Uechi-Ryu.com

Sorry Glasheen Sensei about any ambiguity in my post. It was a second generation effort with the first disappearing into the ether. In my haste and frustration the salutation wasn't clear. Hopefully the content was not ambiguous.
Good training,
David

Hey, no problem David.

Hopefully we've all had a chance to step back and see a few truisms:

1) Us guys and Them guys are not a collective set of robots that are part of their respective Borg. Everyone has their opionion and perspective. It's too easy to see one in a group and assume all are the same. It's easy for us to see how Mr. Aksteter is wrong in assuming we are all the same and don't know what we are talking about. It should be just as easy to see that he is an individual with his own set of feelings and opinions that are not necessarily reflective of anyone else.

2) Sometimes a lot of emotional energy is spent....to no productive end. It's too easy to turn the flame thrower on. While it may be a personal catharsis, there are better ways of achieving THAT particular end.

What is disturbing about Mr. Asketer's comments is that after 23 years of martial arts training , he has difficulty distinguishing between ' pecking order' and traditional respect upon which the arts are founded !

Additionally , quite aside from the above , it is matter of common courtesy to be somewhat polite when in somebody's else house and to give the host the benefit of the doubt , at least initially, lest you get thrown out on your ears !

No arrogance ? Well how about this : < you're wrong and your chances of learning
were negligible, too. ---- you come across as an embarrassingly
self-preoccupied group with a few too many air heads (where did
you get this Lori character from?)doing a lot of role playing. >

Once I read that the Spanish matadors had a phrase for dealing with the onslaught of the beast -----Ver llegar--- >>> Hemingway , in ' Death in the afternoon ' clarified it's meaning : " The ability to watch the bull come as he charges with no thought except to calmly see what he is doing and make the moves necessary to the maneuver you have in mind "

What " intruders' of this " house" would do well to consider , is that we have some formidable literate scientific minds on board , who are very much capable of calmly watching the advancing charging cyber- diatribes and divert the electronic -noise to bounce off the " wall" like rattling cans !!

Mr. Asketer , can consider himself fortunate that Lori has not yet deigned to take him on intellectually , as , given the lack of emotional weight and intelligence of his recent post , right now he would be joined with the coyotes howling at the moon !

Believe when I say that it is very difficult to stuff an argument -or coon pie-down anybody's throat while using contemptuous , patronizing , insolent and posturing language ! We are all guilty of that at one point or another , especially if we allow our emotional sentinel to give way to impulsive feelings overriding the rational !

I know that our esteemed Bill Glasheen is very forgiving on his forum and he espouses the concept of all comers are welcome , but this sometimes sends the wrong message and invites the uncle Earls and keyboard commandos to mount an invasion with impunity usurping our time in cyber land and enslaving us behind the PC screen !

As I have written before , remember
that insult is the deadliest of all sins , and the cyber cretins lacking in social graces have an open invitation to spend a few months as my
guests in the southern Italian countryside { Sicilian } where they could feel free to ply their trade !
Then watch them melt in cold sweat for days on end {Their great 'karate skills' not withstanding} while awaiting
the sudden 'deadly hammer' behind the polite smile and the 'icy glare' !!


On my forum I use the mindset technique of preempting the annoyance i.e., flush it down the cyber toilet by hitting the delete button with a smile [ the finger you use on the mouse remains an option] ---no chi required Dr. X !

Van Canna

Uh guys and gals,

Could we get back tot he point at ahnd?
Before we were so dudely interrupted I was asking what differentiates an internal system from an external system.


To Dave:

Your point regarding mind-set is well-taken. I refer you back to Van Cann's forum for discussion of this topic.

To Rick Wilson:

The connection betweeen min-dbody sounds intriguing but my problem is that this verbiage is still vague and doesn't help me to understand just what the difference is between Internal and External arts.

To Doctor X:

And you accuse me of lack of tact????
But I enjoy your tirades.

To Mr. Askteter:

I am a Finance manager. In the business world we seek to eliminate what is generally referred to as "non- value added activities". These are activities which add to the cost of producing and distributing a product or a service but which don't add any value to the form, function, fit or purpose of the product or service being sold. An example would be movement of raw materials from one site to another site, if in fact, the raw material should have been stored at the point at which it is consumed. The movement would add additional cost to the production of the item but no real value.

i would argue that your post was a non-valued added item. Instead of addressing any of the substantive issues in this thread you chose to spit invective and ridicule. Is that how you treat other martial artists in person? If so, then you may have learned technique in your 23 years but you certainly have not internalized the martial principles which we all aspire to.

To Bill G.

Your practical description of deflecting energy has caused further reflection on my own part.

My previous post dealt with the generation of power. Your post dealt with the neutralizaion of power.

I had another conversation with my erudite and articulate martial arts comprade and he remnded me that acceleration is a derivative of velocity, time and distance. The formula is as follows:

Where d is distance, v is velocity, a is acceleration, t is time.

For constant acceleration
d = d0 + vt + .5at^2
v = v0 + at
v^2 = 2ad

Ok, I'll admit that my calculus days are long behind me so the most I can get out of this equation is that an increase in velocity, a shortening of distance or a shortening of time will increase the generation of power.

The time I am referring to is the amount of time a fist or foot is in contact with a target. It appears to me that increasing velocity over a short distance with momentary contact with the target will generate a whole lot of force.

Am I right about this?

Now let us turn our attention to deflection of energy. From your post I gathered that there are four ways to neutrlaize an opponent's power.

1: Avoid
2: Deflect
3. Misdirect
3: Block it "dead in its tracks"

Does this sound right?

If so, then I would argue that any and all systems have devloped a certain emphasis on some of these options to neutralize power. So what distinguishes an internal system's emphasis from an external system's emphasis?

Mr. Sigman, please feel free to jump in here at any time.

I also understand that deflection, misdirection or (for want of a better wortd),a stop-hit will be succesful depending on a numer of variablesa. Going back to the physics issues, There are all sorts of variables to be considered including vectoring, distance, timing, etc.

So now I am back to my original query? using the above rules of physics, what is the difference between internal and external arts? Mr. Askteter, i would appreciate any and all value-added comments concerning this matter.

To Lori:

Rest asssured that your honour yet remains unsullied by these deprecations and innuendos.

Best Regards,

Mike

Mea culpa for my spelling errors.

Anthony, is there any way yu could set up a spell checker for the reply dialog box?

The beginning sentences of my post should have been as follows:

Could we get back to the point at hand?
Before we were so rudely interrupted I was asking what differentiates an internal system from an external system.

Mike

Hi Mike - I think Rick and I were attempting to address your question. The mind set is an important component of "internal" arts. As mind set is an important component of "external" styles also, I would invite you to entertain the possibility that the distinction is artificial. Henning makes a damn good case for that possibility using copious historical reference material.
Nagamine Sensei of Shorin-Ryu stated at a banquet that when he began his study of the arts he considered his path very distinct from others. As he approached the higher elevations of the mountain, he saw that the various paths tended to converge.
I would submit that advanced practitioners of almost any martial art will tend to embrace similar concepts, movements, and strategies. Some start out "hard" and become "softer" and some start out "soft" and hopefully become "harder" (if they are attracted to the martial aspect of the "internal arts" and if they have a knowledgeable sifu.
Ultimately the synthesis of mind ("yi"), muscular power ("li") and intrinsic energy ("qi") must be present for any martial artist or champion athlete. I think of qi as the neurological raw material from which conditioned response patterns are forged in the furnace of repetitive focused training.
I've heard it said that to know the house of Chen one must quake. This refers to the uncontrolled shaking of the extremities as one stands in low postures for long periods of time in an "internal" style. In a traditional Hung Gar school guess what the first order of business is for the first year or so...you got it - stand in low ma bu (horse stance.) You tell me, what's internal and what's external?
I think (from what I've seen - not the last word in anything) that if you took an advanced practitioner of one of the Taoist internal traditions, a Wing Chun fighter, a Uechika, a practitioner of Silat, etc, etc. and placed them in real combative situations not sport application, no visible denotation of their style - you would have a hard time telling who trained what.
You would be able to identify specific strategic choices based upon their perceptions of their opponent, i.e., bigger, smaller, stronger, weaker, fiercer, more frightened, slower, faster, good with kicks, no kicks, etc, etc, however, the "stuff" won't look that different. What is always different however, is the mind set. It is the "36th Chamber" where the real issues are settled. To that extent, I will always visit Canna Sensei's forum as he is a strong spokesperson for that reality.
I have a Wing Chun brother who really doesn't train very much and is overweight. He has decided that he will ALWAYS go home to his wife and kids though - NOTHING will ever stand in the way of that. This captures my attention and diminishes the relative importance of a debate over what is internal and what is external.
I think you would really enjoy Frantzis' book that Rick mentioned. He is very biased but gives a down to earth rap on the subject.
Good training,
David

Folks

1) After an unfortunate diversion this thread is back on track. Good!

2) It is on track near the very end. This creates a bit of a logistical problem.

I will close this one and attempt to repost a few of the salient posts at the end of this thread in a brand new one. Mike, please allow me the editor's license. I'll fix your post in the new thread.

Bill

Dave,

I appreciate your reply. My initial point in raising this thread is echoed in your post. The differentiations re; Internal v. External are artficial. I was attempting to draw out from the "Internal" exponents among us their definition of internal and external systems via practical and scientific principles.

I will contend, however, that one must first develop a stong body and mind-set before moving off into the the softer aspects of the martial arts.

To be honest I have very little patience for aikido and jujitsu practitioners who can't take a hit as well as Tae-Kwon do types who have very hard, fast and high kicks but don't know how to deflect, misdirect or avoid attacks,

IMHO, Uechi-ryu/Shohei-ryu encompasses the best commbination of both soft and hard techniques, for all of the reasons Van Canna Sensei mentioned in his previous post on this thread.

Mike