karate or Shaolin Kung Fu is. It was originally developed as a martial art and it continues to be taught as a martial art in many places (though they pale in number compared to those who teach it for health). There are health benefits to Tai Chi that people have realized and then used the art exclusively for. However, interestingly, training for Tai Chi as a martial art, in fact, yields greater health benefits than training it purely for "health." Tai Chi is actually very similar to Pentjak Silat in some respects, and it cultivates great power. Work with a well trained Tai Chi adept some day who trains the martial aspects of the art, and you will see exactly how brutal this art can be in the right hands.

There are classically 2 schools of (Taoist) meditation (although one school invariably leads to the other ultimately). One is the "water" school which focuses on relaxing, feeling and not forcing anything. The meditation you do in this school would be akin to merely emptying your mind from the start by means of listening or feeling your breath as it enters your body and creeps down to your Tan Tien, then as it comes out. There is also a fire variant of meditation which tends to rely on more extreme methods to increase chi and reach "enlightenment" (which is not my goal as I am purely a martial artist). This school would be more inclined to visualize things happening to force them to happen rather than feeling. Overall, the most important aspects of meditation are: 1. Keep relaxed, tension impedes the flow of chi. 2. Breathe slowly from your stomach; in and out through the nose and your tongue lightly touching the top of your mouth (but not your teeth). 3. Relax your mind and focus lightly on your breathing or a relaxing imagery. You could also visualize (forcefully) chi flowing through the meridians in your body to try to feel the sensation more.

I study Kilap Kilat Silat, an amalgamation of many styles of Pentjak Silat with a power base in Chinese martial arts. Pro 1. Covers striking with all manners of hitting surfaces (fist, open palm, knee, foot, elbow, head, shoulder, even chest). 2. Short, fast grappling. No complicated joint locks. 3. Ground fighting trained as a last resort if somehow you fall to the ground. 4. Emphasis on multiple attacker fighting. 5. Aggressive, swift attitude and fluid movement typical of Indonesian martial arts combined with the external and internal power typical of the Chinese (external earlier on, internal later on). 6. Taught free form as concepts and not rigid applications. 7. Weapons are kept minimal (knives, sticks and staff), but still enough training to interest those who want to learn weapons. Con 1. Most conditioning must be done on the practitioner's own time as class is most often technique and sparring. 2. This system is pointless for anyone seeking a sport or a serious means of aerobic or muscular conditioning. Practitioners gain strong legs, but it does not stress conditioning in such a way that all higher level students have the "Adonis" body and can do full splits. 3. This system was first taught only in the last 15 years or so, and as a consequence, there are only three possible sites in the nation where it is taught. 4. By the very nature of the system (sampling many kinds of arts and styles of training in a certain order), there is more emphasis on taking the most combative aspects of many arts rather than learning all the nuances and beauties of a single art in great detail. However, many fundamentals are redundant from style to style.

I know I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I figured I'd drop my experience in the matter in. I think we'd all agree that the human body effectively runs on electricity or electrical impulses transmitted through the nervous system to catalyze movement and thought and emotion and essentially all human activity. The meditation aspect of chi kung, along with other benefits, oxygenates the blood at a much higher level than normal and, in my experience, a greater amount of oxygen in the blood seems to increase the amount or intensity of these electrical impulses. Perhaps this is a consequence of the body simply running at a higher level of efficiency. This would explain without a doubt the health benefits of having a lot of chi. Rather, the more accurate statement would be that having a lot of chi would be the effect of having a healthy body that is running efficiently and is well oxygenated. Consequently, when someone says they have hit someone with a "chi blast," most often he means that he has struck someone in such a way as to conduct this bioelectricity into the other person's body as a sort of "blast" (though no doubt there are those who claim to be able to hurl balls of energy at people and such. I suppose I am skeptical of this, but if I were to experience it in some way, I would consider it with a more open mind). On an even more rudimentary level, simply having a greater amount of chi in your body will allow your body to utilize your muscles at a much greater efficiency. I have noticed that simply doing chi kung as a supplement to my normal training has made my strikes harder and harder. From my own experience with feeling chi in my body (strongest after I have finished doing some kind of chi kung), it feels like sticking my finger in an electrical outlet. I'm of the opinion that the earliest Chinese and Indians who felt this sensation did not have the sort of knowledge of electricity/magnetism and human biological mechanics to associate this sensation and this energy to the completely natural and physical kind of biological energy that it is. Thus, this conception has stuck around for several thousand years and in the contemporary world, this sort of mysticism is looked down upon as gibberish and new-age garbage when, in fact, it is more likely that those who teach it using the classically Taoist conception simply have not modernized it due to their own ignorance of simple biological and physical functions. P.S. JerryLove, we train at the same school (though I go to the Carrollwood one).