Questions

Thank you for replying, I appreciate it.

I studied under Erle Montaigue prior to going to Wudang at a kung fu academy where they also teach qigong and inner alchemy. He doesn’t take taijiquan as a daoist art but he sure knows his fajin (explosive energy), which is why I came to him to learn the old yang style form with fajin strikes. I also learned the Wudang Qi Disruption forms which can be traced back all the way to Zhang, Sanfeng along with Michael’s Primordial Qigong (excellent form). Although, at Wudang I learned sanfeng taijiquan which also incorporates fajin and puts a greater emphasis on the internal energy structure. Taijiquan just isn’t taijiquan without fajin, and my opinion is that it shouldn’t be practiced without it. Medically, it’s very important too, it gets your qi in there explosively when it’s needed-like fighting off pathogens! To me, the best form of medical, spiritual, and martial.

The tantric lama kung fu I studied is the lions roar kung fu. In my opinion, it is the second greatest kung fu style next to taijiquan. Taijiquan does everything as a whole (like rooting, connecting to heaven, fa-jin, etc.) while lions roar does things more separately. Learning hard qigong, like Chia’s iron shirt is a waste because you won’t have cotton muscles which is what you’re aiming for so you can express soft jins. They use the same jins except you learn qinggong (light body skills) which aims at lightening the body and standing on stakes in horse stance (mabu) to increase rooting. The simultaneous rooing power generated by the huiyin and lightening from the dantian produces tremendous power and speed. They try to incorporate the bagua, yin-yang, and five elements (as it comes from a very long lineage and tried to also develop upon taijiquan) and use kundalini as the base to this martial art so they both support each other like inner alchemy and taijiquan. Here’s a good link if you want to know more about it, I put a link.

Personally, I think that Daoists should take advantage of fajin inherent in taijiquan (great art created by Sanfeng for daoists), it really becomes effortless after a while even though its explosive and the benefits are extraordinary. Internal martial arts are a very good supplement to inner alchemy.
lionsroar.name/site_map.htm

Max,

Tanks for complementing me. I just wanted to say that I think you might have misunderstood – a little. I too follow the daoist way of going internal to external. There are, from my knowledge, 4 positions to practice: sitting, lying, standing, and moving. For sitting, meditation. Lying, dream yoga and standing/moving, internal martial arts. Wether zhan zhuang, or form.

This way they are working towards the same ends, unlike shaolin monks. They use dangerous martial qigong and then do nei dan to try and compensate for all that hard qigong. While internal martial arts is a means of powering the energy body, and drawing a stronger connection to earth and heaven, which is needed for higher practices. Internal to external.

I guess, I am doing the same thing as Michael is, except I practice martial arts and he does internal qi breathing and rooting – interesting stuff. I wonder if you can incorporate internal qi breathing during a taijiquan form? Don’t know enough about this counterforce breathing though!

Adrian

Great talking to you Max. The Healing Dao Forum looks like something I can fit in with.

To make something different, you should first have an awareness of it – like forms. As Michael says, practice until you feel like you own the practice. Then, if you feel like there’s a missing peice, experiment, see if it works. And, like you said, sometimes the original form is better left unchanged. The 12 Wudang Qi Disruptive forms I learnt from Erle are really powerful and advanced, they don’t need to be changed, they carry out the desired effect well enough. I have no doubt that Zhang, Sanfeng created them.

It’s been fun!