Zhong Gau

do drug stores, parking lots and tea rooms count?

in certain circumstances lethal force is allowable. other more prolonged circumstances in which the governmental law enforcement and judicial system has proved its inability to defend your rights in, by nature, allows the individual to protect him/her self with lethal force against such complaints as organized crime or racketeering or blackmail, or limiting the constitutional right to free association in coersion to fulfill payment. in these circumstances in which the judiciary as proved ineffectual or impotent to prosecute the complainant has the right to exercise lethal force preemptively until the threat no longer exists. in protracted situations this legal grace is limited to a thirty day window of opportunity per annum.

NY typically would call a pencil a weapon in the hands of a martial artist. Sai are, as someone else pointed out, considered a type of knife/dagger and as such are limited to a three inch blade to be legal. the cross guard thing is a defining point of distinction between a utility tool and a weapon. In Florida several wah lummers who worked as surveyors were charged with weapons possession when seen with things called 'choppers' hanging from thier belts. these things are essentially swords without crossguards. the surveyors were using them as machettes. the court dismissed them as the tools did not have crossguards and as such were not intended for lethal combat.

Well, you certainly have your hands full. And you're basically out of time to start this one! each state/province has its own laws regaurding training to use leathal force. Canada has some kind of non-lethality training certification. Counties and Cities may further modify restrictions. your best bet is to find a public access legal law library and "Shepardize" your topic. then you'd have to go to the small business licensing departments of your governments (city, county, and state/province) to find out thier requirements. then there's defining the market, identifying established competition and thier market share, funding and sources, program development, insurance, rent, utilities, advertising, transportation, fair costs and trying to earn a living. to learn about this basically puts you through the ropes of starting up a business in your town, which can take several months just to get the info when the governments aren't on holiday...and canada is notoriously slow in almost everything except tax collection.

I have been denied to return to one of my teachers until i find and learn three specific forms which he knows -probably exclusively- from his days with the wadering monks durring the Maoist Revolution. I can go back and visit, but they won't show me new dirty tricks until i can show these: Buk Pai, Bagua Chum Choi, and a unique petition form.

if you perform the two meditations you mentioned with the circulations you may invite problems. generally, introductory meditations are primarily taught for grounding and clearing. those two have a similar movement. a similar one is 'Jolly Siddartha Separates Heaven and Earth' which incorporates a rapid squat with a rapid push of the hands skyward such that your palms face the sky with the fingers pointed inwards. as you hold this position stretch such that your middle is stretched by your torso going up and your pelvis going down. hold for 11 seconds. do it as one fluid motion, exhaling as you squat and stretch. repeat 10 or 20 times.

Jing is also part of the evolution of the qiqong process. qi (breath) is converted to and ren and jing. one is 'body' the other 'mind'.

damn, jerry! you just oversimplified about a thousand pages of Buddist evolution and Japanese syncretism. its a bit more involved than that. Buddism is the foundation of Chan. Chan is what was taken to Niponai-Edo which after about 150 years became syncretized with indigenous Kami faiths. Kami Faiths are an Animistic philosophy concerning ontology -or being and reality- which defines life as a stage in a spirit's development. Chan/Zen (Sudden EnlightenmentSchool) was founded in the 5th century of the common era durring the Liu Sung period (420-479). it is part of the Three Treatise School of Buddism (of which Tien Tai -or the philosophy of 'perfect harmony'- is also a part) which was founded on the principle of emptiness. the premise of Chan for fighting is this: that the supreme achievement of enlightenment is to react faster than it takes to think about how to react: to instinct. This principle is known as Wu Wei, or being without the clumsiness of being, aka 'non attachment' or 'mind being'. one could meditate and practice for as long or as short as it took for the individual to achieve this sudden enlightenment known as 'sitori'. the beating method of iron shirt (see 'iron shirt' thread) comes from this school in a later period and was the training tool to achieve non-attachment, the meditative predecessor to sitori. this was considered to be the quintessential attitude/virtue a warrior could achieve as it would increase his speed, survivability and alieviate his conscious of his actions. but, according to a columnist i know, was a technique for keeping Japan's energetic warriors occupied between war time. there's about eighty pages edited out of the edit i got it from. (cf. Wing Tsit Chan, A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy)

or sitori.

this patting/slapping is a systematized meditation to increase blood flow. it also trains the body to respond to pressure with increasing flow to 'wounded' areas. it toughens the skin and immediate sub-dermal layers. it may affect circulation on the surface in a negative fashion, as i no longer bleed more than a drop or three with superficial cuts, scrapes and flap peelings/tearing. deep cuts (such as kitchen accidents with sharp knives goin to the bone or taking most of the pads off) take some time to start bleeding (30 secs.) but totally heal in about three days. the degree of meditation i achieved was after three years of twice daily meditation. the third day with his whipping staff broke the staff when he mockingly struck at the top of my head! (that was a "Inside Karate Kung Fu Ill." columnist).

I'm not sure if goju uses this method: it's a buddist method of hardening by increasing flow around the body. stand and compact in your normal method. pat your extremities lightly initially and over time (weeks) increase the pressure. continue beyond outright striking yourself to the use of bunches of sticks, then steel screw cores. eventually you will need an assistant to help beat the crap out of you while you meditate. as odd as that sounds that's the way it gets. i had a younger brother take choice strikes on me with his 7foot staff while i practiced the 88yang before leaving that school. this is an external result that i learned by combining the beating method with several internal methods.

i remember one of my older brothers asking a sifu about this sort of thing back in the mid 90's. they tried to develop the kinds of techniques described using a staff and a metal pipe of similar length and could not manage the kinds of control needed for forms practice with a weapon that could lengthen due to centrifugal force. when the spear was whipped they could not stop it from leaving the tube. so the concept of lengthening and shortening must be a battlefield concept and not a temple practice. Several weeks later the older brother brought another article explaining the nonviability of the weapon concieved in that article, the author using it to test people's willingness to try something new based on someone else's 'said-so-experience' or merely to experiment. in another explanation the author said it was mainly to test magazine reader's gullibility. Same Article?

successful study of anything from a book takes diligence. can most people learn to plot the orbit of the moon around the earth as the earth orbits the sun? sure, but how long will it take? does the student have the potential for that kind of expression? for the most part, martial arts and mathematics and music are all memorization. application is where things like critical thinking and understanding of the studied content come into play: some people have the ability to apply thier learning, others do not. its like performance arts in high school: people that are affraid to perform music or language or mathemetics will never become good at it mainly because they are affraid of failure -or worse- success. for most people failure in certain areas creates a kind of comfort zone that reinforces their normal areas of comfort. We'll use Thaiboxerken (only one of several others here) as an example. although he says he'll keep his mind open for any possible insite, he so detests qi that he martials others to support him by brow-beating those that don't. having never tried to utilize its concepts he says they'll never work. not having the comfort to accept it as a possibility he refuses opportunities to give it a try. Yet he'd probably sign up for a differential equations class in a heart beat because although he can't see the mathematical equations he can speak thier language -even understand it- because he has a proclivity to communicate with the universe in that manner, disregaurding all others because he can see its influence in engineering and to some extent the natural world. many people who study internal arts are exactly the opposite. like all martial arts, the more you learn the more it all bleeds together. if qi practice included boulean and (matrix) math then perhaps more externalists would understand. Can You Learn a Difficult Thing From A Book? *PROVE THAT YOU CAN*

successful study of anything from a book takes diligence. can most people learn to plot the orbit of the moon around the earth as the earth orbits the sun? sure, but how long will it take? does the student have the potential for that kind of expression? for the most part, martial arts and mathematics and music are all memorization. application is where things like critical thinking and understanding of the studied content come into play: some people have the ability to apply thier learning, others do not. its like performance arts in high school: people that are affraid to perform music or language or mathemetics will never become good at it mainly because they are affraid of failure -or worse- success. for most people failure in certain areas creates a kind of comfort zone that reinforces their normal areas of comfort. We'll use Thaiboxerken (only one of several others here) as an example. he so detests qi that he martials others to support him by brow-beating those that don't. having never tried to utilize its concepts he says they'll never work. not having the comfort to accept it as a possibility he refuses opportunities to give it a try. Yet he'd probably sign up for a differential equations class in a heart beat because although he can't see the mathematical equations he can speak thier language -even understand it- because he has a proclivity to communicate with the universe in that manner, disregaurding all others because he can see its influence in engineering and to some extent the natural world. many people who study internal arts are exactly the opposite. like all martial arts, the more you learn the more it all bleeds together. if qi practice included beoolian and (matrix) math then perhaps more externalists would understand. Can You Learn a Difficult Thing From A Book? *PROVE THAT YOU CAN*

You're not suggesting they can control the time of death are you? Seems to me that if you can rupture an artery or major vein then slow death can occur and seem like magic. like that strike to the leg. the master broke the leg and crushed the circulatory system in the area. it became infected by a natural staph already in the student's body or he bled out and he croaked.

7 feet seems to be the functional length limit for chinese styles. try using an 11 foot weapon with speed up close. it probably could be done, but why use a cumbersome thing that's good moderate at a distance when up close and personal is where you need it? most pole weapons are also this length. (Pu Dao, Kwong Dao, long staff, Dragon Head Spear, double moon blade spear, ect.) there are also several periods in Chinese history in which weapon length was curtailed, thus the ringed swords. Pole arms probably faced some sort of restriction, too. find a Hung Fot practicioner. There's one in San Jose, CA and another in Bethesda, MD and another in Chile. they're a mostly weapons style that left the Shaolin temple in the 16 or 1700's.

do you mean daily living rituals? or general overall being? or earning a living? there's probably a lot of information you're not looking for that could be a plausible answer to your question. if you're looking for a syncretic point of view, or rather one that is homogenized from the two go to your nearest china town and find a community center. take a tape recorder and conduct impromptu interviews. remember: they all came here for a reason. many were born here and haven't left thier cultural identity for the larger american society. and in that question (assimilation) you will discover that philosophy is very much tied to thier nationality of origin. even chinese, korean and viet people born here will have different philosophies than thier parents and grandparents due to thier degree of enculturation. I know a really old guy who has lived in the states for thirty years but still won't learn english. there's a book about the history of oriental philosophy, its basically out of print but you can still order used copies: A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy by Wing Tsit Chan. 1963 Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01964-9.

there's a Long Pai sifu in arlington. he probably knows a little bagua and xing-yi as well, but i don't know for certain.

some of his symptoms resembled 'drop the bomb' and 'burn the town's ancestors'.

indeed, he exemplifies it.

AngelaG: have you ever noticed your opponent get a sudden case of explosive diarhea when you stomp and link gb41 to water and wood? not to mention fallen arches!

Rotten Head Fok, AngelaG, Sansori Te: there is a footwork pattern that is based on a four or five petaled plum flower known as "Plum Flower Footwork". this is kind of like 'Shaolin hopscotch and musical chairs' combined but is primarily for developing a sense of movement around an opponent while kicking. five elements qiqong practice is also associated with the exercise. to make a plum flower footpad: Clear a large area. make a center spot. two steps away mark a second spot. from the second spot place a third and fourth one step out and forty-five to sixty degrees out from the center line from point a to point b. the angle should be symetrical and 45 degrees for a five petal, 60 degrees for four petal. stand on either the third or fourth points facing inward towards the other point and arc your foot from point b along the ground making a line. do this from the opposite point as well. the place where the two lines intersect furthest from point A (origin) is the last point in the petal. Mark it. do this three more times each at a ninty degree pivot from the previous petal from point A. this is a basic plum flower. use it to practice moving in stances, twisting, kicking and balance. although it may feel natural to use your hands to counter-balance your sweeping or wide angled kicks -don't. sometimes, Shaolin monks would tie thier hands behind thier back to get more out of this training. it takes dedication. I installed one for chan back in 1990, but they don't even use it. sometimes this is called "square dancing". the five elements i refer to is the five elements from Hsing-I/Xing-Yi and Hung Gar. it is principle of movement and technique augmentation. you can get videos of these sets.

are you sure it itsn't "wu dje" which would be something like 'attitude virtue' or 'ones's own mindfulness' or even 'right frame of mind' or 'correct perspective'. Speed, Power, Strength, Precision. there are actually seven attributes. Four of which must be honed, three are as virtues. "there are seven things that make God proud, three are your outlook four are your garments:" (from the Wisdom of Sirach)

I have some of wong's qi books. they're rather exhaustive in thier description of "how to". he'll probably tell you the secret is qi and buy some more indeapth qi books. but yeah, he's a legitimate qiqong sifu.