Posted on 09/28/2012 6:49:57 PM PDT by Solomon8522
Does HuQuan involve any of the internal arts?
Don’t they have that screwy rainwater legislation in one of the other NWern states? I don’t get the logic. Does it involve interfering with the manmade water conveyance channels to CA or something?
Happy shopping!
Worst ever was heading up the Yangtze to Shanghai. It smelled of strong chemicals, more than anything else. Made my eyes water, and my dress whites were ruined with acid rain while there.
Wish I were off to Walmart! HAH! ;o]
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” 1984, Part 3, Chapter 3
Sadly true.
Morning, ‘Face. “My Country versus Me” loaded onto iPod and have three books loaded onto Adobe Digital (”Allah’s Torch,” “Islam Unveiled,” and “Dark Frost.” New authors.).
Tomorrow’s the Mennonite BBQ fundraiser for volunteer FD w/homemade ice cream. Our Cuisinart freezer thingie is no longer working so we’re really looking forward to that.
What’s on your agenda?
” I tell people, if/when the dollar crashed, FORGET precious metals entirely; you can’t eat gold.
GRAIN is the commodity that will be the medium of exchange for all else. If you think the world is going to hit the skids in any severe way, you’d best be figuring out how to silo a couple a three years’ worth of whole grain. It isn’t cheap, now; it’ll be flat-out exorbitant if things really DO get seriously ugly, and precious metals will prove to have been a total waste.”
I agree with you 100%. Most others, I fear, will not.
Nothing on my agenda, today. I may go to bed early, since I didn’t sleep well last night, but that’s OK...I like to lie in bed and read!
I’ve never understood gold as an “end of the world as we know it” expedient. You can’t eat it, put it in your gas tank, or diaper a baby with it. Kudzu is more useful!
” I’ve never understood gold as an “end of the world as we know it” expedient. You can’t eat it, put it in your gas tank, or diaper a baby with it. Kudzu is more useful!”
Common sense trumps “sophisticated financial analysis” every time : )
“Does HuQuan involve any of the internal arts?”
Well, first HuQuan covers a lot of different tiger styles, it simply means “Tiger Fist”, so any art that has tiger emulating movements could be called “HuQuan”.
And HuQuan differs depending on Northern or Southern origins, as well as whether it’s associated with Buddhist or Taoist oriented teachers or temples.
Taoism is a nature religion, and the most ancient forms of kung fu amounted to what you might call animal dances. Remember the American Indians were once Siberians/Orientals, these old animal dances go back to certain shamanic roots, and also Taoist beliefs that a person with physical or emotional illnesses could not only take certain natural medicines, but also perform certain dances to bring his energy back into harmony.
So, when you see a person performing “Taoist” HuQuan, you often see someone who is not just practicing practical movements, but is actually acting like a tiger to the best of his ability. If you see someone practicing “Buddhist” HuQuan, it’s often a person who has taken the practical techniques, added acrobatics and principles from other styles to make it a path to general self mastery rather than pursuing a purely HuQuan path.
What I learned is more a Taoist HuQuan. It is a bit narrower as far as sticking to certain strategies and exemplifying only Tiger movements; it’s simpler, but also deeper, in a manner of speaking. They say if you go to a Buddhist school you’ll be learning techniques the rest of your life, if you go to a Taoist school you can learn all the techniques in a year, but you spend the rest of your life trying to understand what you learned.
As far as internal work, the emphasis is first on reaching a state in sitting meditation that you can easily access a state of maximum relaxation but highest mental alertness at will. They give the example of a hawk riding wind currents so he doesn’t have to move a wing to stay aloft, but is hyperalert and aware because somewhere underneath him, there is a rabbit frozen in it’s position to remain invisible, and the hawk watches everything for the moment there is movement, then he dives. Similarly, a person in deep meditation should be so relaxed, his heart rate and breathing is half normal, but mind so alert that they grab a fly out of the air.
Once you master finding this state sitting, you carry it over to walking. Regular long walks are important training. First, you need to practice walking on the balls of your feet, somewhat “on tiptoe” everywhere you go, and in the beginning this isn’t easy. But mastering this simple thing magnifies your speed and fighting ability like you wouldn’t believe. Take a few pages to get into that.
Walking meditation basically takes the calm mindset sitting at home, and brings it into the active environment, where you move and react and pay attention to people and surroundings. When you walk, put your weight forward on the balls of your feet, relax your whole body so you actually feel like you’ve become at least an inch shorter...and walk on your toes, concentrsting on the swiveling of your hips, legs springy, hips doing “the hula” as you walk down the street. Then start visualizing a tiger walkinging through long grass, as seen by a monkey far above in a tree. The tiger is not only relaxed, his whole back moves just like a snake, he parts the grass, he doesn’t crush. Totally silent, leaves no trace. Then, take that “hula” movement in your hips, and start focusing that twisting undulating action right up your spine, vertebrae by vertebrae, until the twisting action moves joint by joint all the way up to your neck. Don’t be surprised that stiff vertebrae will actually start loosening and popping as you do this, it will happen. Don’t swing your arms too much, let all the torsion happen in your hips and back, hands close to the sides, elbows tucked in as if protecting your ribs, which is a good habit to get into. Practice clenching your hands into tiger claws then releasing as you walk, good grip exercise and a good focus, six steps closing the hands into claws, six steps slowly relaxing to normal, and so on.
Once walking meditation becomes second nature, you realize other benefits. One, you don’t have to be looking around you to know what’s going on around you. If you’re in the zone, a person or an event that disturbs your meditation, automatically draws your attention... so you don’t have to actively pay attention, you just have to stay in the zone...if that makes any sense. Always is a good idea to look both ways before crossing the street, though...LOL.
When you’ve taken passive meditation, sitting, to active meditation, walking, you advance to practical meditation, fighting. Taoist HuQuan does have a few dedicated “chi exercises”, I know of four, there may be more, I don’t know. To me these are basically useful for loosening up and getting my mental/energy/physical balance right quickly, just before a practice, or before going to do anything that I need to quickly prepare myself for. If you’re not put off by a fat man thinking he knows enough kung fu to teach somebody, I might put some of them on YouTube sometime.
Anyway, as I practice them, chi exercises are more in the category of holistic warm ups. The real internal work is in the daily meditations, and using the five element concept during practice of the physical routines.
5 element practice goes like this: Air/Wood are interchangeable, then Fire, then Water, then Earth/Stone, then Void. Here’s how it goes.
Take a simple technique. Block, counterpunch. Simple.
Air/Wood. Symbolized by the Crane. Learning the technique, you do it simply and flowing without force, that’s Air. Once you’re doing it correctly, do it very slowly with great concentration, like a Tai Chi movement, this carves it into your consciousness. That’s Wood.
Next, Fire, symbolized by the leopard. Do the movement as rapidly as possible, training that one move to exhaustion, pain and beyond. Past where it’s a physical effort, and more a test of will.
Water, symbolized by the Snake. Relax from your effort, maybe you don’t feel like working your arms anymore. That’s fine, go to low stance and let all movement come from your legs and hips. Block as though you are redirecting force, not stopping it, punch as though you are pushing them across the room, not breaking bones.
Earth/Stone belongs to the tiger. First, you adopt the attitude of Earth, there is no opponent, only the ground he stands on, that belongs to you. Think like a pool player, block thinking I’m turning his body, not his hand. Turn him this way, his ribs are exposed, that way, his head. And every blow delivered with the attitude of a knockdown, not important to hurt, as much as to make the opponent end up on his azz. Don’t worry if you’re strong enough, just assume for the moment you are, if you are 100lbs think of a 100lb tiger, and growl as you exhale while imagining you are delivering the knockdown. Think of lions trying to make a buffalo’s legs buckle. Blows should be like “water” up to the wrists, then fingers like stone...”yin force” up the arm that becomes “yang” when it leaves the fingers...and you use “sinking” as you deliver...more long subjects.
Speaking of Stone, stone practice is a lot like Okinawan sanchin practice...using dynamic tension to make your body as hard as possible, and using breath control and muscle against muscle to make your body your own private gym...you also practice your “growling” exercise while doing Stone. All “yang” practice...more a physical exercise than internal.
Lastly, void, represented by tbe dragon. This is the equivalent of minding your own business, being nice and calm, then having someone shout “Defend yourself NOW!!” in your ear, and you do your technique like your life depends on it. It’s a practice between opposite poles. Like a man half asleep in a LazyBoy in front of a swinging heavy bag, and the moment the bag is perfectly still, he has to immediately leap up and attack it like he’s finally found the exconvict that killed his motber twenty years ago. You have to put yourself in a state where practicing the technique is the furthest thing from your mind, and out of nothing, or “Void”, explode with a life or death response, and see what comes out. If your form wasn’t right, you need more Air/Wood practice, if your response seemed weak, more Earth/Stone. Lack of confidence, you need fire. Bad balance or no root, more Water, and so on.
I can babble off on the Android on this subject for quite a while, as you can tell...sorry...giving the fingers a rest ;^)
Other FReepers ridiculed me when I stated same. I figured that was their problem.
I get to read after finishing continuing ed and my chores. Heavenly!
” Other FReepers ridiculed me when I stated same. I figured that was their problem.”
In the summer of 2006, I was ridiculed for warning FReepers that they should get out of the investment(spec) real estate market, especially in California and Nevada. I was severely flamed : )
Copying and pasting. Please let us know if and when you demonstrate and post on Youtube! Tiger is new to me w/exception of initial form learned in ‘93 (Tiger-Crane). Sifu focused me on Crane and Leopard. Tigers are supposed to be heavy, strong and fast initially. I didn’t have the body mass.
But you got out and Look at you now! ;o]
Fortunately, I never listened to anyone’s advice other than my first broker’s: “Never underestimate the value of compounding.” It’s a great blessing to recognize wisdom when you encounter it.
“Most others, I fear, will not.”
Most others will be serfs. A few will become Kings.
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