Is Tai chi fake?

[Marblehead]

BTW  Korean Tai Chi is called Dahn Mu Do.

 

 

[windwalker]

"DahnMuDo is an energy-based, non-combative, healing martial art, with roots dating back thousands of years into Korean history. In Korean, “Dahn” means energy. “Mu” means “martial,” or “limitless” and “Do (Tao)” means, “the way,” or, “the ultimate truth. DahnMuDo is therefore also known as “The Art of Being Limitless. Its mind-body training methods combine martial arts movements with universal energy principles to help practitioners circulate blood and energy through the body, and recover the natural balance and rhythm of the body and mind. Its goal lies in training the body and mind to become one."

http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/dahnmudo-revealed/

 

I think it would be more correct to say its taiji like "maybe "  Not a "Korean taiji"

It would be interesting to see if the history matches what is claimed. 

 

 

Taekkyeon, would probably fit into what would or could be called a kind of Korean taiji like style. 

I taught taiji a long time ago to a  Korean soldier while in Korea,  he would later go on to study the art and noted

its similarities. 

 

"Taekkyeon is a traditional Korean martial art first explicitly recorded during the Joseon Dynasty. Taekkyeon is characterized by fluid, dynamic footwork called "pum balgi" or Stepping-on-Triangles. Taekkyeon has many leg and whole-body techniques with fully integrated armwork. Although taekkyeon primarily utilizes kicking, punching, and arm strikes thrown from a mobile stance and does not provide a framework for groundfighting, it does incorporate a variety of different throws, takedowns, and grappling techniques to complement its striking focus. The martial art is frequently romanized informally as Taekgyeon, Taekkyon, or Taekyun."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taekkyeon

[Starjumper]

3 hours ago, windwalker said:

"DahnMuDo is an energy-based, non-combative, healing martial art, with roots dating back thousands of years into Korean history. In Korean, “Dahn” means energy. “Mu” means “martial,” or “limitless” and “Do (Tao)” means, “the way,” or, “the ultimate truth. DahnMuDo is therefore also known as “The Art of Being Limitless. Its mind-body training methods combine martial arts movements with universal energy principles to help practitioners circulate blood and energy through the body, and recover the natural balance and rhythm of the body and mind. Its goal lies in training the body and mind to become one."

http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/dahnmudo-revealed/

 

I think it would be more correct to say its taiji like "maybe "  Not a "Korean taiji"

It would be interesting to see if the history matches what is claimed. 

 

 

Taekkyeon, would probably fit into what would or could be called a kind of Korean taiji like style. 

I taught taiji a long time ago to a  Korean soldier while in Korea,  he would later go on to study the art and noted

its similarities. 

 

This is incorrect, I know some of the finer points of tai chi, which probably means "I've learned stuff about tai chi that a lot of serious students never will"  =)  Particularly in Chen style, the original flavor of tai chi.   It is clear from watching the videos that, other than some real chi kung in the beginning, Dahn Mu Do follows the principles of tai chi 100% and looks particularly like a perfect execution of Chen Tai chi, which like I said earlier, I seen some of.

 

Taekkyeon, on the other hand appears to only incorporate some, maybe 20% of the principles of tai chi and the forms hardly look like tai chi. 

 

Dahn Mu Do - the Winner!     

 

The story's over now, move along there.

Edited June 18, 2017 by Starjumper

[Marblehead]

Thanks guys and especially thanks to Windwalker for his patience.

 

Defending an understanding of something one recalled seeing 50 years earlier is no easy task.

 

 

[dwai]

On 6/9/2017 at 10:41 PM, Earl Grey said:

 

I'm copying a few lines from someone who did roughly the same thing to me and my teacher.

 

The story I gave him while still trying to remain gentle when offering very obvious hints about what's wrong with him was this:

 

Grandmaster Bob in my rival's lineage was approached by some Australian guy to train him. In one class, he asked the guy to never come back again. During that first class, Guru Bob tells Aussie to slow down, as he's blinking and getting tense. Aussie fires back and says "I DID NOT BLINK! I AM NOT TENSE!" And Guru Bob says that that's what he saw. Aussie says, "Well you saw wrong! You're not me!" Guru Bob has a senior student stand to the side and watch the technique, and confirms that Aussie keeps blinking and is even more tense. Aussie fires back and says that they don't know what they're talking about, who the hell are they to tell him anything, and that he sooooo did not blink nor is he tense. Guru Bob walks away and throws Aussie's money at his feet and says, "I can't train someone who knows everything, I don't need his money, and I won't waste my time with someone who has no respect."

 

The student replied to me with this:

 

Grandmaster Bob failed as a teacher for making a direct statement to Aussie about his actions and looked to prove himself right by adding an observer. That is ego based and did nothing to teach Aussie, it was a rouse to satisfy the Grandmaster's Ego of the validity of his opinion. If this Grandmaster was looking to teach the Aussie and fully commit, he would have found the easier alternative of empathy. "Aussie, it appears you tense your muscles an etc. With this technique it should look like this," Show the technique, if the Aussie fails again, the teacher should say, "Let me know what's going on in your mind while you do this." The tension is a dead giveaway for thinking too hard about the technique, and the student's reaction is trying to put his body under his mental submission (my idea of a grandmaster would know this is the case and would gentley see to it that this student was not ostracized by an observer but by taking him aside privately and assisting the student in letting go of his tension while doing the exercise). Bob failed the one student because he did not fully commit to teaching, but to being a grandmaster.

 

Notice that this student fails to even see the disrespect in the example of the story and in his own interactions with people. He has no idea that he is being disrespectful and self-entitled. Unsurprisingly, he is no longer a classmate of mine or student under any of my teachers. 

 

I find that a lot of people watch a few videos or might know one teacher or another and elevate themselves to experts for some reason, whether it is Tai Chi or MMA. My MMA friends who do compete tell me that they love their sport and style, respect my internal arts and have taken a few classes with me, but we can agree that it's the fans that turn us off. An armchair athlete watching thinks he knows more about why my friend lost a match because of the angle he saw gave him better perspective than being in the octagon. Likewise, a YouTube Tai Chi Master (De)bater who sees a few videos on Shibashi or Yang thinks she knows more than two of my teachers who do Chen and Yang respectively, and says that they, who have been trained since childhood and are in their 40s and 50s now, are wrong. Riiiiiiiight. 

 

Fans with no experience of either MMA or Tai Chi or whatever style are often very bafflingly the loudest self-proclaimed experts, and they are the ones who "debunk" what is fake by calling authentic practitioners phonies, while celebrating shysters as the real thing. 

 

When actually being taught, these experts seem to find ways to make themselves insufferable and prove that the instructors are not good, make excuses to justify them being disrespectful, and try to show they know more and are better than the instructor. Here's another example, with an instructor who was neither impressed nor fazed:

 

 

 

Richard Clear is very good and also very  patient

his taiji caliber shows in how he handled the young guy...

 

[dwai]

13 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

 

Sifu Clear has way more grace and patience than I do. After a few days of dealing with the difficult student in my story above prior to the video, who not only remained disrespectful, but somehow felt he didn't need to pay and yet demanded more (including insulting one of my teachers and ordering him to teach him a technique so that he could teach it to someone else), I certainly wasn't subtle with him when I told him never to contact me again until he can empty his cup. He then had the nerve to say that he has experience from another school and there is no need to empty his cup because he "already knows more than me and my teachers due to his ten years of experience" and a lot more nonsense about transcending his ego and seeing how everyone else is still suffering from ego. At this point, it's no longer social, emotional, and verbal Tai Chi, but walking away altogether from an unnecessary fight, which this guy seemed to want in spite of his platitudes. 

 

Every time I see people like Sifu Clear, I remind myself that I still have a way to go before I can apply the physical and social aspect of Tai Chi to life with unquestionable mastery of skill. Maybe in another hundred years I will get close to that, but until then, I'll keep training.

Sometimes we have to just "empty" their cup for them

Haha my Master did it to many folks like that. Two fingers projecting someone several feet (> 200 lbs usually) in the air into a re-inforced wall (specially made to withstanding bodies slamming into them) will usually do the trick. And my Master weighs 120 lbs..

 

Mostly though, these cup-full folks never come back. Most profoundly impacted are those who think taijiquan is "woo woo" or don't believe in Qi or Jin. They get such a massive shock (cognitive dissonance) that they run away fast.

 

[Taoist Texts]

1 hour ago, dwai said:

Haha my Master did it to many folks like that. Two fingers projecting someone several feet (> 200 lbs

No vids?

[Mig]

On 6/9/2017 at 8:41 PM, Earl Grey said:

 

I'm copying a few lines from someone who did roughly the same thing to me and my teacher.

 

The story I gave him while still trying to remain gentle when offering very obvious hints about what's wrong with him was this:

 

Grandmaster Bob in my rival's lineage was approached by some Australian guy to train him. In one class, he asked the guy to never come back again. During that first class, Guru Bob tells Aussie to slow down, as he's blinking and getting tense. Aussie fires back and says "I DID NOT BLINK! I AM NOT TENSE!" And Guru Bob says that that's what he saw. Aussie says, "Well you saw wrong! You're not me!" Guru Bob has a senior student stand to the side and watch the technique, and confirms that Aussie keeps blinking and is even more tense. Aussie fires back and says that they don't know what they're talking about, who the hell are they to tell him anything, and that he sooooo did not blink nor is he tense. Guru Bob walks away and throws Aussie's money at his feet and says, "I can't train someone who knows everything, I don't need his money, and I won't waste my time with someone who has no respect."

 

The student replied to me with this:

 

Grandmaster Bob failed as a teacher for making a direct statement to Aussie about his actions and looked to prove himself right by adding an observer. That is ego based and did nothing to teach Aussie, it was a rouse to satisfy the Grandmaster's Ego of the validity of his opinion. If this Grandmaster was looking to teach the Aussie and fully commit, he would have found the easier alternative of empathy. "Aussie, it appears you tense your muscles an etc. With this technique it should look like this," Show the technique, if the Aussie fails again, the teacher should say, "Let me know what's going on in your mind while you do this." The tension is a dead giveaway for thinking too hard about the technique, and the student's reaction is trying to put his body under his mental submission (my idea of a grandmaster would know this is the case and would gentley see to it that this student was not ostracized by an observer but by taking him aside privately and assisting the student in letting go of his tension while doing the exercise). Bob failed the one student because he did not fully commit to teaching, but to being a grandmaster.

 

Notice that this student fails to even see the disrespect in the example of the story and in his own interactions with people. He has no idea that he is being disrespectful and self-entitled. Unsurprisingly, he is no longer a classmate of mine or student under any of my teachers. 

 

I find that a lot of people watch a few videos or might know one teacher or another and elevate themselves to experts for some reason, whether it is Tai Chi or MMA. My MMA friends who do compete tell me that they love their sport and style, respect my internal arts and have taken a few classes with me, but we can agree that it's the fans that turn us off. An armchair athlete watching thinks he knows more about why my friend lost a match because of the angle he saw gave him better perspective than being in the octagon. Likewise, a YouTube Tai Chi Master (De)bater who sees a few videos on Shibashi or Yang thinks she knows more than two of my teachers who do Chen and Yang respectively, and says that they, who have been trained since childhood and are in their 40s and 50s now, are wrong. Riiiiiiiight. 

 

Fans with no experience of either MMA or Tai Chi or whatever style are often very bafflingly the loudest self-proclaimed experts, and they are the ones who "debunk" what is fake by calling authentic practitioners phonies, while celebrating shysters as the real thing. 

 

When actually being taught, these experts seem to find ways to make themselves insufferable and prove that the instructors are not good, make excuses to justify them being disrespectful, and try to show they know more and are better than the instructor. Here's another example, with an instructor who was neither impressed nor fazed:

 

 

 

Are we still talking about that? Don't need to be an expert in martial arts or have practiced some Chinese boxing or some exposure to sparring so you can see how this is fake in real street fighting or against a martial art practitioner. It doesn't work being flexible: there are so many variables in a situation that doing what I see in this video you will be knocked down in seconds.

[Michael Sternbach]

18 minutes ago, Mig said:

Are we still talking about that? Don't need to be an expert in martial arts or have practiced some Chinese boxing or some exposure to sparring so you can see how this is fake in real street fighting or against a martial art practitioner. It doesn't work being flexible: there are so many variables in a situation that doing what I see in this video you will be knocked down in seconds.

 

Because there are so many variables in street situations, it's good to have plenty of tools in your toolbox. The one shown in the video is surely not the only one that Mr. Clear or any other good martial artist has. But it is a skill that may well come in handy in certain situations.

[dwai]

1 hour ago, Taoist Texts said:

No vids?

Some things don't need to be publicized that way. One little example is here --

 

Spoiler

example of pushing with 2 fingers

 

[Taomeow]

8 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

No vids?

 

Oh, videos are useless, because an army of armchair warriors trained to scream "fake! fake video! staged!" at the top of their lungs is always ready and waiting for them. 

 

At one point someone posted on youtube a video of my teacher doing a push-hands demo against ten guys at a seminar, some of them twice his size, all of them falling like dominoes, and I saw dozens of comments under the video explaining to the "gullible suckers" how this is

 

1) extremely easy to do, anyone could do it;

2) absolutely impossible and therefore staged, completely fake;

3) yada yada yada. 

 

I've known my teacher for many years.  He hasn't taught me how to push ten guys apiece yet, but he did teach me how to push one, twice my size, half my age, athletic, and resisting with all his might, so I know that it's neither easy to learn nor fake once mastered.  The interesting part being that even the guy I pushed, well he was there, right?  I pushed him every time, so he comes back with, "yeah, you are very strong."  I tell him, no, that's not it, it's taiji, it's structure, usage, internal training, it's a technique, I've been taught.  He goes, "yeah, some people are genetically very strong.  You must be one of them." 

 

Skepticism can be a  fundamentalist religion like anything else, and the thing about fundamentalist religions is, they are not abandoned because of evidence to the contrary presented.  Any evidence.  Even the evidence of their own senses, as I've discovered.  One has to suspend fundamentalist beliefs first...  then evidence can be evaluated.  Otherwise it's like the Earth having been created six thousand years ago.  No amount of dinosaur bones radiometrically dated two hundred million years old will convince the believer.  God could easily fake dinosaur bones.  To test the believers' faith, see.     

[kpodhayski]

4 hours ago, Earl Grey said:

Here's a video of @Sifu Eric Randolph pushing a train. We've heard all the criticisms now about how fake this is or how he's just naturally strong or the racist comments in relation to his strength and how someone like him couldn't possibly be using Tai Chi, and how black people (fill in the blank) and eastern styles (fill in the blank). Sometimes, evidence will never be enough because if someone believes that the moon landing was faked, the earth is flat, or deny climate change and evolution, you can't change their mind.

 

This is Tai Chi. Full stop. 

 

 

 

 

 

AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

 

If that is Tai Chi I was a master at 14! We used to rock train cars when i was a kid! Find one with loose bogie's or an unbalanced load and you can really get it going with little effort.

 

Here, look at this:

 

 

 

[kpodhayski]

3 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

Someone just proved my point.

 

I am not trying to convince Earl Gray of anything here. This is for people who might be fooled by this silliness and be distracted from the Dao.

 

Hey, Earl Gray, if I show you a video of a 16 year old doing this, will you call them a Tai Chi Master? I am literally telling you I did this as a kid. Why do you not believe me?

 

A few more notes of the trickery involved; Notice he is doing it on the last rail car and in the video how it was the last rail car that was swaying?

[kpodhayski]

2 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

@Sifu Eric Randolph is neither silliness nor distraction from the Tao. All things are Tao. 

 

Where did you learn that nonsense! Ha!

 

Creating dualism by making himself look great, that is a distraction from the Dao.

 

2 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

 

I have questioned him often. I have even considered him and other masters to be fakes. But I have always been proven wrong and humbled by the truth in their skill and wisdom. 

 

You can say you've moved trains using simple physics, and I do not doubt that. But you are also not seeing what Sifu Eric did, nor do you have the experiences I have had, especially training under him. 

 

A very crucial line in the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching: 

 

Thus, constantly free of desire
One observes its wonders
Constantly filled with desire
One observes its manifestations

 

You will see what you want to see if you are looking for something, which in this case, appears to be your desire disprove the skill of Sifu Eric. Okay, this is fine, you take ONE VIDEO, where a lot of skill is shown, and you say it can be done by a teenager ("Find one with loose bogie's or an unbalanced load and you can really get it going with little effort"). Fair enough. But the highlight there is how he did it, and I also know the details of the story too, for you aren't the only one who made this argument about how a train can be pushed using what you describe. 

 

I am not looking, I am seeing.

 

How has your desire to prove Eric is a Tai Chi a master created your manifestations?

 

2 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

 

If you are fortunate enough to engage him or if he desires an argument, something he will likely urge me not to further pursue here, then either you will choose a) to find ways to disprove and call him a fake, or consider that there is indeed skill. 

 

I need not tell you the fajin or the esoteric practices and experiences--you appear to already have your own judgments, and that's fine--that is all Tao still. You are also welcome to read my practice journal, which I am still writing seven years' worth of experiences slowly. You are free not to as well. You are free to post contrarian arguments and say that I or my classmates and I are deceived. All is Tao. But the end result is we have achieved skill and we are better people with not just the art, but good training and lineage. If you insist that this is still trickery, then I leave you be because true words are not beautiful, and beautiful words are not true; those who argue aren't often correct, and those are correct don't often argue. 

 

There are two times not to argue; when you are wrong, or when the other is not open to being wrong.

 

So I will end this here.

[Marblehead]

My Tai Chi might be fake but my swords are real.

 

[kpodhayski]

I can shoot a Tai Chi master blindfolded from a mile a way.

 

The bragging about his greatness makes him a huge target.

[Starjumper]

Concerning the train thing, keep in mind that trains do not have shock absorbers for dampening rocking motion, they only have springs, which have no dampening effect.  Therefore it is easy for a small repeated force input that matches the natural frequency of rocking to become amplified into a visible rocking motion even for something really heavy.  Therefore the video in question is not really about tai chi, it's about resonant motion.  I myself have moved very very large boats, in calm wind and water with a steady applied force even a  small ship will start moving.

 

Which proves the physics corollary: "If you push something hard enough it will fall over"  (Fudd's First Law of Opposition)

 

But it doesn't prove much about tai chi.  

 

 

Edited June 20, 2017 by Starjumper

[Marblehead]

45 minutes ago, kpodhayski said:

I can shoot a Tai Chi master blindfolded from a mile a way.

 

The bragging about his greatness makes him a huge target.

And with the inflated ego he looks twice as big - an even larger target.

 

 

[Marblehead]

17 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

Concerning the train thing, 

....

17 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

 

But it doesn't prove much about tai chi.  

You are right, the train thing had nothing to do with Tai Chi.

 

[Marblehead]

I looked for Fudd.  I found this:

 

If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.

 

Duh!

 

Edited June 20, 2017 by Marblehead

[Starjumper]

I just noticed that the tai chi 'master' named Eric is the one that erroneously uses Sifu as a self title rather than leaving it as a label used only by one's own students, even when this is pointed out to him.  This and his misrepresentation of tai chi in the video means he has two strikes against him.  You know, I've heard of stories about people who claim tai chi is not a martial art, they have no idea about applications, flowing, or intent, but if you tell them the way it is they disagree and say they've been doing tai chi for twenty years (as if that makes them an expert) when the obvious fact is that they have been doing it wrong for twenty years.

 

In brief, doing it wrong for 25 yrs doesn't make it right.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Starjumper

[Starjumper]

5 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

I looked for Fudd.  I found this:

 

If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.

 

Duh!

 

I added a video describing Fudd's discovery possibly after you read my post.

[Marblehead]

Yes, I did see the video.  Tried to listen to it but my hearing just couldn't grasp it so I went looking.

 

[Starjumper]

I think you're going a little too far with that, Earl.  Sifu  may know a lot of good tai chi and can be helping you advance, this, plus the fact that he makes mistakes does not mean you are crazy, does it?  Everyone makes mistakes.  It's just illuminating to see how they respond to corrections.  His use of the self term 'sifu' simply means his knowledge and/or respect for tradition is somewhat lacking, due to this I became curious as to how he would represent or misrepresent tai chi.  That is all.

[Brian]

1 hour ago, Starjumper said:

Concerning the train thing, keep in mind that trains do not have shock absorbers for dampening rocking motion, they only have springs, which have no dampening effect.  Therefore it is easy for a small repeated force input that matches the natural frequency of rocking to become amplified into a visible rocking motion even for something really heavy.  Therefore the video in question is not really about tai chi, it's about resonant motion.  I myself have moved very very large boats, in calm wind and water with a steady applied force even a  small ship will start moving.

 

Which proves the physics corollary: "If you push something hard enough it will fall over"  (Fudd's First Law of Opposition)

 

But it doesn't prove much about tai chi.  

 

 

I love the video!