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RE: My other passion KUNG FOOO!!!! (in reply to henrym3483)
hey henry, liking the videos, and the other ones on youtube.. you still goin to classes?? i remember it being hard to find a kung fu instructor round here, must be full of 'em in southern ireland eh!!
RE: My other passion KUNG FOOO!!!! (in reply to henrym3483)
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xinyi liuhe is the father of xing yi quan, plus i think in xin yi there are alot more varied animal forms. did you do monkey squating, i was shown the exercise and it really works the back and shoulders hard.
Xinyi liuhe (I was told) is older than wuxing xingyi, but as far as any direct connection is concerned - as my professor friend would say - "these things are hard to verify". But the two systems can be combined nicely. Xinyi liuhe has 10 basic animals and each of them has three main variations, moving up, down, and horizontal. And there are other movements that aren't any particular animals. I didn't learn a lot of it, but it was really nice. I don't know about 'monkey squatting' as a separate exercise, but there's some monkey stuff in the form and pretty well everything works the back and shoulders hard, never mind the legs!
RE: My other passion KUNG FOOO!!!! (in reply to Ailsa)
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Nice clips - I was doing Taijutsu until I did a spectacularly high kick and pulled a muscle in my back! Now am reduced to watching Michelle Yeoh films.
Well high kicks are only good for films. No long-term damage, I hope?
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But my son still goes and it really has helped him in all sorts of ways - given him confidence and discipline, helped with concentration. And I really like how much emphasis they place on respect.
Yes, that's the good stuff.
You might be interested in possible connections between martial arts and dance... I wouldn't make too much of it, but I think you can see some ancestral connection in Bharata Natyam for example. In Indonesia there are many different styles of pencak silat, in some of them they do an improvised performance to music - here's a good example:
And this one is more obviously on the dance end of the spectrum - the gents in their Saturday best wouldn't want to roll around in the mud!
There's also a dance from Sunda (West Java) which incorporated some silat movements, but in recent years the style of dancing is much softer and more frilly so it doesn't show as much. But some of the arm movements are derived from parrying, locking/unlocking movements etc.
RE: My other passion KUNG FOOO!!!! (in reply to Stu)
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he spent a month or so with Shaolin monks in china practicing kung fu harnessing his Qi, working with the monks etc, really was quite moving when he suddenly "got it" after weeks of being frustated and over thinking about everything the "penny dropped" and he understood.
He's lucky it only took a few weeks! Sounds like an interesting film. I'm sure we've all had similar experiences - to varying degrees of profundity - while learning guitar, dance, or whatever.
My teacher of Chen-style taijiquan and xinyiquan was very traditional, it was "do this - follow me" without any of the detailed explanation that us gwailos are accustomed to getting. At the end of the first several classes I often felt rather uncertain about what and how I was to practise, and he would say "Go home and try to figure out!"
At first it was exasperating but in the long run it worked well (which is why they've done it this way for ages); no amount of potentially distracting explanation can help you "get the feeling" which can only come through making the effort over a period of time.
RE: My other passion KUNG FOOO!!!! (in reply to henrym3483)
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were we separated at birth?
...and by about twenty years. LOL!
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im currently continuing my studies in chen taiji .....learning the long form
Great! Chen style is really nice, and it goes well with the other stuff- it teaches you how to relax and move, and the xin(g)yi gives you the applications. Long form is good. Thanks for the vid of the condensed one, sorry I don't have any in return. [edit: but here's a picture of my teacher setting a good example in a demo]. Just one thing - you'd better start practising lower, then it won't be such a shock when you have to put yer bum on the ground about halfway through! But I'm sure you know about that.
Once that's all under your belt, you can do Sun style...
cheers Steve
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