Animal Styles

[luizheli]

Hello,

 

Kung Fu is a wonderful martial art . Some times I think that my Sifus and Instructors wants only to gain money. But they needs to survive. And they love Kung Fu.

 

Forgive me my bad english. My original language is portuguese.

 

Luiz

[Iron Arahat]

http://www.shaolin.com.au/animal.html

 

I found this site to be very informative.

 

I'm personally a little skeptical about this site, especially when I found the colour sash videos, and instructors tapes. Some of the information is good, alot of the animal infomation (how to put this politically correct) is marketing and flash appealing to the exotic side of CMA.

 

Animals & Elements has alot more to do with Chinese Horoscopes, that martial arts. You see some elemental "philosophy" in Hung Gar.

 

In reality if you focus on animal styes, you loose the essence of the kung fu. People often "mimic" animals when they learn a style and lose the essense of the kung fu itself. When I teach an animal style I never tell a student what he is learning, until much later, as not to influence his mind when training, ie. acting like a monkey.

 

Learn the basics, forget about animal styles until later.

[Neil]

From what has been said it seems to say that in Kung Fu the most important thing was to 'become the animal'. To act like him, train like him, fight like him, become him. Maybe thats why that website gave an article on each animal 'In Life' to show which personallity goes with which animal. Persoanlly I think this animal styles can get a big cheesy if over characterized. Maybe they should be kept purley as body type as opposed to thinking and acting like an animal but hell I don't know and I am in certainly noi position to argue since I have been only studying and training these animal styles for a few months.

[Iron Arahat]

in Kung Fu the most important thing was to 'become the animal'. To act like him, train like him, fight like him, become him....I don't know and I am in certainly noi position to argue since I have been only studying and training these animal styles for a few months

 

I'm just curious what style/system do you study, and what animal styles have you been training for a few months.

 

"Becoming the Animal" is exactly what I do not want my students to do. Too often you see prectitioners overact. Train like him? I don't think anyone would train like a monkey, groom their friends, eat lice, and swing in trees all day long. Nor would would we train like a dragon, which is how exactly I'm not sure as they are a fictional being.

 

It is true that many Chinese martial arts emulate animal movements or styles, and yes they are condusive to body types (not saying that you have to be a certain way to learn, anyone can learn any style), they blend better with people.

 

I am just saying not to be "trapped" (pun intended). Most systems (assuming that they are complete, and not an animal based system) will not see a student learn animal styles for 1 maybe 2 years. Generally, it takes my students 2 years before we even look at animal systems.

 

I have people come to me and ask, I want to learn "tiger" or "dragon" or "snake". People are generally not interested when they find out about what kind of commitment. People are very attracted to the "mystical" and "exotic" philosophy of the animal styles, quite often more than the training itself, as it is extremely hard work.

 

THe sad thing is that many martial arts schools have added "animals" or teach "animal styles" because they are t they see as popular, and want to attract more students. For example a local TKD instructor talked about animal styles in TKD to the local newspaper, and talked about Bruce Lee, and how his association was named after Bruce Lee the TKD practitioner (scary but true). To probably everyone here this would raise alarm bells because they have greater knowledge on the subject than 'Joe Public'. However, very few people have the same understanding of animal systems, and can easily be misled (I'm not saying that I am by any stretch I know everything, but am well versed within a tradition style with a well known and established lineage).

[Kyle-san]

A point I'd like to make about the addition of animals to a style is it's not always for popularity sake. The Aiki Jujitsu dojo I go to has adapted some animals into the style (Japanese style using Chinese techniques) and tends to use them quite effectively. There's no focus on completely becoming the animal, but rather visualizing how they would fight.

 

When being taught, say, a tiger technique we're just informed of what it is and how to do it, not to become it. Anyway, that site makes me rather skeptical.

[Neil]

No offence intended but that is just what I have read, not what I think. Since I started training at my Goju club we have been doing some Tiger but mostly White Crane kata, but these past 3 months we have been doing a a lot more White Crane. My teacher does a lot of White Crane as that is one of the animal styles that has influenced Goju Ry karate Jutsu. The other animal which has influenced Goju is the Tiger although we havew only done a few opf their katas. I can remember the names of some of the katas. One of them was pronounced Roo-Ki-Shoo, The other was pronounced Zan-Za-roo (I don't know how theyr spelt). I cant remember the Tiger ones since for some reasen we don't do a lot of them. We do White Crane and Tiger katas to see how are Martial Art of Goju came about. My teacher sais it is important to study history to see where we are going into the future.

[Kyle-san]

My teacher sais it is important to study history to see where we are going into the future.

 

That's a fairly common ideal, but there's a difference between studying history and understanding it.

[Iron Arahat]

My teacher sais it is important to study history to see where we are going into the future.

 

That's a fairly common ideal, but there's a difference between studying history and understanding it.

 

You can't put it any better than that.

 

Niel sounds like you are just doing karate kata in your class. Yes there may be a Chinese influence, but they are very different. Shorin Ryu claims a direct link to shaolin, but it is very different from Shaolin Kung Fu. However you can see the influence; however, so slight.

[luizheli]

Será que posso me comunicar em português? Este é um assunto que gosto muito e meu inglês é péssimo para dizer o mínimo.

[Iron Arahat]

Eu não sou certo se você puder compreender meu português. Seu inglês pode ser nao bom, mas você rirá provavelmente quando você lê este, porque minha tradução não é provavelmente boa. Que era sua pergunta?