Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Freedom is Discipline!

[Path to Mastery 3/3/10 – Wk25 D3 (Str 9.12.09)(Ph2 11.15.09)]

Continuing our Tai-Chi Journey:

Free hand weapon

The title “Freedom is Discipline” may have thrown you off.  Freedom Discipline is a complete oxymoron.  

Like all truth, truth is simple yet profound.  Truth is often paradoxical.  It’s like the North and South pole of a magnet.  You need the Yin and the Yang to make the whole truth.

So, how does this relate to weapons?  Weapon is the ultimate discipline.  When you learn to use weapons, you have to be disciplined because if not you can be injured or injure your partner that you are training with.  You also need to be disciplined because if you are not, it is easy to make the training none realistic.  

To stay with a real or realistic weapon is hard.  If you have an edge coming into you, you will be extra diligent, or it would be a good idea to be extra diligent.  You must be very relaxed and very calm, not reacting.  It is when you react that accidents happen.  When you are conscious, you may get injured, but it will not be as bad as reacting to a situation.  

The irony is when you train under a higher discipline, everything else gets easier and your range of freedom increases.  If you have trained with live weapons, or something that does pose some danger, then your skill level goes up.  This is the reason you train free hand with weapons.  The risk increases your sharpness of mind, and it increases your sensitivity.  

When you can do free hand with weapons calmly, relaxed consciously, you have freedom with almost everything else.

It is extreme discipline that gives extreme freedom.


History of Tai-Chi Journey up to this point:

Before the blog opened to the public, we covered the single person part of the system.
1. Qi-Gong (Taoist Longevity, White Crane Qi-Gong)
2. Standing Meditation
3. Stepping Mediation
4. 7 Basics
5. Basic Form
6. 30 Form
7. 108 Form

Interactive training after we went public with the blog.  
1. 8 Type Pushing Hands (Covered from 2/2 ~ 2/11)
2. San-Shou (Covered from 2/12 ~ 2/15)
3. Ba-Gua.(Covering from 2/16 ~ 2/19)
4. Weapons (Covered on 2/23)
5. Healing System (Covered on 2/24)

Non-Structured System:
6. Introduction (Covered 2/25)
7. Free moving – conditioning (Covered 2/26)
8. Free hand pushing hand (Covered 3/1)
9. Free hand (2 person drills and multiple person drills) (Covered 3/2)
10. Free hand weapon (2 person drills and multiple person drills) (Covered today)

1 comment:

  1. It reminds me of free hand, resisting without hurting the other. How is that different that training with a weapon while aware? It is very similar, all training on how to be surgical and avoid harm.

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