Hello everyone I am an avid practitioners of martial arts. Started with Judo and Jiu Jitsu. Then my health and phisical condition degraded due to external causes. I switched to Aikido for three years and now Tai chi chuan, which I am now strongly committing to.
Aside from obvious positive effects (balance and agility) I wonder what you all think about inner martial arts.
I tend to ingest as little taoist folklore as I can, not because I think it's not interesting, but I want to avoid the exotic sounding mysticism tailored to impress westerners as a kind of new age marketing strategy. Fortunately, my teacher is a medical doctor working in the field of work related injuries.
I know I love Tai Chi Chuan and I truly mean to get better at it, but I can't ignore all the... weird stuff connected to it (no, Mr. Grand Master, I refuse to think that you single handedly pushed 10 people by the power of chi mastery). At the same time, I've been impressed by how, sometimes, finding adequate balance can make you able to sustain a strong push without even making active use of muscular strength.
So Il just wondering how you feel about this (or the other) inner martial art.
For me, it's a demanding and rewarding practice, full of great health and self discipline benefits and a few truly impressive perks, but with a..weird decorum I can't begin to understand.
There sure is a lot of flashy myths and fantasies in this branch of martial arts. Sometimes, my fellow practitioners truly believe in Chi as a mystical force allowing one to get superhuman abilities, which is a bit frightening tbh. I'm not counting daoism among said fantasies and myth. I'm still ignorant about its meaning. So yes, I guess you're right.
The thing with meditation and repetitive physical practicing can easily have something like chi that descibes the feeling of getting thigs right in a way that some people take literally magic. Like how focusing on moving something can feel effortless because practice has made it a whole body motion. Or how thinking about punching past something makes it easier to hit it harder because your brain is less likely to subconciously pull back on impact.
The mental part of martial arts is like medidation. There are real world benefits, both mental and physical, and having a long history that intertwines mysticism means a lot of people are going to start to believe their own hype.
That was actually a very useful (for me) way of explaining it. Thank you.