Formosa Neijia

… will be the long fist that I’m working on now. And I’m not really sure yet how far I’ll pursue long fist.
The reason I say this is that I’m almost 100% sure, at this point, that I’ll be going back to judo. And, oh boy, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.
My [...]

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This post continues thoughts that started here.
The best qigong that I’ve ever practiced was swimming. Sound strange?
Start with the bottom of the pool. It’s one large, white expanse. Sounds boring, right? It is. That’s the point. As you do free style swimming, you look at the bottom of the pool almost constantly until you turn [...]

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The first post on this subject is here.

After a lot of shopping around I finally bought the Adam Hsu jian. (The blade distortion above is due to me resizing the pic. Click on the pic to see the original.) It was a big decision for me and I looked just about everywhere in Taipei. Getting [...]

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When I think of IMA “health benefits,” I always compare it to the healthiest things I’ve ever done in my life: swimming and running.
During my senior year in high school, I got serious about running and built my training up to the point that I was running about 7-8 miles a day, which took about [...]

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Thoughts of a Taiji Beginner has a good post on doing the form slowly here. I agree that doing the form reeaallly slowly can help build certain skills.
I liked this post because I recently showed my Chen short form to another teacher and he said it looked a lot like Yang style and he was [...]

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I promise to make as few OT posts as possible. I prefer to make the blog about IMA, but this story just goes to show that Taiwan isn't as isolated as I thought.
My wife and I are big fans of Smallville. For those that don't know, it's an American TV show about Superman in his teenage [...]

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The first part of this topic is directly below.
Asking for private lessons is a tricky thing and they aren’t always advisable.
First, never ask for privates before you know the teacher and the quality of the material presented. Several times in the past, I asked for privates too quickly and the teacher reacted negatively. You must [...]

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I’m learning taiji sanshou (not the form) from a teacher in the Chen Pan-ling lineage. The format is private lessons and after class this morning, I was thinking about just how much of this stuff depends on personal, private transmission from teacher to student. This simply isn’t the kind of stuff that can be taught [...]

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I highly recommend two English books on taiji: Cheng Hsin — The Principles of Effortless Power  and Qi and Jin. I’ll review Cheng Hsin later. I should note that Qi and Jin used to be known as the Intrinsic Energies of Tai Chi Chuan. That’s the copy that I have and will be reviewing, but I [...]

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Here’s a free book on YiQuan. It mainly covers the basics on zhan zhuang (standing meditation). I put this up knowing that beginners might find it handy. If you have a good background in IMA already, then most of this won’t be new to you.
Also looking at the book reminds me why free things are [...]

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