Formosa Neijia

I will soon be posting a long review of the first English edition of Chen Xin’s magnum opus — The Illustrated Canon of Chen Family Taijiquan.

As you can see, it’s already a big hit with the smallest martial artist in my house.

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I can’t recommend Douglas Wile’s Lost Tai’-Chi Classics from the Late Ch’Ing Dynasty (Chinese Philosophy and Culture) enough. This is easily the best set of classics I’ve ever seen. These are the Wu/Li and Yang family 40 chapters classics. They are very rich in detail and cover both martial and neigong training. In both […]

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These are common questions and below is my beginning level answer.
The physiology and body mechanics of it follows the qi. Many of the physical requirements match those acquired after you can feel your qi. The body mechanics, however, are imposed from the outside in while feeling your qi allows you to work from the inside […]

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Dojo Rat has an interesting post on not-touch knockouts and hypnotism. Reading it made me think of my experiences with that kind of stuff — especially a technqiue called the ghost punch.My choy lai fut teacher was capable of some amazing things, but one that I remember the most was the ghost punch. One […]

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We have a couple of good discussions going on over in the Formosa Neijia discussion group.
The first is regarding the 1928 All China Tournament that so many people have heard about. It seems that everyone and their brother won it, doesn’t it? After hearing about so many winners, I wondered about the nature of the […]

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This is Taipei teacher Huang Lien-shun doing the Chen Pan-ling baguazhang. As you can perhaps tell, this spot in Canada is pretty popular. Huang isn’t a baguazhang specialist BTW. He’s someone that grew up in Taizhong and loved training all of the material from Gao Fang-xian and Chen Pan-ling as a child. He never […]

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Those of you who are members of the Formosa Neijia Discussion group have access to a little treat I cooked up. I have four breathing meditation MP3s in the file section that are free downloads for discussion group members. I will be making these these things available from time to time in the discussion […]

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As the Chinese supposedly say — may you live in interesting times. (BTW, I’ve never heard that said here.) And oh boy are things going to get interesting now. Ma Ying-jeou won yesterday’s presidential election by a landslide. This means that all branches of government are firmly back under KMT control. The DPP has […]

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The main problem that I see with the obsession with fighting through IMA is that the fighting mindset gets in the way of truly developing IMA skills.
Consider how people think of fighting: us vs. them, me vs. him, good guys vs. bad guys, a clash of two forces, etc. Notice the sharp splitting of two […]

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Formosa Neijia group
You hear from me all the time. No it’s your turn to have your voice heard!
Welcome to the Formosa Neijia discussion group at Google. I’ve set up this group so that those of us who are interested in what we discuss here and who share the values expressed on the site will have […]

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