Martial arts are great for self-discipline, and red ray bonding with your body and personal power. For some they can be helpful with lower three chakras, cultivating will, and more. I took Tae Kwon Do as a kid and was interested in swords a lot in my child and teen years. Hobbies in general are good to have, as is an understanding an appreciation of history. In my teen years I learned what real swords VS stainless wall ornaments were, and that website Sword Buyer's Guide was the main source I learned from. I'd second it as the best source out there for sword info, for beginners and the more knowledgeable alike.
http://www.atar.com/
This guy has like a doctorate in metallurgy and quite and impressive set of skills.
I've always been interested in swordplay. Bleedover from other lifetimes methinks
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I'm less interested in external martial arts these days and more interested in internal styles. I find the Baguazhang forms that use the Da Dao broadsword quite elegant. Flowing through the form and maintaining a state of dynamic balance while swinging a huge sword around is pretty cool
(04-20-2021, 02:36 PM)Black Dragon Wrote: [ -> ]Martial arts are great for self-discipline, and red ray bonding with your body and personal power. For some they can be helpful with lower three chakras, cultivating will, and more. I took Tae Kwon Do as a kid and was interested in swords a lot in my child and teen years.
All martial arts, perhaps excepting some Westernized versions, is external learning up until black belt (or whatever equivalent, some traditions it is just when the teacher says you're ready) where the basic techniques are mastered. After black belt, the learning is internal. So as you go up in degrees of black belt, your internalized understanding of how you interact with your environment, others, self, and energy deepens.
I like the nandao.
I have obtained 2 levels in internal neijia systems and 1 level in weijia external systems.
(04-20-2021, 03:23 PM)Spaced Wrote: [ -> ]I've always been interested in swordplay. Bleedover from other lifetimes methinks .
I'm less interested in external martial arts these days and more interested in internal styles. I find the Baguazhang forms that use the Da Dao broadsword quite elegant. Flowing through the form and maintaining a state of dynamic balance while swinging a huge sword around is pretty cool
The Da Dao is a good looking blade, and looks like it would handle good. It is one of my favorite looking types out there off the top of my head. It is a nice balance of elegance and sheer, raw power. When I first learned the difference between a stainless display piece and a real sword, my main interest was in longswords/hand and a half swords and larger European two handers with side interest in katanas and middle eastern swords. My interest is almost certainly tied to some harsh lifetimes in the age of Aries and maybe into the middle ages and beyond. I bought one longsword when I was 18 and couldn't get a good edge or good cut, wasn't the best model to buy in hindsight. Part of it is was skill and size of the area I had to cut in.
I've been a lot less interested in all that for a while, recently wanted to clean up and sharpen a couple really nice real hand forged daggers I got cheap or free as a young adult. One is an Atar piece. Skinny little thing, but the flick of an untrained wrist and it goes through four water bottles without knocking over the bottoms with a newb grade edge. That's the cut and it's slightly more of a thrusting weapon. The idea of internal martial arts and peaceful and positive non-destructive uses for these historical types of weapons is really appealing and gives a new appreciation when there's somewhat of an ugliness tied to their historic 3d usage. It was an interesting experience for a while and made good stories, but now obviously 4d positive will be something completely different.
The more physical martial arts are good for grounding and lower chakras. This includes target cutting and stuff, even sparring with others hand to hand with pads or blunted weapons. The more internal and ceremonial ones can indeed be used in positive and peaceful higher workings. I have not done those but find the idea interesting.
(04-20-2021, 04:35 PM)Ymarsakar Wrote: [ -> ]I use Japanese katanas to cut tree branches.
I have this monstrous horse cutter, that is really good for cutting through the jungle of summer.
https://sbg-sword-store.sword-buyers-gui...ct854.html
Now that's truly an impressive blade, including the price tag. A sword that large and that tough that's well made and hand forged, $200 is almost too good to be true. Usually the ones I see at that price, even the better quality, are ground and not hand forged in anything close to a traditional manner. A lot of cold steel weapons for example. They are well made( a bit overbuilt even, good for zombies) functionally, and styled and designed well, but they are made in a rather modern industrial manner. That's the real kicker here with that sword at $200 is the forged blade.
That first video you linked shows a very good depiction of European Long Sword and Hand and a Half styles from the high middle ages(1300's-1400's). I believe they are showing the Italian style. The German and Italian schools for this type of weapon were similar but unique, and they were the two most recognized for perfecting the longsword/bastard sword/hand and a half fighting techniques. Quite detailed manuals survive to this day from those times, and that's pages of them they are showing as they spar in the vid.
Ryujin and Sam Sung are exceptional forges operating in China. My first sword 1045 steel, no edge, athame was from Musashi brands, which was also Sam Sung. They have only improved their efficiency ratios since. It was priced at 50 USD in 2014 something.
The polish job they do is superior to Cheness, which has double the price due to the 9260 silicon spring steel and skilled tempering process.
Apocalypse Swords by Gus Trim is also another interesting designer and smith.
I have never used a Cold Steel blade, but they are made for the European upper body strength and tend to be blade heavy and easier to leverage at the tip. Sorta like a mace. Could use a lot of lightening. Cheness blades are the same way. Sam Sung's blades are designed to be more for how light it would have been to save on metal costs.
Besides the SBG store itself, this website is one of the most trusted and has the best deals, and a huge selection. It's fun even just to look at all these. They have almost every type of blade imaginable. Almost. Wish somebody made a reasonably priced Estoc though. I feel that would be and interesting handling blade.
https://www.kultofathena.com/
What's interesting is that European martial arts and sword-fighting actually doesn't have a lot of continuity to it, in the sense of transmission. A lot of these manuals that are being used today are being used in the form of re-creation and reinvention, since there haven't been continuous lines of transmission so there is a great deal of interpretation that takes place. That's different from a lot of Eastern schools that do have continuity of transmission, with the same techniques being passed down for hundreds of years from master to pupil.
The transmission was broken when gun powder came out and the industrial revolution changed the economic condition for families. Thus swordmasters and schools no longer had heirs.
Asia had the same issue, but they were too beholden to tradition and genetic line, to ignore the ancestral value.
In general, the HEMA re application of the principles of combat, is a good thing.
In Eastern lineages, a lot of the techniques have lost their meaning, because they were preserved as they were, sorta like ancient scriptures. After enough time has passed, nobody even remembers what it was for. This is seen in Okinawan Karate when it came to Japan and then exported to South Korea as Tae Kwon Do. The ancient South Korean TKD was something else entire.y
I have a textbook by Choi Hong Hi who was the guy who fused Oh Do Kwan Karate with Taekkyon (and I'm sure some of his own ideas) to coin "Taekwon-Do". He's pretty controversial for a number of reasons but a big thing seems to be that his techniques aren't really rooted in traditional Korean martial arts like Tang Soo Do as you say, and his shmoozing with the North, the South Koreans weren't fond of that.
Both Japan and South Korea somehow lost a lot of their martial lineages in the war. For various different reasons.
So when they imported in Okinawan karate, people tried to resurrect their homeland styles using these teachers because Okinawan karate had impressive physical conditioning and weaponless methods that impressed people that felt this was the real power.
This was when the color belt system was generated in Japan, because one Okinawan teacher teaching a class of 100-200 Japanese, needed a way to sort the students into certain categories. And color coordination was the simplest.
Taekkyon would be the traditional Northern/long range kicking style for Korea. That got lost somehow.
There has been some work by people who learned under Japanese or Okinawan instructors, here in the US, in attempting to "reconstruct" what got lost or misremembered in the Japanese katas. The Katas had the movements, but the application break downs got misplaced or just forgotten because Okinawan instructors just did not know how to teach 200 students a day. They were used to like 1-9, total, for a life time.
Anyways, when I was learning martial arts, I got to reading questions on Yahoo Answers and used it as a spring board to do open source research on these topics for about 1-2 years. I remember this stuff because I was reverse engineering human hand to hand techniques at the time, and integrating them into my own personal art and path. I met a few people at Y Answers who knew the subject and could teach. I obtained some valuable experience and knowledge, but over all, almost all of them did not know how to teach these principles via online videos. They were too old school and needed physical contact methods. Very inefficient and obsolete to my eyes. It was a struggle between utilizing and understanding my intuition vs my lack of experience compared to all these others. By answering questions there, I also developed my polarization more.
I was not looking to memorize human techniques and movements. What I was interested in was the internal energy circulation methods, the principles and physics.
Internal and external martial arts are definitely two sides to a coin, and of course you will get slightly different conceptions based on the philosophy of the body any system stems from.
Of course, martial arts is always evolving out of the needs and the cultural attitudes it arises in. However, as you say, the further things get from their source, usually the less their meaning resembles the original. Yet, in a way, I feel like this continuous "reinterpretation" is part of how the arts evolve.
In my experience, there are lots of different kinds of students and like spiritual philosophies I think the existence of many different styles and approaches is reflective of that natural differentiation of need. I, personally, learn physical things much more effectively by actually doing them. There are push/pull techniques, in my opinion, which will be limited by solo practice.
The system I mostly work with now is Wing Chun, which has three forms (I was moving on to the second but everything has been disrupted of course lol), but they are not considered to be complete movements, rather combinations of many small movements which are then utilized in an organic manner. I like what one of my teachers said, you don't "do wing chun", rather, "wing chun happens". The movements themselves and the flow of energy are tied together since energy moves according to geometry, so proper form is based on efficient geometries. This is a big thing in Systema too. However, it is also very loose, it's not about creating a rigid structure, but more like water is shifting from form to form.
However, whereas Systema training involves a good deal of intellectual breakdown of these principles, Wing Chun is much more intuitive and the training doesn't emphasize "knowing" so much as "doing". (At least, not in the lineage I've learned.)
So in the old days, you had what you had locally. It wasn't really an option for most people to learn some obscure martial art from halfway across the world. What's really amazing nowadays is the sheer access of knowing. People have options and can gravitate towards those styles which reflect their own way of learning and values, and fuse them together. I think it's interesting how the past couple thousands of years of differentiation have now resulted in a modern era of possibility and synthesis.
I just push on a wall and that is my Tai Chi way haha. I learned a lot from Jin Young's Art of Pressure fighting. He used to be on Youtube as China boxer but started his own website/service income thing.
He started Wing Chun path because he met Hawkings Cheung and Jin as a young MMA competitor, couldn't do anything to this 105 pound old man. Hawkings Cheung is the well known childhood friend and RIVAL of Bruce Lee.
If a wall is all you've got, then use it! Martial arts is all about what is useful.
That sounds about right. There is this little old guy, maybe 5'4, who has sometimes attended the class and one time the senior teacher was telling me that there aren't very many people he'd never want to be really hit by, but he's at the top of the list. One time this bigger young guy challenged him to chi sao, within three moves he struck him in the ribs with a palm, not even full on since he was obviously holding back, but absolutely winded the guy. By the end of the class the guy wasn't feeling so good and later on got x-rays and found he had a couple broken ribs.
In the history of wing chun the story goes that it is named after a woman, some say princess, who was set to wed this military general or warlord. However she didn't love him and didn't want to marry him so she ran away from the city. It's said she encountered one of the Five Elders, Ng Mui who taught her this fighting style specifically based on the fact that she was smaller and less physically powerful than the general. She used this to defeat him in combat and reject the marriage.
I am fortunate that my sifu decided to settle here and is willing to teach, it is from the Ip Man lineage. His student Leung Sheung taught one Paul Lam, who taught my sifu, Bob Stevenson.
Ah martial arts enthusiasts, it's nice to see that we share the same passions! I always dreamed of going 1 year for training in a Shaolin temple, what an experience it must be.
Rather than martial arts, I am cultivating the divine art now.
Analyzing (poll style) most of the instructors/answerers on Yahoo answers in 2008-10 ish, pretty much 90-95% were 3rd density capped. Meaning, they could not break through into the realm of the heart, the invisible chi. They could circulate it internally, using mechanics, technique, and external movements, but the internal circulation was not understood. This internal circulation of chi, was only at the lower dantien, the lower 3 chakras. It did not connect to the heart, and definitely did not boost the psychic upper dantien, the throat/indigo/crown chakras. It was quite difficult learning about all dantiens, chakra centers, and not being able to communicate or make effective use of other people's perspectives and experiences. First I had to "translate" a lot of concepts. A lot of what I said, would have sounded inane or actually insane or non practical, to most of the people there. They got used to it eventually and stopped getting triggered, but only because one of the more respected people there began to notice I had some deeper knowledge of bio mechanics and was not treating me as a clown. Thus the rest of the crowd sort of followed in, like a herd wolf pack. The majority did not understand me or agree with my methods of "teaching" online, as I focused more on principles and less on practicing a physical movement that was meaningless 1000 times first in a dojo, but I started gaining a "reputation" heh.
There were examples of secret healing societies that utilized these arts, such as the BBC once recorded, but they are mostly mystical fog to those practicing physical refinement and have not graduated the test to the next grade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuW4UfaC-l8
The Martial Man does on site interviews and voyages, sorta like a Mugya Shugyo. So Star one, you can still get a hint of the experience even if you can't get to a Shaolin temple ; )
EDIT 1 add
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF6KSsrFyoA
Well most martial arts don't make a study of meridian system or the dantien, those are typically considered "mystical" and associated with either TCM, qi gong or Tai Chi. This knowledge was certainly never a regular part of european martial arts either, although the knowledge and understanding of the circulation was there in the shadows of secret societies.
"Chinese internal alchemy" is an interesting study, there are quite a few varying conceptions, just like with martial arts schools there are plenty of different internal systems and they name parts of the energetic system in various ways. Personally, I am not too concerned with cataloguing nowadays.
I learned more from qi gong and reiki about energy circulation than from any martial art I've been interested in, but nothing beats actual work with energy.
(04-22-2021, 02:12 AM)STAR-ONE Wrote: [ -> ]Ah martial arts enthusiasts, it's nice to see that we share the same passions! I always dreamed of going 1 year for training in a Shaolin temple, what an experience it must be.
I trained with some Shaolin monks. They were indeed focused and extremely disciplined. You can see videos (I refer to some old videos rather than recent ones on the Internet, but maybe you can find good recent stuff), and follow some of their basic exercises such as hanging upside down and transferring water from one container to another using a small cup. They also did things like dragging bricks with a rope tied to their scrotums, and punching into barrels of sand, and being hit in fragile spots such as throat and genitals with a board. Pretty extreme. The most intense I trained with were karate experts from Japan, who didn't even speak English, and just watching the sword ritual of removing and replacing it was intensely riveting to the point of being downright threatening. But martial arts training goes to any level you want it to—it comes from within—whether you are training at Shaolin or with a local teacher in the states or wherever.
If you find a good martial arts teacher, they will teach the esoteric side, no matter what the specific discipline. For example, my first teacher's discipline was Kajukenbo, a tough, street-fight-style, Hawaiian art, but he also taught that if you learn to hurt you also need to learn to heal—things like that. My second teacher was the one to take me into the internal side very much rooted in traditional Chinese arts.
So why not find a teacher? I came across my first teacher by chance seemingly, but it was meant to be. It began a years-long journey with him and he was like a father to me. My second teacher was the same, and I will always love them both and be deeply grateful for everything they passed on to me.
The thing about martial arts is that it has the potential to awaken a person to the connection between mind, body, and spirit, and the training hones this connection. In addition, it's just fun—hard, but definitely fun.
This kind of interplay between practitioners is really nostalgic. Reminds me of when i did not know a single word of ma vocabulary on yahanswers.
People i work on kept asking me if i did reiki. I did not but they felt a heat energy from my hands, without touching their skin.
I expended a significant training time punching out candle flames to make my punches faster in high school. I did not realize at the time that it also cleared my arm meridians for healing work.
(04-22-2021, 10:59 AM)Diana Wrote: [ -> ] (04-22-2021, 02:12 AM)STAR-ONE Wrote: [ -> ]Ah martial arts enthusiasts, it's nice to see that we share the same passions! I always dreamed of going 1 year for training in a Shaolin temple, what an experience it must be.
I trained with some Shaolin monks. They were indeed focused and extremely disciplined. You can see videos (I refer to some old videos rather than recent ones on the Internet, but maybe you can find good recent stuff), and follow some of their basic exercises such as hanging upside down and transferring water from one container to another using a small cup. They also did things like dragging bricks with a rope tied to their scrotums, and punching into barrels of sand, and being hit in fragile spots such as throat and genitals with a board. Pretty extreme. But martial arts training goes to any level you want it to—it comes from within—whether you are training at Shaolin or with a local teacher in the states or wherever.
If you find a good martial arts teacher, they will teach the esoteric side, no matter what the specific discipline. For example, my first teacher's discipline was Kajukenbo, a tough, street-fight-style, Hawaiian art, but he also taught that if you learn to hurt you also need to learn to heal—things like that. My second teacher was the one to take me into the internal side very much rooted in traditional Chinese arts.
So why not find a teacher? I came across my first teacher by chance seemingly, but it was meant to be. It began a years-long journey with him and he was like a father to me. My second teacher was the same, and I will always love them both and be deeply grateful for everything they passed on to me.
The thing about martial arts is that it has the potential to awaken a person to the connection between mind, body, and spirit, and the training hones this connection. In addition, it's just fun—hard, but definitely fun.
Interesting, indeed the martial arts lead to a discipline of the body and the mind which is really very instructive on many levels.
I would like in the manner of JCVD in Bloodsport or Kickboxer to have a master in a personal capacity (I am not comfortable learning with others), I prefer to be alone and in this way the learning is better and goes more at the end of the day.
(04-22-2021, 09:21 AM)Aion Wrote: [ -> ]Well most martial arts don't make a study of meridian system or the dantien, those are typically considered "mystical" and associated with either TCM, qi gong or Tai Chi. This knowledge was certainly never a regular part of european martial arts either, although the knowledge and understanding of the circulation was there in the shadows of secret societies.
"Chinese internal alchemy" is an interesting study, there are quite a few varying conceptions, just like with martial arts schools there are plenty of different internal systems and they name parts of the energetic system in various ways. Personally, I am not too concerned with cataloguing nowadays.
I learned more from qi gong and reiki about energy circulation than from any martial art I've been interested in, but nothing beats actual work with energy.
So true !
(04-22-2021, 11:32 AM)STAR-ONE Wrote: [ -> ]Interesting, indeed the martial arts lead to a discipline of the body and the mind which is really very instructive on many levels.
I would like in the manner of JCVD in Bloodsport or Kickboxer to have a master in a personal capacity (I am not comfortable learning with others), I prefer to be alone and in this way the learning is better and goes more at the end of the day.
I love those 2 movies.
You can usually get one-on-one training from any MA teacher. Also, I have been looking out for a good martial arts VR game.
However, just learning good katas is great training. I recommend Tiger and Crane. But having a teacher to explain what the moves mean in terms of self-defense is important. Even Tai Chi is self-defense, so in addition to the body moving chi through the proper body mechanics and the breathing, all the moves are based in self-defense.
You all remember the sword in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon that could slice a porcelain cup in half cleanly?
(04-22-2021, 11:56 AM)Great Central Sun Wrote: [ -> ]You all remember the sword in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon that could slice a porcelain cup in half cleanly?
I think that was a Tai Chi sword.
(04-22-2021, 11:55 AM)Diana Wrote: [ -> ] (04-22-2021, 11:32 AM)STAR-ONE Wrote: [ -> ]Interesting, indeed the martial arts lead to a discipline of the body and the mind which is really very instructive on many levels.
I would like in the manner of JCVD in Bloodsport or Kickboxer to have a master in a personal capacity (I am not comfortable learning with others), I prefer to be alone and in this way the learning is better and goes more at the end of the day.
I love those 2 movies.
You can usually get one-on-one training from any MA teacher. Also, I have been looking out for a good martial arts VR game.
However, just learning good katas is great training. I recommend Tiger and Crane. But having a teacher to explain what the moves mean in terms of self-defense is important. Even Tai Chi is self-defense, so in addition to the body moving chi through the proper body mechanics and the breathing, all the moves are based in self-defense.
Thanks for the tip Diana!