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Showing posts from January, 2009

Great Cultural Revolution's Role in Bad Kung Fu

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A tiny history lesson is neccessary to understand the dilution and misinterpretation of kung fu. When the Great Cultural revolution occurred in China Mao Zi Dong tried to bring all the people to the same level which meant that rich, successful and educated people had to be removed from the equation. At this time most of the doctors, lawyers, entertainers, teachers and martial artist were killed off if they couldn't escape. This ensured that no one would be able to oppose Mao during this new regime change. Unfortunately this meant that all the martial artist teachers at this time were killed or they had to flee. Many of the traditional arts fled to Taiwan, Hong Kong or other areas in China and taught in secret. Martial artists have always been looked at as a strange group of individuals even in China. It wasn't until Bruce Lee took the world by storm and showed a more beautiful part of the arts that China began to support kung fu as a tradional part of Chinese culture. When Bruc

WU WEI 无为

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In all of the martial arts styles there is one element that the masters speak of that is universal. Becoming like water. I know that it seems like a simple enough idea of learning how to flow from one movement to the next, interacting with your opponent in the forms of waves and crashes while defensively dispersing or redirecting energy. This is called Wu Wei or formlessness. How is it achieved? In modern terms you can think of it as muscle memory of the entire body. Practicing a simple movement over and over allows your muscle memory to direct the movement so that it is no longer thought but reaction that leads your attacks. To do that with the entire style means that you have to create a schedule, a training regiment that incoorporates the most vital parts of the style being the way of the legs 步法,the way of the body身法,and the way of the hands 手法. These concepts especially in Bagua are designed to simplify the movements into one idea. The movements themselves are not important, but o