Formosa Neijia

So I’ve received a number of emails lately from a “big dog” in the American taiji community who is known for talking lots about “ground paths” and “suits.” The gist of these emails is that I know nothing whatsoever about IMA because I don’t write long, drawn-out posts about minutia related to body mechanics on [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJvxqp-Bqzw
First off, I’m a big fan of Sam Masich. I think a lot of his video work is great. I used to have his xingyiquan tapes, and I thought they were the best you could buy then, and they probably still are today. I haven’t seen anything in the past 15 years that surpasses them.
But [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH31NDIlFIM
So while I’m writing up a review of Intu-flow by Scott Sonnon, I thought I’d share this clip from Choke with you. This is Rickson Gracie doing some of his training for an upcoming full-contact tournament in Japan. As you can see, he has incorporated a lot of yoga into his training, and he is [...]

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I’ve been noticing lately that Internet forums and blogs have gone from bad to worse in terms of mud and hate that posters sling at each other. In some cases, it has become intolerable.
Over at EF, all sorts of BS have broken out. There’s more “challenges” than you can count. I posted something in a [...]

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I need some time to write up the Scott Sonnon review. In the meantime, I found this interesting.
Part of my passion for MA is keeping up with the latest trends in crime. If we’re going to be serious about self-defense, then we must take these things into consideration. With that in mind, this article below [...]

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Continuing with this post (see part one here), here’s part two:
The man in the suitcase is an example of the difference between classic Hatha yoga and chi gung. Many of the chi gung people don’t have anywhere near the flexibility that Hatha yogis have. Most can’t put both legs behind their heads, can’t lie on [...]

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This is a story told by Bruce Kumar Frantzis in his newsletter, which I subscribe to. If stuff like this interests you, then I suggest that you pop over to energyarts.com and sign up. This is the first half of the story. Tomorrow, I’ll put up the second half with some comments and an interesting [...]

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In one of the schools that I studied at, we primarily trained what we liked in class individually and the teacher came around and offered suggestions. I got in the habit of bringing gloves because I wanted to spar with people, but few took me up on the offer. So one night I asked a [...]

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So think about it for a minute: why DO you train? What is it that you hope to get out of IMA?
Broadly speaking, I would say that most people fall into the following few paradigms:

IMA for fun — This probably covers most people. They do it because they enjoy it. They tend to not [...]

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We do ourselves a great disservice when we decide to train like we’re in our 80’s. Unless, of course, we are. But I’m assuming most of us aren’t.
Many people believe that older practitioners are good models because they are more efficient than the young, therefore we all should move as they do. But [...]

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