Monday

Quotes from known instructors

Many good instructors are aware that tai chi is becoming a lost art:
 

Many excessively bounce around learning the next 'new' form or movement set without ever extracting the real internal value from any of them.

(Bruce Frantzis)


Over the centuries many variations of the movements have been taught, but provided the principles are adhered to there is no need for the student to doubt the authenticity of what he is being taught.

(Paul Crompton)


The way most people do tai chi, it's not a martial art. They could never use it the way they're doing it. Everything's in their hands, they just fill in the rest with fantasy talk.

(Paul Gale)


If all you learn is a lot of forms, you just become a good dancer.

(James Wing Woo)
 
Students of the martial arts in the West feel that they must use their art to fight, or at least to compete, to show people how good they are. In tai chi, this is unacceptable, because that is against the principle of tai chi.

(Gabriel Chin)


A small error in principle at the beginning of training will have greater consequences as time goes on.

(Yang Jwing-Ming)


You may know two hundred different martial arts but what is the quality of your movements? It's still just movement, it doesn't matter how many forms you know.

People with wisdom will use a tool properly, but a person with lower knowledge will recognise only one function of the tool. In the same manner, internal martial arts can be used for many functions because you use the same tool. This training method is only one tool, but it has many different uses.

You need to use one form for practice and include everything in it - mind, structure, movement and qi. If you can easily do all of these within each motion, that is the internal martial arts.

(Luo De Xiu)


Westerners have some very good ideals. One is that they like the guts, they want to go to the heart of the matter and get the real stuff. They don't care about all the fluff. How does it work? Tell me how it works, then I'll do it.

The Chinese way is to have faith, do it a long time and maybe I'll tell you how it works.

(Allen Pittman)


Most people are on a path with a dead end. They train ten years and they end up with nothing.

(Paul Gale)

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