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Below is the commonly held idea is that the 'Internal' is a modern construct: 

"if you look at some of the old writings, internal and external as "schools" of martial arts didn't exist before Sun, Lu Tang and his contemporaries... It's a modern concept."

MP responds.

"First the concept of "Internal" and "External" arts is definitely NOT "modern" - The first distinction between external and internal martial arts comes from Huang Zongxi's 1669 Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan, and the principles that distinguish internal styles from the external were described at least as early as the 18th century by Chang Nai-chou.

Second, many people make much of the fact that Sun Lu-tang seems to be one of the first persons to have classified TCC, Hsing-I, and Ba-gua as the neijia, or "Internal Family" arts - as if the commonalities between these arts did not exist until he noted them in print; it's almost as if they are suggesting it was some sort of "intellectual construct" - an almost "artificial" classification.

My own feeling is that having learned his Hsing-I from Guo Yun-sheng, (better known as "Divine Crushing-Fist Guo), his Ba-gua from Cheng Ting-hua, Bagua-founder Dong Hai-chuan's #2 disciple, and his TCC from Wu/Hao-style founder Hao Wei-zhen, Sun Lu-tang was uniquely qualified to make this judgement about the deeper similarities between these three "Internal" arts. 

You don't get to train under masters like these without having reached a very high standard before they even accept you as a student - for example, Sun trained in Hsing-I with the accomplished master Li Kui-yuan before being accepted for further training by Guo Yun-sheng.

Having trained hard under such exacting task-masters such as Guo, Cheng, and Hao, Sun's understanding of these three arts came from a deep and VISCERAL physical comprehension of their inner workings; his classification of these three arts as "neijia" is definitely NOT just some mere intellectual construct.

Sun was also a very good fighter, not just a theorist - for example, when all of Chen Ting-hua's 12 top disciples had been defeated by a very big and tall Shaolin monk, and Chen was going to have to face the fierce monk himself, it was the much smaller Sun Lu-tang who stepped in and handily defeated the monk with one strike.

If people don't want to believe in the Internal-External divide, that's fine with me, I couldn't care less - but I do resent the implication that master Sun was just some effete intellectual who just conjured up the whole thing out of thin air.

In fact, he was very tough both physically and mentally - he went thru a type of severe physical training that would simply drop most modern "martial arts" practitioners in their tracks, and he did it to the exacting standards of some of the Best martial arts masters of his time."

The

Five Elements (Wu Xing)

The Five Elements are Water, Fire, Wood, Metal and Earth. "Wu" means five and "Xing" means movement. The five elements are considered to be phases of a cycle of change.

Interrelationships of the Five Elements

There are many different relationships between the Five Elements and some common relationships are shown below.

For example: I Liq Chuan uses the five elements to metaphorically represent five different applications.

From various sources, mostly Wikipedia. Thanks Ashe Higgs for the diagram. The last is directly from Master Sam FS Chin.

On Aug 21, 2010, at 6:13 AM, CJ Rhoads wrote:

Which brings up a question I’d like to ask the list; should Taijiquan (T’ai Chi Ch’uan) really be considered a fighting art?

 

Michael Phillips: