Posted by rick on December 30, 1998 at 18:58:09:
my own experience was from the outside in. sport tae kwon do led me to shotokan
competition. practiced some isshinryu forms and continued competition until
obvious politicking and pettiness among competitors and organizers turned me off. then, I found ryukyu kenpo, a grappling style influenced heavily by aiki and jujutsu. to the die-hard tai chi guy, you would still consider this kenpo a "hard" style, as it is focused on externals, but compared to my previous martial arts training, this grappling was a totally new animal. had to unlearn tightness and explosiveness and retrain myself to relax. while training in kenpo, two chinese influences converged in my training - flow drills (lop sau, etc) and pressure point studies.
patience, I'm getting to my question.
as a long-time student of the arts I understand levels of
interpretation or implementation are virtually limitless within a coherent
formal system. human nature being what it is, different groups, or families,
decide that "this is the thing" that makes the system great, and
therefore they emphasize that thing in training. as long as this
continues, martial knowledge will always increase, new areas will be explored,
and ancient knowledge can be better applied. stagnation of this process would
effectively turn formal systems into dead languages.
here comes my question.
my very limited experience with students of internal gung fu leads me to the
conclusion that internal chinese styles are the most resistant to new
interpretation. understand this is based on a few conversations with
acquaintances who cross-trained in hung-gar and tai chi, a fellow who studied
tai chi exclusively, and one who trained in 5-animal style and philipino arts.
and now the question.
among you here, how many consider themselves progressive students, and how
many think that the heights have already been attained, and that your lot is
simply to follow the path left to you by masters long dead?