A warrior can cut through crap and touch another's
tenderness,
the part that loves children, feels pain, and would rather be
friends.
To do so takes power.
If one's actions are hollow, lacking
substance, this is easily detected and resented.
A warrior walks his talk.
We have to be in touch with the part of us that loves children,
feels pain, and would rather be friends.
It is not to our advantage to go around looking
for enemies to defeat.
(Ron Sieh)
Cross-training
Karate, aikido and wing chun students commonly take up tai chi as
a means of
supplementing their existing practice.
Hard-style martial artists have been doing this in China for many years.
Tai chi,
qigong and
neigong are used to cultivate
internal strength.
Rooting,
groundpath and
sensitivity can all be
developed through the study of the internal arts.
But only to a certain
point.
Superficial understanding
External martial artists can only ever attain
a superficial grasp of tai chi because their body usage
and habits of muscular tension hamper the
tai chi immensely.
Tai chi can only be truly understood by someone who is willing to
let go.
Cross-training will only work to a certain extent.
If you want to gain the
real skills of tai chi, you will need to
drop your external art altogether.
Internal strength
Quite a
few people have produced videos/DVD's demonstrating how it is possible to
add an internal component to your training.
Mike
Sigman teaches neigong bodywork principles on DVD.
Adding some 'internal strength' is not necessarily the same thing as learning
tai chi as a martial art.
Health-only
An external martial artist can gain a considerable sense of tai chi by training
the
health-only syllabus.
This reduces the potential training conflicts.
It puts the focus upon internal strength rather than upon learning the entire
curriculum.
Blind to the obvious?
Martial artists are often reluctant to drop an existing system
when they commence tai chi.
Yet, if your existing art is 'complete', why are you taking tai chi
lessons in the first place?
Your very presence in the class speaks the
truth. Something is
missing from your existing system.
Now see the
situation from a different
perspective: a tai chi student would never attend a kickboxing, karate or wing chun
class.
What possible value would it have?
In what way could it conceivably improve their tai chi?
The tai chi way
Tai chi encourages freedom of movement. It also trains
body habits.
You are learning to use the body in a certain
way.
If anything you train conflicts with your tai chi, it will prevent the tai chi
from working correctly.
Different styles
You may be learning
more than one style/approach of tai chi, and
find that these conflict.
Students with conflictive training tend to find that one teacher asks them to
practice an exercise one way, whilst their second teacher asks for it to be done
a different way.
This can be
confusing - physically and mentally - and can
also potentially lead to injury.
Two teachers?
It can be frustrating for a teacher if you are also training with another
teacher.
Many teachers will not instruct a student unless the student is fully committed to one
class and one class only.
If your eyes are looking in different directions, you may miss what is right in
front of you.
One step forward, one step back
If one style of training is seeking to teach a certain approach, then it will
work best when unimpeded.
Practicing contradictory methods means that you will not necessarily make much
progress.
This is especially evident in students who are
tense.
Unwilling to drop their existing habits, they flounder in the shallow end of the
syllabus.
Page created 4 March 2000