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.
While I'm not familiar with the practices of Tai Chi and its history, I am familiar with the stories and mysticism of "inner" martial arts and chi due to my cultural background. I've always been fascinated with martial arts and kung fu, and have recently taken up karate and its cultural histories. I also have a degree in kinesiology and will agree that the human body is such a complex and fascinating subject. The word "chi" or "ki" literally means air or in the context of martial arts, breath, and I will associate it as such. In every martial arts that I've seen, breathing is always a subject in the forefront. But as far as listening to tall tale stories and feats that chi can achieve, I always smile and nod but take it with a grain of salt
Indeed. I really like my teacher because he quite often avoids to pepper notions that would sound mystic because we're ignorant of them. He gave us the exact approach to "chi" that the one you're describing.