Eh?
It’s MTG/22 btw.
Anyone know anything about this?
Thanks,
Iron
Erle’s internal Iron Shirt is a series of qigongs that strengthen the Wei Qi. There are ones for the chest, stomach, arms, legs, neck, sides,… He doesn’t cover everything on that one but he covers the basics. He’s a believer in not being hit rather than taking a hit. But his stuff is pretty good because I have taken full power punches to the solar plexus and it barely phased me. (The only way to test iron shirt os to take a hit.) My forearms have also become pretty tough.
sam
where and who did he learn iron shirt off?
he seems to know it all, he doesnt believe in iron palm conditioning so how does he do iron shirt??
thanks
FT
Erle has exercises for iron palm, they just don’t involve hitting sandbags or containers full of pebbles.
While most of the iron shirt exercises are simple qigongs, there are a few that involve striking oneself.
But I have no idea who he learned iron shirt qigong from. Why not ask him?
sam
i ask you because your his representitive and you should at least know what, where, and who your sifu learnt from!!
If you must know, he learned iron shirt qigong in 1985 in China from a man named Chang. I believe it was while he was there for the tournament. At the time, Chang was 85, and demonstrated his iron shirt by having two men run at him and ram him with a tree trunk.
This may sound a little callous, but I have gotten tired of discussing Erle’s lineage now. It doesn’t matter how ardently I defend it, or how much I try to prove that what he says is true, because most people are not going to believe it anyway. I realize that your question was probably an honest inquiry, but that’s the way things are. So when the discussion of lineage comes up, I usually back off or say, “I don’t know, why don’t you ask Erle?” I’d much rather discuss more productive things.
Was that Chang Yiu-Chun, his taiji teacher?
No, this is another Chang. Erle said he doesn’t know the rest of the guy’s name, but that he had started his own style called Chang style.
irrelevant drivel
not truly relevant to this discussion i guess, but i just read this weekend that Chang is the most common surname in the world. easily beats out Smith and all the other common names you can think of ;).
anyways, just sharing what i though was interesting…
D
Hi Sam. I’ve heard of a Chang style before, just not sure if it was taiji or not.
It would be weird to not know your teachers name.
As I stated above, and seem to have been demonstrated quite well by a poster who doesn’t even practice Taijiquan according to his profile, whatever I say to support his claims will be refuted with some assinine comment or another.
taijiquan_student,
I could be wrong, but the way Erle responded, I took it to be the Chang style Taiji guy. Erle said that Chang was quite good. I have never seen the style myself, I have only read a bit about it here and there, but nothing that really tells me anything about the style. It might be wierd indeed to not know a teacher’s name. But I have had teachers from school whose first names I did not know, either. I always called them Mr. or Mrs. To this day, I have people who I went to school with who I barely remember greet me in public and recount the days when we hung out, and for the life of me I can’t remember their names. I know the first names of the man who lives next door to me and the couple who live across the street, but none of their last names, and I have known them for a while. I can remember half of the names of people whose pools I have worked on and yet cannot give you directions to their house, and the other half I can remember directions to their house but I can’t tell you their names. What I can tell you is the name AND address of every customer who had a nest of Black Widows in some place I had to stick my hands this past year. Nothing like opening a skimmer or pool house to find an angry little Black Widow staring you in the face…or to leave a house and arrive at your next stop and find one crawling up your shoulder! I also remember the names and addresses of customers where I found scorpions or copperheads. I guess it all depends on what you are focused on.
I could understand being tired of the lineage question. My sifu turned someone down after being asked about it too much. He said, “Do you want to learn from my teacher, or do you want to learn from me.”
In one sense I could understand the kids question, because as a martial artists you’re always told, check the lineage. BUT, this kid wouldn’t have known these people anyway, just like I wouldn’t have.
What drove me to my teacher was his reputation – I simply heard he was the best in NYC. I went with an open, but yet inquisitive mind; I was happy with my teacher at the time.
It took maybe 10 to 15 minutes to see this man’s aproach was light years ahead of anything I’ve ever seen; very realistic, no bs, honest. The thing is, his lineage just happens to be impeccable. But even if it wasn’t, it’s his knowledge that is valuable, where he got it, well, I respect those men, but I don’t know them. I do know my teacher is a rare gem.
Poor kid should have just kept his mouth shut and his ears open.
Exactly.
A prospective student asking about lineage is something that I agree with you on. If you watch a person’s class, see them move, see their students, talk with the students, talk with the teacher, etc… as a prospective student, you do not need to ask lineage questions.
Asking “Who’s your teacher?” in that setting is rude unless done as a natural extension of a conversation where the topic just flowed there.
On the other hand, if you are learning from a teacher for more than just a short while - like to the level of being an assistant or instructor, and you do not have the lineage thing down pretty solid, it is NOT your teacher’s fault (unless they did NOT answer the question) but rather the student’s fault.
I have never met a teacher yet who was not willing and even happy to tell the history of what they teach back as far as they can to a student who exhibitted true interest in the answer and story.
I agree, GLW. I have never bothered to ask Erle some things because my conversations and correspondence never go there. Lineage is one of those things. My questions to him tend to lean toward technical things, applications, healing, etc. The whole time I have known him, I have only asked about lineage 3 times. It’s just not one of those things that comes up often. And it’s not one of those things I am really concerned about anymore. But I guess it’s something that stays on a lot of people’s minds. I have had people call me and ask me about what I teach or practice before who questioned incessantly about lineage and yet knew nothing about Taiji or any of the past masters. It just doesn’t do them any good to know who taught whom if they don’t know who any of those people are in the first place. I don’t tell them that, but it’s true. I just tell them what they want to know. Those who have boned up on Taiji or Bagua history, on the other hand, might have decided on learning a particular master’s style and are looking for someone in that lineage, and I have the info they need. I’ve just never been asked from whom Erle learned a qigong exercise before. If I don’t know, it’s my fault for not asking. But sometimes, I am a bit of a solipsist, in that I for some reason assume that people know or practice the same things I do, and sometimes I assume that what Erle teaches is more common than it is. I forget that there are some things that he teaches that many people have never seen or heard of before.
Hi Sam.
Similar to my style.
I know my Instructor, other Instructors and the Head of the style.
Apart from that I know which styles he studied and where.
But since he formed his own system, who he studied under has become meaningless as he is not teaching his former Instructors System.
He will happily tell me if I ask him.
Yes, lineage is kinda important, but in no way a guarantee that your Istructor is good.
Peace.
GLW,
I have been working a lot on my sword form, and was wondering if there was anywhere I could download video footage of competitions with good swordsmen, or if you could e-mail footage to me or something. What you said about the tassels has been on my mind for a while now. I have some footage of jian forms from a tournament, but the practitioners are not the best. Or maybe, if you could email me some complete guidelines as to how the tassels are supposed to react during the techniques, that would be great, too. What you posted a while back was good, but didn’t cover everything.
Thanx.
Sam
hey Sam, if it’s the same Chang i’m thinking it may be, you may be referring to Grandmaster Chang Tung Sheng , the famous Shuai Chiao player from china. he created Chang style taiji, and was said to be undefeated in all matches (and he had quite a few challengers).
if anyone wants some background on this man, try this site:
Well here’s my two cents.
When I first visited my Taiji class one the first things I asked was what my teachers lineage was. He told me some names and I had no idea who he was talking about.
I participated in a class and thought it seemed pretty good. However, having no Taiji experience I wasn’t sure. I was very skeptical for a long time, especially because my teacher is this scrawny white guy with a pony tail.
As I started reading more and more I discovered that my teacher has an impecable lineage. His teacher is none other than Feng Zhiquiang.
So basically I had training with no real concept of the lineage. But my teacher new exactly who his teacher was and he had told me no questions asked.
I’d be a bit skeptical of anybody that claims that they don’t know who their teacher was. The Sifu/Student relationship is the most important one in your training. You would definitely know your Sifu’s name and if you had spent any significant amount of time with him then you’d know when his birthday is, where he lives, his family, etc, etc, etc.
I’m just not gonna buy this crap of I learned from some monk in China. China is a real place with real people, real names, real families and real documents.
man Sam Wiley. Your Erle didn’t know the sound comes from tassle! I emailed him asking for vcds or videos but he hasn’t responded yet :p. I don’t know how I’m gonna payf or it either cause he’s in Australia and I don’t gotta card.
Hrm well before i pass final judgement on whether he really is unfit or not I gotta take a look at some of his tai chi vids. His fa-jing is okay but you can’t tellf rom a video but his broadsword form was meh. So i guess i’m not flamin him for now but instead would you have any vcds on you?
and if you’re looking for sword vids goto www.furiousg.com he has mostly wushu sword vids but there’s a tai chi section of the beijing team practise. dnot remember if there’s sword but there’s a huge library of stuff