This discussion concerns Fajin Demos esp. in The Mysteries Of Tai Chi series fround here:
On May 16, 2010, at 11:23 AM, mikepekor wrote:
And what is the value in doing that? How does it translate into a useful skill? Please explain. Mike
--- Michael Phillips Responds:
It's really funny that YOU of all people should be the one to ask me that Mike, since your voice was one of the loudest calling for me to put up some videos in the first place - I believe "put up or shut up" was the popular phrase at the time.
But OK, since you ask for an explanation - just this once, I'll give you one.
For other Listmembers, I apologize for the fact that in order to explain my own demo, I am going to have to seem to be talking about myself at some length - but the real subject is what's going on in the demo, not me. Please feel free to hit the delete button anytime you are feeling as cosmically bored as I would expect you to be under these circumstances.
One of the problems of doing Chinese-style fajin demos for westerners is that Chinese people know what they're watching, and westerners don't - westerners don't understand that the reason for not doing it free-style and against an "uncooperative opponent", blah blah blah, is precisely to ELIMINATE the BS factor - in other words, the parameters are so "locked down" that there's absolutely no ROOM for BS.
So factors like two bodies in motion, and the myriad ways that mass, gravity, and acceleration can combine to "accidentally" produce some dramatic effects are PURPOSELY ELIMINATED!
In other words, this set of contrivances that some of you guys view as a way to ENHANCE the BS factor are put in place for exactly the opposite purpose - they're there to ELIMINATE the BS factor.
But the question remains: is there a kind of "collusion" involved in such a demonstration?
And the answer is yes, sometimes there is; in the case of myself and Kelley, he does not do any of the "artful-dodger" tricks he would normally pull if we were doing free-form push-hands, so I can easily access his center of mass.
But that's IT! There can be no collusion between myself and the laws of physics - he still weighs a very solid 190 pounds of muscle, and he takes off in a split-second with very little motion on my part, and NO acceleration of my mass - my weight is already on my forward foot, and my feet stay exactly in place. I do not crouch and then open up my knees, nor do my elbows bend and then 'push out', either - and my elbows and wrists do not "follow-thru" and come out as in a normal push.
Also - and I know some of you will find this hard to believe - I don't wait until he loads me up with a whole lot of force; if you watch carefully, you will see that he barely gets to put any force on me at all before he's "airborne". When I ask Kelley and Tom to just barely touch me with the tips of their fingers, it is to purposely show how little force and pressure is needed to trigger the fajin.
The whole point of the demonstration is that in order have such an instantaneous acceleration of mass, you must have the application of some type of Energy - and if you purposely eliminate the usual forces could produce this effect, like acceleration of your OWN mass, then you must be applying some other type of energy to get it done.
I purposely did TWO different demos in the first video - in the one where I'm standing, it could be said that I'm cleverly using the system of "bows" and levers built into my skeletal structure to throw him out.
A strong man could in fact do that with some practice, but only if his demo partner really took the time to "load him up" in a very "committed" way - which is precisely why I fajin as soon as I am touched, to eliminate any load-up time.
The whole reason for the "chair demo" is to purposely eliminate the possibility of using the bows and levers that might be present in the first demo - so it is not meant to be a "sideshow-trick" , but actually a more rigorous test.
So again, the whole point of the demos is to eliminate as many variables as possible, to showcase just one thing - that the phenomenon of fajin actually exists, AND that a non-Chinese TCC practitioner could do it. At the time I made those videos, the only people on the web who were doing such things were Chinese "masters".
I thought that this would be treated as "good news" by the members of this list, but from the day they were put up, the claims that they were BS or insufficient in some way are mostly what I've heard - go figure. I would have thought that the fact that some round-eye who can do what the Chinese 'masters' can do, but who can speak perfect English and explain his techniques well would have been greeted with some positive response - but such has generally not been the case, at least amongst non-Chinese people.
Chinese people love what I'm doing in those videos because they can SEE what I'm doing in those videos - they SEE the purposeful elimination of one variable after another, so that the chance for the demonstrator to BS his way thru it is virtually reduced to zero. I have dozens of emails from Chinese practitioners complimenting me on the skills being demonstrated, and two of them have become my private students.
As for what fajin might be useful for, I am sorry to have to say that anyone who asks me that question is either too lazy to think it through, or they're simply not too bright;
POWER is always a useful thing in the martial arts.
No, it won't look like the demos, but it will be there in every technique.
On May 16, 2010, at 8:13 PM, mikepekor wrote:
Which still does not speak to what value it has in a violent situation.
Do you think raw POWER might be useful in a violent situation?
I generally put the fajin into a punch, but I've knocked out 17 people with my left hook, so it seems to be working ok so far......
Sorry there wasn't any personal video cameras back then, but I have plenty of witnesses, what would satisfy you, signed affidavits?
The saying around the school at that time was "They come in vertical, but they end up horizontal".
Again, Kelley joined my school because I beat his teacher, and he's only one of about 20 students who came to me that way... His teacher was/is world famous, and he has never been beaten before or since.
But as he told Kelley later that day, "There's a first time for everything."
