Windrider wrote:Please forgive me, but I am not sure what you are asking here: "The second is how you generally make use of internal concepts and get them to unify with the square of the basic karate/kung fu type moment so far displayed on your site? Do you instead have some more round posture at a higher level?"
To put the concept into other more precise words I was talking about the connection between your original center and your movement. If all movement is centered on your original center your movement will be smooth and balanced but there is also more you can do with it.
Through working on the connection with your center your movement can express more of your bodies combined power.
The most basic example in striking is the "one inch punch". This short power is connected to the ground through your Dantian, later you can use this short power from other parts of your body like your hips.
You can however train to have this connection throughout your movement and not just striking. This improves your grounding, resilience to striking, short power and shaking jing.
A practical example would be that after I had been training this skill for a few months I was sparing or more like playing with my friend who used to do Wing Chun with me. By turning wile maintaining connection through my structure I disrupted his stance even though it was not the energy of a strike or muscular energy or force. I was connected throughout my body and through his tension was able to displace his through his arm without perceptible effort (Sadly I am in no way consistent in this ability yet) because I was connected but in a relaxed manor that allowed for the transmitting of power through the body not just the arm muscles.
An analogy would be pushing a car. Your body lines up and this connection is combined with your breathing to apply all your force.
To do this in a martial sense you do not have to have or want stiff muscles but to join your body with your center and use this to express power from the ground or through a turn.
Eventually you come to realize the power is not from the ground but from your center. The ground simply allows you to express the force of your energy as it expands out from your center. The force is like a presser wanting to extend your limbs as if you were a blow up dole being inflated wanting to push out from the center. You can then direct this by limiting how it can expands so the force goes the way you want. This takes a lot of training so I must confess to not being much good at it yet and that this is my own short coming since I know the method for training it. It has a lot to do with intention and visualizing force and presser wile keeping a good rooted structure.
The converse also is true as you absorb an impact you can either dissipate it through yourself to the ground or use your connected body and center to store it like a spring and send it back with some interest.
Eventually the aliment becomes less obvious and more continual, internal or integrated.
My question was that as it seems much easier to have this connection through the rounded type movement found in Taiji, Bagua or Xing Yi than through the squarer movement used in some Shaolin styles. If you are using a connection to the Dantian are you using a more rounded method at high levels of your art to express this or are you still using the more square form?
I think that at a high level you could have that connection with everything you do in any shape but I and others find it hard to do it achieve a strong connection through a square structure.
I have been told that many external methods like standing in a horse stance and bashing your arm against a tree as well as wall-bag training can be used to develop a connection, This would presumably take a lot of training and awareness of the rout force takes from the weapon to the ground.
I am sorry if my way of saying this seems mystifying but I find this hard to express.
The books "Warriors of Stillness" by Jan Diepersloot go into it in some depth.
This bagua video talks a bit about it although just at the most basic level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68wit3yjudAThis method is perhaps most understood in the terms expressed in the Internal Martial Arts community. I would not be to surprised if you use other words to explain the concept or simply don't use the concept and use other methods to develop combat power.
I have known dangerous fighters that did use this concept at all and I do not feel I am a better fighter than them yet although it has and is improving my martial art a lot.