Holding a Taiji posture cannot make you fat. Take it from me…B.S. in Biochemistry.
Fu-Pow
I’ve heard mixed things about Erle Montague. Never met or trained with they guy so I can’t really say.
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What we do in life echoes in Eternity
Forgot to Rant
Honeysmacks you are a complete moron, have you ever trained with Erle?
“Erle is not the real deal”
Sorry but I know from personal experiance that Erle IS the real deal,
I suppose if you prefer david Caridine that is your problem. You have no right to speak so authoritativly about someone when you have such limited experiance yourself, Id wager Erle would wipe the floor with you and your sifu without having to put his morning coffee down.
So in summation go F##K yourself.
I appologize to everyone about the tone of this post im just a bit angry in general lately..
Gary
“Of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong”-Dennis Miller
www.pressurepointfighting.com
Gary, if you are angry, it is probably an issue you are having internally (ie. the mind). Taiji balances many issues, but not all. I suggest you consult some form of compassion meditation, as anger is associated with the “liver” but also counteracted towards when one is giving attention to the heart (energy) center. If this problem continues, you may wish to to do some 3-centered meditation, (sitting) that is, as one should not neglect the sitting meditation by just doing taijiquan (standing) all the time.
Just a thought, hope everything goes well for you physically, emotionally, spiritually.
- Nexus
<font size=“1”>“Time, space, the whole universe - just an illusion! Often said, philosophically verifiable, even scientifically explainable. It’s the <font color=“blue”>‘just’</font> which makes the honest mind go crazy and the <font color=“blue”>ego</font> go berserk.” - Hans Taeger</font>
Cheng Fu was a bit on the large side, but it was more likely from eating too many monkeys than from repulsing them.
Incidentally, I doubt Erle would wipe the floor with anyone. For one thing he’s too nice a guy, and for another he’s already got children 
>Id wager Erle would wipe the floor with you and
>your sifu
I have not read anything from his sifu here in the forum, so I think maybe you should not expand your anger to his sifu. He has probably nothing to do with what honeysmacks is saying here.
Guandi
true true
Nexus,
you very right, I have been working entirly to much due to recent events and have negected my qi-gong.
Dedalus..Guandi, Of course Erle is to nice and would not consider it, I was just making a crude point.
But perhaps honeysmacks sifu does have something to do with it? It seems that teachers influence greatly how their students respect others. Well I suppose I can be an As##### at times, and ERle is totally nice, so your probably right 
Gary
“Of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong”-Dennis Miller
www.pressurepointfighting.com
Repulse Monkey treats the liver and gall bladder, and as far as I know is in no way connected to weight gain or loss. The posture Erle associates with weight gain and loss is Fist Under Elbow. Done the way it is done in Yang Cheng-fu’s form, it supposedly helps you gain weight, and done the way it is in Yang Lu-chan’s form, it supposedly helps you lose weight. However, it is not the the qigong itself that will make you lose or gain weight, according to Erle. I’m not sure how to explain this, except to say that doing it YCF’s way can make some people feel very yin and make them not want to do anything, and that doing it YLC’s way makes you want to go out and take on the world. My theory on this is that YLC’s way raises some yang energy and you want to go out and do something active, and that YCF’s way either does not raise the energy or calms it so that you are less active. Having practiced both ways of doing this posture, I can say I do indeed feel like going out and doing something active after doing the posture YLC’s way and I feel like lounging around after doing it YCF’s way. The only sure way to lose weight and keep it off is to get up and exercise. There is no way doing a qigong is going to make you lose weight on its own.
Yang Cheng-fu himself did not get fat just because he practiced it the way he did. There had to have been other factors. And to my knowledge Erle has never said that YCF got fat because of that.
Nor has Erle ever claimed to be the sole inheritor of true Taiji or anything like that.
Iron Fist,
In answer to your question, Erle is extremely controversial, and because of that his system is as well. He has stepped on people’s toes so many times that many people have grudges against him. There are even some out there who have grudges against me because of some of the things I have said. I have even gotten hate e-mails from people because of some of them. Erle is, however, a decent person, and very nice to boot. There are sometimes when I am simply astounded by his generosity. For instance, at his last seminar in New Jersey, although it was supposed to be on a few specific things, he took the time to demonstrate the first third of the Old Yang Style, and thus answered many questions, both asked and unasked, including some of my own. He didn’t have to go over that form, the seminar was not on it, but he demonstrated it at its internal level to give people something more than what they thought they were getting. And he often gives tapes away to people, sometimes several at a time, and usually volunteering them himself. That may not seem like a big thing to many, but he makes money with those tapes and his books. He does it because he wants people to get some good information, even if he has to give it away for free. (Actually, he used to teach for free.) And these are videos he has put a lot of time and effort into, putting things down in very minute detail. I guess what I’m saying is that yes, he is a good teacher, and yes, his videos are good. And having seen what he can do first hand, I would say his skill is good as well. There may be better teachers out there with better info, but I have yet to find them.
In one of the older volumes of Journal of Asian Maftial Arts, there is a comparision of Yang Cheng Fu’s earlier postures and his latter. In his earlier postures, he was as skinny as a rail. Without an autopsy one will never quite know how he died but there is a good chance he contracted Hepatitus of some sorts and had a liver failure. It was also reported that Chen Fake (Journal of Chen’s Taichi) that died of liver cancer which also can arise from a hepatitus infection. No matter what you play, infectious diseases are tough to rememdy.
I don’t think Yang Cheng Fu’s weight had much to do with his taijiquan.
Yang Shaohou’s TRUE descendant
For all of you who want to know,
There are still TRUE descendants of Yang Shaohou Taijiquan. I will name one for all of you, Tian Yingjia, son of Tian Zhaolin (Tian Zhaolin was the student of Yang Shaohou) is still alive and well in China. I got this from very reliable source. And I will assure you that his teaching doesn’t even close to what Erle teaches. FYI, Yang Shaohou’s students are mystery in the west, but NOT in CHINA. So, anybody who follows Erle Montaigue, I hope all of you can go to China and see whether Erle Montaigue’s teaching is even close to YSH TRUE descendant or not.
Wish for peace
Actually, there’s a surprising number of Yang Shou-Huo taiji descendants in the west. For example in Vancouver one of the more famous taiji instructors was Tchoung Ta Tchen whose taiji came from Yang Lu-Chan -> Yang Shou-Huo -> Tian Zhao Lin -> Shi Tiao-Mei.
Despite having made significant alterations of his own to the forms he recieved, his curriculum is remarkably similar to Erle’s, including the fast form and the stick form.
Is his fast form similar to Erle’s? And does Erle have any fast form set apart from what he calls Sanshou A&B which actually is not THE Yang Shaohou fast form (Kuaijia) which has the same way of arrangement with the common Yang form, e.g. Qi shi, Lan Que Wei, Danbian etc.? And do you know that there is still some claim in Southern China on the original Yang Luchan-handled-down set and practice methods?
About Shi Daomei, I know from very reliable resource that Shi only learned for about 5 years.
Wish for peace
Wish For Peace,
Those kind of responses are exactly what I am talking about. Don’t make assurances to anyone about what his art is like when you haven’t seen it yourself. And don’t give second and third-hand information (ala, “I heard from a very reliable source,” or so-and-so said"). Not only does that take the credibility out of the statement, it makes whoever made the statement seem immature in several areas.
A week ago, I had a Xingyi and Taiji practitioner come to me to see what the Old Yang Style I teach is like. That’s the way to gather information: to get it from the source.
“Is his fast form similar to Erle’s?”
It is not the same arrangement as the ‘common Yang form,’ and he teaches a paired sanshou A&B form. I have not done a comparison of postures between his and Erle’s forms.
“And do you know that there is still some claim in Southern China on the original Yang Luchan-handled-down set and practice methods?”
I didn’t specifically know this, nor did I think otherwise, nor do I see how it relates to the current discussion.
“About Shi Daomei, I know from very reliable resource that Shi only learned for about 5 years.”
If this is supposed to be a damning statement, I hope you’re comfortable throwing out babies like Sun style Taiji and Cheng Ting Hua’s bagua with that bathwater. And that’s assuming you’re right.
depends if hes changing
and you have a crush or not 
“I finish the job with a tiger claw into the throat. Remember guys’INSERT CORNY WHITEBOY VOICE’ use extreme violence against your opponents always, that will discourage them from hurting other people” kungfu site technique sec.VS?."…
Tchoung Ta Tchen studied with Shi Daio-Mei for only 2 years as a total beginner after a seriours illness. After he regained his health, he studied push hands with Cheng Meng Ching. Therefore Tchoung is hardly, or claimed to be, a representative or ackonwledged descendant of the Yang Shou Hou branch.
I think Erle Montague is fraud. Get a hair cut dude!!!
"Right or wrong does not come from your personal judgement. Your personal judgement always favors you. Favoring yourself is not the right answer, the right road. Favoring the other side is not the right answer either. Right and wrong were their before you were born. Personal beliefs of right and wrong bring with them the confusion of your own thoughts. This is the worst way to make a mistake. "
-Grandmaster Iron Kim
Patriot - I’m just going with what was said at the memorial service for his funeral.