Anyone else use Yao Bu?

[JowGaWolf]

If you know what a 'inner hook" is, why do you want to learn the chinese name "得合 De He", or the Japanese name "大内刈 Ouchi Gari"?

To learn an extra Mongolian word, or an extra Japanese word will have little meaning to my training.

Some teacher see it as being Authentic and other teacher see it as a cultural exchange, where they want students to know and follow some aspects of Chinese culture related to martial arts. Beyond that, it's not intended to help with the actual training.

 

[Oily Dragon]

I appreciate these things more than words can express. Thanks again. Often, when I would question whether I was doing something correctly, my Sifu would say “don’t worry if you are right or wrong, you are wrong”. So I just assume I’m wrong and look for the right, easier that way.

We both live in an age when everyone argues about everything, but kung fu? Forget about it.

Watch this, there are a couple really good examples of Shaolin Yao in this intro. Note the repetitions.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Hey, I was able to dig up a Yao Kiu demo that kind of supports Damien's video. This is a Hung Kuen school in Canada, but the soft/supple/groovy bridge is on full display.

to become soft, as opposed to being soft, and then being hard.

Yao Kiu/ soft bridge. | Yao Kiu / Soft bridge 软桥 | By Canadian Hung Kuen Association | Facebook

Yao Kiu / Soft bridge 软桥

ne-np.facebook.com

 

[JowGaWolf]

Hey, I was able to dig up a Yao Kiu demo that kind of supports Damien's video. This is a Hung Kuen school in Canada, but the soft/supple/groovy bridge is on full display.

to become soft, as opposed to being soft, and then being hard.

Yao Kiu/ soft bridge. | Yao Kiu / Soft bridge 软桥 | By Canadian Hung Kuen Association | Facebook

Yao Kiu / Soft bridge 软桥

ne-np.facebook.com

I'm on the fence about those type of demos. I think for the most part they are only good for concept discussions and concept training. If you had to actually find something that supports a concept then it will need to be done in application.,,

I'm not saying it's an unnecessary thing. For me it's more like an incomplete thing.

 

[Oily Dragon]

I'm on the fence about those type of demos. I think for the most part they are only good for concept discussions and concept training. If you had to actually find something that supports a concept then it will need to be done in application.,,

I'm not saying it's an unnecessary thing. For me it's more like an incomplete thing.

That's ok.

I stay on the fence for every demo, doesn't matter the art.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Hey, I was able to dig up a Yao Kiu demo that kind of supports Damien's video. This is a Hung Kuen school in Canada, but the soft/supple/groovy bridge is on full display.

to become soft, as opposed to being soft, and then being hard.

Yao Kiu/ soft bridge. | Yao Kiu / Soft bridge 软桥 | By Canadian Hung Kuen Association | Facebook

Yao Kiu / Soft bridge 软桥

ne-np.facebook.com

It's just a general strategy. It's no different than this clip.

- Your opponent attacks you.
- You use stealing step to move yourself out of the attacking path, and
- lead your opponent into the emptiness.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

We both live in an age when everyone argues about everything, but kung fu? Forget about it.

Watch this, there are a couple really good examples of Shaolin Yao in this intro. Note the repetitions.

With a super size of drama. Making a face, any face, could get you snapped at by the Sifu. Rocking back and forth will not gain points either. otherwise, great demo!

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

I'm on the fence about those type of demos. I think for the most part they are only good for concept discussions and concept training. If you had to actually find something that supports a concept then it will need to be done in application.,,

I'm not saying it's an unnecessary thing. For me it's more like an incomplete thing.

Well to be honest it’s a conditioning exercise as much as a technique. Because you will do it 10,000 times before you can use it.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

That's ok.

I stay on the fence for every demo, doesn't matter the art.

It was an example, I’m amazed you could find one at all.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

It's just a general strategy. It's no different than this clip.

- Your opponent attacks you.
- You use stealing step to move yourself out of the attacking path, and
- lead your opponent into the emptiness.

Yes, it goes back to my old trope, it is all just motion. Strong foundational basics are what really matter. If a man doesn’t have balance, posture, and coordination, then they can’t do anything anyway.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Yes, it goes back to my old trope, it is all just motion. Strong foundational basics are what rhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVN2dmsLxgYeally matter. If a man doesn’t have balance, posture, and coordination, then they can’t do anything anyway.

May be in the Hung system, if you use striking skill, you use hard posture. If you use wrestling skill, you use soft posture.

The Hung system used to be one of the long fist system in the north China (Cha, Hua, Hung, Tan, Pao). After the Hung system had been moved to the south China, the Hung has been changed and may look different from the rest of the long fist system. The Hung may include some southern CMA principles, and no longer be a pure northern CMA system any more.

Cha Quan:

Hua Quan:

Tan Tui:

Pao Quan:

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

May be in the Hung system, if you use striking skill, you use hard posture. If you use wrestling skill, you use soft posture.

The Hung system used to be one of the long fist system in the north China (Cha, Hua, Hung, Tan, Pao). After the Hung system had been moved to the south China, the Hung has been changed and may look different from the rest of the long fist system. The Hung may include some southern CMA principles, and no longer be a pure northern CMA system any more.

Cha Quan:

Hua Quan:

Tan Tui:

Pao Quan:

True , my Sigung trained Hung Gar in Canton around the mid 1930s. Anything I know of it comes directly from there. Same with my Yang long Tai Chi Chuan and Mok Gar etc. our system is the melding of those and more that were in Canton from1929 to 1941.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

May be in the Hung system, if you use striking skill, you use hard posture. If you use wrestling skill, you use soft posture.

The Hung system used to be one of the long fist system in the north China (Cha, Hua, Hung, Tan, Pao). After the Hung system had been moved to the south China, the Hung has been changed and may look different from the rest of the long fist system. The Hung may include some southern CMA principles, and no longer be a pure northern CMA system any more.

Cha Quan:

Hua Quan:

Tan Tui:

Pao Quan:

Not so much hard and soft for me, more internal cannot be felt without external. Soft sounds collapsed. Like southern mantis Tong Long Pai, Sifu Woo trained in it. He complained of the curved back “ you can train any handicap to proficiency”. Similar to the lisp in a certain region in Spain, people speak that way because the king had a speech impedimen, so it became the tradition. I don’t mean to say wrestling is collapsed at all. I mean the language and definitions we use might be different for similar concepts. Especially because I am ignorant to Cantonese. My apologies if I misunderstand.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Soft sounds collapsed.

When I say

- soft, I mean yield, stick, join, and follow.
- hard, I mean force against force.

 

[JowGaWolf]

lead your opponent into the emptiness.

I've been to emptiness before, I don't like that place lol.

 

[Oily Dragon]

May be in the Hung system, if you use striking skill, you use hard posture. If you use wrestling skill, you use soft posture.

The Hung system used to be one of the long fist system in the north China (Cha, Hua, Hung, Tan, Pao). After the Hung system had been moved to the south China, the Hung has been changed and may look different from the rest of the long fist system. The Hung may include some southern CMA principles, and no longer be a pure northern CMA system any more.

Because Hung (hong/red/flood) fist, "village Hung kuen", and Hung Ga Kuen are not quite the same, but there is a historical path between them. Hung Ga schools teach a lot more than the others.

Hung hei gun is the legendary "founder" basically Hung Kuen's version of Ng Mui. Those arts spread travelled south. But all modern Hung Ga schools derive from the Wong Fei Hung lineage (no relation that I know of). Fei Hung created the modern system, which is basically a mashup of Shaolin Qigong, animal styles, Daoist elemental philosophy, medicine, and common weapons.

The Yao Kiu, by the way, is practiced using Yee gi kim yeurng ma in advanced Lam Family and intro Dang Fong family training (funny that), in a squeezing sense (hence Wood element). So it's not really soft in the literal sense, though the hand with single finger chan is a little more relaxed than the other fist. So you get that lower body YGKYM adduction but also the upper body torso/pecs. So I agree with what you said about grappling.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

May be in the Hung system, if you use striking skill, you use hard posture. If you use wrestling skill, you use soft posture.

The Hung system used to be one of the long fist system in the north China (Cha, Hua, Hung, Tan, Pao). After the Hung system had been moved to the south China, the Hung has been changed and may look different from the rest of the long fist system. The Hung may include some southern CMA principles, and no longer be a pure northern CMA system any more.

Cha Quan:

Hua Quan:

Tan Tui:

Pao Quan:

I've been to emptiness before, I don't like that place lol.

I think Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) said it in the 1980 Conan the barbarian movie. ”Who among you is ready to embrace emptiness”

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I've been to emptiness before, I don't like that place lol.

To lead your opponent into the emptiness usually means to let your opponent to kiss the dirt. It also means you and your opponent switch places. You let your opponent to take over your place while you take over his place.

 

[JowGaWolf]

To lead your opponent into the emptiness usually means to let your opponent to kiss the dirt.

Nothing wrecks a plan like thinking something is going to be there only for it to be nothing and then hitting the ground.

 

[Damien]

Crikey a lot happened since I last checked!

Well you won’t hear that from me. To me it’s just all motion. Tell me it’s a block and watch me use it as a strike. Good on you for exploring. You could just use it as such on a resisting opponent and make a video.

Was that on this forum?

Gone are the days where a person says "kung fu technique does this" Sometimes you just have to show how it works through application.

No it was on another forum. I said about how I regularly used the technique (in a different way) in sparring and they were essentially like "no, its still not a strike, just because you use it as one, doesn't mean it is one"

I mean it's dumb because most Shaolin practitioners teach it as a strike! Some people have drank a little too much of the everything is a throw Kool-Aid. Sure somethings are, but doesn't mean they aren't other things too.

One guy even tried an appeal to authority to prove the application I was talking about was wrong, saying a highly respected master had told him it was a throw, and I was like yeah, nice try, but the guy who you're name dropping is the one that taught this specific application of this move!

The yao (Cantonese for soft, supple) concept is differentiated from gong (hard) in the same way yin and yang are (in fact, gong is yang, yao is yin), but in practice since you are doing these movements isotonically in the fist sets, it's never 100% one or the other. There are a bunch of kuen poems about this along the lines of "hard but not too hard, soft but not too soft".

The Yao step (bu) from changquan probably isn't related to the southern Yao (southern Shaolin bridge), but I was curious if there was a connection. Doesn't seem to be a lot of material out there on the Yao Bu (as Damien pointed out, often this stuff is just taught as-is the way it was passed down).

So Yao Kui in Mandarin would be Róu Qiáo, so a different concept that Yao Bu. 搖 as opposed to 柔, shaking rather than soft. It's an odd name. Of course characters being what they are, it could also be sway, twist, rotate, brandish, astound.... but my teacher learnt it from his teacher, Cui Xiqi as shaking, and he's generally considered one of the greats of his time. But as I've mentioned before, literacy is not exactly a pre-requisite for being a good martial artist, and they have the same tone and character, so at some point in the past someone may have just got confused! So it's likely that the name got changed over time. Yáo Bù as twisting or rotating step would make more sense in the context and help to distinguish it from Gōng Bù.

Northern Shaolin does have similar principles of softness and hardness in balance though. For example if your hard strike misses and you over extend, you collapse your body into them to give you the opportunity to recover. And there's the basic ideas like straight but not straight, move backwards to go forwards etc, all with that idea of multiple directions or approaches being linked.

We don't practice the same standing work you see in some southern styles though, such as the posture @Oily Dragon showed. Northern and Southern Shaolin are really completely different styles, though of course everything has parallels when you're talking applying body mechanics. Styles with the same or similar names are another cause for mass confusion amongst the kung fu community! I mean there are so many different Hong/Hung styles out there, but they're not all related. A poor grasp of language, attribution to legendary/historical characters and myth learnt as history have a lot of explaining to do!