Quote:
Originally Posted by kingoftheforest
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Some one asked me if you can train in an internal and external art together and my answer was yes. Is this traditional? No not really. But it can be done.
All you have to do is attempt to apply the same rules that govern an internal art into the training of the external one.
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There is no one concept of the internal arts that is more important in my view than using the body as one unified unit to strike. Even when a kick is used to attack or a shoulder strike is used the whole body is behind it.
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KOTF
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You think karate is stiff? I was so stiff karate loosened me up!
After 20 some years of karate, I found bagua which got me going in circles and FMA which taught my hands to go in circles.
Even my cello teacher is still fussing me to relax, arggh. Now I gotta learn how to release instead of relax.
But after all that hard style training, I would find it hard to apply the internal rules of the Practical Method to my karate because they are opposite what karate teaches.
Karate and CQC and FMA and everything else I have played with in the last 35 years
ALL taught the
unified body theory bringing the energy up from the ground and out the hand. Details were a bit different.
Until now.
The Practical Method as taught by Joseph Chen, splits the circle. The body is not unified in the way others peak of it but only in its working absolutely together but in opposite directions.
Splitting the circle means half your body must extend to the right to create power to the left, so your opponent on your left can feel it.
I've litteraly asked hundreds of tai chi players how their unified body theory is diffrent from karate's and never got a clear, physical answer.
But splitting the circle is so new, so different, and has such a profound physical effect an those touching the person doing it that I am totally captivated.