# Liu He Ba Fa



## Xue Sheng

There is a 4th Chinese internal martial art that I tend to forget about because I know little about it beyond the following;

Liu He Ba Fa &#8211; Literally, &#8220;six combinations eight methods&#8221;. One of the Chinese internal martial arts, its techniques are combined from Taijiquan, Xingyquan and Baguazhang. It is reported that this internal martial art was created by Chen Bo during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) 
[From Shaolin White Crane by Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming]

I am wondering if there are any practitioners of this style out there that can shed a little more light on the subject.

Another thing I am wondering about is the creator of Liu He Ba Fa the same as the historically excepted creator of Taijiquan - Chang, Sen-Feng (960-1127), also from the Song Dynasty (960-1279). I have seen references to Chang Sen-Feng being called Chen Bo in more places than just the Jet Li movie. But this name similarity can by no means be considered solid proof of this, I am certain there was more than one person called Chen Bo during the Song Dynasty. 

Mandarin &#8211; Liu He Ba Fa
Cantonese - Lok Hop Ba Fa

http://www.answers.com/Liu%20He%20Ba%20Fa


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## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> There is a 4th Chinese internal martial art that I tend to forget about because I know little about it beyond the following;
> 
> Liu He Ba Fa  Literally, six combinations eight methods. One of the Chinese internal martial arts, its techniques are combined from Taijiquan, Xingyquan and Baguazhang. It is reported that this internal martial art was created by Chen Bo during the Song Dynasty (960-1279)
> [From Shaolin White Crane by Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming]
> 
> I am wondering if there are any practitioners of this style out there that can shed a little more light on the subject.
> 
> Another thing I am wondering about is the creator of Liu He Ba Fa the same as the historically excepted creator of Taijiquan - Chang, Sen-Feng (960-1127), also from the Song Dynasty (960-1279). I have seen references to Chang Sen-Feng being called Chen Bo in more places than just the Jet Li movie. But this name similarity can by no means be considered solid proof of this, I am certain there was more than one person called Chen Bo during the Song Dynasty.
> 
> Mandarin  Liu He Ba Fa
> Cantonese - Lok Hop Ba Fa
> 
> http://www.answers.com/Liu%20He%20Ba%20Fa


 
I had never heard of this, or at least not in the context of it being a fourth internal art, but something has caught my eye.  The Cantonese Lok Hop Ba Fa.  My sifu has taught me a set called Lok Hop Kuen, and he says he knows a Broadsword and a Spear set from the same system, but that is all he knows of this.  I believe he learned it from Sifu Wong, Jack Man of the Ching Wu association in San Francisco.  Now that I think about it, I think I remember him referring to it as more "internal", at least more so than most people realize.  Perhaps it is from the system you are referring to.  I shall have to ask him about it.

Stylistically, it has many similarities to Tibetan White Crane technique (which is why he taught it to me since I am most interested in this art), but the Tibetan crane is entirely different from the Fujian crane.  Technique is entirely different, different history, totally separate arts.


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## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> I had never heard of this, or at least not in the context of it being a fourth internal art, but something has caught my eye. The Cantonese Lok Hop Ba Fa. My sifu has taught me a set called Lok Hop Kuen, and he says he knows a Broadsword and a Spear set from the same system, but that is all he knows of this. I believe he learned it from Sifu Wong, Jack Man of the Ching Wu association in San Francisco. Now that I think about it, I think I remember him referring to it as more "internal", at least more so than most people realize. Perhaps it is from the system you are referring to. I shall have to ask him about it.
> 
> Stylistically, it has many similarities to Tibetan White Crane technique (which is why he taught it to me since I am most interested in this art), but the Tibetan crane is entirely different from the Fujian crane. Technique is entirely different, different history, totally separate arts.


 
I would be interested to hear what your Sifu says about it. I would like to find out more about Liu He Ba Fa. I heard about it years ago, but I never researched it, until now. 

Also as a bit off topic, I was just reading a little about Tibetan white crane and a Shaolin type of White crane last night and they seemed a bit different. I may have this entirely wrong, but it appeared that the Tibetan version has a bit of a higher stance. Is the Tibetan version as big on external Qi training as the Shaolin version appears to be? I will have to look into Fujian white crane. However the differences do not surprise me, look at Yang style tai chi as compared to Chen and you will see big differences.


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## Flying Crane

I usually meet with my sifu on Saturday mornings, but was unable to attend today due to other personal obligations (we are babysitting my in-law's dog while they are out of town, and he is old and getting sick and we were afraid he was taking a turn for the worse so we felt the need to stay with him.  Poor little guy, I'm afraid he is living on borrowed time right now.)  So I don't expect to see him again until next week.  Send me a PM on Friday and remind me to ask him about it.

As to Tibetan vs. Southern Shaolin (Fujian) White Crane, they are established as completely separate and not from the same root at all.  No similarity with technique.  Tibetan is the ultimate longfist style, with fairly high and mobile stances.  Stylistically it is similar to Choy Lay Fut.  We do use the lower stances, but they are more transitory.  Our focus is either hit and run, or blitzkreig and overwhelm the opponent.  Basically, if we decide we have to fight you, then we charge in throwing everything we have as fast as we can and from every angle and with full power until you go down.  You may block the first couple shots, but we switch and never stop until we hit you.  It's a bit hard to spar that way.

The art was known as "Lion's Roar" in Tibet, when it was supposedly developed by the Lamas.  Once it was brought into Southern China it was known as Lama Style, then later Hop Gar (hero's style, named after a famous guy who is now something of a folk hero), and later (1950s, I believe) splintered into the sister style of White Crane.  The art itself supposedly was developed when a Lama witnessed a fight between a Crane and a "mountain ape" (there is a species of macaque that lives in some areas of Tibet, so it is possible).  Lama, Hop Gar, and White Crane all exist as sister arts and are very similar but with some differences as they went their own way.

Fujian Crane is something that I have only seen a few video clips of.  It seemed to me somewhat similar to Wing Chun and Southern Mantis.  Wish I knew more about it.

The art does have qi development, what I have learned of it is what I refer to as "hard qi" (see my post in the Internal-External thread).  There is also a lengthy Internal form in the system, but I have not learned it.


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## Xue Sheng

Sorry to hear about the pup.

If I remember I will PM you next Friday, if I remember, and lately with everything going on (my youngest is learning to walk and with the China trip pending) I do not remember much. However I am very interested in finding out if that has anything to do with Liu He Ba Fa. 

What I read about Tibetan White crane described the same sort of fighting style. I have never seen it in action and I just read about it yesterday, and it sounded impressive. I was going through some old books and found a short description. 

The Shaolin type White Crane I was reading about is the stuff Yang Jwing-ming does. 

I will have to see what I can find about the Fujian style.


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## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> The Shaolin type White Crane I was reading about is the stuff Yang Jwing-ming does.
> 
> I will have to see what I can find about the Fujian style.


 
They are the same.


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## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> They are the same.


 
Ahh, then my observation about them is incorrect; I will have to read them more closely. 

Of course the book I have that talks about "Tibetan white crane" only dedicated 3 pages to it and Dr Yang's is an entire book about it and he is calling it "Shaolin White Crane". 

There was one stance, that the shorter book discussed, that I did not see in Dr Yang's and it may be that I missed it in one or one was incorrect. It was a very high stance with arms stretched above the head in Cranes Beak (sorry a Tai Chi Term) apparently ready to strike. The philosophy behind both seemed the same the attitude seemed the same but the stances looked different. It could also be the teacher. Sorry about the error.

There is a lot of external Qi work in his book, and  it doesn't look easy.  There is also a section on internal too.

It appears that I need to find out more about Fujian White Crane to make a better comparison. As well as Liu He Ba Fa (Lok Hop Ba Fa) that I was originally looking for.

Hey, I may be in error, but at least my wife has no reason to think I'm crazy this time.


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## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> Ahh, then my observation about them is incorrect; I will have to read them more closely.
> 
> Of course the book I have that talks about "Tibetan white crane" only dedicated 3 pages to it and Dr Yang's is an entire book about it and he is calling it "Shaolin White Crane".
> 
> There was one stance, that the shorter book discussed, that I did not see in Dr Yang's and it may be that I missed it in one or one was incorrect. It was a very high stance with arms stretched above the head in Cranes Beak (sorry a Tai Chi Term) apparently ready to strike. The philosophy behind both seemed the same the attitude seemed the same but the stances looked different. It could also be the teacher. Sorry about the error.
> 
> There is a lot of external Qi work in his book, and it doesn't look easy. There is also a section on internal too.
> 
> It appears that I need to find out more about Fujian White Crane to make a better comparison. As well as Liu He Ba Fa (Lok Hop Ba Fa) that I was originally looking for.
> 
> Hey, I may be in error, but at least my wife has no reason to think I'm crazy this time.


 
Yes, I have Dr. Yang's book on Shaolin (Fujian) White Crane and am familiar with it to some extent but have not read it thoroughly.  It does treat extensively with the qi gong aspects of that art.

The other book you refer to could be Jane Hallander's?  I have read that and yes, that one is about Tibetan Crane.  I remember the picture you refer to, it is a posture found in one (at least of what I know) of our forms tho I have to confess I am not entirely clear on just what the use is.  I think there are other pictures that illustrate a straight punch, with the other arm extended behind.  This illustrates our full body pivot to generate extra torque for power in our punches.  We use an exaggerated reverse swing with the other arm to help drive the striking hand forward.


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## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> Yes, I have Dr. Yang's book on Shaolin (Fujian) White Crane and am familiar with it to some extent but have not read it thoroughly. It does treat extensively with the qi gong aspects of that art.
> 
> The other book you refer to could be Jane Hallander's? I have read that and yes, that one is about Tibetan Crane. I remember the picture you refer to, it is a posture found in one (at least of what I know) of our forms tho I have to confess I am not entirely clear on just what the use is. I think there are other pictures that illustrate a straight punch, with the other arm extended behind. This illustrates our full body pivot to generate extra torque for power in our punches. We use an exaggerated reverse swing with the other arm to help drive the striking hand forward.


 
OK so I was right originally but wrong the second time, I got to pay more attention. Dr Yang's is Fujian which IS different from Tibetan.

ok, I feel slightly less silly&#8230;..I think&#8230;..

The "full body pivot" seems similar to something that I learned in my brief stint with Shaolin Long fist, if it is, it is a very powerful attack.


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## East Winds

Xue Sheng,

There is an excellent book by Khan Fox "The Kung Fu of Six Combinations and Eight Methods (Liu Ho Pa Fa) published privately in 1995 which gives an excellent description of Liu Ho Pa Fa. I don't know how difficult it is to get now, but I bought it several years ago when I learned the form (sadly not kept up). That was in an earlier life when I didn't know any better and was in the "collecting forms" stage!!! There are also a series of teaching videos by Paul Dillon produced by Great Achievement Enterprises Santa Rosa CA.

Liu Ho PA Fa is a beautiful form and as you suggest, a synthesis of Taiji, Bagua and Xing-Yi.

Hope this helps

Best wishes


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## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> The "full body pivot" seems similar to something that I learned in my brief stint with Shaolin Long fist, if it is, it is a very powerful attack.


 
I think so and I imagine it is found in many systems, but in Tibetan Crane I think we take the pivot to the extreme.


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## Xue Sheng

East Winds said:
			
		

> Xue Sheng,
> 
> There is an excellent book by Khan Fox "The Kung Fu of Six Combinations and Eight Methods (Liu Ho Pa Fa) published privately in 1995 which gives an excellent description of Liu Ho Pa Fa. I don't know how difficult it is to get now, but I bought it several years ago when I learned the form (sadly not kept up). That was in an earlier life when I didn't know any better and was in the "collecting forms" stage!!! There are also a series of teaching videos by Paul Dillon produced by Great Achievement Enterprises Santa Rosa CA.
> 
> Liu Ho PA Fa is a beautiful form and as you suggest, a synthesis of Taiji, Bagua and Xing-Yi.
> 
> Hope this helps
> 
> Best wishes


 
Thank You I will look for the book. 

I am basically curious to know more about it. I too went through a collecting forms stage way back when, but Liu Ho Pa Fa was not one of them. And although I no longer collect forms I do internal CMA and I know little about Liu Ho Pa Fa .

Thanks.


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## TaiChiTJ

Master Wai Lun Choi is retired now. His videos are still available. 

http://www.liuhopafa.com/





Also, on Mike Patterson's Hsing I site, he teaches the Liu Ho Pa Fa form on video and you can see the first few moves of it, as well as Mike's self defense applications for those moves.


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## Xue Sheng

TaiChiTJ said:
			
		

> Master Wai Lun Choi is retired now. His videos are still available.
> 
> http://www.liuhopafa.com/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Also, on Mike Patterson's Hsing I site, he teaches the Liu Ho Pa Fa form on video and you can see the first few moves of it, as well as Mike's self defense applications for those moves.


 
Thanks I will check it out


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## Gaoguy

LHBF cannot be Taiji, Xingyi, Bagua. Bagua was developed around the turn of the century. Khan Foxx? Hmmm.


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## Xue Sheng

Liu He Ba Fa contains form and principle elements from the arts of Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Taijiquan

Bagua -  Dong Haichuan in the early 19th century

I have found no date of Liu He Ba Fa I have only found a referrence to 

Liu He Ba Fa proponents say that it contains form and principle elements from the arts of Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Taijiquan. Each of these art forms are believed by some schools to share principles extending back to various precursor disciplines, Tao Yin, for one example.

I can find no date to the origin of Liu He Ba Fa so if you have one I would appriciate the info. I currently have found nothing that says it came before Bagua.


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## Xue Sheng

Gaoguy said:
			
		

> LHBF cannot be Taiji, Xingyi, Bagua. Bagua was developed around the turn of the century. Khan Foxx? Hmmm.


 
Liu He Ba Fa contains form and principle elements from the arts of Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Taijiquan
Bagua -  Dong Haichuan in the early 19th century

I have found no date of origin for Liu He Ba Fa I have only found a reference to 

Liu He Ba Fa proponents say that it contains form and principle elements from the arts of Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Taijiquan. Each of these art forms are believed by some schools to share principles extending back to various precursor disciplines, Tao Yin, for one example.

I can find no date to the origin of Liu He Ba Fa so if you have one I would appreciate the info. I currently have found nothing that says it came before Bagua.

And I have found that the book by Khan Foxx appears to be out of print.


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## Gaoguy

No more info than you. Doesn't look like baguazhang to me. You can probably order Foxx's book from his site. Something like watersprite.


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## CrushingFist

Since I am tall and young, I was always told to practice Long Fist, White Crane style Kung Fu. going back to topic

I am too learning about Liu he ba fa. It sounds pretty good according answers.com , but can't let everything sound good to me


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## Flying Crane

CrushingFist said:
			
		

> Since I am tall and young, I was always told to practice Long Fist, White Crane style Kung Fu. going back to topic
> 
> I am too learning about Liu he ba fa. It sounds pretty good according answers.com , but can't let everything sound good to me


 
I know of a school in New York that teaches Tibetan White Crane, but they go under the name Lama Pai.  I have never met the instructors so I can't vouch for them, but I know they are there.  I believe one instructor's name is David Ross, can't remember the others.  I know they have a website, you'll probably find it if you poke around a bit.


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## Xue Sheng

CrushingFist said:
			
		

> Since I am tall and young, I was always told to practice Long Fist, White Crane style Kung Fu. going back to topic
> 
> I am too learning about Liu he ba fa. It sounds pretty good according answers.com , but can't let everything sound good to me


From what I am finding out Liu he ba fa is hard to find. Its not even easy to find a book on the subject.



			
				Flying Crane said:
			
		

> I know of a school in New York that teaches Tibetan White Crane, but they go under the name Lama Pai. I have never met the instructors so I can't vouch for them, but I know they are there. I believe one instructor's name is David Ross, can't remember the others. I know they have a website, you'll probably find it if you poke around a bit.


 
Flying Crane would know better than I, but I am reading a book by Dr Yang Jwing-Ming about White Crane that seems fairly good.


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## East Winds

Xue Sheng

Have a look at www.shenwu.com/discus/messages.

there is some more information about Liu Ho Pa Fa and Khan Foxx talks about reproducing his book if there is enough interest.


Best wishes


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## East Winds

Xue Sheng

Should have said that the discussion on Liu Ho Pa Fa comes under the "Martial Arts - Miscellaneous" heading. There are lots of links to Liu Ho Pa Fa offered as well.

Best wishes


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## Xue Sheng

East Winds said:
			
		

> Xue Sheng
> 
> Should have said that the discussion on Liu Ho Pa Fa comes under the "Martial Arts - Miscellaneous" heading. There are lots of links to Liu Ho Pa Fa offered as well.
> 
> Best wishes


 
Thank You, I will check it out.


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## dmax999

I used to know this form.  From my understanding it is earlier then BaGua, XingYi, and TaiChi.  It is closer to Tai Chi then the other two.  It is an internal art, but is more common then you probably think.  Not many teach it in America, but there are many that practice it.  Many that I have seen who practice it also practice O-Mei Kung Fu, but I have no idea if there is any connection.

As for finding a teacher, good news and bad news...  Taoist Tai Chi Society teaches it in Canada via seminars.  Many local branches will also teach it from them as well.  The reason TTCS Tai Chi looks so bad is that their creator was better at LHBF and turned his Tai Chi to look like LHBF.  He wanted to teach LHBF, but found it too difficult to teach most westerners, so he modified Yang Tai Chi to be closer to LHBF.  The "advanced" students there move to LHBF.

It is more difficult then Yang Tai Chi.  It is also performed mostly slow, and when done correctly should be very low stances.  Not knowing much about Chen Tai Chi, I would say it is closest to that from what I have seen of Chen.

Any specific questions about it?


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## East Winds

The Liu He Ba Fa taught by the Taoist Tai Chi Society is (with the best will in the world) a bit of a joke! Liu He Ba Fa is a beautiful (some would say the ultimate) IMA. The founder of the TTCS (Moy Lin Shin) expressley forbade any mention of martial  aspects in the society and therefore he emasculated not only Yang Taijiquan but also Liu He Ba Fa. Steer welll clear of this lot if you truly wish to research LHPF.

Best wishes


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## Xue Sheng

dmax999 said:
			
		

> I used to know this form. From my understanding it is earlier then BaGua, XingYi, and TaiChi. It is closer to Tai Chi then the other two. It is an internal art, but is more common then you probably think. Not many teach it in America, but there are many that practice it. Many that I have seen who practice it also practice O-Mei Kung Fu, but I have no idea if there is any connection.
> 
> As for finding a teacher, good news and bad news... Taoist Tai Chi Society teaches it in Canada via seminars. Many local branches will also teach it from them as well. The reason TTCS Tai Chi looks so bad is that their creator was better at LHBF and turned his Tai Chi to look like LHBF. He wanted to teach LHBF, but found it too difficult to teach most westerners, so he modified Yang Tai Chi to be closer to LHBF. The "advanced" students there move to LHBF.
> 
> It is more difficult then Yang Tai Chi. It is also performed mostly slow, and when done correctly should be very low stances. Not knowing much about Chen Tai Chi, I would say it is closest to that from what I have seen of Chen.
> 
> Any specific questions about it?


 
Thank You, but I am not really looking for a teacher at this point, I am just looking for information. I am an internal CMA guy and I realized I knew little about Liu He Ba Fa.

However I am suppose to go to China in a couple of months and I have been recently told, meet with a Taoist about CMA. I will also be looking for Xingyi, since I use to do Xingyi and I will start formal training again in a couple weeks. And since I am trying to find out about Liu He Ba Fa I will look for it as well to see what it looks like there.

As to the age of Liu He Ba Fa, I am not certain when it was actually called Liu He Ba Fa. However I am fairly certain that the original CMA that it came form is older than at least Bagua.

This is what I have so far as to origin

Liu He Ba Fa proponents say that it contains form and principle elements from the arts of Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Taijiquan. Each of these art forms are believed by some schools to share principles extending back to various precursor disciplines, Tao Yin, for one example.

Thanks


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## Flying Crane

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> I had never heard of this, or at least not in the context of it being a fourth internal art, but something has caught my eye. The Cantonese Lok Hop Ba Fa. My sifu has taught me a set called Lok Hop Kuen, and he says he knows a Broadsword and a Spear set from the same system, but that is all he knows of this. I believe he learned it from Sifu Wong, Jack Man of the Ching Wu association in San Francisco. Now that I think about it, I think I remember him referring to it as more "internal", at least more so than most people realize. Perhaps it is from the system you are referring to. I shall have to ask him about it.
> 
> Stylistically, it has many similarities to Tibetan White Crane technique (which is why he taught it to me since I am most interested in this art), but the Tibetan crane is entirely different from the Fujian crane. Technique is entirely different, different history, totally separate arts.


 
OK, I had a chance to ask my sifu about this.  Lok Hop Kuen that he taught me is Six Harmonies Lost Track style, and is not what you are asking about, so I was mistaken.  He says that it is sort of external/internal mix, but is a whole different method.

He was familiar with LHBF, but has not had any experience training it.  He believes it is somewhat newer as a system, looks somewhat like tai chi in that it is slow and relaxed and meditative, but the physical technique is quite different and unique.  Sorry, but that's about all I got right now.


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## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> OK, I had a chance to ask my sifu about this. Lok Hop Kuen that he taught me is Six Harmonies Lost Track style, and is not what you are asking about, so I was mistaken. He says that it is sort of external/internal mix, but is a whole different method.
> 
> He was familiar with LHBF, but has not had any experience training it. He believes it is somewhat newer as a system, looks somewhat like tai chi in that it is slow and relaxed and meditative, but the physical technique is quite different and unique. Sorry, but that's about all I got right now.


 
That's great thanks for the info; your Sifu actually gave you a lot of information on the style. "relaxed and meditative, but the physical technique is quite different and unique" 

I am going to look for it when I'm in China just to see what it looks like.

Thanks

On an unrelated note, I just found out that there are Xingyi and Bagua forms in San Da/San Shou.at least in the police version.


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## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> That's great thanks for the info; your Sifu actually gave you a lot of information on the style. "relaxed and meditative, but the physical technique is quite different and unique"
> 
> I am going to look for it when I'm in China just to see what it looks like.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> On an unrelated note, I just found out that there are Xingyi and Bagua forms in San Da/San Shou.at least in the police version.


 
yeah, I tried to pin him down a little with regard to the description of the technique: "what do you mean, sifu?  The technique is different as in more like longfist, or something still like like tai chi?"

response: "hmmm... it's just different, but not like longfist, but not like tai chi.  tai chi has certain movements that define it and are common in one variation or another from one style to the next, but the all have it.  But this one doesn't.  It's just different."

I guess that's him using Verbal Tai Chi.  He just pivots and rolls and my questions sort of slide off him sometimes...


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## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> yeah, I tried to pin him down a little with regard to the description of the technique: "what do you mean, sifu? The technique is different as in more like longfist, or something still like like tai chi?"
> 
> response: "hmmm... it's just different, but not like longfist, but not like tai chi. tai chi has certain movements that define it and are common in one variation or another from one style to the next, but the all have it. But this one doesn't. It's just different."
> 
> I guess that's him using Verbal Tai Chi. He just pivots and rolls and my questions sort of slide off him sometimes...


 
I know the feeling; I have received similar responses from my tai chi teacher in the past. I guess it is just the nature of the beast.

I have been checking some of the other suggestions, I have not yet checked them all but I am working on it. Some lead to other places to check.

I will be in China in a less than 2 months and if I find out anything more when I'm there I will post it here.

I appreciate you taking the time to check with your Sifu

Thanks.
T


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## Xue Sheng

dmax999 said:
			
		

> I used to know this form. From my understanding it is earlier then BaGua, XingYi, and TaiChi. It is closer to Tai Chi then the other two. It is an internal art, but is more common then you probably think. Not many teach it in America, but there are many that practice it. Many that I have seen who practice it also practice O-Mei Kung Fu, but I have no idea if there is any connection.
> 
> As for finding a teacher, good news and bad news... Taoist Tai Chi Society teaches it in Canada via seminars. Many local branches will also teach it from them as well. The reason TTCS Tai Chi looks so bad is that their creator was better at LHBF and turned his Tai Chi to look like LHBF. He wanted to teach LHBF, but found it too difficult to teach most westerners, so he modified Yang Tai Chi to be closer to LHBF. The "advanced" students there move to LHBF.
> 
> It is more difficult then Yang Tai Chi. It is also performed mostly slow, and when done correctly should be very low stances. Not knowing much about Chen Tai Chi, I would say it is closest to that from what I have seen of Chen.
> 
> Any specific questions about it?


 
From what I am reading it appears to have some Qin na, in the Dragon and Tiger Fighting form. Do they teach these forms at the Taoist Tai Chi Society?


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## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> I know the feeling; I have received similar responses from my tai chi teacher in the past. I guess it is just the nature of the beast.
> 
> I have been checking some of the other suggestions, I have not yet checked them all but I am working on it. Some lead to other places to check.
> 
> I will be in China in a less than 2 months and if I find out anything more when I'm there I will post it here.
> 
> I appreciate you taking the time to check with your Sifu
> 
> Thanks.
> T


 
I think he also referred to it as "water boxing".  That might be a lead to check.


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## Xue Sheng

This is what I have so far.

As suggested by TaiChiTJ I went here; Wai Lun Choi's Chinese Internal Arts

http://www.liuhopafa.com/

I found this so far:
Apparently there is a simplified wushu version not to be confused with the real thing

Liu Ho Pa Fa System
The complete system consists of six hand forms, The Twelve Animal form, Eight Linking Palms, Six Harmonies Eight Methods Fist, Dragon and Tiger Fighting, Coiled Dragon Fist and Coiled Dragon Swimming.

The Twelve Animal forms are a set of twelve short forms that build the necessary foundation need to practice the remaining forms. Each set was developed in characteristics associated with each animal. These forms develop the basic body movement and proper breathing necessary to complete the more complex techniques found in the remaining forms. 
The main form (Six Harmonies Eight methods Fist) contains some seven hundred different techniques alone. It is in essence contain all of the movements of the other forms, but in for instance in the Dragon and Tiger Fighting form, contain a more in dept extrapolation of the chin na skills found in the main form. 

And here: Mike Patterson&#8217;s site (I had been here before looking a Xingyi and never noticed the Liu he ba fa)

This is the &#8220;long form&#8221; of the Six Harmony; Eight Methods style. This is a strikingly beautiful and intricate form. It combines the thirteen postures of Tai Chi, the Eight Palms of Pa Kua, and the Twelve Animals and Five Elements of Hsing I, all rolled into one long 137 posture, 512 technique form. Performed at a pace as if practicing Yang style Tai Chi, this set ambles through some impressive combinations from the three classic Internal Families. 

Some videos too: http://www.hsing-i.com/pics/index.html
The part of the form he does looks very Tai Chi, but the applications demo looks Tai Chi and little Xingyi with Qin Na. I have to say, I feel sorry for the Demonstrate-ee, especially for the last application demonstration.

I also went to Tim Cartmell's site per suggestion of East Wind and found a link to Kann's site, http://waterspirit6x8.tripod.com/id13.html
He gives lessons in Thailand&#8230;and I doubt I could convince my wife that we need to go to Thailand..just to find out more
 But I think I will look for a book when I am in China

Thanks for all the help, I am still looking and what I find I will post here.


----------



## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> I think he also referred to it as "water boxing". That might be a lead to check.


 
I have come across that before, I will have to look into it in greater depth. It may also be the terminology for the alleged original Taoist form that it supposedly came from. 

I will look into it more
Thanks


----------



## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> And here: Mike Pattersons site (I had been here before looking a Xingyi and never noticed the Liu he ba fa)
> 
> This is the long form of the Six Harmony; Eight Methods style. This is a strikingly beautiful and intricate form. It combines the thirteen postures of Tai Chi, the Eight Palms of Pa Kua, and the Twelve Animals and Five Elements of Hsing I, all rolled into one long 137 posture, 512 technique form. Performed at a pace as if practicing Yang style Tai Chi, this set ambles through some impressive combinations from the three classic Internal Families.


 
If this is an accurate description, do you think this qualifies as a fourth internal style, rather than just a hybrid style?


----------



## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> If this is an accurate description, do you think this qualifies as a fourth internal style, rather than just a hybrid style?


 
If it is accurate I would be leaning more towards a hybrid style of the internal styles.

But I am really not sure what to make of it at this point, but if this is true then it is certainly does not appear to be a unique style, I will have to see it before I am certain.

But there are some very good styles that pop up out of a combination of other styles as I found out just yesterday; San Shou has Xingi and Bagua in it.


----------



## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> But there are some very good styles that pop up out of a combination of other styles as I found out just yesterday; San Shou has Xingi and Bagua in it.


 
very true.  the label can be a bit misleading, that's all.


----------



## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> very true. the label can be a bit misleading, that's all.


 
That is true, labels can be very missleading.

I thought about this late last night as far as internal styles go. 

Sun Lu Tang (1861 - 1933) was a master of Xingyi and he studied Bagua, possibly also considered a master of Bagua as well. He also studies Wu/Hao Style Tai Chi, Sun was considered a very good martial artist. 

He went on to developed Sun Style Tai Chi, which is recognized by the Chinese government as the 5th Tai Chi family. 

I have only seen the Sun Short form done in person, but I have seen clips Sun style forms that appear to have Xingyi and Bagua elements.

So I suppose based on this Liu He Ba Fa could be considered the 4th internal style.


----------



## Xue Sheng

More Liu He Ba Fa Sites, 

Waterboxing
Liu He Ba Fa
http://www.waterboxing.com/
Directory of Six Harmonies & Eight Methods (Liu He Ba Fa) Masters
http://www.geocities.com/zibocekungfubox1/68box
Liu He Ba Fa
http://www.liuhebafa.ca/

Liang Shou-Yu also teaches Liu He Ba Fa.
http://www.shouyuliang.com/classes/liuhe.shtml


----------



## Flying Crane

Xue Sheng said:
			
		

> That is true, labels can be very missleading.
> 
> I thought about this late last night as far as internal styles go.
> 
> Sun Lu Tang (1861 - 1933) was a master of Xingyi and he studied Bagua, possibly also considered a master of Bagua as well. He also studies Wu/Hao Style Tai Chi, Sun was considered a very good martial artist.
> 
> He went on to developed Sun Style Tai Chi, which is recognized by the Chinese government as the 5th Tai Chi family.
> 
> I have only seen the Sun Short form done in person, but I have seen clips Sun style forms that appear to have Xingyi and Bagua elements.
> 
> So I suppose based on this Liu He Ba Fa could be considered the 4th internal style.


 
But Sun's style is considered a style of Tai Chi, not a new style of Internal Martial Art.


----------



## Xue Sheng

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> But Sun's style is considered a style of Tai Chi, not a new style of Internal Martial Art.


 
This is true, so my late night realization is a bust. I HAVE to stop thinking late at night.

However I have been online so much today looking a Liu He Ba Fa stuff my eyes are burning, so I am not going to write much right now, but I have found a lot today. And I have printed a lot today and I am going to read it and try and condense it down to a couple of paragraphs and post it.

I will add a couple of things.

I have seen a few references that say it is seen as the highest form of internal kung fu.

Also it is a long internal form consisting of elements from Xingyi, Bagua and Tai Chi
From Xingyi - 5 elements and 12 animals
From Bagua - the 8 main palm variations
From Tai Chi - the 13 postures.

It appears to be much older than I originally thought, but has been changed to include the other 3 internal styles to fill in the gaps. I will explain more of that later.

It is supposedly not a mere amalgam of forms, it's most distinctive trait is a smooth flowing character. Hence the name water boxing (flows like water)

Is very likely, originally, from a Taoist. Possibly the same Taoist that came up with the Tai Chi Ruler.

And at one point a master of Liu He Ba Fa made the statement that there were only 2 and a half martial artists left in China. Half was a Crane stylist the other 2 were Xingyi. Apparently these were the only 3 people he did not defeat with great ease, possibly a draw.

That is just a little of what I read today and I am going to try and condense it into a couple paragraphs....ok maybe 6 paragraphs.

 But since my eyes feel like they are vibrating, I think I will stop now. :erg:


----------



## CrushingFist

http://www.huangtaichi.com/


----------



## TaiChiTJ

I found this today on Mancuso's Plum Publication site. It is a series of vcd's from the mainland that teach the Liu He Pa Fa style. 

Xue Sheng, if you go out to the Plum Publications home page,  then click on "Weblog",  this is the page where Shifu Mancuso discusses new vcd's they are selling. Mancuso mentions this new series, and makes a few tactful comments about it, saying its history is quite colorful and so forth. 


http://www.plumpub.com/sales/vcd4/coll_LHBF1.htm


----------



## Xue Sheng

TaiChiTJ said:
			
		

> I found this today on Mancuso's Plum Publication site. It is a series of vcd's from the mainland that teach the Liu He Pa Fa style.
> 
> Xue Sheng, if you go out to the Plum Publications home page, then click on "Weblog", this is the page where Shifu Mancuso discusses new vcd's they are selling. Mancuso mentions this new series, and makes a few tactful comments about it, saying its history is quite colorful and so forth.
> 
> 
> http://www.plumpub.com/sales/vcd4/coll_LHBF1.htm


 
Thank You for the link. 

I went to the site and I will go back and check it more thoroughly later today.

I will look for those VCDs when I am in Beijing. 
I may also see if I can find Wu Ying Hua 

Thanks again


----------



## Xue Sheng

I have been reading a lot about Liu He Ba Fa and I am still reading. 

I have found something that explains why what Gaoguy saw looked nothing like Bagua.

There are different styles of Liu He Ba Fa. Some look more like Xingyi, Some look more like Bagua, some are stronger in Tai Chi and yet others look absolutely nothing like any of them. 

As for the origin, I agree with what TaiChiTJ found, the history is quite colorful and I will add difficult to figure out what is true and what is not. 

But then again I know at least 4 Tai Chi origin stories, 3 go to Zhang, San-Feng and 1 goes to the Chen family. So this is not surprising.

Thanks for all the help. Once I figure out all this stuff I will try and post a summary.


----------



## oxy

Is anyone still interested in Liu He Ba Fa or is this thread dead?

As a former assistant instructor in Liu He Ba Fa, I don't know much about the history and the master-tree for the style, but I do know about the style itself.

When people doing Liu He Ba Fa says it has elements of Taiji, Bagua and Xingyi, they do not mean that LHBF was created by taking parts from them. All they are saying is that a few movements in LHBF resemble the idea behind a few movements in the other three styles.

There are a few forms of Liu He Ba Fa that survive today:

The beginner's form: Jook Gei (Cantonese pronunciation) which literally means initiation form or something like that - it has two unequal halves to it that are sometimes treated as separate forms for teaching purposes; the advanced form: Tsik Long which means Straight Dragon; the twelve animals; and one called Long Fu Tsin which means Dragon Tiger Battle.

The first half of Jook Gei is a lot like Taiji in that there's not much body translation. The second half of Jook Gei is a lot like Bagua - it's more mobile and some parts uses evasive footwork like in Bagua. The Straight Dragon form is like Xingyi. It goes up and down in a straight line. That is practiced slow like Taiji, but is very explosive when used. The Twelve Animals are separate short forms that are used for training for actual combat (but that is not too say the other forms are not: the other forms can be more deadly than the twelve animal short forms).

I have no idea what Dragon Tiger Battle is like. I've heard of it and apparently some people teaches it. My teacher's teacher did not teach it because he thought it was an unnecessary form: there are no original movements which cannot be learnt from practicing Jook Gei and Straight Dragon.

LHBF is supposed to be consistent with Daoist philosophy. No extremities, only what's natural for the body. Therefore, there are no wide stances. The low stances all have the legs close together in the same way that some Bagua stances have the legs close together.

There should also be no flowery movements at all in keeping with Daoist philosophy. Modern Taiji and ultra modern LHBF unfortunately suffers from unnecessary undulations in the body and hands which have no use at all. Daoist martial arts are supposed to be internal. So the intention should be in the mind and not expressed in the form explicitly. When it's all in the mind, the intention comes out in the form by itself such that it is only noticeable by equally and higher skilled practitioners. Such expression is proper. Highly visible expression is not.

As for other styles having the Liu He name:

There is a style of Praying Mantis called Liu He Praying Mantis. There are no doubt other Liu He styles.

That does not point to any relation between the LHBF style and the others. The concept of Liu He is a very important Daoist concept. So all it points to is that many people are trying to adapt Daoist concepts into other martial arts.

To avoid confusion, the actual name of LHBF is Xin Yi Liu He Ba Fa. Xin Yi means something like "intention of the heart".

There are other people who have mistakenly appended the names of the forms into the LHBF name like Xin Yi Liu He Ba Fa San Pan Shi Er Sai or something like that. The last five words are actually the official name of the twelve animal forms and not the name of the style.


----------



## TaiChiTJ

Oxy, do you plan on resuming teaching sometime in the future?


----------



## oxy

TaiChiTJ said:
			
		

> Oxy, do you plan on resuming teaching sometime in the future?



Yes. Although, I have to get out of university first. Perhaps even get a proper job first. I turn 20 this year anyway, so many people will be turned off by my age before anything else.


----------



## Xue Sheng

oxy said:
			
		

> Is anyone still interested in Liu He Ba Fa or is this thread dead?
> 
> As a former assistant instructor in Liu He Ba Fa, I don't know much about the history and the master-tree for the style, but I do know about the style itself.
> 
> When people doing Liu He Ba Fa says it has elements of Taiji, Bagua and Xingyi, they do not mean that LHBF was created by taking parts from them. All they are saying is that a few movements in LHBF resemble the idea behind a few movements in the other three styles.
> 
> There are a few forms of Liu He Ba Fa that survive today:
> 
> The beginner's form: Jook Gei (Cantonese pronunciation) which literally means initiation form or something like that - it has two unequal halves to it that are sometimes treated as separate forms for teaching purposes; the advanced form: Tsik Long which means Straight Dragon; the twelve animals; and one called Long Fu Tsin which means Dragon Tiger Battle.
> 
> The first half of Jook Gei is a lot like Taiji in that there's not much body translation. The second half of Jook Gei is a lot like Bagua - it's more mobile and some parts uses evasive footwork like in Bagua. The Straight Dragon form is like Xingyi. It goes up and down in a straight line. That is practiced slow like Taiji, but is very explosive when used. The Twelve Animals are separate short forms that are used for training for actual combat (but that is not too say the other forms are not: the other forms can be more deadly than the twelve animal short forms).
> 
> I have no idea what Dragon Tiger Battle is like. I've heard of it and apparently some people teaches it. My teacher's teacher did not teach it because he thought it was an unnecessary form: there are no original movements which cannot be learnt from practicing Jook Gei and Straight Dragon.
> 
> LHBF is supposed to be consistent with Daoist philosophy. No extremities, only what's natural for the body. Therefore, there are no wide stances. The low stances all have the legs close together in the same way that some Bagua stances have the legs close together.
> 
> There should also be no flowery movements at all in keeping with Daoist philosophy. Modern Taiji and ultra modern LHBF unfortunately suffers from unnecessary undulations in the body and hands which have no use at all. Daoist martial arts are supposed to be internal. So the intention should be in the mind and not expressed in the form explicitly. When it's all in the mind, the intention comes out in the form by itself such that it is only noticeable by equally and higher skilled practitioners. Such expression is proper. Highly visible expression is not.
> 
> As for other styles having the Liu He name:
> 
> There is a style of Praying Mantis called Liu He Praying Mantis. There are no doubt other Liu He styles.
> 
> That does not point to any relation between the LHBF style and the others. The concept of Liu He is a very important Daoist concept. So all it points to is that many people are trying to adapt Daoist concepts into other martial arts.
> 
> To avoid confusion, the actual name of LHBF is Xin Yi Liu He Ba Fa. Xin Yi means something like "intention of the heart".
> 
> There are other people who have mistakenly appended the names of the forms into the LHBF name like Xin Yi Liu He Ba Fa San Pan Shi Er Sai or something like that. The last five words are actually the official name of the twelve animal forms and not the name of the style.


 
Thank You, I have been doing research on Liu He Ba Fa. I am intrigued by what appears to be a bit of a hazy origin, but that is not all that surprising in CMA. 

I wish you the best if you do decide to teach. Liu He Ba Fa is rare and good teachers are needed.


----------



## Rook

Definate post more information if you have any... this is an interesting discussion.  

BTW, do any of you know the Choi in the Chicago area whose website is http://www.liuhopafa.com?  What were your impressions of him?


----------



## monkey

Jack Sedaburg in Vegas was under Choi  & told me alot of it the long fist type has-relation to Lama pai.He runs the CDF accademy in Vegas.He is also under Inosanto for JKD concepts.702-251-1111 I beleave is the phone number.


----------



## Xue Sheng

I am not questioning Sedaburg or Insanto; I know nothing about Sedarburg and only slightly more about Insanto. 

But Lama Pai, from what I have been researching, is more closely related to Tibetan White Crane, and Hop Gar. And has little relation to Liu He Ba Fa. But I could have missed something in my research and since the history is somewhat difficult to trace I suppose it could be. 

Liu He Ba Fa is related to Tai Chi, Xingyi and Bagua. Different forms of Liu He Ba Fa have different amounts of those 3. Example one could have more of a Tai Chi feel where another has less of a Tai Chi feel. Bagua could be very prevalent in one style and hardly noticeable in another.


----------



## monkey

ProblI agree.I stated Lama on Jacks behalf as he enjoys long fist-chewen choy I beleave he called it.He long armed & lama-or hop gar ect. he realy loves.He enjoyed Choy as he did some in his system also.


----------



## oxy

Most Liu He Ba Fa practitioners started learning when they were already proficient in other forms of martial arts. In Hong Kong, it has a rare reputation as a "master's kung fu" because only masters of some martial art even hear of it. Choi knew a lot of martial arts like Lama before he began learning from Chan Yik Yan.

All of my classmates and I had to learn four forms of Seven Star Praying Mantis with a combat emphasis before we could go on to Liu He Ba Fa. Despite the differences, SSPM is a very good martial art to transition into Liu He Ba Fa (is a very good martial in its own right if you practice it properly).

Of all the videos I have seen of Liu He Ba Fa, Choi is the only one who even comes close to resembling Chan Yik Yan and Wu Yi Hui in their photos. I've also got his Twelve Animals VCDs and he teaches just like how I was taught (if you give some leeway to the fact that you only get like 6 hours of video only).

Here's the tip:

If you are looking to learn Liu He Ba Fa, learn your style very well, but be prepared to forget it.

The best thing is, once you learn Liu He Ba Fa, learning other styles becomes a whole lot easier, and you can even tell when people from other styles are not doing theirs properly (though, due to common courtesy, it's best not to point that out to them).

Liu He Ba Fa gives you many benefits besides the health and self defence aspects. Believe it or not, I did not understand maths at all until I started learning (again) in Year 10. For some reason, practicing LHBF helped me understand analytical geometry, calculus and statistics.


----------



## Rook

I found a new video on Youtube - there are actually three liu he ba fa videos now.  





 - this one has Choi, the head of the system according to his website, performing the second half of their main form.  Choi seems to be highly regarded on the internet, but I am not particularly impressed with the clip.  Then again, I'm not an expert in what I should be looking for.


----------



## East Winds

Rook,

I agree with your assessment of Choi. His footwork is extremely sloppy!!!! I'm not impressed by this performance.

Very best wishes


----------



## Rook

Its too late to edit my first post, but I noticed there are actually alot more than three LBHF videos on youtube.  

East Winds, I remember that you studied some of LBHF in the past.  If you get a chance, can you look to see if any of them look correct to be in correct form?


----------



## oxy

I actually have bought his VCDs that has him demonstrating and teaching a class the twelve animal forms of LHBF. His footwork is much better there. There is a clip of Choi Wai Lun doing Xingyi. There doesn't seem to be much wrong with his footwork.

I myself do not understand why he performs the second half of the LHBF main form so differently (in terms of "spirit") than his twelve animal forms. However, I would like to know what criteria and such that would cause someone to evaluate his footwork as sloppy and what "sloppy" is defined as.

LHBF has slightly different philosophies than other martial arts. Given that, every LHBF video I have seen out there on the net is appalling. Especially the competition-wushu-fied and the Taiji-fied versions out there. But then, if I were to release our own videos everyone else would say the same thing (ie, that our way of doing the pattern is not the True Way(tm) ). But then, Choi Wai Lun's forms are the most closest to the photos of Chan Yik Yan and Wu Yi Hui in the books they wrote.


----------



## Rook

oxy said:


> I actually have bought his VCDs that has him demonstrating and teaching a class the twelve animal forms of LHBF. His footwork is much better there. There is a clip of Choi Wai Lun doing Xingyi. There doesn't seem to be much wrong with his footwork.
> 
> I myself do not understand why he performs the second half of the LHBF main form so differently (in terms of "spirit") than his twelve animal forms. However, I would like to know what criteria and such that would cause someone to evaluate his footwork as sloppy and what "sloppy" is defined as.
> 
> LHBF has slightly different philosophies than other martial arts. Given that, every LHBF video I have seen out there on the net is appalling. Especially the competition-wushu-fied and the Taiji-fied versions out there. But then, if I were to release our own videos everyone else would say the same thing (ie, that our way of doing the pattern is not the True Way(tm) ). But then, Choi Wai Lun's forms are the most closest to the photos of Chan Yik Yan and Wu Yi Hui in the books they wrote.


 
If you get a chance, post some of the video of your movement.  I have been looking at the ones on youtube and they vary greatly in apparent quality.  However, liu he ba fa's movement seems particularly interesting to me and I like the way it seems to combine multiple methods of power generation.  It would be more apparent if I saw higher quality practitioners in action.


----------



## oxy

Rook said:


> If you get a chance, post some of the video of your movement.  I have been looking at the ones on youtube and they vary greatly in apparent quality.  However, liu he ba fa's movement seems particularly interesting to me and I like the way it seems to combine multiple methods of power generation.  It would be more apparent if I saw higher quality practitioners in action.



You're very correct in saying that the LHBF on youtube varies greatly. None of them actually match the photos of Chan Yik Yan (you can find them at www.waterboxing.com )

The thing is, we try to perform the pattern as though it's "nothing special". So it's very likely Choi was actually doing that in the video. Looking pedestrian while keeping everything internal is something we try to achieve.

I might be able to find some time to film myself after exams, but it probably wouldn't be quality practitioning.


----------



## Rook

oxy said:


> You're very correct in saying that the LHBF on youtube varies greatly. None of them actually match the photos of Chan Yik Yan (you can find them at www.waterboxing.com )


 
I already bookmarked the page.  It was interesting stuff but no video.  



> The thing is, we try to perform the pattern as though it's "nothing special". So it's very likely Choi was actually doing that in the video. Looking pedestrian while keeping everything internal is something we try to achieve.
> 
> I might be able to find some time to film myself after exams, but it probably wouldn't be quality practitioning.


 
Thanks.  I'll look forward to it.


----------



## East Winds

Rook,

Yes, I did some Liu Ho Pa Fa some years ago but am no expert. The You Tube clips are vastly variable from a "Chen" style performer who is in my opinion appalling, to  a lady whos body structure  is way out of kilter!! In between you have some reasonable (and different) forms.

Oxy,

When I commented on the  footwork being sloppy, I was refering to the fact that after the foot is planted, there is a lot of re-ajustment happening. There is a lot of lifting of toes and heels at the point the applications would be applied (i.e. no root). I do however agree that the form should be "formless", however that does not mean slackness. Feet should be planted and remain planted until the next transition otherwise the form and the applications are worthless. 

Liu Ho Pa Fa is a very underated martial art.

Very best wishes


----------



## oxy

East Winds said:


> When I commented on the  footwork being sloppy, I was refering to the fact that after the foot is planted, there is a lot of re-ajustment happening. There is a lot of lifting of toes and heels at the point the applications would be applied (i.e. no root). I do however agree that the form should be "formless", however that does not mean slackness. Feet should be planted and remain planted until the next transition otherwise the form and the applications are worthless.



This is what I was referring to when I said LHBF has different philosophies.

I can tell you that the foot movements are not "re-adjustments". They are actually an integral part of power generation in LHBF.

For example, when you transition from a 4/6 stance to a bow and arrow stance, we twist the back foot on the toes. The heel is still touching the floor but lifted just enough to allow movement. It allows the torso to turn much more quickly than if your feet are completely planted during the movement. The same goes for when you transition from bow to 4/6.

Now, Choi in that video does seem to be a bit rough, but I would say that would be a combination of his shoes and the floor surface he was on. I myself have performed with such a combination and it makes it hard to concentrate the foot turns on the toe.

The benefits of rooting do not make much difference in Liu He Ba Fa as we do not rely on low stances and it decreases manoeuvrability, but that's a different issue. The foot movements are actually very important for power generation and stability in LHBF.


----------



## East Winds

Oxy,

Thanks for your input. Clearly we are going to disagree on many points of Liu Ho Ba Fa techniques. Turning on the toe will widen your stance and make you more unstable. (Perhaps thats why you guys need to keep adjusting stances!!). The torso turning without rooting will only produce muscular power, not internal strength. I also cannot agree that foot adjustments are an integral part of Liu Ho Pa Fa. Have a look at most of the practitioners on You Tube and Choi is the only one adjusting his feet. (Although I have to say most of the You Tube stuff is fairly poor). I also  can't agree that you need a low stance to root properly. Low stances have little to do with rooting. But for the release of Jins you certainly need rooting. If your Liu Ho Ba Fa does not require rooting, then I'm afraid as a MA it will be of little use. My teachers mantra was "The important feature of a good stance is the capacity for correct action". 

Anyway it is good that a little known art is being aired. It has made me dig out all my old notes and begin to practise the art again.

Very best wishes


----------



## oxy

> Turning on the toe will widen your stance and make you more unstable.



That's why you see that in the video, Choi is basically standing up. His feet are really close together. The widening of stance does not even become as wide as what you would see in Bagua.

Also, the use of the martial art is much different from how we practice it.



> The torso turning without rooting will only produce muscular power, not internal strength.



The only thing I can assure you is that 1) we do not solely rely on that and 2) that you have to be taught properly in the foot turning to be able to generate a lot of power. It's impossible to describe over the internet (but you can see it in Choi's 12 animal videos) and impossible to imagine for someone who has not been taught personally. So, in short, we'll just have to disagree.



> Have a look at most of the practitioners on You Tube and Choi is the only one adjusting his feet.



Choi's the only one Chan Yik Yan officially passed the lineage to.



> If your Liu Ho Ba Fa does not require rooting, then I'm afraid as a MA it will be of little use.



Again, you cannot imagine, let alone trial what I'm talking about, so we'll have to leave it at that.

We do have our own substitute for rooting. In short, we call it "sinking".

Anyway, you have to remember that LHBF has a different set of theory. Much of modern CMA theory are incompatible.


----------



## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> Again, you cannot imagine, let alone trial what I'm talking about, so we'll have to leave it at that.
> 
> We do have our own substitute for rooting. In short, we call it "sinking".
> 
> Anyway, you have to remember that LHBF has a different set of theory. Much of modern CMA theory are incompatible.


 
Interesting statement.

Tai Chi has sinking and rooting and although I do not think it is as old a LHBF I would not call it a modern CMA. And Shuaijiao is one of the oldest CMA styles and from what I understand its theory is very similar to modern CMA and TMA styles. However I will admit it could be very different from something such as LHBF. I know less about LHBF that I do about Shuaijiao and I do not know all that much about Shuaijiao. 

I do not mean this as a flame or an argument in any way. I am just very interested in what is meant by LHBF has sinking.


----------



## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> Interesting statement.
> 
> Tai Chi has sinking and rooting and although I do not think it is as old a LHBF I would not call it a modern CMA. And Shuaijiao is one of the oldest CMA styles and from what I understand its theory is very similar to modern CMA and TMA styles.



What I meant by modern was not about when the style came into being. Rather the way it is taught and explained today. I also was not naming any styles in particular - just the modern theory (which, I might add, is very ill-defined, which can possibly be the largest cause of incompatibility).



> I do not mean this as a flame or an argument in any way. I am just very interested in what is meant by LHBF has sinking.



I would actually like to know what "rooting" really is. Everything I've read skirts around the issue. They all say why it's important, but they don't describe it in ways that is reproduceable. Maybe it's why I declared earlier that rooting has little use in LHBF - I may be fuzzy as to the equivalent in LHBF.

Sinking is basically a temporary lowering of the stance, which is accompanied by the foot turns. The aim is to use the body's weight (transferred to the point of contact along the arms) as a shock force that produces an opening in the opponent's defence as well as maintaining balance and generating power (attack and blocking at the same time, basically). We also grab the ground with our toes at all times. When this is practiced slowly, it has a sinking feeling. And in keeping with the "water boxing" mentality, we continue to move, so we don't sink constantly. Imagine waves. They go up and down.

Anyway, this "rooting" business is a bit off the point. The thing was East Winds said Choi looked clumsy because the foot shifts. I explained that it's about generating power etc. So the counter-point was that the foot shifting (not re-adjustments) negates "rooting". And then it diverged to here when I forgot to ask if East Winds sees rooting in the video. So I would like to take this chance to ask if people for their opinions if you can see rooting or if there's anything there that provides an equivalent to rooting's benefits.

My evaluation is that Choi seems to be showing his age in that video and is not performing the pattern as "spirited" as we could like. But I can also see in that video what I saw in his Xing Yi video and his 12 animal VCDs.

----------------------

Xue Sheng, you do Xing Yi, right? They have that step where you take a step forward and bring the back foot slightly forward as well, right? This could be related to what I'm trying to explain about the foot turning business.


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## East Winds

Oxy,

I agree that this is not the forum to discuss rooting. However from your posts, you clearly undertand the concept, if not how to actually apply it. Quite simply rooting comes from the lower half of the body and its contact with the ground.  Once this power base has been developed the internal  energy developed can be transfered to the upper body. Energy is rooted in the feet, transferred through the waist and applied through the hands. There can be absolutely no instabillity in the root (i.e. the feet) or there will be a subsequent flaw in the energy delivered. I did not say that Choi was clumsy or that he was in some way inadequate as a teacher. I was merely commenting on a particular video clip that I thought showed lack of stability and rooting. I had a master who consistently refused to be filmed or videoed saying "people will judge my whole performance on one single moment in time". You should not take these comments personally, and remember that some of us have indeed studied LHBF under a master teacher (even it was some years ago). Learning the sequence of movements in the LHBF form is not learning LHBF. That is only the end of the beginning.

Very best wishes


----------



## Xue Sheng

East Winds said:


> Oxy,
> 
> I agree that this is not the forum to discuss rooting. However from your posts, you clearly undertand the concept, if not how to actually apply it. Quite simply rooting comes from the lower half of the body and its contact with the ground. Once this power base has been developed the internal energy developed can be transfered to the upper body. Energy is rooted in the feet, transferred through the waist and applied through the hands. There can be absolutely no instabillity in the root (i.e. the feet) or there will be a subsequent flaw in the energy delivered. I did not say that Choi was clumsy or that he was in some way inadequate as a teacher. I was merely commenting on a particular video clip that I thought showed lack of stability and rooting. I had a master who consistently refused to be filmed or videoed saying "people will judge my whole performance on one single moment in time". You should not take these comments personally, and remember that some of us have indeed studied LHBF under a master teacher (even it was some years ago). Learning the sequence of movements in the LHBF form is not learning LHBF. That is only the end of the beginning.
> 
> Very best wishes


 
Good description. 

I was going to go the Chinese type metaphor route- think tree


----------



## oxy

East Winds said:


> There can be absolutely no instabillity in the root (i.e. the feet) or there will be a subsequent flaw in the energy delivered.



But that's the thing. There is no instability. The foot turns do not lead to instability. The whole foot is in constant contact and applying constant force to the waist. The body's weight is also in constant contact with the ground between the feet.

To expand on the concept, there are quite a few more reasons why we turn the foot. The other is for balance of forces. You have one force going forwards. We balance this by shifting our weight downwards and a balancing force backwards by turning the foot. This prevents over extension so that no energy is needed to waste on unnecessary attempts at balancing. In LHBF, we have the principle of the balance of forces. For example, if we have a force that punches out, there must be a balancing force that goes backwards. In some cases, that would mean the withdrawing of one hand to the waste while the other lashes out. But that would also be a waste of energy. So we add the foot turning (in this context) to provide the counter-balance.

Also, Xue Sheng didn't get back to me with this one, but I would draw a parallel from the foot shifting to the shuffle step you would see in Xing Yi videos. Surely, you wouldn't look at the back foot moving in Xing Yi and say that would make you unstable. Our foot turning is the same principle used in Xing Yi but we just carry it out differently. Unless you have the same objections to the Xing Yi shuffle step (or whatever it's called), I don't see how the foot turning would make one unstable and unable to root.



> I did not say that Choi was clumsy or that he was in some way inadequate as a teacher.



I don't know if I come across that way, but I wasn't accusing you of saying that.



> You should not take these comments personally



I get that quite a lot. Apparently, every time I try to explain the way I understand things, people automatically assume I took the comments personally. If someone presents an analysis of something that we do, surely, I'm allowed to reject the analysis on the basis of incorrectness, right? That's all I'm doing.



> and remember that some of us have indeed studied LHBF under a master teacher (even it was some years ago). Learning the sequence of movements in the LHBF form is not learning LHBF.



Okay, that last bit is kind of irrelevant, don't you think? I don't think we were ever talking about sequence, where we? I thought we were talking about the foot turnings leading to instability.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> Also, Xue Sheng didn't get back to me with this one, but I would draw a parallel from the foot shifting to the shuffle step you would see in Xing Yi videos. Surely, you wouldn't look at the back foot moving in Xing Yi and say that would make you unstable. Our foot turning is the same principle used in Xing Yi but we just carry it out differently. Unless you have the same objections to the Xing Yi shuffle step (or whatever it's called), I don't see how the foot turning would make one unstable and unable to root.


 
My apologies for not responding before. 

I just watched the LHBF form of Choi and I also watched the form of Helen Liang. First I do not know LHBF so I would likely not be a good judge of anyones form. And form what I have seen in the various videos of LHBF that I have watched is that they all tend to look incredibly different.

As to Choi, I hate to judge anyone on one video. And any number of things could be affecting his otherwise impeccable form. I saw this happen to my first CMA Sifu on stage doing a Chen form that he was amazing at. However just prior in a Long fist form he had strained a leg muscle so his Chen did not look that good. 

But if I were to just look at that video I would have to say that there are areas where Choi looks incredibly rooted and others where he looks like he is just not where he needs to be so he is adjusting his feet. 

As to similarities to Xingyi stepping, I have to say I do not see it in Choi's form. I do see it in Helen Liang however. 

Xingyi by nature moves forward and moves forward fast, think freight train. I am for all intensive purposes going off the front foot, not the back and when the back foot becomes the front foot it hits the ground, roots and that is what pulls you forward. The now back foot follows and hits the ground and stops. It does not readjust nor does it move until you go to the next step. When the back foot hits the ground it gives you additional power for striking. If I where to hit the ground with the back foot and then allow it to move as in the Choi video I loose 2 things power and forward momentum and this is not Xingyi.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> When the back foot hits the ground it gives you additional power for striking. If I where to hit the ground with the back foot and then allow it to move as in the Choi video I loose 2 things power and forward momentum and this is not Xingyi.



I didn't want to get too into it before you had a chance to respond.

However, what I was not saying is that the back foot turns after it hits the ground. What I mean is that the back foot turn is a kind of substitute for the Xing Yi step.

If I understand correctly, the back foot should hit the ground at the same time as the strike, right? Conversely, with LHBF's foot turning, the turning should stop right at the moment of the strike. Also, in Xing Yi, when the back foot hits the ground, the torso "falls" slightly, right? When you do the foot turning, it gives the same effect. No one would even suggest you would shift your feet after you do the back foot step. It's more of a substitute.

Basically, our foot turning is like a stationary and understated (a core LHBF philosophy, by the way) form of the Xing Yi step. I would say it's a generalised form of the Xing Yi step. The Xing Yi step basically moves forward. In LHBF, you can move forward and do the Xing Yi step, or you can stay still and do the Xing Yi step on a dime. The latter would be used for close quarters combat since I would think it would be quite difficult to use the advancing form of the Xing Yi step.



> As to similarities to Xingyi stepping, I have to say I do not see it in Choi's form. I do see it in Helen Liang however.



So basically, you don't see it in Choi's form is because we do our version of the step inconspicuously.

The Xing Yi step provides great power. And we encourage its use. But the main focus of LHBF is to use the least amount of energy for the greatest amount of power and we acheive this through the flow of the applications. If we did a Xing Yi step right out of the book it breaks the flow.

From a scientific standpoint, kinetic friction is always smaller than static friction. It takes less energy to keep a thing moving than it is to have to start anew each time. So we try to keep our bodies (which, by LHBF definition must include the feet) moving (but rooted) until the end.

Don't get me started on the Helen Liang video.

Anyway, I created a computer generated version of one of the LHBF patterns in the video thread. It's very robotic, but you can just about see the principles I'm talking about before.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> I didn't want to get too into it before you had a chance to respond.
> 
> However, what I was not saying is that the back foot turns after it hits the ground. What I mean is that the back foot turn is a kind of substitute for the Xing Yi step.
> 
> If I understand correctly, the back foot should hit the ground at the same time as the strike, right? Conversely, with LHBF's foot turning, the turning should stop right at the moment of the strike. Also, in Xing Yi, when the back foot hits the ground, the torso "falls" slightly, right? When you do the foot turning, it gives the same effect. No one would even suggest you would shift your feet after you do the back foot step. It's more of a substitute.
> 
> Basically, our foot turning is like a stationary and understated (a core LHBF philosophy, by the way) form of the Xing Yi step. I would say it's a generalised form of the Xing Yi step. The Xing Yi step basically moves forward. In LHBF, you can move forward and do the Xing Yi step, or you can stay still and do the Xing Yi step on a dime. The latter would be used for close quarters combat since I would think it would be quite difficult to use the advancing form of the Xing Yi step.


 
As stated I know little about LHBF and how it works or it apps. And that would also be an admission that I do not know the subtleties of it either. 

I do understand what you are saying and I suppose it is possible that is what Choi was doing. And the best I can offer is that to the eye untrained in LHBF it looks like he is looking for proper foot position.

As to Xingyi at close quarters, the step just gets shorter and there is more to Xingyi than the step. My last Sifu had some tremendous power at close range. 



oxy said:


> So basically, you don't see it in Choi's form is because we do our version of the step inconspicuously.
> 
> The Xing Yi step provides great power. And we encourage its use. But the main focus of LHBF is to use the least amount of energy for the greatest amount of power and we acheive this through the flow of the applications. If we did a Xing Yi step right out of the book it breaks the flow.
> 
> From a scientific standpoint, kinetic friction is always smaller than static friction. It takes less energy to keep a thing moving than it is to have to start anew each time. So we try to keep our bodies (which, by LHBF definition must include the feet) moving (but rooted) until the end.
> 
> Don't get me started on the Helen Liang video.
> 
> Anyway, I created a computer generated version of one of the LHBF patterns in the video thread. It's very robotic, but you can just about see the principles I'm talking about before.


 
And this too is very likely, I do not know LHBF and as I said I have seen a few videos of it, I even saw it done live once fairly recently and they all look different. Some look more like Tai Chi others look more Bagua another one looks more Xingyi and yet another looks like none of them. 

And I do not know Helen Liang either, I am wondering if she is Liang Shou-Yu's daughter, but that is all.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> I do understand what you are saying and I suppose it is possible that is what Choi was doing. And the best I can offer is that to the eye untrained in LHBF it looks like he is looking for proper foot position.



I would think that his propensity to look at the floor and his hands would definitely serve to give that impression. In my father's school, we generally don't let people learn the next moves until they show enough promise that they are breaking the habit of looking at their hands and feet or even slightly at the ground.



> As to Xingyi at close quarters, the step just gets shorter



Well, of course. But try to imagine a Xing Yi step where there is no step forward and the back foot doesn't leave the ground. How would you go about doing the Xing Yi step without actually stepping? That's what the foot turning is all about. Also, think about how you would modify the Xing Yi step to allow for multiple quick fire strikes. This is what the foot turning step is training.



> and there is more to Xingyi than the step. My last Sifu had some tremendous power at close range.



I didn't mean that Xing Yi lacks power at close range. Our second form is a lot like Xing Yi and it has tremendous power at close range, so I know what you are talking about. I know Xing Yi has more than the step, but I only draw a parallel to this since it is the only thing relevant to this discussion. I hope that clears things.



> And this too is very likely, I do not know LHBF and as I said I have seen a few videos of it, I even saw it done live once fairly recently and they all look different. Some look more like Tai Chi others look more Bagua another one looks more Xingyi and yet another looks like none of them.



It might be because they were doing different parts (but I wasn't there so I wouldn't know).



> And I do not know Helen Liang either, I am wondering if she is Liang Shou-Yu's daughter, but that is all.



I think she is. I saw another video of her and an older man demonstrating push hands and I think the credits had his name on it. On the youtube video, I can follow for the first few bits of the thing. But then it diverts so much from the proper form. I listed a website previously in this thread www.waterboxing.com . They posted photos from Chan Yik Yan's book that shows the correct order. Because they are still shots, they lack a bit of what is present in the moving form, but none of the videos (except Choi's) contain the whole form as per the photos. That website also has Wu Yi Hui photos which demonstrates how things should be done.

Anyway, as I've said to Rook, I will be trying to find some time after exams to film myself (more for archival purposes) and maybe pick a clip to post here. I can't guarantee that I would be able to demonstrate the principles I talk about though.


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## oxy

I rewatched the video more closely. I think I was right in my initial assessment in that his shoes and the ground are really mismatched.

The floor seems to be a polished and coated floor kind of like what you would find in basketball courts but with a little bit more of the "varnish stickiness". And his shoes are the ones that come with rubbery soles which grips the ground more than usual. Coincidentally enough, I've had a similar experience. When I practiced on that kind of surface for the first time it feels like when you try to slide across some linoleum only to find that it isn't as slippery as you thought and you end up doing a stuttered skip. The first few times I did that, I certainly did have to readjust my feet. But I've had enough practice in similar conditions (eg 2-3 cm moist grass) to be able to do the foot turning. So my guess is that Choi didn't have enough experience on similar surfaces or that floor was more stickier than what you would normally find. If it were me in that instance, I would have probably replaced all the foot turns with the Xing Yi steps instead.

Also, another thing that may have caused him to look like he was readjusting is that he generally did not time the foot turns in synch with everything else. Part of that I would also say was due to the floor. Basically, he would turn the foot just before he commits the next move to compensate for the stickiness of the floor. Again, I would have just substituted that with a step instead.


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## East Winds

Oxy,

Of the LHBF clips , the most technically correct (if the least aesthetically pleasing) is the clip of Paul Dillon. Solidly rooted, feet planted at the end of each posture.
I cannot agree that the hands deliver the energy at the same time as the foot plants. The foot MUST plant first in order to  transfer the energy via the waist into the hands. It may look as if it is happening simultaneously, but believe me it should not. I cannot talk about Xing-I as my experience of this is very limited. However I have been practising Chinese internal arts for quite some time (Taiji, Bagua and LHBF) and I contend that the internal principals of one are the same as the internal principals of the others. As you know LHBF is a synthesis of the the three other internal arts. Taiji like a rubber ball, Xing-I like a steel ball, Bagua like a woven wire ball. LHBF taking elements from the other three.

And I really cannot let you get away with claiming in one post that foot repositioning  is a fundamental element  of LHBF and  in another claiming that the foot repositioning is the result of shoes and floor. It is either one or the other.

Very best wishes


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## Xue Sheng

East Winds said:


> I cannot agree that the hands deliver the energy at the same time as the foot plants. The foot MUST plant first in order to transfer the energy via the waist into the hands. It may look as if it is happening simultaneously, but believe me it should not. I cannot talk about Xing-I as my experience of this is very limited.


 
Same for Xingyi.


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## oxy

East Winds said:


> I cannot agree that the hands deliver the energy at the same time as the foot plants. The foot MUST plant first in order to  transfer the energy via the waist into the hands. It may look as if it is happening simultaneously, but believe me it should not.



Okay, a bit of my teaching method leaked into it. I know very well that the foot must be planted first. But the timing still has to be right. So we aim for simultaneous force, but it is only through aiming for such a goal that the right timing between the foot planting and the strike is achieved. Same for the foot turning. The foot turning ends just before the strike is executed, but there must be good timing.

We can never get perfect simultaneous foot planting and striking. But it is aiming for such that a perfect timing _between_ the foot plant and the strike that gives power.

As an aside, LHBF philosophy is that maximum power is attained through the whole body moving together. Letting the feet plant too early from the strike breaks that flow and decreases the power. Optimising that lag to be as small as possible gives the benefit of both the whole body's force being focussed into the strike as well as the energy gained from being rooted to the ground. A strike's application time is short. So there's not point in dragging out the time you get the force from the ground. Short and sharp and ready for the next situation.



> I cannot talk about Xing-I as my experience of this is very limited. However I have been practising Chinese internal arts for quite some time (Taiji, Bagua and LHBF) and I contend that the internal principals of one are the same as the internal principals of the others. As you know LHBF is a synthesis of the the three other internal arts. Taiji like a rubber ball, Xing-I like a steel ball, Bagua like a woven wire ball. LHBF taking elements from the other three.



That is not exactly a logical conclusion. Most of LHBF teachers out there right now were only introduced to LHBF after learning one or more of the other internal arts. The most likely explanation for the internal principles being carbon copies of each other is that their training in the other arts bled into LHBF. And given the fact that the Grandmasters Wu Yi Hui and Chan Yik Yan would only demonstrate a move three times at most, it's no wonder that their students have to fill in parts they missed with principles from the others.

Secondly, the history of LHBF is certainly not an attempt to almagamate the other three arts. The more likely explanation is that the Daoist martial arts all contain the principles of the earlier Daoist qigong called Tao Yin. All four developed from that art, which is why their principles are similar.



> And I really cannot let you get away with claiming in one post that foot repositioning  is a fundamental element  of LHBF and  in another claiming that the foot repositioning is the result of shoes and floor. It is either one or the other.



The foot turning _is_ a fundamental part of LHBF footwork. The foot repositioning in Chois video is poor because of the shoes and the floor. So it's not "one or the other". It's always "foot turning". How perfectly you can carry it out is variable from practitioner to practitioner and terrain to terrain. I'll say it one last time:

_Foot turning is a fundamental element of LHBF. Choi's POOR foot turning is a result of the floor and shoes. Foot turning and poor/good foot turning are not one and the same._


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> Same for Xingyi.



The thing about East Wind's post is that he did not distinguish between the front foot from the back. The front foot definitely lands much earlier before the strike, but the back foot is almost simultaneous with the strike.

Would you know of any Xing Yi videos that looks very representative of the step and could you post it if it exists? In some Xing Yi videos I've seen sometimes the back foot is even completely off the ground at the moment of striking.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> The thing about East Wind's post is that he did not distinguish between the front foot from the back. The front foot definitely lands much earlier before the strike, but the back foot is almost simultaneous with the strike.


 
The back foot is planted/rooted/solid either slightly before or at the same instant of the actual strike. Otherwise you loose force and go backwards and Xingyi does not go backwards in this instance of attack (although Xingyi can attack going backwards). Just move forward and extend your arm to hit something and then hit it without that back foot being rooted and you will see you loose power.



oxy said:


> Would you know of any Xing Yi videos that looks very representative of the step and could you post it if it exists? In some Xing Yi videos I've seen sometimes the back foot is even completely off the ground at the moment of striking.


 
I have already post Xingyi videos of Di Gouyong on MT doing 5 elements. If I can locate them I will post a link here. 

I cannot speak for all styles of Xingyi. I have not seen or experieinced what you are talking about in Hebei 5 elements or the linking form. Nor have I seen it in the 12 animals form, but I have limited training in 12 animals so it is possible I suppose. 

But I have only seen and trained Hebei style and some mixed but I do not believe I have ever seen Shanxi or Henan styles. But it is my understanding that Shanxi has lighter footwork than Hebei and Henan is more aggressive than Hebei, but I cannot tell you this from experience only what I have read about them.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> The back foot is planted/rooted/solid either slightly before or at the same instant of the actual strike. Otherwise you loose force and go backwards and Xingyi does not go backwards in this instance of attack (although Xingyi can attack going backwards). Just move forward and extend your arm to hit something and then hit it without that back foot being rooted and you will see you loose power.



Exactly what I was talking about where our styles are similar. The back foot is very rooted. It's really difficult trying to describe mental images, but I'll try.

Think of the small period of time between when the back foot is off the ground to make a step and when it roots itself for the strike. Now, replace that moment with the turning of the back foot instead. So now, we basically have the same principle if we think about it further. The foot stops turning basically at the same moment a Xing Yi person would root their back foot. It's the same step, in principle. The back foot moves into position. Then the back foot roots itself just before the strike. The difference is how we move the back foot into position. Everything else is the same.

What you're describing and what I'm thinking of is really the same principle. It's just that it's hard to describe on both sides.



> Nor have I seen it in the 12 animals form, but I have limited training in 12 animals so it is possible I suppose.



This is where it gets confusing. Which style's 12 animals are we talking about? Are we talking about the 12 animals of LHBF or Xing Yi or something else entirely? I've lost track


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## oxy

Continued:



Xue Sheng said:


> The back foot is planted/rooted/solid either slightly before or at the same instant of the actual strike. Otherwise you loose force and go backwards and Xingyi does not go backwards in this instance of attack (although Xingyi can attack going backwards). Just move forward and extend your arm to hit something and then hit it without that back foot being rooted and you will see you loose power.



Also, out of curiosity for my learning - in Xing Yi, do you also try to minimize the time between the front foot and the back foot rooting? I can only assume you would.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> This is where it gets confusing. Which style's 12 animals are we talking about? Are we talking about the 12 animals of LHBF or Xing Yi or something else entirely? I've lost track


 
Hebei style Xingyi 12 animals. 

You know oxy, I watched the videos again that I previously posted of Di Guoyong and the Xingyi Demo I just post here and this prompted me to go into the stairway of my office and actually see for myself by trying piquan on a wall or two (luckily there was no one around or I would have something else to add to the most embarrassing place caught training post) and I have to say I think you are right about the back foot. 

It has been month or so since I trained the Xingyi form for various reasons but I recently have decided I needed to go back to the root I have just been training santi for the last month or so. But I believe the power comes off of what is at the beginning the front foot and ends up the back foot. But the now back foot hits the ground at almost the instant of the strike or just slightly before and that does actually add to the power of the strike in piquan, it adds to that freight train effect. It may appear on film that the foot is behind the strike but it is actually not, it is just incredibly close in timing. I had not thought about it at this level of detail before, thank you for getting my brain to work. 

Di Guoyong - 5 elements




 
Di Guoyong - Xingyi Linking fist (slow and fast motion)




 
Xingy Demos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1MiOZz4f4Y&mode=related&search=



oxy said:


> Continued:
> 
> Also, out of curiosity for my learning - in Xing Yi, do you also try to minimize the time between the front foot and the back foot rooting? I can only assume you would.


 
Yes, but I have to say my training is only 2.5 years all together in Xingyi with a few breaks in between sifus, so I would not consider myself an expert on the topic. The lions share of my CMA comes from Tai Chi (3 years various styles 12 years Yang Style) and I am currently on a bit of a self-imposed hiatus from internal styles except for Xingyi santi training. I am mainly training non-sport Sanda at the moment. But I believe I will start working on my Xingyi 5 elements again, maybe this evening.


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## oxy

As promised, here is a video of me doing LHBF. It's more of a trial to weed out camera problems but it's somewhat close to how I normally do the form.

See my feet turn!


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## arnisador

Thanks for sharing that! I am strongly reminded of Tai Chi.


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## East Winds

Oxy,

Sorry!! All I saw was upper body movement , no rooting, hence the foot movement!!

Best wishes


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## Xue Sheng

I see a similarities to Tai Chi but I have to agree with East Winds I do not see the rooting, at least not off of the back foot. I also do not see the similarity to the Xingyi step. You got me doing Xingyi stepping since I last posted and Xingyi roots of the front and then the back follows and roots which gives a lot of power to strikes. 

I do see what appears to be rooting on the front foot however which is very similar to the Cheng Manching style I did briefly. I personally could never get it to work for power but my Sifu and his Sifu sure as heck could.

Nice form though, thanks for posting it.


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## oxy

East Winds said:


> Oxy,
> 
> Sorry!! All I saw was upper body movement , no rooting, hence the foot movement!!
> 
> Best wishes




It would help if you could tell me what "rooting" is supposed to look like from the Taiji perspective.

Better yet, maybe you can find some time to post a video of yourself doing the form. There's too many different ways of doing LHBF out there already.

I still suspect that it's a difference of philosophy. I also suspect that you don't seem to be able to discern that foot turning is required to transition from bow stance to 4/6 stance (since the angle of their back foot must be different to get maximum power).


----------



## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> I see a similarities to Tai Chi but I have to agree with East Winds I do not see the rooting, at least not off of the back foot.



Like I said to East Winds, perhaps I need video to understand exactly how rooting from the Taiji perspective is supposed to look like. Maybe even an exact description and explanation specific to the video would help more as well. Maybe even a few pictures with annotations in the picture.



> I also do not see the similarity to the Xingyi step. You got me doing Xingyi stepping since I last posted and Xingyi roots of the front and then the back follows and roots which gives a lot of power to strikes.



I think you may have not exactly understood what I was getting to. I asked you before in a previous post to think about the similarity between the foot turning and the Xingyi step. Of course you're not going to see anything that superficially looks like the step.

----------------------------

The thing is, as I have pointed out before, there are philosophical differences between Taiji and LHBF.

If the final verdict is that my LHBF has no rooting, than so be it. LHBF's power, at least from its philosophy, does not come from rooting of a fixed stance but rather from the transition.

Chan Yik Yan himself wrote an LHBF book (supposed to be for his students but none would take it up) which has a passage which specifically states that: it's not the stance that's important, it's the transition between stances. Rooting seems like placing too much emphasis on the stance rather than the transition.

Also, what was not discussed in length in this thread is whether or not the goals of "rooting" can be achieved through other means. In LHBF, I would say that the goals of "rooting" is fully achieved through the LHBF philosophy of "start together, stop together".

----------------------------

I didn't want to say anything before I posted the video, but now I will.

I have seen many Taiji videos. I still can't understand which part of what I see can be termed "rooting". I have an idea, though, and if I'm right about what is "rooting, then I must say that anyone who does a Taiji style rooting for LHBF is definitely doing it wrong.

There are many parts of Choi Wai Lun's video that sticks out like a sore thumb (the reason for which could be the floor or could be actual flaws), but the lack of supposed rooting is not one of them.

Taiji rooting (assuming what I recognise in the video is "rooting") definitely breaks the LHBF philosophy of "start together, stop together".


----------



## Xue Sheng

oxy

First I am more than happy to admit I have not got the fainest clue about Liu He Ba Fa, I do not train it. I do train Tai Chi and I have trained Xingyi and even a little Bagua. I have seen various style with many different stances. I am not saying anything against LHBF or your form. I am saying that from a Tai Chi point of view it does not root the same. And I did understand what you were getting at with Xingyi and I do not see the similarity there either, there is no similar foot turn, sorry. 

But this is not saying that LHBF is not good or lacking anything. It is saying that I do not understand LHBF and that I do have a pretty good understanding of Tai Chi and a little understanding of Xingyi. 

Different styles have differnt approaches that is all. Let me put it this way, my Yang style sifu once said of "Chen style it is to low". A member of the Chen family I talked to said "Yang style is to high". Neither new what the other had said. Does that make one better or worse than the other? Or did that make me stop training Yang or want to not train Chen? No to both. 

It may simply be a very similar thing

Tai Chi says LHBF does not root

LHBF says Tai Chi roots to much.

That is all it is. 

I am guessing if I asked my YAng Sifu what he thought about Xingyi he would say it is to hard. And if I were able to ask the Xingyi Sifu I saw in China what he thought about Tai Chi he might say its to soft. What differeance does it make.

And just for the record I also said "Nice form"

My best
XS


----------



## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> I am not saying anything against LHBF or your form. I am saying that from a Tai Chi point of view it does not root the same. And I did understand what you were getting at with Xingyi and I do not see the similarity there either, there is no similar foot turn, sorry.
> 
> But this is not saying that LHBF is not good or lacking anything. It is saying that I do not understand LHBF and that I do have a pretty good understanding of Tai Chi and a little understanding of Xingyi.



I don't and have never thought that you were saying anything about LHBF. I assure you, I understand where you're coming from. This thread is all about discussing LHBF, right? So all I'm trying to do is explain my side of things and get people to explain their side. Of course anything that comes up will _appear_ as if one side views the opinions expressed as criticism, but they're not.



> And I did understand what you were getting at with Xingyi and I do not see the similarity there either, there is no similar foot turn, sorry



I don't know exactly how you are looking for similarity. If you're looking for similar appearance, then you won't find it. But if you "look" for similarities with regards to power generation, they're much more similar. That is, you would probably need to try it out and compare the feeling in your leg muscles.

Basically, try this. If you watch the video again, mentally replace every foot turn with a Xingyi step. You will find that, from an applications point of view, the Xingyi step can be substituted into LHBF. I myself have watched the Xingyi videos you posted and I can say I have tried to substitute in foot turning instead of the step and I can still get the same amount of power.

Maybe I'll try to post a video of the Coiled (or Straight) Dragon form with both types of steps.



> Different styles have differnt approaches that is all. Let me put it this way, my Yang style sifu once said of "Chen style it is to low". A member of the Chen family I talked to said "Yang style is to high". Neither new what the other had said. Does that make one better or worse than the other? Or did that make me stop training Yang or want to not train Chen? No to both.



Trust me, I understand that you were not saying anything about which is better. But I do want to learn something out of this. I do it by asking questions. In this thread, I'm also doing it by explaining my side and how it compares to Taiji (but only when it actually comes up).

For example, previously, I have stated that Taiji rooting might negate the "start together, stop together" philosophy of LHBF. That post did not mean that LHBF is better than Taiji or that I viewed the observation that I lacked rooting as being critical. It had more to do with explaining why Taiji style rooting is not immediately transferrable to LHBF. It was also more to do with addressing East Wind's opinion that LHBF should have Taiji rooting. But in no way am I interested in saying which style is better. I'm only interested in compare and contrast.



> Tai Chi says LHBF does not root
> 
> LHBF says Tai Chi roots to much.
> 
> That is all it is.
> 
> I am guessing if I asked my YAng Sifu what he thought about Xingyi he would say it is to hard. And if I were able to ask the Xingyi Sifu I saw in China what he thought about Tai Chi he might say its to soft. What differeance does it make.



You are right about that. And that's all I'm trying to treat it as. I'm just trying to explain my side of things, given that this is an LHBF discussion thread.



> And just for the record I also said "Nice form"
> 
> My best
> XS



I heard ya.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I still do not see the opinions you have forwarded as being critical of anything, LHBF or my video. Compare and contrast. Explaining my side of things. Blah blah blah. You get the idea.

------------------------------

Anyway, personally, the only thing I find worth looking for in Liu He Ba Fa videos indeed is the amount of synchronisation between all parts of the body. Or, you would call it the "freight train effect". Although in LHBF it's omnidirectional for much of the form I don't know about Xingyi. I'd be interested to hear if you see good synchronisation between all parts of the body and such. Remember, I ask because I want to learn and improve. Don't get put off by my apparent "forwardness", if you can.


----------



## Xue Sheng

I'm not put off and I'm not angry, I am also just trying to learn.


----------



## oxy

East Winds said:


> Of the LHBF clips , the most technically correct (if the least aesthetically pleasing) is the clip of Paul Dillon. Solidly rooted, feet planted at the end of each posture.



The interesting thing is that I've finally paid attention to that video for once. Your recognition of it being the least aesthetically pleasing (with which I agree) was part of the reason I never looked at it seriously.

One thing I noticed.

Not only does Paul Dillon turn his feet, but he does so in such an unstructured way.

He actually turned his feet where there was no need to turn and his feet do not turn consistently where there is a need for it. His feet turns are almost completely incidental. Several times, I saw his back foot's ankle lift off the ground where it's not supposed to be in the form. One thing that stuck out was in one instance, his front foot turned, again in a place in the form where there was no need.

In LHBF, the foot turns are supposed to generate power. Basically, Paul's foot turns (they are present) do not appear to coincide with any part of the form where the action was supposed to generate power.



> Solidly rooted, feet planted at the end of each posture.



I think this part of your assessment needs special mention.

The basic thing is: there should be no "end of each posture". Yes, you are supposed to perform each posture properly and to its fullest, but there should be minimal perceptible "end".

If you are consistent with your own assessment when you looked at Choi's or my video, then I must say that you probably did not see rooting because you were looking for the "end of each posture". While I'm still undecided as to the importance of Taiji style rooting in LHBF, I'm more decided on the fact that the whole form should be one smooth ride from the beginning to the end.

----------------------------------------

There is also no way to convince anyone that this post is not "sour grapes". So think what you want.


----------



## Xue Sheng

There is really no end to a Tai Chi posture either, kinda sorta. There is a definite place where one posture ends and another starts but the form itself does not stop, One posture flows into another. 

As to Tai Chi Rooting, watch these 2 links, this is what I am talking about. Watch the feet and where the power comes from and goes to. 

Chen Zhenglei - Taiji - Chen Style 18 form





Tung Yingchieh (1898-1961) - sorry about the quality here, its an old film
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7040453155631206049&q=Tung+Ying+chieh&hl=en

This is the Tai Chi style where I see the most similarity to LHBF foot work

Tai Chi Cheng Man Ching 
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2933659771259335758&q=Tung+Ying+chieh&hl=en


----------



## oxy

Thank you very much.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to view them for another few hours because The Ashes are about to start and my internet speed got capped as well.


----------



## East Winds

Oxy,

At least we agree on one thing. I do not expect to see a stop at the end of each posture and I agree that once the form starts, there should be no stopping until the end. However there is a process called "stopping without stopping" . If postures merely meld into one another, blurring one form into the next, then it is dance.  The stopping without stopping clearly  delineates one posture from another so that you can see the end of one and the beginning of the next.  Watch again the Chen Zhenlei clip and you can see this process quite clearly.

Paul Dillon moves his feet during posture transitions and is rooted at the point of application delivery, be that a strike or a Chin Na lock. And that is as it should be. 

Let me quote Kumar Frantzis on rooting "The technique of sinking body energy and rooting into the earth. It is difficult to physically move a martial artist who has mastered rooting. In the internal martial arts, rooting gives a practitioner tremendous power". One of my teachers used to quote the Chinese epithet " A tree with a weak root will soon be blown over"

I am afraid that we may never agree about this and that is OK. So long as you and your students are happy with what you are teaching, then no one can argue with that.

Very best wishes


----------



## oxy

East Winds said:


> If postures merely meld into one another, blurring one form into the next, then it is dance.



No one's talking about blurring. Don't know why you brought it up.



> Paul Dillon moves his feet during posture transitions and is rooted at the point of application delivery, be that a strike or a Chin Na lock. And that is as it should be.



That's what I was talking about. Paul doesn't JUST move his feet during posture transitions. There was movement where there didn't need to be. His back heel lifted off the ground at various times - at the wrong times. He even turned his back foot on his heel.

In our LHBF, I would say we are also "rooted" at the point of application delivery. It's just that, because that's also the point we move onto the next posture, you don't see it distinctly. And maybe your idea of where that "point of application delivery" is different from ours. I would say wrong as well, which I will explain later.

I don't see the point of drawing out the rooting at the point of application delivery, at least in LHBF.

Also, maybe your idea of where each "posture" is in LHBF is not the same as ours. Our change in "posture" can be as small as changing the stance from bow to 4/6. If you look at my video closely, you see that correlation with foot turning.

Also, LHBF philosophy places more emphasis on the change of posture. Application delivery should actually happen more on posture changes than at the end of each posture. Scientifically, change in velocity means acceleration. Only with acceleration can you have force. If you are applying anything at the END of each posture where there is negligible change, then you are not getting any useful force.



> Let me quote Kumar Frantzis on rooting "The technique of sinking body energy and rooting into the earth. It is difficult to physically move a martial artist who has mastered rooting. In the internal martial arts, rooting gives a practitioner tremendous power". One of my teachers used to quote the Chinese epithet " A tree with a weak root will soon be blown over"



Fine. Rooting is important. Although "argument by quote" hardly does anything for me.

But you have concluded without evidence other than "because you were taught this way" that LHBF must root like Taiji. That's simply not the case. If your LHBF teacher used Taiji rooting in LHBF, then I'm afraid he wasn't teaching you LHBF.

Your quote does not say that rooting should be carried out exactly the same way across all internal arts either. From where I'm sitting, it seems like you're judging whether someone is rooted purely on whether or not their foot is stationary. For you, it seems like a foregone conclusion that there is no way to incorporate rooting and foot-turning into one. I'm here to tell you it can. And we have. And it is essential to LHBF.



> I am afraid that we may never agree about this and that is OK. So long as you and your students are happy with what you are teaching, then no one can argue with that.



The thing is, I show them BOTH the feet turning versions and non-turning versions of each posture and all of them agree that the feet turning provides more power. I try each posture on them and I let them try it on me. Their recognition of the fact is clear. From where I sit, it seems you are only reading and not trying it out for yourself. That doesn't help anyone.

I have tried not turning my foot. The power is not as tremendous.

Again, I invite you to post video of yourself so I can see what you are trying to say clearer.



> Watch again the Chen Zhenlei clip and you can see this process quite clearly.



What I saw in the video is that during the transition from a 4/6 stance to a bow stance, his back feet didn't turn, which resulted in his body being side-on to the direction of the force. In LHBF, the torso should be directly facing the direction of the force. This is the reason for the need of foot turning. Different philosophies lead to different movements.

Another thing I saw. In the first stance change where he moves onto the right foot, it didn't seem to be driven by a push off the left foot. Maybe it's a different philosophy in Taiji, but in LHBF, all stance changes are foot driven.


The next thing I saw is the single whip. His front foot is on the ground. Then he spends quite some time to actually get the "whip" out. I say this to contrast LHBF philosophy. In LHBF, we would have the foot plant and the "whip" happen at almost the same time. We would also have our torso facing the right of screen.

The next thing I saw after that happened at around 1:50 into the video (it looks like he was doing the first "brush knee" of the form). His back foot TURNED. And on his toes. Where the back foot turns is a different philosophy I would reckon. But by your assertions, his back foot shouldn't have turned. And it was there.

At 2:19 where he was throwing the first punch. His back foot turned AGAIN just before the actual punch. Not good in LHBF books.

Overall, his lower body moves well, but I would say it is exactly the style of rooting that causes his upper body to be disconnected from the lower body. Basically, his arms are moving solely by themselves. Not allowed in LHBF.

Overall, where his foot turns, conversely in LHBF, we would have those areas as "application delivery" as well. Which would mean we turn the back foot on its toes.


----------



## oxy

Right now, I'm watching England vs Australia in the Ashes. I'm guessing it's the same for baseball.

That is, the front foot lands JUST before the bat is swung. That gives a lot of power for little energy and a lot more power than standing in one stance and swinging the arms.

In baseball, the pitcher's front foot lands JUST before the ball is thrown.

That is the philosophy of LHBF.

I cannot say for sure that it is better than Taiji. But it fits in well with LHBF of "start together stop together".


----------



## Rook

oxy said:


> Right now, I'm watching England vs Australia in the Ashes. I'm guessing it's the same for baseball.
> 
> That is, the front foot lands JUST before the bat is swung. That gives a lot of power for little energy and a lot more power than standing in one stance and swinging the arms.
> 
> In baseball, the pitcher's front foot lands JUST before the ball is thrown.
> 
> That is the philosophy of LHBF.
> 
> I cannot say for sure that it is better than Taiji. But it fits in well with LHBF of "start together stop together".


 
I think thats what XS was saying about Xingyi.


----------



## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> There is really no end to a Tai Chi posture either, kinda sorta. There is a definite place where one posture ends and another starts but the form itself does not stop, One posture flows into another.



I know, that is very easy to see. But, compared to LHBF, at least from the videos I see, there is a bigger time gap between each posture. In LHBF, there's a much more finer line between what East Winds calls "stopping without stopping" and "dancing" because the time gap between each posture is so small.



> As to Tai Chi Rooting, watch these 2 links, this is what I am talking about. Watch the feet and where the power comes from and goes to.
> 
> Chen Zhenglei - Taiji - Chen Style 18 form



I gave a somewhat close analysis of that video in my reply to East Winds.

Just to expand on that, when I watch this video, there seems to be a disconnection for power transferrance between the lower half and the upper half of the body. He's got strong legs for sure, but his torso does not turn consistently at what I would consider "application delivery" points in that form. His arms are not in complete synchronicity with his torso which in turn is not in complete synchronicity with his legs.

It's not something we have in LHBF because we turn the back foot to allow the torso to turn. This is where most power comes from because this whole action allows the whole body to move together. Legs -> torso -> arms.



> This is the Tai Chi style where I see the most similarity to LHBF foot work
> 
> Tai Chi Cheng Man Ching
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2933659771259335758&q=Tung+Ying+chieh&hl=en



[/QUOTE]

I would agree with your assessment. But I want to ask one thing. Do all the videos of him have the same foot work? I want to make sure because it could very well be a one time thing due to the type of ground he's performing on (leaves and dead plant matter) and I haven't seen other videos of him.

Assuming it's not a one time thing:

His form is very close to what LHBF philosophy is. The difference with his foot turns, from the LHBF point of view, though, is that he turns on his heel. In LHBF most back feet turns should be pivoting on the toes.

Other than that, his body is straight on for the single whip (and similar postures) because his back foot turned to allow the leg to be more comfortable. This is something we encourage in LHBF. Personally, I like the look of this video more than the others from an LHBF perspective.

The thing is, while my father still lived in Hong Kong, he read a lot of Taiji books, one of which was authored by Cheng Man Ching. If I remember correctly, he told me that the book talks about turning the foot. Of course, my mind could be making this up so don't trust my memory on this.


----------



## oxy

Rook said:


> I think thats what XS was saying about Xingyi.



Exactly. Xue Sheng and I actually seem to agree more than is shown on this thread or forum.

You have to keep in mind that I'm also carrying a simultaneous discussion with East Winds. With him, it seems like he is blindly transferring Taiji ideas to LHBF exclusively and forgetting that LHBF is neutral and contains elements that bear resemblance to all three internal arts.

I'm only saying that I disagree with East Winds when he proposes rooting to such an effect that there's a disconnect between the the time when the front foot plants and when force is applied.

There's less of a difference between Xingyi and LHBF footwork than there is between Taiji and LHBF.


----------



## East Winds

Oxy,

If you consider there is a disconection between Chen Zhenlei's upper and lower body, then you have an incomplete understanding of energy in the internal arts and therefore there is little point in continuing with this discusssion.
I therfore  respectfully withdraw from this thread.

Very best wishes


----------



## oxy

East Winds said:


> Oxy,
> 
> If you consider there is a disconection between Chen Zhenlei's upper and lower body, then you have an incomplete understanding of energy in the internal arts and therefore there is little point in continuing with this discusssion.
> I therfore  respectfully withdraw from this thread.
> 
> Very best wishes



First of all, my understanding of energy is DIFFERENT. Not incomplete. As far as I know, no single Daoist martial art has any complete monopoly on "energy theory". I say there's a disconnection because even on the pure physical level, in that video, his torso does not synchronise with his legs completely. On the LHBF philosophy, that is disconnection.

If Taiji is complete in its energy theory, then tell me why do many internal martial artists practice more than one? Many Taiji practitioners, at least in Hong Kong, also train in Xingyi because they feel the footwork in Taiji is lacking in so many ways related to energy. If you feel that Taiji energy theory is "above all" and should be transferred to all Daoist martial arts, while completely ignoring the fact that other Daoist martial arts do have different theories on energy, then I'm afraid you are deluded.

Secondly, you avoided the fact that in the video that you said was a good example of rooting, the guy TURNS HIS FEET on more than one occasion. Both the Paul Dillon and Chen Zhenlei's exhibit prominent foot turning. Check the times I listed in my other reply. You can see his foot turn. In those cases, they should be called adjustments.

I completely agree with you that there's no point in continuing this discussion. I have absolutely no interest in talking to people, who under some misguided views on internal martial arts, deliberately uses one single disagreement (and blames it on the other's supposed incomplete knowledge) to allow themselves to bow out while completely overlooking that their assertion that rooting requires static feet was completely shown to be false in a video they consider to be exemplar.

You also ignore the other video that Xue Sheng posted that featured very prominent foot turning. Foot turning that I would very much consider compatible in theory to LHBF. In that video, I can definitely see that there is no disconnection between the upper and lower part of the body. So in doing this, not only are you saying that Taiji rooting requiring static feet is unnegotiable, you are saying that the style of Taiji you practice is more "complete" than another style of Taiji.

In summary:

You excused yourself from this discussion so that you don't have to face the rest of my observations regarding the foot turning that is present in that video. How convenient.

Good day to you. And I'll try to find someone to talk to who realises that Taiji, even the different styles of Taiji, is not the be all end all of internal martial arts energy theory.


----------



## Xue Sheng

Rook said:


> I think thats what XS was saying about Xingyi.


 


oxy said:


> Exactly. Xue Sheng and I actually seem to agree more than is shown on this thread or forum.
> 
> You have to keep in mind that I'm also carrying a simultaneous discussion with East Winds. With him, it seems like he is blindly transferring Taiji ideas to LHBF exclusively and forgetting that LHBF is neutral and contains elements that bear resemblance to all three internal arts.
> 
> I'm only saying that I disagree with East Winds when he proposes rooting to such an effect that there's a disconnect between the the time when the front foot plants and when force is applied.
> 
> There's less of a difference between Xingyi and LHBF footwork than there is between Taiji and LHBF.


 
Rook is correct and so is Oxy, I do see similarities between the Xingyi front foot and LHBF front foot. I also see differences between the back foot. That is not so say one is better of worse they are just different approaches. 

Xingyi Philosophy varies from other Internal CMA styles. Xingyi uses attack as defense where many other Internal CMA style will not. I am just a beginner at Xingyi so my views here may be off base but as mentioned just before the hit the front foot roots and very shortly there after the back foot roots. It seems to me that this is why when you are hit by a Xingyi person you get the feeling you have just been hit by a freight train it is kind of like this Bang Bang thing. You are hit hard and then get hit with more force so quickly after that it feels like one very hard hit.


----------



## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> I also see differences between the back foot.



About this.

Currently, I'm trying to figure out how to go about showing the similarities between the LHBF and Xingyi back foot. On video if possible.

What I plan to do is to try and show how a Xingyi back foot step (one that we can interchangeably use in the Coiled Dragon form) "morphs" into the LHBF equivalent.

Let's hope it comes out well.


----------



## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> I know, that is very easy to see. But, compared to LHBF, at least from the videos I see, there is a bigger time gap between each posture. In LHBF, there's a much more finer line between what East Winds calls "stopping without stopping" and "dancing" because the time gap between each posture is so small.
> 
> 
> 
> I gave a somewhat close analysis of that video in my reply to East Winds.
> 
> Just to expand on that, when I watch this video, there seems to be a disconnection for power transferrance between the lower half and the upper half of the body. He's got strong legs for sure, but his torso does not turn consistently at what I would consider "application delivery" points in that form. His arms are not in complete synchronicity with his torso which in turn is not in complete synchronicity with his legs.
> 
> It's not something we have in LHBF because we turn the back foot to allow the torso to turn. This is where most power comes from because this whole action allows the whole body to move together. Legs -> torso -> arms.


 
First understand this is a teaching video from Chen Zhenglei, there will be some gaps in movement. It is also a form of his design to teach beginners the basic movements of Chen Style. But I also see your point as compared to LHBF but I think that comes down to different approaches that different styles have. My main reason for posting was to show you what I was talking about when I was talking abuot rooting in Tai Chi. 



oxy said:


> I would agree with your assessment. But I want to ask one thing. Do all the videos of him have the same foot work? I want to make sure because it could very well be a one time thing due to the type of ground he's performing on (leaves and dead plant matter) and I haven't seen other videos of him.
> 
> Assuming it's not a one time thing:
> 
> His form is very close to what LHBF philosophy is. The difference with his foot turns, from the LHBF point of view, though, is that he turns on his heel. In LHBF most back feet turns should be pivoting on the toes.
> 
> Other than that, his body is straight on for the single whip (and similar postures) because his back foot turned to allow the leg to be more comfortable. This is something we encourage in LHBF. Personally, I like the look of this video more than the others from an LHBF perspective.
> 
> The thing is, while my father still lived in Hong Kong, he read a lot of Taiji books, one of which was authored by Cheng Man Ching. If I remember correctly, he told me that the book talks about turning the foot. Of course, my mind could be making this up so don't trust my memory on this.


 
There is a video of Chen where he is outside and I believe it is a different form and the footwork is very similar but you will see differences based on the surface he is on. If I can find it I will post it.

As to Cheng Manching, yes that is how the style is taught. I did train it briefly and I will admit I was very impressed by it, but I could not get the power in some areas based on the back foot turn. In others however it was very obvious that the power came later that in traditional Yang style. But the upper body movements where changed to compensate for this. It was explained to me that it was done this way to allow for better qi flow. 

I need to add though that the Sifu and his Sifu had absolutely no problem with power generation. There seemed to be a lot more subtleties to Cheng's style than Yang. But once again it still does not make one better than the other, just different. 

The history of both says that Yang Chengfu, who was Cheng's teacher, was undefeated. It also says Cheng was undefeated as well. That is if you can believe the histories.


----------



## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> About this.
> 
> Currently, I'm trying to figure out how to go about showing the similarities between the LHBF and Xingyi back foot. On video if possible.
> 
> What I plan to do is to try and show how a Xingyi back foot step (one that we can interchangeably use in the Coiled Dragon form) "morphs" into the LHBF equivalent.
> 
> Let's hope it comes out well.


 
I think I see the problem here. 

You are talking Xingyi 12 animals and I am talking Xingyi 5 elements and I only know 5 elements. I will be learning 12 animals sometime but not yet. At best I can say I have only played with the 12 animals forms.

EDIT: I look forward to the video and I will take a look at a video I have of 12 animal and compare there.


----------



## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> First understand this is a teaching video from Chen Zhenglei, there will be some gaps in movement. It is also a form of his design to teach beginners the basic movements of Chen Style. But I also see your point as compared to LHBF but I think that comes down to different approaches that different styles have. My main reason for posting was to show you what I was talking about when I was talking abuot rooting in Tai Chi.



Thanks for clarifying. There are no disagreements from me. Different approaches and philosophies and all that.



> I could not get the power in some areas based on the back foot turn.



If you don't mind me asking, were you taught to pivot on your heel our your toe? Just today I tried both and the former feels awkward at first since I wasn't used to it.

The way Chan Yik Yan, his students, my father and his students were taught was through having to actually grab their teacher's heel and calf muscles to get the best feeling of how to generate power from the back foot turn.



> I need to add though that the Sifu and his Sifu had absolutely no problem with power generation. There seemed to be a lot more subtleties to Cheng's style than Yang. But once again it still does not make one better than the other, just different.



Exactly.



> The history of both says that Yang Chengfu, who was Cheng's teacher, was undefeated. It also says Cheng was undefeated as well. That is if you can believe the histories.



Mate, I don't even believe a lot of LHBF's history either.



> You are talking Xingyi 12 animals and I am talking Xingyi 5 elements and I only know 5 elements. I will be learning 12 animals sometime but not yet. At best I can say I have only played with the 12 animals forms.



Actually, I was talking about the second LHBF form called Coiled Dragon (as I've seen it translated). I used to think it was called Straight Dragon since the form is in a completely straight line and the chinese name for it (Zik Long) sounds homophonous to Straight Dragon. Given that I do not know Classical Chinese, "Coiled" might be a homophone to "Straight" and I've mistranslated.

Either way, the Xingyi step can be incorporated into every posture of LHBF and vice versa.

I'll try and show as best I can how the two steps are conceptually the same and also try to show how I use it to generate power in a similar way to the Xingyi step.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> If you don't mind me asking, were you taught to pivot on your heel our your toe? Just today I tried both and the former feels awkward at first since I wasn't used to it.


 
It was all of a month of training but it was pivot on the toe in CMC Tai Chi. This is different from Traditional Yang (as taught by Tung Ying Chieh) or Chen the pivots tend to be on the heal or ball of foot in a few cases. I have trained Chen much more than CMC and Yang much more than Chen. 

The big issue for the power with me is that it appears to come mainly of the front foot in CMC and not much from the back. Like I said I just could not get a handle on it. But I know from experience that the Sifu and his Sifu could. I was used as a demo guy. 



oxy said:


> Actually, I was talking about the second LHBF form called Coiled Dragon (as I've seen it translated). I used to think it was called Straight Dragon since the form is in a completely straight line and the chinese name for it (Zik Long) sounds homophonous to Straight Dragon. Given that I do not know Classical Chinese, "Coiled" might be a homophone to "Straight" and I've mistranslated.
> 
> Either way, the Xingyi step can be incorporated into every posture of LHBF and vice versa.
> 
> I'll try and show as best I can how the two steps are conceptually the same and also try to show how I use it to generate power in a similar way to the Xingyi step.


 
OK, my bad, but I am still going to take a look at the 12 animals video I have from China to see how it compares.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> The big issue for the power with me is that it appears to come mainly of the front foot in CMC and not much from the back. Like I said I just could not get a handle on it. But I know from experience that the Sifu and his Sifu could. I was used as a demo guy.



The last bit is partly the reason why I prefer to teach by being the "demo guy" for my students instead. But that's not the topic right now.

Maybe my video explanation of how turning on the back foot generates power could bring you insight into how LHBF does it. It might or might not be different from CMC, but it's one method. There are probably countless others to generate from back foot turning. In my experience, I tend to focus on the back foot a lot, but somewhere along the line I begin to feel how power is generated by both feet simultaneously.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> The last bit is partly the reason why I prefer to teach by being the "demo guy" for my students instead. But that's not the topic right now.
> 
> Maybe my video explanation of how turning on the back foot generates power could bring you insight into how LHBF does it. It might or might not be different from CMC, but it's one method. There are probably countless others to generate from back foot turning. In my experience, I tend to focus on the back foot a lot, but somewhere along the line I begin to feel how power is generated by both feet simultaneously.


 
I Look forward to the video.

I Just watched a video of Xingyi dragon style and although the rear foot does lift it is completely different in the direction of force than anything I have seen so far in LHBF. The direction of power is going to the front and downward at about 45 degrees and then comes up with a kick. 

Xingyi 12 animal, the first one is Dragon. 





But while watching the video I thought of something that could be a problem with the comparison being made between Xingyi and LHBF. I have ONLY trained Hebei style and I do not believe I have ever even seen Shanxi or Henan styles (and there are others I have not seen) so there may be a different step there I am entirely unaware of that may be similar to what you are talking about. I would very much like to see the YouTube video you plan on posting. 

Now, I Just read through this thread again and I found there were a few things that I missed that I should address. I understand that you do not trained Tai Chi that this is the reason for the comments (and I know many where not directed at me - but I will say I do trust East Winds assessment of things Tai Chi). But it is likely much the same reason I have made comment about LHBF, I do not understand it or train it so I do not know. But I am hoping to learn in this post.

It is the belief of some internal Martial artist that you start at Xingyi, then go to Bagua and finally Tai Chi. I do not agree that this is necessary but that can at least explain in part why some Internal stylist know greater than one internal style. Also many lack patience to train the (average) 3 years (if you train 7 days a week  longer if you train less) to become effective with Tai Chi so they go to Xingyi that I believe it is said 2.5 years. Not that it is less effective or inferior to Tai Chi it is just easier to understand the direction of force and application. Philosophically they tend to have at least one big difference; Xingyi uses attack as defense where Tai Chi generally does not. 

To say that Chen Zhenglei is showing a disconnection for power transference is not correct, and does show at least a lack of knowledge about Chen Zhenglei and CHen, but as I said it is a teaching video. And I admit a lack of knowledge (roughly equivalent to the Grand Canyon) about LHBF and all the people in the posted videos too. 

Chen Zhenglei Traditional Chen style





But there are applications and reasons (such as anatomy) to move your foot on occasion. As well as moving power from the foot to the upper body, Tai Chi is not supposed to be ridged. It is also possible that is what is going on with the LHBF clips I have seen so far since I do not train LHBF so I have no way of knowing, but I am trying to understand.

And the Other guy you are referring to is Tung Ying Chieh who was one of the students that Yang Chengfu allowed to carry on Yang Style that was NOT a member of the Yang family. His ability is or I should say was extremely high. Not to mention he was my teachers teacher so I may be a bit overly sensitive here and I will not comment further. 

I am equally willing to admit that I have an apparent incredible lack of understanding about LHBF and I am beginning to believe that if I wish to understand it I will need to train it and there is a class near me that teaches form and form only but I have do not have the time to dedicate to it and my free time becomes even more precious starting this week. Also as a note and question on my observation of the class near me and this is going to sound REAL strange coming form a Tai Chi guy, but are all LHBF forms taught at such a slow speed in the beginning? 

As to Tai Chi lacking energy in Hong Kong, What styles and what were they learning? I cannot comment unless I know more and I can only comment on Yang, Chen and to a much lesser extent Wu. 

I am not trying to defend anything here, but if I based my assessment of all Tai Chi styles based on the Yang 24 I saw in the parks in Beijing I would run not walk to the nearest Xingyi School. But I know there is much more to Tai chi than what I saw there. ANd if I were training with those people I would as previously mentioned high tail it to the nearest Xingyi school. 

I am trying to keep this post as a way of understanding another style and not disrespecting LHBF or Tai Chi is anyway. I do understand we all can get very sensitive about our chosen art but I am trying to keep this civil in order to understand better. 

I have another question; Why do you feel that Liu He Ba Fa is so rare today?


----------



## oxy

Great post, I must say. Lots of meat.



Xue Sheng said:


> I Just watched a video of Xingyi dragon style and although the rear foot does lift it is completely different in the direction of force than anything I have seen so far in LHBF. The direction of power is going to the front and downward at about 45 degrees and then comes up with a kick.
> 
> Xingyi 12 animal, the first one is Dragon.



In short, it seems the majority of stances of Xingyi are in the 4/6 (or a similar stance with more weight on the back foot) position rather than bow (7/3) stance. Since in LHBF, we twist the back foot when we move from 4/6 to 7/3 and vice versa almost in equal numbers, the 7/3 step is more prominent. When we train in Praying Mantis (we use it to introduce LHBF principles because we didn't know about the LHBF 12 animals back then) we do a 7/3 Xingyi step which makes the direction of power for the back foot around just a little bit backwards from vertical. But in LHBF or Praying Mantis when we do the Xingyi step in the 4/6 stance, then the direction of power is actually as you say for Xingyi.



> But while watching the video I thought of something that could be a problem with the comparison being made between Xingyi and LHBF. I have ONLY trained Hebei style and I do not believe I have ever even seen Shanxi or Henan styles (and there are others I have not seen) so there may be a different step there I am entirely unaware of that may be similar to what you are talking about. I would very much like to see the YouTube video you plan on posting.



I think the difference you pointed out earlier might be spot on. There just doesn't seem to be a common bow Xingyi step in Xingyi. But now that I know about this, I'll try to concentrate on the 4/6 part of LHBF for the video instead.



> It is the belief of some internal Martial artist that you start at Xingyi, then go to Bagua and finally Tai Chi. I do not agree that this is necessary but that can at least explain in part why some Internal stylist know greater than one internal style.



I have also heard this and I similarly do not agree with that belief either. But there are who take Xingyi after Taiji because the footwork is not adequate for them.



> Also many lack patience to train the (average) 3 years (if you train 7 days a week  longer if you train less) to become effective with Tai Chi so they go to Xingyi that I believe it is said 2.5 years. Not that it is less effective or inferior to Tai Chi it is just easier to understand the direction of force and application. Philosophically they tend to have at least one big difference; Xingyi uses attack as defense where Tai Chi generally does not.



Of course there are those who lack patience. I realise how my earlier post sounded. I didn't mean all those who took Taiji and Xingyi did so for the same reason. But many feel Taiji footwork to be inadequate. As you said, that's probably down to the difference in philosophy and not "one is better". I would, however, say that one style is necessarily better depending on what each individual wants and how their way of thinking is better suited to one style.



> To say that Chen Zhenglei is showing a disconnection for power transference is not correct, and does show at least a lack of knowledge about Chen Zhenglei and CHen,



I really need to expand on my comments. In my reply to East Winds at least, that what I actually meant was that from the LHBF perspective that Chen Zhenglei shows disconnection. I agree that I know little of Chen like how you know little of LHBF. My point was that there are philosophical differences between LHBF and any kind of Taiji and it was a mistake (what East Winds earlier proposed) to say that "proper" LHBF should have identical theory to Taiji. From all the Chen style videos I have seen, yes they're all pretty much the same so that must mean it's quite standard.

The example I used earlier would be the Single Whip posture. In the other Chen video you posted, his torso was facing the camera with his arms stretched out to the side. The different philosophy in LHBF would dictate that his body be facing towards the left of the camera. I would prefer the LHBF way. No doubt you would prefer the Chen way. Objectively speaking, there probably isn't a "best way". They are different and the "best" way would be different under a different philosophy. And for East Winds to criticise LHBF philosophy (ie, the Wu Yi Hui -> Chan Yik Yan -> Choi Wai Lun (and my father's teacher) lineage) because it is different to his idea of Taiji and Taiji = LHBF philosophy is wrong.

Also, I did not mean that Chen Zhenglei showed disconnection throughout the whole video (from the LHBF perspective). Much of what happened after the Single Whip is at least reconcilable with LHBF (ie, his torso faces the direction of force).



> Chen Zhenglei Traditional Chen style



Certainly, he looks better than a lot of other Chen stylists I've seen. I sound like a broken record, but again, from the LHBF perspective there still some disconnection. For example, like in the first push (the one with both hands and the feet move together) his hands move by themselves and are not totally synchronised with his feet moving together. This has a lot to do with my unfamiliarity with Chen, but the point was that Taiji and LHBF are not completely interchangeable.

Chen certainly looks more dynamic (in the body movements but not footwork) than LHBF. I would still say it's a difference in philosophy. One of the main principles (the "Eighth Method") is "Conceal. Develop the ability to conceal [your technique, power, and intent] before you manifest [your attack]" so that in the end, the LHBF from "looks" pedestrian. The drawback of this is that it makes it very hard for students to learn because they can't see. This is why starting from my father's teacher, one of the recently developed teaching methods require the student to actually touch the teacher's abdomen, back, calves, heels, etc so they can feel the movements that they cannot see.



> But there are applications and reasons (such as anatomy) to move your foot on occasion. As well as moving power from the foot to the upper body, Tai Chi is not supposed to be ridged. It is also possible that is what is going on with the LHBF clips I have seen so far since I do not train LHBF so I have no way of knowing, but I am trying to understand.



Anatomy is definitely a part of the reason. But it's not the only reason, as far as LHBF is concerned. Since it is more comfortable to change the angle of the back foot to accomodate the angle of the torso, why not use that transition to generate force as well? That's one of the mentalities of LHBF is to use what's there to the fullest. Otherwise the back foot would be wasted if it turned only for anatomy.

The thing is, every video I have seen of anyone from the Chan Yik Yan lineage features the same foot turning (although I must say some may have forgotten to teach it properly). Certainly Choi Wai Lun has it in his LHBF forms and in his LHBF 12 animals form. My father and his teacher has it. His teacher's other students and their students have it. Chan Yik Yan was the one to spend the longest time learning from Wu Yi Hui too but I haven't seen their forms.



> And the Other guy you are referring to is Tung Ying Chieh who was one of the students that Yang Chengfu allowed to carry on Yang Style that was NOT a member of the Yang family. His ability is or I should say was extremely high. Not to mention he was my teachers teacher so I may be a bit overly sensitive here and I will not comment further.



I am sorry if the way I said "other guy" seemed insensitive. I mean no disrespect.



> I am equally willing to admit that I have an apparent incredible lack of understanding about LHBF and I am beginning to believe that if I wish to understand it I will need to train it and there is a class near me that teaches form and form only but I have do not have the time to dedicate to it and my free time becomes even more precious starting this week.



From what I read in your posts, your personal understanding of Taiji would make it very easy for you to make the transition into the Chan Yik Yan lineage of LHBF. But I agree that it would be a waste of time to learn the "form only" LHBF. The biggest problem you will have in searching for an LHBF school is one that doesn't have the philosophy that LHBF = Taiji. Even in those schools, despite teaching power and energy and martial applications, you would still wind up learning the "form only" LHBF since you have already learnt those Taiji theory. You would be better off creating your own Taiji form instead.

I don't subscribe to the theory that LHBF was created from the other three internal styles. But whatever the LHBF history actually was, the fact is, as you know, that LHBF contains principles present in the other three. If I were to classify them, it would be: footwork from Xingyi, escapism from Bagua, and Taiji for the arms. But even then, there is a lot of LHBF specific philosophies in those areas too (some from the actual way they amalgamate). To learn LHBF where the instructor eliminates all the other internal principles from other styles and completely replaces them with their version of Taiji, then there's no point in learning LHBF. You would be better off learning Taiji. If I had to, I would say the Helen Liang video is a perfect example of how some teachers threw away all the other principles for Taiji.



> Also as a note and question on my observation of the class near me and this is going to sound REAL strange coming form a Tai Chi guy, but are all LHBF forms taught at such a slow speed in the beginning?



Unfortunately, this is a good example of amibuity in the english language.

What do you mean by "taught at such a slow speed"? Do you mean that the teacher was teaching his students to perform each posture very slowly? Or do you mean that the teacher taught very little in one class?

To answer the first possible question: it depends.

My father once saw a guy in Hong Kong's Victoria Park (famous for its many people practicing some kind of martial art) who performed the form REALLY slowly. I mean he would move his posture inch by inch.

In one of the LHBF videos on Youtube (the one by John Chung Li) the guy takes a long time too.

Each teacher teaches different speeds. My father's teacher would teach a reasonable speed but would also tell his students (the more advanced ones) that you should sometimes practice a faster (but less intention), smaller stanced form to get a feel of the flow. People often gets confused by the term "Water Boxing" because they normally take a few (inappropriate) lines from the Dao De Jing where it says that water can be soft and yielding at times but can come down on you like a ton of bricks. That certainly is present in LHBF and is a mentality that is best suited to slow speeds. But we hold the fluidity of water to be just as important, so anything that doesn't allow us to move smoothly is wrong.

My video is 7 minutes, which is faster than my father's time which averages about 12. 9 if he's doing it fast. You might have heard of the designations "Si Hing" and such and that "Si Hing" is the martial arts equivalent of older brother. My "Si Bak", which would be the equivalent of "uncle" does it even more quickly, but he does the fast version I told you about before.

If you meant the second possible question:

Let's just say it took my father 16 years of learning, re-learning, re-learning the same form over and over for him to feel capable of teaching. I only learnt for 2 or 3 years (over the whole course of my life so far that is) which is why I'm only an assistant instructor.



> As to Tai Chi lacking energy in Hong Kong, What styles and what were they learning? I cannot comment unless I know more and I can only comment on Yang, Chen and to a much lesser extent Wu.



In Hong Kong, the dominant style should be Yang, I think.

My comment was specifically about the footwork energy as the reason why many take up Xingyi at the same time or Bagua at the same time. Either way you look at it, I have not seen any Taiji video that displays mobility as much as Bagua or Xingyi.

This is a bad example, but it's easier to understand: push hands. Push hands is good for sensitivity training and yielding and all that. But in all push hands video I have seen, the other person loses because their footwork and/or leg structure is appalling. In many cases, I could see multiple opportunities for someone to close the gap with a Xingyi step and in doing so lock the arms of the other person. As I've said, it's a bad example because it doesn't seem push hands is supposed to be teaching about footwork and leg structure.

Again, I stress that people have different philosophies in regards to their own bodies and martial arts, so they feel Taiji as lacking in leg structure and footwork because it doesn't click with their philosophies. Pure Taiji works for some while it is incredibly lacking for others. From the LHBF perspective, most Taiji styles have poor footwork. Just like how from the Taiji perspective LHBF must look like it doesn't root.



> I am trying to keep this post as a way of understanding another style and not disrespecting LHBF or Tai Chi is anyway. I do understand we all can get very sensitive about our chosen art but I am trying to keep this civil in order to understand better.



If at any time you feel I'm getting too disrespectful, tell me, as I can't see everything in what I say.



> I have another question; Why do you feel that Liu He Ba Fa is so rare today?



LHBF is not as rare as it seems. Only good LHBF is rare.  Either way there are a lot of people who really only teach "Taijibafa". If you show them even my video, they would surely say the same thing about me. And there's really no reason for you to believe EITHER of us.

There is no single reason I have heard that really is more convincing than any others.

There is a theory that Wu Yi Hui was the one who invented LHBF and attributed it to Chen Tuan and Li Dong Feng to gain recognition. If he was the first that means we still have less than a century of existence.

Another theory is the closed door theory that LHBF was sparingly taught and only to those who were willing to pay. That is supposedly why Wu Yi Hui and his lineage before him only taught LHBF in the Qing court until it fell to the revolution.

Yet another theory (one that is more related to Chan Yik Yan's reputation in Hong Kong) is that only those who were adept (often to the level of "master") at other styles before would seek out LHBF to learn. In that sense, my father was lucky to be even redirected by Chan Yik Yan to one of his students.

Yet another theory is that a lot of LHBF teachers dishonestly immortalises their art deliberately making student's learning harder than it really needs to be. Unfortunately, I have to say Chan Yik Yan is partially guilty of this because he would not show any posture more than three times. He even complained to my father's teacher about him teaching everything he knows to his students instead of doing the "three times maximum" thing. This makes it rare because most students don't want to put up with such strictness and I don't blame them.

Again, though, I must say that LHBF is much more common than people think. For example, I was quite surprised to hear that you had a teacher near you. My father was quite suprised to find out there is one in our state that we have never heard of. I was also suprised that there was one in Sydney. I've seen all the LHBF promotional websites on the internet, since there aren't a lot. And all of them makes a very cliched promotion that "LHBF used to be so secretive and rare" which unfairly boosts the feeling of its rarity rather. They also make the illogical proposition that LHBF is rare and secretive there it must be good. What would people like us who have a better understanding of the martial arts scene when they read this? I would automatically think that they are probably con artists. I would not be surprised to hear that LHBF teachers have lost students because they promote the art beyond what it actually is. If you went to an LHBF school and find that all they really teach is Taiji principles using a different form and yet the teaching staff claims the art to be super-duper, would you waste your time on them anymore?

Personally, I don't feel it's rare. But that's because I don't want LHBF to be diluted with "forced" popularity. Unfortunately that has already happened.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> Chen Zhenglei Traditional Chen style



One specific thing I noticed in this video happened at around 2:42 into it. It's the one where he jumps and punches when he lands. It's not exactly the same but it is similar to the way LHBF generates power by turning the backfoot. It's just that we do it more often and without the jumping. If you look closely at his Yin foot (I think it's Yin) he changes the angle just before he lands. And when he does land, I detect that he's also pushing off from the heel of that foot the generate some of the power.

Watch it and see if you see the same thing as me.

I noticed another thing at around 2:53 into the video when he begins to throw the series of right punches. His front foot turns in a similar manner. And I must say it is probably the reason why he's able to generate the power you see in that point in the video.

In the rest of that video there are other times when he changes the angle of his feet. Coincidentally, those points appear more powerful than the rest. Again, keep in mind I say this from the LHBF perspective. I'm quite sure that those "less powerful" parts that he could throw me back 10 metres or more.


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## oxy

(Anyone who is interested),

Well, my attempts to make the video comparison has hit a snag. I have currently "lost access" to a camera. And I had devised such a good method to show the power generation too. Current estimates are for a few weeks.

To pass the time, I thought of this:













These are pictures of successive postures in LHBF ordered from left to right. These pictures are linked from the www.waterboxing.com site which has the whole form from Chan Yik Yan's book.

As anyone can see, I'm not hallucinating about having been taught to turn the back foot. The photos I chose (from the 300 on the website) seems to be the most clear in terms of 1: quality 2: camera angle 3: order of posture. The only thing the photos don't show is whether the foot turns on the toe or the heel.

The best thing about this sequence is that it shows a change from 7/3 to 4/6 back to 7/3 stance. So I killed two birds with one stone and the RSPCA are none the wiser.

About the rest of the photos on that website:

It's not a comprehensive set. They look like they were taken during the course of Chan Yik Yan performing the whole thing in one go so some are of transitions. Of all the people I have seen that can be said to actually resemble Chan Yik Yan it really does seem that the direction some postures face are different across practitioners. Like Chan Yik Yan's, some have angular directions. In my form we have a more squarish directions. I don't think it makes a real difference. However, Chan Yik Yan's apparent form trains zig-zagging weight transfer much more than mine. This would be lacking in people whose forms mine resembles as we either have forwards or backwards motions which change direction of motion in 90 degree increments. The benefits of the version I was taught is that turning is being trained more.

I wouldn't have a preference for either. I certainly would go so far to say that there should be no discussion as to which form is the One True Form(tm). For the sake of lossless transmission, right angles are much more easier to remember. But the angular form trains a different mindset. My father's teacher would encourage people to practice "as they see fit", modifying their own practice form.

I think it's a good thing to do so and prevents huge schisms that result from some changing the form to suit their personal needs/environment but not passing on the generic form in favour of a specialised personal form.

Hope this post is interesting enough while you wait for the video.

-------------------------------

I say I come from the Chan Yik Yan lineage (Wu Yi Hui had other students which other LHBF teachers on the internet claim lineage to of which I have no way of researching about). This being the internet, there's no reason why people should believe what I say about my lineage. I actually have photo evidence proving my lineage which I am not at liberty to upload since they are private photos and those featured in them cannot give their permission. Merely mentioning this inability to provide proof makes me look even more shady. So the only thing that is available right now is to compare my video to the photos Chan Yik Yan from the website. I make no claim that my video shows the best form, but it is similar enough to those of the Chan Yik Yan lineage that I have seen.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy

I am still here and still reading posts, but I am currently to short of time to give a proper response. I will respond more later

Thanks 
XS


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## Xue Sheng

I fully agree that there are philosophical differences between LHBF and Taiji and those differences do make it difficult for an old Taiji guy such as me to understand where LHBF is coming from but I keep trying.

As to the other guy, Tung Ying Cheih, no problem, no offense taken. 

As to the speed of LHBF I should have been clearer. I am referring to how long it takes to go from one posture to another. Although now that I think about it the Clips that you have posted were no where near as slow as the one I personally saw in my area. 

I understand what you are talking about when you refer to push hands much of the problem people have with push hands is they do not realize or they have not been taught that it does move. Part of push hands training in Yang style after you learn stationary single hands and double hands is 3 step and four corner. These are where you begin to learn to move. After this you progress to free style which is very dynamic. 

From what I have seen of LHBF and knowing how people have bastardized or diluted Tai Chi I am rather concerned that it will go the same route. Meaning people go learn Yang 24 or Chen 18 and then go off and charge money to teach people Tai Chi when they have no real understanding of it at all. The fact that it is in my area being taught as it is shows me that this is already happening. 

As to its rarity in its real form I suspected it was the closed door theory to be honest the only true LHBF I knew of before starting this post was in either Singapore or Malaysia. 

I have not yet had the chance to look back at Chen's video in the areas you pointed out, I am having a problem connecting to that site at the moment, but I will take a look at it and get back to you.

Yet another note about stance as compared to Xingyi. Xingyi is a back stance where the back leg actually is the 60 and the front leg is 40 or 70/30 (to be honest I am not exactly sure of what the exact weight distribution is but either way the back leg ends up with more weight.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> I understand what you are talking about when you refer to push hands much of the problem people have with push hands is they do not realize or they have not been taught that it does move. Part of push hands training in Yang style after you learn stationary single hands and double hands is 3 step and four corner. These are where you begin to learn to move. After this you progress to free style which is very dynamic.



I actually have seen the mobile version of push hands and it is an improvement (a major one) over the less advanced forms. The peculiar thing about Taiji footwork is that it looks like "creeping". When moving, the leading leg takes a step first and then the rest of the body moves. And it seems to be a common thing that when the posture requires the body to rock onto the back foot, the front foot's toes lift up and the leg goes straight. That seems, on a martial perspective, very dangerous since it is much more easier to break a knee joint on a straight leg. I don't know what those who take Xingyi because of a lack of footwork in Taiji (in their opinions) think. And I don't know Xingyi apart from the step. But I think part of their reason is about the reasons I just mentioned.

I hope I don't come off looking like I'm bagging Taiji. Just airing a few reasons which I think explain the attitude in some Xingyi/Taiji practitioners. I don't represent them either, so I could be wrong.



> Yet another note about stance as compared to Xingyi. Xingyi is a back stance where the back leg actually is the 60 and the front leg is 40 or 70/30 (to be honest I am not exactly sure of what the exact weight distribution is but either way the back leg ends up with more weight.



Thanks for confirming. So there are (obviously) differences between LHBF and Xingyi footwork. But the 4/6 stance in both have similar theory attached. Now if I can find a damn camera.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> I actually have seen the mobile version of push hands and it is an improvement (a major one) over the less advanced forms. The peculiar thing about Taiji footwork is that it looks like "creeping". When moving, the leading leg takes a step first and then the rest of the body moves. And it seems to be a common thing that when the posture requires the body to rock onto the back foot, the front foot's toes lift up and the leg goes straight. That seems, on a martial perspective, very dangerous since it is much more easier to break a knee joint on a straight leg.


 
I am guessing that you have either not seen advanced push hands or not seen good push hands. The American competition version looks much as you described and it generally is more like wrestling than push hands. And it is as much traditional push hands as is Yang 24 traditional Taiji

As to the rocking, it is part of sensitivity training in the stationary sets.

As to the stepping it is not front foot and drag the body, it is more like walking to be honest. IT is rather relaxed and very lively when done correctly. If you train 3 step the first step would be with the leading front leg of the person advancing and the rear leg of the person retreating but after that it is just stepping. 

If you train 4 corners it is a step with a turn from one corner to the other in a box, if you will.

If you train free style all bets are off. The step is what the opponent makes it. And in freestyle if stationary you do not lock the knee as a matter of fact you can use the knee against the opponent as part of push hands. 



oxy said:


> I hope I don't come off looking like I'm bagging Taiji. Just airing a few reasons which I think explain the attitude in some Xingyi/Taiji practitioners. I don't represent them either, so I could be wrong.


 
Well of course you did.... just kidding. 

I rather like the relaxed movement of Taiji but I will say, in general, it certainly does not advance forward as fast as Xingyi. They are fairly different in movement and basic philosophy although they are both considered Internal Chinese Martial Arts.


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## oxy

Okay, I found this *more* descriptive page about rooting at http://members.cox.net/dmurray777/connect.shtml . From the page:



> Another aspect of this movement is root. Root does not mean that you are frozen immobile in a deep stance, it means that you maintain a connection with the earth. It is relaxed, and sinking. Unless you are changing gate elevation, your head does not bob up and down. An example of rootless movement is where you step and you get taller as your feet pass each other.



Would that be an accurate description of at least part of Taiji style rooting? Because in short, what that page says about rooting is not entirely compatible with LHBF. In some postures, that applies. In other postures, it doesn't work. Maybe it's because Choi's and my video shows our body moving up and down that makes it, from the Taiji perspective, rootless? I don't know.


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## Xue Sheng

That is pretty much rooting in Tai Chi, but at least one of the family styles (I believe it is Wu) does go up and down and is still rooted, but it does still look very different from the LHBF rooting.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> That is pretty much rooting in Tai Chi, but at least one of the family styles (I believe it is Wu) does go up and down and is still rooted, but it does still look very different from the LHBF rooting.



Was the main difference just the foot turning, or is there more? I also realise that my back leg straightens a lot, which is technically incorrect as far as LHBF is concerned which makes it look as if it goes "too high".


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> Was the main difference just the foot turning, or is there more? I also realise that my back leg straightens a lot, which is technically incorrect as far as LHBF is concerned which makes it look as if it goes "too high".


 
For the most part it was the foot turning that from a Tai Chi perspective appears to not be rooted, but I see thinks in Xingyi that I know are very effective that form a Tai Chi perspective may appear double weighted and that is not really the case. Let me take another look at the video. 

And speaking of Tai Chi I must go train, I am woefully behind on my days training.


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## oxy

http://www.tcmartist.com/drakesansone/

Well, I put this off long enough, but I'll have to continue to put off on the promise of the video I said I'd do. To tie you all over for the moment, I give you a directory chock full of Choi Wai Lun and LHBF related videos. They are not mine, except for one which the owner downloaded of my LHBF video (he renamed it "sloppylhbf" laugh out loud).

A combination of factors continue to prevent me from making those videos I promised to do. First, it was the heat. 40 degrees celsius is not a good temperature to perform strenuous exercise. In combination with that, I had on/off access for a camera, which Murphily alternated with the cycles of 40 degree heat that hit Perth over our summer. Now, I have a full time university commitment which chews up a lot of time, which will continue on to the end of the year. I might be able to squeeze them in, depending on how much I feel like doing the university stuff...

So I provide you with someone else's LHBF material for the time being.

The website has a couple of Choi Wai Lun doing the second half of the LHBF form, which you've all seen on the Youtube ones. Nothing special. But there are others which feature the 12 LHBF Animals. Personally, I really prefer the one called "Tiger". That video is a 700MB download (one video file including Goose, Crane and Eagle as well). There are a lot of big video files there. Don't abuse it, or we might lose the only video resource of LHBF.

It's really too bad that Choi Wai Lun did not do a video of "Coiled Dragon Swimming" or "Dragon Tiger Battle" before his retirement, so those are as good as lost. But then, my teacher's teacher said that those two forms doesn't contain anything that isn't in the two/three main LHBF forms. I plan to do one of the "Coiled Dragon Fist". I already posted a video of that collaborative project on the Videos thread (it's the one which was computer generated).

It's too bad no one else has the X the preserve their own LHBF stuff on the internet (in full).


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## Xue Sheng

Oxy

I am getting a server directory when I click the link, is that what it is supposed to be?


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## oxy

Yes, it's supposed to be a server directory. There's only LHBF related stuff in there, so don't worry about finding anything "else".

You should see three folders. One of them is completely dedicated to Choi Wai Lun's videos. Another is a collection of LHBF snippets from around the web. The owner decided to, to put it lightly, "rename" many videos to show what he think's of the LHBF in the videos or alternately a "description" of the person. Mine was renamed to "sloppylbhf" and unfortunately is the only video of a complete main form anywhere on the web.

There's also the "Five Character Secrets" or "Five Word Song" of LHBF in Chinese and english, but the english translation is very very poor. I've been trying to get it translated, with one aborted attempt.

Drake Sansone (the owner of the archive) appears to be one of Choi Wai Lun's former students. He's very zealous. You may have read his posts in many other forums relating to what he thinks of anyone who didn't learn from Choi Wai Lun himself. He also goes by the nick of "Swmng Dragon" or something similar. He has a few posts at EmptyFlower as well. He hasn't appeared to be very active for a long while now.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> Yes, it's supposed to be a server directory. There's only LHBF related stuff in there, so don't worry about finding anything "else".
> 
> You should see three folders. One of them is completely dedicated to Choi Wai Lun's videos. Another is a collection of LHBF snippets from around the web. The owner decided to, to put it lightly, "rename" many videos to show what he think's of the LHBF in the videos or alternately a "description" of the person. Mine was renamed to "sloppylbhf" and unfortunately is the only video of a complete main form anywhere on the web.
> 
> There's also the "Five Character Secrets" or "Five Word Song" of LHBF in Chinese and english, but the english translation is very very poor. I've been trying to get it translated, with one aborted attempt.
> 
> Drake Sansone (the owner of the archive) appears to be one of Choi Wai Lun's former students. He's very zealous. You may have read his posts in many other forums relating to what he thinks of anyone who didn't learn from Choi Wai Lun himself. He also goes by the nick of "Swmng Dragon" or something similar. He has a few posts at EmptyFlower as well. He hasn't appeared to be very active for a long while now.


 
It appears that I am unable to open most of the files here and I cannot open yours at all. What player do I need for an FLV file?


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## oxy

You would never have guessed: FLVPlayer.

I'm not sure why the other files won't work. They're basically Windows Media files, DivX AVIs and Quicktime files.


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## qi-tah

oxy said:


> Right now, I'm watching England vs Australia in the Ashes. I'm guessing it's the same for baseball.
> 
> That is, the front foot lands JUST before the bat is swung. That gives a lot of power for little energy and a lot more power than standing in one stance and swinging the arms.
> 
> In baseball, the pitcher's front foot lands JUST before the ball is thrown.
> 
> That is the philosophy of LHBF.
> 
> I cannot say for sure that it is better than Taiji. But it fits in well with LHBF of "start together stop together".


 

sorry to bring cricket into it again, but i guess it depends on which way you are swinging (so to speak)... pretty much all batsmen will have some backswing *as* they are stepping, unless they are playing backfoot defence, where the lift needed is minimal, or they are master punchers of the ball like Ricky Ponting  I mean, the backlift will also contribute to the total kinetic energy imparted to the ball, no? And players do stand and deliver as well, the reason for stepping is to get your body into the hitting zone, depending on where the ball is bowled.

Sorry about putting my 2 cents in if this is completely off topic now.


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## qi-tah

oh, and this is not Liu he ba fa, but some other Liu he styles previously mentioned... i think there are some clips on this site somewhere too. On a different tack, would be interested to know what ppl think of Zi ran men as an internal-like style?

www.ziranmen.com/main/main.php

Again, apols if off topic


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## oxy

qi-tah said:


> sorry to bring cricket into it again, but i guess it depends on which way you are swinging (so to speak)... pretty much all batsmen will have some backswing *as* they are stepping, unless they are playing backfoot defence, where the lift needed is minimal, or they are master punchers of the ball like Ricky Ponting  I mean, the backlift will also contribute to the total kinetic energy imparted to the ball, no? And players do stand and deliver as well, the reason for stepping is to get your body into the hitting zone, depending on where the ball is bowled.
> 
> Sorry about putting my 2 cents in if this is completely off topic now.



Your analysis is completely correct.

I brought up cricket and baseball as examples because, if I remember the conversation correctly, someone a claim made that the Xingyi-like step-and-strike in an almost simultaneous action was wrong citing some reason about power generation or whatnot. I was showing, using real world examples, how it is very possible to generate power in that fashion (only because I felt the comparison to Xingyi was ignored or dismissed).

From the Liu He Ba Fa point of view, that kind of power generation is more powerful and more efficient than any other method.

But you are very correct that legends like Ricky Ponting (and Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Adam Gilchrist, ...) can also punch the ball in a stand-and-deliver action.

And that is not incompatible with Liu He Ba Fa either. Liu He Ba Fa contains a very logical mix of both kinds of footwork. Sometimes, both kinds of footwork are present in the same movement. That is what that "foot turning" thing a few hundred or so posts ago is about. When we practice, we turn our back foot on the toe (but the whole foot is still in contact with the ground). When it's actually used, it is up to the situation for the person to move in what way is required. In close quarters, where it is not always possible to step forward and deliver, it is still possible to turn the back foot (either going from a bow/arrow stance or a 4/6 stance). By doing that, you can still generate good power while at the same time just standing and delivering. Even then, there's no requirement in Liu He Ba Fa that foot turning or stepping must be present when applying an action for real.

There is simply no universal principle that favours either kind of footwork absolutely. You see people like Andrew Strauss who has been dismissed during the Ashes both for having no foot movement (against the quicks) and sometimes too much foot movement (against Shane Warne). It's not really an issue about different types of footwork. It becomes an issue about being able to make the right choice without hesitation in less than a second. Liu He Ba Fa has the best of both worlds, but you would also get the same from doing both Taiji and Xingyi. In my experience learning and teaching Liu He Ba Fa, a lot of effort is used in explaining, for a certain action, what situations require foot movement, which don't and which is better served by the hybrid.

And no, I do not think you are off topic. "Liu He Ba Fa" as a thread topic is itself very vague. It makes for a better discussion and learning experience to relate to things outside expected boundaries, like discussing cricket. Talking about history or why one kind of movement is better than another using vaguely worded principles from dead people instead of real world examples (in other domains) means nothing new is being explored and would be better off not being discussed at all.


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## qi-tah

oxy said:


> And that is not incompatible with Liu He Ba Fa either. Liu He Ba Fa contains a very logical mix of both kinds of footwork. Sometimes, both kinds of footwork are present in the same movement. That is what that "foot turning" thing a few hundred or so posts ago is about. When we practice, we turn our back foot on the toe (but the whole foot is still in contact with the ground). When it's actually used, it is up to the situation for the person to move in what way is required. In close quarters, where it is not always possible to step forward and deliver, it is still possible to turn the back foot (either going from a bow/arrow stance or a 4/6 stance). By doing that, you can still generate good power while at the same time just standing and delivering. Even then, there's no requirement in Liu He Ba Fa that foot turning or stepping must be present when applying an action for real.
> 
> There is simply no universal principle that favours either kind of footwork absolutely. You see people like Andrew Strauss who has been dismissed during the Ashes both for having no foot movement (against the quicks) and sometimes too much foot movement (against Shane Warne). It's not really an issue about different types of footwork. It becomes an issue about being able to make the right choice without hesitation in less than a second. Liu He Ba Fa has the best of both worlds, but you would also get the same from doing both Taiji and Xingyi. In my experience learning and teaching Liu He Ba Fa, a lot of effort is used in explaining, for a certain action, what situations require foot movement, which don't and which is better served by the hybrid.


 
Interesting. I did read some of the posts on this topic earlier but i'm not sure that i know enough about Xing Yi (and i *know* that i don't know enough about Liu he ba fa!) to really grasp the nuances of it all. But the twisting on the back foot you describe sounds a little like what i've always called "screwing" the toes - whether to provide a stable launch pad for an explosive movement from the waist or as a side-effect of said explosive movement i've never been able to work out!  It's feels like a more concentrated version of the foot movement in a classic boxing uppercut anyway. And all the Xing Yi stuff i've done has been hands and feet moving together, not as a sequence. But as i said, i haven't done that much. 

Utterly agree about using real-world examples to find new ways to illustrate ideas in MA. Sometimes the ways in which unexpected comparisons don't work can be as thought-provoking as the ways in which they do.


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## Xue Sheng

qi-tah said:


> Interesting. I did read some of the posts on this topic earlier but i'm not sure that i know enough about Xing Yi (and i *know* that i don't know enough about Liu he ba fa!) to really grasp the nuances of it all. But the twisting on the back foot you describe sounds a little like what i've always called "screwing" the toes - whether to provide a stable launch pad for an explosive movement from the waist or as a side-effect of said explosive movement i've never been able to work out!  It's feels like a more concentrated version of the foot movement in a classic boxing uppercut anyway. And all the Xing Yi stuff i've done has been hands and feet moving together, not as a sequence. But as i said, i haven't done that much.
> 
> Utterly agree about using real-world examples to find new ways to illustrate ideas in MA. Sometimes the ways in which unexpected comparisons don't work can be as thought-provoking as the ways in which they do.


 
You have pretty much got the idea of Xingyi.

Everything works together. The back foot land at the same time the strike is made, the entire body works in unison. Xingyi is also a back stance where in general Taiji is not, except in a couple of postures. Xingyi uses attack as defense where Taiji and I believe Liu He Ba Fa do not. I do not see the similarities between Xingyi and Liu He Ba Fa but then I do not train Liu He Ba Fa so I really cannot compare them except in video.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> Xingyi uses attack as defense where Taiji and I believe Liu He Ba Fa do not.



Depends on who you learn it from or what videos you watch.

I have been taught both ways.

Liu He Ba Fa is not as circular as Taiji is (tt shouldn't be; at least it shouldn't look circular due to it all being internalised). It even uses a lot of the Xingyi handwork where the arm is like a wedge that splits the opponent up while being able to launch a direct attack at the same time (with the same hand).

If someone decides to take the "full course", they should be learning the defence aspect and the attack aspect using the same postures such that there doesn't need to be a change in action, thus it becomes using attack as defence and vice versa.


qi-tah:


> whether to provide a stable launch pad for an explosive movement from the waist or as a side-effect of said explosive movement i've never been able to work out!  It's feels like a more concentrated version of the foot movement in a classic boxing uppercut anyway.



Theoretically, the foot turning should never be the side effect of said explosive movement. Practically, some of us (me) don't practice as hard as we should. If it is a side effect, then you would lose all your balance in realtime speed.

When looking at the slow form, you would see that the foot turning is at a constant rate as a strike is being delivered.

That's just how you should train.

In actual application, the foot only turns near the end of a strike. At the end, the turning foot (back foot, but sometimes both) grabs the ground hard and the body sinks such that the friction should stop the foot turning past 30 degrees from forward. It helps as a launchpad for explosive waste movement, as you correctly say, but also as a finisher.

If you then analyse the force profile rather than how it looks on the outside, you would see that it is no more different than stepping.

I swear I really am going to post that video once and for all showing the foot turning.


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## Xue Sheng

oxy said:


> Depends on who you learn it from or what videos you watch.
> 
> I have been taught both ways.
> 
> Liu He Ba Fa is not as circular as Taiji is (tt shouldn't be; at least it shouldn't look circular due to it all being internalised). It even uses a lot of the Xingyi handwork where the arm is like a wedge that splits the opponent up while being able to launch a direct attack at the same time (with the same hand).
> 
> If someone decides to take the "full course", they should be learning the defence aspect and the attack aspect using the same postures such that there doesn't need to be a change in action, thus it becomes using attack as defence and vice versa.


 
Point taken and it may also depend on the style of Xingyi you are talking about, I do Hebei style but there are other styles to consider and I have seen Shanxi style but I do not believe I have ever seen Hunan style and I am told it is rather different. Also I recently saw a style (sorry the name escapes me) of Xingyi that actually used more of a front stance.


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## oxy

Xue Sheng said:


> Point taken and it may also depend on the style of Xingyi you are talking about, I do Hebei style but there are other styles to consider and I have seen Shanxi style but I do not believe I have ever seen Hunan style and I am told it is rather different. Also I recently saw a style (sorry the name escapes me) of Xingyi that actually used more of a front stance.



The attack-as-defence part of some Xingyi I've seen that stuck out the most is Pichuan if I remember correctly.

After seeing a few apps videos of Pichuan, I had a good time recognising them in the Liu He Ba Fa forms. If you look at a video of the beginning of the main form, you can see a Pichuan-like attack at the first rightwards torso-waist turn. It's a good example because it's also a "defensive" action at the same time like Pichuan is.

I've counted 13 Pichuan-like attacks in the first half of the main form, 7 in the second half and 1 in the Coiled Dragon form, which is odd because the Coiled Dragon form is the most Xingyi like of the style. However, the Coiled Dragon form is completely attack-as-defence but unfortunately no one seems to want to show it on the internet or the even rarer forms.


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## Nobody

I do Hsing Yi, Bagua and Taichi and yes do believe that the form of Water Boxing out there now is very influenced by Hsing Yi, Bagua, Taichi.   

This said yes i learned some of the Liu Ba Fa forms an can say man that it was just to much an i had to tell my instructor that to after so long cause here i had twelve years in the other three systems an it just seemed like there was to many forms at that point.  Though the forms are not that much in movement i just was at the time had to much on my plate.   They do start looking more like animal forms than the hsing yi animal form look to me.  The snake movements are very much snake in Liu Ba Fa from what i can remember.


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## oxy

Well, this has been sitting on my computer for a long time. I was bored one time and decided to transcribe my teacher's copy of the LHBF 5 word song. I guess I'm putting here to share and maybe get some people interested in translating it "for the good of martial arts" or something like that. I found a translation by John Chung Li. It was terrible.

Of course, you browser should support unicode fonts. My computer as Arial Unicode MS and only one or two words have a slightly less correct form.

This was taken straight from Chan Yik Yan's own book on Liu He Ba Fa. Scans of some parts of the book (the song, the liu he and the ba fa and the photos of Chan Yik Yan's postuers) are available from www.waterboxing.com . I have seen other copies of the five word song which for some reason have a few extra verses at the end. And even for additions they were translated really poorly.

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## Xue Sheng

Thanks

Now all I have to do is bug my wife to Translate it


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## arashikage1

I have respect for all my brothers and sisters in Liu He Ba Fa and the many different lineage's but I am loyal to one and only to that one. That one is  Great Grand Master Chan Yik Yan / Grand Master Wai Lun Choi lineage of Liu He Ba Fa. It is the bomb, the bottom line, end of story. When I think of water boxing, when i think of the Way of the Coiled Dragon, there is only but one method, one way that comes to mind and that way is Liu He Ba Fa as it is taught by Great Grand Master Chan Yik Yan and handed down to Grand Master Wai Lun Choi and as it was handed down to me from my Sifu who was a student of Master Choi in Chicago back in 1972. The (Zhú J&#299; ??) the Six Harmonies Fist form is the hardest, longest form i have ever learned in the 40 years i have been in the martial arts and it kicked my *** when i first started to learn it.  hell, it still kicks my *** even today. Every time i go through the form i learn something new about it.


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## arashikage1

truthfully...any and all liuhebafa that has its line going back to Master Wu Yi Hui it is liuhebafa. If it traces its roots to Master Chan Yik Yan that is great also and if you can trace your liuhebafa all the way to  Chen Xi Yi (Chen Tuan) then that is truly amazing. In the all the various styles of liuhebafa are part of one family despite differences within the various systems.


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## mograph

The five-character songs are applicable to any martial art, in my opinion.


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## Xue Sheng

arashikage1 said:


> In the all the various styles of liuhebafa are part of one family despite differences within the various systems.



True but the same can pretty much be said for Xingyiquan, Baguazhang, Taijiquan and multiple other CMA styles


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## mograph

... and this is good.


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## VASI

There is also early wu yi hui teachings versus some of the older stuff. seems the earlier stuff is much better and changed later. a bud of mine is seriously into it and trained around in different countries


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## CrushingFist

Love going back and reading this


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## TaiChiTJ

Xue Sheng, I do not know if you have seen this Liu He Ba Fa site. A whole lot of text information about the subject. I have spent a little time with it. 


WaterSpirit-6x8


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## greytowhite

Having practiced the three main internals I'm quite interested in LHBF. There are some great resources out there now for more legitimate lines. One of the more interesting developments is Dr. Kenneth Fish's discovery of a DuLiu Tongbei

Liu He Ba Fa

the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum • View topic - rocking the boat on LHBF

Here is one of Choi Wai Lun's long term students practicing.






Here are two videos of Chan Yik Yan's student Mok Kei Fai. Paul Roberts has done a lot of work on documenting the art on the site below.

International Liuhebafa Internal Arts Association


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## Bagualo8

As an internal styles (Taiji, Xing Yi, Bagua & LHBF) practitioner for many years, I want to advice anyone who are interested in LHBF that if any teacher or Sifu tells you that LHBF is a mixture of Taiji, Xing Yi & Bagua, that teacher does not know what LHBF is. LHBF is a unquie system completely different to the other three internal styles.


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## KabutoKouji

Is that the 'Water Boxing' one? - I think that's what Ling Xiayou in Tekken is supposed to be from - you can definitely see Bagua in her movements too


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## Xue Sheng

KabutoKouji said:


> Is that the 'Water Boxing' one? - I think that's what Ling Xiayou in Tekken is supposed to be from - you can definitely see Bagua in her movements too



Tekken is a fighting video game franchise and Ling Xiayou is a cartoon character. I do not think I would look at that as  good source of information about the reality of LHBF


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## KabutoKouji

Xue Sheng said:


> Tekken is a fighting video game franchise and Ling Xiayou is a cartoon character. I do not think I would look at that as  good source of information about the reality of LHBF



well yeah it is but they are usually mo capped from pracitioners, Hwoarang for example is a pretty accurate rendition of an ITF practitioner, even down to the tul he does during 'attract' mode. He also does 'twisting kicks'. Obviously there are the OTT moves like 'The Hunting Hawk' but the stuff he does while standing is pretty accurate IMO. Jin Kazama's second movesets are also mo capped from Kyokushin practitioners, it is only really the total 'fantasy'/monster type characters that dont have many elements from whatever style they are supposed to come from. In Street Fighter the link is pretty tenuos, but in Tekken it is definitely there.


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## Xue Sheng

it is a high tech interactive cartoon....


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## KabutoKouji

intellectual snobbery based on the medium is still intellectual snobbery - when movies first appeared people were the same, as I said before it is motion capped from humans doing the movements - how does that make those parts of their movements different than a video recording of them in terms of how much of the movements of the style come into what you are looking at? In the game Ling Xiayou very clearly 'walks the circle'. When you watch Hwoarang perform Hwa-Rang pattern in Tekken 3, yes it is polygons you are watching but it is very clearly the recorded movements of a human. Anyway if you don't care for polygons or drawings moving that's fine there is no point in still talking about it, I will not mention the characters in Tekken again.

[youtube]


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## greytowhite

KabutoKouji, your attachment to the video game shows your lack of experience fighting IRL, especially against well trained and tested internal guys. Walking a circle in an actual fight is not advised, it is a *training exercise* that is meant to develop footwork and connecting the feet to the hands through abnormal torso articulation. Just because someone motion captured a martial artist doing moves from their style doesn't mean they know how those things are used and synthesized. As much as I love to use Elliott in DOA 5 much of what he does is stuff we would never use in real combat.


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## Xue Sheng

KabutoKouji said:


> intellectual snobbery based on the medium is still intellectual snobbery - when movies first appeared people were the same, as I said before it is motion capped from humans doing the movements - how does that make those parts of their movements different than a video recording of them in terms of how much of the movements of the style come into what you are looking at? In the game Ling Xiayou very clearly 'walks the circle'. When you watch Hwoarang perform Hwa-Rang pattern in Tekken 3, yes it is polygons you are watching but it is very clearly the recorded movements of a human. Anyway if you don't care for polygons or drawings moving that's fine there is no point in still talking about it, I will not mention the characters in Tekken again.
> 
> [youtube]



It is not intellectual snobbery, nice accusation though.

The meaning is you cannot judge an art, like LHBF (or any MA for that matter), that you do not know, based on a fantasy game. LHBF is not Bagua nor does it come from it, the fact you see some bagua similarity in the LHBF done by a fictional character in a cartoon does not really tell you anything about LHBF. It tells you that the person that they used for their motion capture did something that resembled Bagua to you. I have no idea what you saw, I have no idea if it was actually bagua, and I have done bagua before. I also have no idea what the person they appear to have used for motion capture actually knew either, did they know LHBF, did they know LHBF and bagua and combined them for the game, did they actually know any CMA style at all. Therefore it cannot be used as a reputable source of information as it applies to LHBF in the real world.

Basically your citing Tekkon as a source of some sort of understanding of LHBF is simply not a good source, sorry, call it what you will, but I call it reality


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## Flying Crane

In Tibetan white crane we also have a "circle walking" kind of thing.  It ain't Bagua, it ain't Liu He Ba Fa either.

Recognizing a video game for what it is, is not snobbery.  It is just living within the confines of reality.  The makers of video games tend to take creative liberties.  

It ain't personal.


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## KabutoKouji

I did not say it gave me any understanding I asked is it what the character was based on/motion captured from in the hope someone might know, and also mentioned it because it is pretty rare to see it mentioned in media in general. I was asking did anyone else know anything more about this. Anyway having said that, my memory was incorrect anyway as she is supposed to be based on Bagua and Piguaguan. I have done one 3 hour seminar of Bagua before but I do not in any way means I have any knowledge of it, though as the circle walk is pretty well known when I saw it in the game and then when I heard people say that some people were saying that LHBF is a 'composition' of all 3 of the internal CMAs, I thought this added evidence to my theory. I was wrong, obviously.

For better or for worse the original reason I chose ITF TKD was because of Tekken 3 back in the late 90s. So even if it is a medium you do not like, it can influence people and bring people to MAs, which is a good thing. Just like as a Lancia person, I don't mind the fact that a lot of the reason people in general still know what an integrale is is because of car racing games. I never implied it was some kind of actual proper reference guide to any MA, but to say it is total thrash and has no relation to the arts it does have in some of it's characters is not correct either. In both Tekken and Soul Calibur there are motion captured 'demos' which play in between games of characters performing kata/forms/tul, people seeing this in between their games is a good thing IMO. I watched a Mas Oyama docu last week, and as he was doing his drills instantly it was apparent to me that Jin's moveset in Tekken are exact copies of movements he did himself. Anyway I apologise for steering the thread way off course.


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## KabutoKouji

Flying Crane said:


> In Tibetan white crane we also have a "circle walking" kind of thing.  It ain't Bagua, it ain't Liu He Ba Fa either.
> 
> Recognizing a video game for what it is, is not snobbery.  It is just living within the confines of reality.  The makers of video games tend to take creative liberties.
> 
> It ain't personal.



That is true, but seeing how accurate the movements of characters are in the game when they are based on a 'named' art (when they're not based on something 'real' they quite clearly have made up names for their arts), I'd be prepared to believe it quite probable Ling Xiayou is motion captured from someone practicing Bagua itself. Though not LHBF as I have said I was completely wrong about. 

You're right they do take creative liberties a lot.


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## Bagualo8

I know this thread should talk about LHBF. But I can't help to say something about Bagua. There are so many people mistaken Bagua Zhang is all about walking circle. The truth is walking circle is only a way of developing power or energy. The real techniques are in the linear form or some call it individual movement (San Sau). Only a fool will circling around an opponent during a fight. The real circle is one's center point or Dan Tin. The circle is invisible expanding from the center of oneself.


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