Formosa Neijia

One of the best pieces of advice that I could give is to have strength, but don’t use it. Lift your kettlebells, hold downward dog for five minutes, do some weights if that strikes you as a good idea. But when it comes to doing forms or applications, don’t use that strength at all. Get […]

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This is the best explanation of emptiness and fullness I’ve seen:
“Good warriors make others come to them, and do not go to others. This is the principle of emptiness and fullness of others and self. When you induce opponents to come to you, then their force is always empty; as long as you do not […]

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So when I posted my thoughts on traditional and mixed arts yesterday, I forgot to define my terms. That was a big mistake because somehow the confusion arose that I meant training buffet style by taking this or that from each different system. Needless to say, that isn’t what I meant.
I wrote that post after […]

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I’m having a bit of a crisis lately in deciding what direction to take for the future. The traditional and mixed sides of me are at a bit of a war with each other.
On the one hand, I can really see the need to teach a standard set of material involving forms. I think there’s […]

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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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There are two main things that I can see that the internal components of IMA bring to fighting. There may be more but knowledge of other benefits are, so far, above my pay grade. I’m not advanced enough along this path to see more than just a few possibilities, at least for right now. […]

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I’ve gotten several inquiries about this so I want to start responding a bit to those. But the first thing that strikes me is how odd the question is. Why would people who are supposed to be doing an IMA even ask a question like this? Isn’t it bizarre?
Let me respond with a few questions […]

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I sometimes read about people trying to come up with Western ways of doing internal martial arts and I always scratch my head when I see that stuff. People apparently will not stop trying to re-invent the wheel, in their own image no less.
The Western way is sought because people reject the qi paradigm. I’ve […]

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It never ceases to amaze me that every time something like standing meditation gets brought up, the only thing discussed is how long someone should stand. And it always starts like this: someone says his teacher recommends standing thirty minutes, and then some other guy gets on there and says you should stand for an […]

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