Just putting the question out there…
How many people here have healing arts that are a part of their chosen system or style?
For example bone setting etc.
I’ve learned how to reset dislocated small joints and how to get the tendens in various limbs to relax after having the crap pounded out of them. 
I’ve also learned alot about how to strengthen the minor muscles the help protect joints like the knee.
For any style to be classified as a true Chinese Kung fu system
IT MUST HAVE A MEDICINAL SIDE.
I have said this many times but sometimes it falls on deaf ears or the martial side only teachers of any one sytle they know or have been taught focus on the fighting and forget the rest, ie qigong, herbology, nei gong, tui na .etc .etc
A complete system has all these and sometimes more aspects in them to fall into this catagory (system) otherwise you are learning just a piece of the pie and should call it a style but many will argue that fighting alone can be considered a system, however this is not true… at least as far as traditional goes…
I think in a lot of schools, the sifu probably would have knowledge, but it is not exactly dispensed in the same way as the exercises (which are also healing in some manifestations)
having said that, you can likely learn some tui na, how to apply ditdajow and other helpful practices to ensure good maintenance of yourself as you practiice and learn.
most times, people seek out herbalism, acupuncture and what not from accredited institutions because that is a full focus.
medicine isn;t and shouldn’t be augmnentation or a sideline, it is part and parcel to having kungfu, but not to learning just martial arts.
in shaolin, the idea is strongly infused with yin and yang and buddhist concepts.
little things like , if you can break someones arm, then to have balance means you should be able to fix it as well.
superficial scratch, but I would also add that you should have regular charitable works going on as well. Benevolence and compassion are very important to ones kungfu. a person is complete when both sides of their nature and all facets of those is investigated and examined and cultivated.
well said David… sad thing as I said is that most systems and thier teachers, and thier teachers didnt take the time to learn all thier is to know about the completeness of thier art and focused on only the fighting aspect, again just a piece of the pie.
My teacher learned the medical side of 8 step for 11 years before he was ever taught to throw a punch. many times it was this test to see if indeed the student had the dicipline and longevity to be worthy of the entire system to be passed onto them. But here in America we are all in such a rush to go no where, this is perhaps part of the problem…
[QUOTE=EarthDragon;711280]well said David… sad thing as I said is that most systems and thier teachers, and thier teachers didnt take the time to learn all thier is to know about the completeness of thier art and focused on only the fighting aspect, again just a piece of the pie.
My teacher learned the medical side of 8 step for 11 years before he was ever taught to throw a punch. many times it was this test to see if indeed the student had the dicipline and longevity to be worthy of the entire system to be passed onto them. But here in America we are all in such a rush to go no where, this is perhaps part of the problem…[/QUOTE]
11 Years? Don’t ya think that’s a little too long if some one wants to learn how to defend themselves and get the health benifit from it?
I think if a Sifu wants to test the integrity of a person - he needn’t start a huge, watered down Kung-Fu school in the first place. Keep it small and personal. I think this is a better way to get to know your students and it doesn’t waste anyone’s time.
All the best,
Kenton Sefcik
Dog, as well as all bounty hunters, is an inbred douchebag.
[QUOTE=AJM;711451]Dog, as well as all bounty hunters, is an inbred douchebag.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for coming out. I’d like to commend you on your first post being a smart and informative one.
Dog turned his life around as he once was a criminal. He is very Christian and is part of a loving family. Are you so quick as to judge other people by their looks? How about Asians, Caucasions, Blacks, Hispanics, etc? How about Skaters, Jocks, Preps, etc?
And please don’t hijack threads. Learn to lurk before being a jerk.
Best,
Kenton Sefcik
I agree with Earth and David, real traditional kung fu systems have the healing as well fighting. Its usually after the student has proven himself that the herbal formulas are taught as this is the bread and butter for the sifu.
Garry
trips to the hospital can be part of my system.
[QUOTE=EarthDragon;711186]For any style to be classified as a true Chinese Kung fu system
IT MUST HAVE A MEDICINAL SIDE.
I have said this many times but sometimes it falls on deaf ears or the martial side only teachers of any one sytle they know or have been taught focus on the fighting and forget the rest, ie qigong, herbology, nei gong, tui na .etc .etc
A complete system has all these and sometimes more aspects in them to fall into this catagory (system) otherwise you are learning just a piece of the pie and should call it a style but many will argue that fighting alone can be considered a system, however this is not true… at least as far as traditional goes…[/QUOTE]
Yep I could not agree more. Thats why I asked the question as 90% of the time the focus is just on the fighting side - the healing gets over looked -however you need both!!!
Couch you said…11 Years? Don’t ya think that’s a little too long if some one wants to learn how to defend themselves and get the health benifit from it?
Perhaps, but that depends on what they are trying to learn and how well you want to learn it. If one choses not the goal of defending themselves then time is nothing to them.
if you are in a hurry to learn how to defend yourself but not in a hurry to learn accupuncture then would 11 years be a long time for fighting? again its the long term goal and completeness of our arts that we are wishing to learn is it not?
Alot of times i read posts from students that have devoted 8-10% of thier time taking 3 classes a week then wonder why after a few short years thier kung fu is so so having a job a girlfriend TV you know a life. then imagine being poor in china 80 years ago with no T.V not X box and no internet, and all this extra time you spend training lets say 60-70% of all your free time would 11 years be longer then or would it make you kung fu better? again time is all realitive.
Heck sometimes the 3 mintues in the microwave seems long if I am hungry and watching the plate spin round and round…
question: not to be a party pooper, but why exactly do you need a healing side for a style to be “complete”? I mean, it’s great to have it, but I think it’s a bit dismissive to consider a style incomplete without one…sure, it’s nice from a philosophical perspective, but pragmatically it really makes sense only in context of what the environment dictates; in other words, probably the reason a lot of styles had a healing component at one point was because of the sheer need for it: if you were out in the middle of nowhere guarding a caravan and got wounded, well, too bad for you if you didn’t know what to do; or if you were operating just outside of the law (no, of course that never happenened in the history of TCMA), maybe you wanted to not show up at a local infirmary; or maybe it was a lot cheaper to take care of yourself / training brothers than spend $$$ on a doc; or maybe it was more efficient to treat training injuries “in house” right when it happened; probably other reasons as well, but the key poiint is that the kind of injuries they were preparing for are not the standard bumps and bruises that we get during modern training, but rather how to deal with an abdominal cut from a broad sword or a poke through the thigh with a spear (you think I’m kidding, but my old sifu’s most valuable formula, according to him, was not dit da jow or herbal plasters, but cut powder…) - the kind of stuff that if it happenend today we’d go right to the ER: I mean, if you got stabbed with a knife would you go see your sifu? please…; but see, this was back when medicine was unregulated - which means anyone could theoretically set a bone or pop in a needle; however, these days, probably we know a little more about do’s and don’ts of emergency medicine now than they did 100 years ago, including all the complications that can arise from improper treatment - it’s not to say that dit da and TCM don’t have value in areas that allopathic medicine is lacking, they certainly do - but personally I wouldn’t want anyone laying a finger on me who isn’t licensed and trained under appropriate clinical supervision - quite frankly any teacher publically teaching medicine to a lay person is asking for trouble, and anyone going out and using anything that they learned from their TCMA teacher is also taking a big risk; anyway, obviously the medicine aspect is valuable and certainly should not be lost - but it should be taught in appropriate venues such as TCM schools, or as post-grad continuing ed to licensed professionals (ok, if it were transmitted directly in a non-public venue for personal use by the student or on family/close friends, that’s probably fine from an ethics / liability standpoint);
[QUOTE=EarthDragon;711528]Couch you said…11 Years? Don’t ya think that’s a little too long if some one wants to learn how to defend themselves and get the health benifit from it?
Perhaps, but that depends on what they are trying to learn and how well you want to learn it. If one choses not the goal of defending themselves then time is nothing to them.
if you are in a hurry to learn how to defend yourself but not in a hurry to learn accupuncture then would 11 years be a long time for fighting? again its the long term goal and completeness of our arts that we are wishing to learn is it not?
Alot of times i read posts from students that have devoted 8-10% of thier time taking 3 classes a week then wonder why after a few short years thier kung fu is so so having a job a girlfriend TV you know a life. then imagine being poor in china 80 years ago with no T.V not X box and no internet, and all this extra time you spend training lets say 60-70% of all your free time would 11 years be longer then or would it make you kung fu better? again time is all realitive.
Heck sometimes the 3 mintues in the microwave seems long if I am hungry and watching the plate spin round and round…[/QUOTE]
Cool. Totally agree. Should prolly get off this forum and do my Siu Nim Tao! 
Following goals…as a teacher and a student.
All the best,
Kenton Sefcik
cjuakput,
Your post was well put and made a lot of sense, but realize that there were many complete systems out there that have been dimishied into styles based on not learning the original in its entirety. This has also made some systems extinct.
When any person took the full road from young student to old shrfu he was indeed well versed in medicine, internal and external, philosophy, religion and defence especially if he were choosen a a diciple from genration to generation many things have been lost due to illitteracy, loss from translation and death before all the complete information was pased down, this is why so many systems hold onto thier tradation so tightly, otherwise it will succome to be classified as only a style of fighting instead of a complete kung fu system.
Excerpt from Becca
and how to get the tendens in various limbs to relax after having the crap pounded out of them.
now would this treatment be the doobage?
peace,TWS
[QUOTE=EarthDragon;711604]cjuakput,
Your post was well put and made a lot of sense, but realize that there were many complete systems out there that have been dimishied into styles based on not learning the original in its entirety. This has also made some systems extinct.
When any person took the full road from young student to old shrfu he was indeed well versed in medicine, internal and external, philosophy, religion and defence especially if he were choosen a a diciple from genration to generation many things have been lost due to illitteracy, loss from translation and death before all the complete information was pased down, this is why so many systems hold onto thier tradation so tightly, otherwise it will succome to be classified as only a style of fighting instead of a complete kung fu system.[/QUOTE]
first off that “cjurakputz” if you please…
second, I respect your perspective, and there is a part of me that agrees with it wholeheartedly: in fact, one of the reasons I went into PT was having been exposed to dit da through my sifu at the time and thinking that having learned how to disassemble the human body, knowing how to out it back together again would be nice - unfortunately, nether my sifu’s English nor my Cantonese were up to the degree of technical detail that would have been necessary to study with him, and anyway, I wanted a professional degree/license a bit more solid than acupuncture was at the time; anyway, again, philosophically, i agree that there’s a nice intrinsic sense of balance to knowing how to fix what you also know how to break, probably because the latter is so much easier to do than the former (Newton’s Third Law, I think - the one about all organized systems more readily moving towards entropy than order)
that being said, I guess it’s just a sign of how things change over time: what was once a critical necessity is now, like much of the fighting component as well, outmoded, a curio that while part and parcel of the art, has become obsolete in context of how it was once used, that is, in matters of life or death - in other words, the percentage of TCMA practitioners who are practicing their art with the need for frequent actual combat is probably a lot less than once was the case: certainly, there are folks out there - bouncers, bodyguards, law enforcement personell - who may well be using it regularly, either alone or in conjunction with more modern tactics; of those in that minority, even fewer, if any at all, make use of the traditional medicine in the same way their ancestors did - push comes to shove, they go to the ER;
look at it this way: if you had a choice of getting your broken humerus (upper arm) set by your sifu or by an orthopedist in an ER, who are you going to choose? hands down the ER, mainly beause they will x-ray the arm and decide what’s the safest thing to do, so as not to, say, lacerate the brachial artery with a shard of your humerous…
i guess it’s just evolution: what was once important to complete a practice, really just isn’t anymore; and again, given the climate of healthcare in this country, practicing something like dit da is at best nebulous, at worst illegal if you aren’t licensed
that said, your point about the family-like situation of a young disciple learning the whole art soup to nuts over a long time until he becomes a sifu - it’s like an apprentice / journeyman / mastercraftsman situation: you stuck with one thing for decades until you mastered it - so, of course to eliminate part of that would certainly make the trade incomplete - but again, I see that as, in this country at least, more a product of the intrinsic standard of medical care present that obviates the need to really know it (although your other points about factors of American culture are certainly well taken, no argument); finally, back to the whole completness perspective: i think knowing something like the medicine aspect has great potential to make you a better human being, so for that alone, it’s worth learning it…
I know of a friend who works under the banner of tactile therapist in Aus. He was taught healing arts in his system, he showed a great aptitude - this then took him out of Australia to be tested by the top people in the world.
He often gets refferals from the hospital system and specialists -Then discovers later down the track that they copy his reports and pass them off as their own.
When he goes into to have treatment on occasion for certain things - every single time the medical staff are blown away as to how quickly things are healing or recovering - they cant explain it but he can.
A few months ago he had an eye problem and required surgery which meant coming back at a later date to have it done.
Instead of waiting to book in for the full operation he told the Dr to do it then and there as he did not want to wait. He tapped a few anathesia points and had the operation done minus any anaesthetic…Popped the eyeball, let the medical staff do what they needed to do and off he went. The staff were blown away.
He can give you more detailed info on your system than the majority of medical professionals can.
But again I think you need both points of view for a balanced perspective.
But still pretty cool stuff to know if you can get it:D
Cjurakpt, sorry brother for spelling your name wrong ok you said
that said, your point about the family-like situation of a young disciple learning the whole art soup to nuts over a long time until he becomes a sifu - it’s like an apprentice / journeyman / mastercraftsman situation: you stuck with one thing for decades until you mastered it - so, of course to eliminate part of that would certainly make the trade incomplete - but again, I see that as, in this country at least, more a product of the intrinsic standard of medical care present that obviates the need to really know it (although your other points about factors of American culture are certainly well taken, no argument); finally, back to the whole completness perspective: i think knowing something like the medicine aspect has great potential to make you a better human being, so for that alone, it’s worth learning it…
Your post was well thought out and you have great points, but please realize that i am tradationalist and a lineage holder taught by thechinese …
…I am that guy you spoke of
and feel the need to keep that alive, with so many schools chopping up cutting out and teaching bits of this and bits of that our kung fu is dying and much has been lost, its apparent when someone gets on there and says i have been training for a year and a half and I am testing for my BB!
this sickens me and when the teacher teaches a chinese system but wears a Gi and a obi I scratch my head and say WTF?
Then when others call thier fighting pices of what they are learning a complete system again I say WTF?
[QUOTE=cjurakpt;711530]question: not to be a party pooper, but why exactly do you need a healing side for a style to be “complete”? I mean, it’s great to have it, but I think it’s a bit dismissive to consider a style incomplete without one…sure, it’s nice from a philosophical perspective, but pragmatically it really makes sense only in context of what the environment dictates; in other words, probably the reason a lot of styles had a healing component at one point was because of the sheer need for it: if you were out in the middle of nowhere guarding a caravan and got wounded, well, too bad for you if you didn’t know what to do; or if you were operating just outside of the law (no, of course that never happenened in the history of TCMA), maybe you wanted to not show up at a local infirmary; or maybe it was a lot cheaper to take care of yourself / training brothers than spend $$$ on a doc; or maybe it was more efficient to treat training injuries “in house” right when it happened; probably other reasons as well, but the key poiint is that the kind of injuries they were preparing for are not the standard bumps and bruises that we get during modern training, but rather how to deal with an abdominal cut from a broad sword or a poke through the thigh with a spear (you think I’m kidding, but my old sifu’s most valuable formula, according to him, was not dit da jow or herbal plasters, but cut powder…) - the kind of stuff that if it happenend today we’d go right to the ER: I mean, if you got stabbed with a knife would you go see your sifu? please…; but see, this was back when medicine was unregulated - which means anyone could theoretically set a bone or pop in a needle; however, these days, probably we know a little more about do’s and don’ts of emergency medicine now than they did 100 years ago, including all the complications that can arise from improper treatment - it’s not to say that dit da and TCM don’t have value in areas that allopathic medicine is lacking, they certainly do - but personally I wouldn’t want anyone laying a finger on me who isn’t licensed and trained under appropriate clinical supervision - quite frankly any teacher publically teaching medicine to a lay person is asking for trouble, and anyone going out and using anything that they learned from their TCMA teacher is also taking a big risk; anyway, obviously the medicine aspect is valuable and certainly should not be lost - but it should be taught in appropriate venues such as TCM schools, or as post-grad continuing ed to licensed professionals (ok, if it were transmitted directly in a non-public venue for personal use by the student or on family/close friends, that’s probably fine from an ethics / liability standpoint);[/QUOTE]
If that post was formatted, it woulda been the best post ever.