Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by T: <B> Nothing against intellectual study, I do an awful lot of it actually, but I do not agree that reading about taiji will give you t...

So in a sense 虚灵顶劲，气沉丹田。 is a kind of 'coded' expression, which is really talking about stretching one end of the spine upward and the other downward.

Yes, I think you have a good point about Yang Chengfu distinguishing breathing and qi. Oddly, in practice, 'sinking qi to the dantian' seems to have the force of the mythical animals and so on in so many of the form names: more of an image to suggest the overall picture than some steps to be literal...

I agree with Dave about the xuling part being Up versus qi chen sinking or going down. When Yang Zhenduo explains this I don't think I have ever heard him say anything about qi. He always talks about the head rising and the lower spine pulling downward, stretching and lengthening the spine.

Xie Bingcan uses the term dingjing in a somewhat different context, where he is talking about a sort of strong, fixed oppositional force. I am not certain if that is the same ding3, but I think it is. So the flavor I get out of this is dingjing as an active upward lifting jing or force. ding shang q...

Chen Weiming, Zheng Manqing are some more examples. Frankly shugendla, all you are revealing here is an anti-intellectual bias of your own.

...my preference is to study with a teacher who can show/teach rather than one who is an "intellectual"'. Why does it have to be either/or? Why can't a teacher be an intellectual and also be able to show/teach? You keep suggesting the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Nor is one pr...

I dislike judging other people's supposed taiji practice level or generalizing about different groups of taiji practitioners. It's a disguised form of boasting, usually. Us and Them. No need to divide like that. Many who post here, though quiet about it, have paid some dues practicing and have put i...

Yeah I think maybe you are right, Louis, line 5 refers back to the initial notion of taiji, and it is the 'principle' referred to by li in line 5. The principle of the two polar opposites which cling and move away is here said to explain everything, all the various changes and positions in the art. ...

I actually do make pretty good sense out of Yuri's interpretation, punctuated thus: 5. 虽变化万端，而理为一贯: 6. 由招熟而渐悟懂劲，由懂劲而阶及神明。 7. 然非用力日久，不能豁然贯通焉。 (roughly) Although the permutations are infinite, yet the principle makes of them a single thread: from knowing the postures well to gradually awakening to und...

Last few lines of this first section: 4. 动急则急应，动缓则缓随。 5. 虽变化万端，而理为一贯。 6. 由招熟而渐悟懂劲，由懂劲而阶及神明。 7. 然非用力日久，不能豁然贯通焉。 He moves fast I respond quickly, He moves slowly I follow slowly. Although the permutations are infinite, yet they are arranged into a single thread. I take 理 li here as in 理髮 'arranging ha...

In Lao Tzu, I think, it has the saying
wu4ji2bi4fan2 'when things go to one extreme, they turn around and go the other way'.

[This message has been edited by JerryKarin (edited 09-02-2008).]

OK well we've flogged that to death now. I think the next few lines are easier.

Let me give an example of an idiomatic use of zou in modern Chinese. If you are playing instruments together and one person loses the thread and stops playing, he is said to zoudiao . We would say in our own idiom that he got lost, or perhaps that he 'wandered off', the last I think being preferable...

I think the zou/nian dichotomy is something like the colloquial terms 'bugging out' and 'sticking like glue'.