Books on internal part of the (Yang) Taijiquan???

[Louis Swaim]

Thanks, Jeff. I will definitely revisit Shi Ming's book; it's been years since I read it. I agree with your opinion of Cleary's translating skill, but my frustration with his translations (I've read several) has more to do with my scholarly interests. For example, when he refers in Shi Ming's book to "the classic _The Spiritual Mechanism_," I'm pretty sure he means the early medical text, the Ling Shu, but it would help if he gave a brief footnote to explain the source, especially when he's the only person I've seen translate the title that way. In any case, there is some very valuable content in the book.

Re: Ling Shu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_wen

Take care,
Louis

[This message has been edited by Louis Swaim (edited 07-12-2006).]

[Yuri Snisarenko]

To me, Shi Ming was somewhat an eclectic, who emphasized the main aspects of taiji, expressing them in his available writings in quite simple and direct way:

http://bbs.ruc.edu.cn/bbsanc.php?path=%2Fgroups%2FGROUP_7%2FHYtaichi%2Ft heory%2Fqita%2FM.1130679770.U0

Louis, one thing that I have found similar to Wang Yongquan's teaching is the three circles for qi circulation (shoulder, waist, hips-kua). WYQ's writing is on the linked page too. You may compare them. I haven't met the mention of these three circles in the works of Yang Chengfu's followers; so I guess it is unique to that branch (maybe Yang Jianhou's ??). However, as I said, I don't know for sure.


[This message has been edited by Yuri Snisarenko (edited 07-12-2006).]

[Louis Swaim]

Greetings Shugdenla,

Re: “Vey few of modern taijiquan pioneers mention who their teachers were and that is a good thing! Teachers like Shi Ming, it seems (and other older masters) say that the skill of the teacher is in how he lives the arts in comparison to those just wanting to say they studied with a famous teacher and that is as far as the skill they possess.”

Lineage is controversial and tricky. My first taijiquan sifu did not mention his teachers’ names, although I’m fairly certain who some of them were. He spoke of his teachers very respectfully and often traveled back to Hong Kong to pay his respects, but he did not emphasize lineage in his teachings to his own students. That is kind of contrary to martial art traditions, but evidently he had his reasons. He said he wanted to “prune away the dead and dried branches” from traditional martial arts, and emphasized content over everything. He was influenced by Yiquan founder Wang Xiangzai, who was very iconoclastic, and critical of some traditional conventions in martial arts teaching, including the more ritualistic aspects of teacher-student relations.

Take care,
Louis

[oldyangtaijiquan]

I learned about Qi and Jin generation from various TJQ masters, private lessons, seminars, from manuscripts, books, videotapes, and so on. All (useful) that I learned I incorporated in my TJQ practice.
Different sources explain the same things in different ways. Also some methods are very simple and effective while others are very complicated and ineffective. No source that I experienced explained the »internal« part of TJQ enough completely, but I can make a complete knowledge about the internal part of TJQ only with combination of more sources.
In my searching of a complete source (book) about the internal part of TJQ I didn't found yet souch book. Many books have very interesting explanations, but also they are incomplete.

I began to write my own manuscript on the internal part of TJQ I will make my comments (and explanations) on the more important Taijiquan principles and Classics quotes. No book more needed

P.S.: Today I received the book Taijiquan Wuwei: A Natural Process by Kee-Jin Wee (<-Huang Sheng-Shyan <- Cheng Man Ching <- Yang Cheng Fu] and it is one of the best (if not the best) book about the internal part of TJQ. I highly recommend it (temporaly the english version is out of print)!