Probably not.
heres my stories
i’ve witnessed a hung gar teacher fall off a 25 foot stack of chairs and kick them out of the way and landed softly.
I’ve been hit by the short explosive power and the long explosive power. Just by the feeling I had, I could tell you it’s real. Yeah maybe its hard to measure bt its just a different science of physical mechanics. It’s nothing mystical, but it sure is when you watch a Gordon Liu movie..
Talk is cheap.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Consider how many pictures there are in a video.
Greetings..
There is much more to the “super-power” mythology than high-jumps, high-jumps are pretty well documented.. There is a great story about GM Chan Pui.. those that were there still talk reverently about a challenge issued to Chan Pui at his Boston school years ago.. traditionally, the challenger must prove themselves worthy by completing three tests as chosen by the one being challenged.. first, there was a half hour of low stance, with a staff resting on the thighs.. so far so good for the challenger.. then, there was 250 “side to sides”, a shifting from side to side in a “low single-whip” posture (butt about 4 inches off the ground).. stressed but willing to continue, the challenger waited for the third task.. Chan Pui said, “follow me”.. he went to the third story and walked out of an open window, landing unharmed on the sidewalk below.. the challenger left. This is a story that has witnesses and persists as legend in the Wah Lum system, and.. since i know Chan Pui personally, i have no doubt of its validity, either as an actuallity or a very real capability.. aside from that, the witnesses are of excellent character and not prone to embellishment.
While i don’t put much stock in things i can’t verify or that have no back-up evidence.. i also keep an open mind and regard current advances in particle/string physics as evidence of great potential in the perceived mystical realm.. things are only mystical by comparison to someones history of experiences.. isolated tribes in deep jungle communities once worshiped a person with a butane lighter, they considered it big magic… Sure, i believe that some ancient masters may have stumbled onto a link to enlightenment, that they may have had sufficient discipline/faith to manifest “big magic”.. science doesn’t rule this out.. but, of more interest to me is the training necessary to get there, even to get “small magic”.. rather than shred accounts of feats we don’t believe or understand, i think we should study them.. look for consistencies, test them, and.. just maybe, move a step closer to some magic of our own..
Be well..
I would like to say that Tai Chi Bob and i do share an opinion on this. Just because western science does cannot prove or disprove something, does not mean it does not exist.
If I was suffering from migranes and western medicine could find no cure, then went to an accupunturist and was healed I would be hard-pressed (as would western medicine) to understand why. But this doesn’t make the treatment less valid. I think our science has come a long way, and explains much; but not everything.
Perhaps these increible feats we talk about are not supernatural, but follow laws of nature we do not yet understand.
Ah but I am not saying: subject these things to the rigours of the “western” scientific method. I’m saying simply: show me, don’t tell me.
In 1972 there was no VHS or no Beta either I think. I will give you his name it was Lee Gann. I dont have to prove it I saw it that is enough for me. I dont really care if I quote Yoda either. I didnt see Christ walk on water but I believe it. So you guys spend time debating something you cant prove or disprove. Although the mark is 8 feet this man cleared 6.5 easily with one step then take off and the other with 5 or 6 steps I am not thirteen and trained longer than most of you have been alive. I have seen alot of strange but true things as I am sure many of you have. KC
Simon, my comments were general opinions. And BTW I agree with you I want to see it.
National Geographic Channel
Last night they had a special about “mystical superhuman powers” and I thought of this thread.
There was a martial arts guy “George Dillman” doing his famous “no touch chi knock-outs”
Less than impressive
It worked amazingly well on his students but when a skeptic volunteered to be knocked out by one of his top students/partner nothing happened
imagine that
then when questioned about it Dillman (seriously) said “he was a total non-believer”
a non-believer! :rolleyes:
then, just to make it worse, he said, “well if he had his tongue in the wrong place it could have nullified it”
also, “if you move your big toes up and down I won’t be able to knock you out”
is this guy for real? is he a complete fraud or sadly deluded?
supposedly he taught bruce lee at one point
I would say he’s just a harmless clown but he also demonstrated pressure point knockouts on people and commented that he had accidentally flat-lined at least one.
They also showed “yogic flyers”
guys sitting in lotus bouncing on mattresses
The muslim sufis were creepy. One guy was walking around with 2 daggers stuck in his skull. :eek:
Anyone know anthing about this Dillman?
Dillman and his protege travel the country offering up seminars to people deluded, or hopeful, enough to host them. Check in some KF mags and you will see Dillman seminars listed.
i have heard of that special before and the wiggling toe excuse…:mad:
It never seemed smart to me to immediately discount something that seems unbelievable just because you haven’t personally seen it done.
It also seems stupid to me to simply take someone’s word for it.
The way I look at it is this. If someone tells you that with years of training, you should be able to do certain things, he should give you some mile markers. After training for a while, if you start to hit the markers, then you might be able to believe the rest of it. If you try and try and never hit the mile markers, you are probably in the wrong place.
If someone comes up to you and tells you he can do something amazing, he’s probably full of it. To have enough discipline and power to actually do something incredible sort of prevents anyone who feels like they need to go out and show off from ever accomplishing it. You can’t need to please other people and show off to be happy and still be able to train as long and hard as you have to to do things like that. An incredible amount of inner peace and discipline is required.
Now do I believe that unbelievable things can be done by a few talented people out there? Sort of. I believe it because I have seen some things that were beyond the ordinary, although far short of things like jumping 2 stories, and I don’t even begin to pretend to be wise enough to know where to draw the line.
I don’t believe in magical kung fu powers in the same way that I believe in the existence of God. God is not a question. I have proved to myself that He exists, and there’s no doubt to me. I have not, however, been able to prove to myself that a master’s iron body technique can turn away a sword cut, for example, so I don’t know that it’s true. I have, however, taken the first few steps toward that and other things, and everything has checked out so far, so I hope that it’s true, and I choose to believe it, and I’m aware that that belief is a choice.
As an aside, most people who tell me that they only believe in what science can prove usually never really study science. They can’t tell me, for example, why the sky is blue, or name any subatomic particles other than electrons, neutrons, and protons, if those. They almost never even know what a radio wave is. Basically, they tend to be people who need to feel like there are no more real mysteries in the world, and that they have everything figured out even though they never bother to learn many of the basic principles of the natural world. Don’t be that guy.
Are you saying science can’t prove why the sky is blue? Or are you saying people that use science as an excuse dopn’t know why???
I know why the sky is blue. The short answer is because of refraction. I was just saying, though, that the people I was mentioning usually never know. Mankind does know, though. 
now before we go anyfurther…
are we talking about falling? or jumping?
because here’s the facts:
The CIA says that the height that will kill you with greater than 80% probabilty is 75 feet. That’s about a 10 story building. So a person with relatively average knowledge and good skill can indeed fall from a two or three story building and not do any damage to themselves.
If you have this knowledge, it is not that impressive a feat. I myself have jumped to the ground from more than two stories (high school roof) did not sustain any injury whatsoever and just rolled out of the fall a la tumble.
But to jump up 2 stories? I gotta say, there is no one that can do that, it is an impossibility forthe human form to do this.
There has even been tales of people who are skydiving from more than 1000 feet, hit terminal velocity, chute didn’t open, WHAM!!! and they live! maybe a broken bone, but they live!
so apply a bit of kungfu to your ability to fall from distance and I’m sure quite a few of you wwould be amazed at the heights you can move from. This isn’t so much a question of secret power as it is the knowledge of how to tumble and breakfall and mostly, do you got the guts to try.
guts. that is a big key in any martial arts.
you gotta have the guts.
I think there is potential in the human body that hasn’t been tapped into. Does it require belief in something mystical? I don’t think so. For example, there is this issue of biotensegrity which IMO most of the so-called internal arts are based around. It is the concept that the forces in your body can be non-localized across the entire structure and also that the elasto-hydraulic properties of the body can store and release force. The internal arts tapped into these potentials through careful practice and observation and used the paradigm available to them for explaining how they work. Same with acupucture which IMO is tapping into the subtle electrical currents in the body. Chi can me different things depending on the paradigm that you are operating from. I think we can still talk about Chi as a useful metaphor even though we are operating from a empirical-analytical paradigm. Its just our explanation of “how” things work is going to be different than the Chinese explanation from 2000 years ago.
I have often wondered if (and read some theories suggesting) “chi” is our bioelectricity.
Since we are all basically walking talking wet-cell batteries, perhaps the ancients found a way to keep us charged and even increase our capacity to hold a charge.
when your charge runs out, you stop moving…
forever
does proper oxygenation allow for better electrical conductivity?
what does anyone else think about this?
I am really having a hard time with this. Not with the topic, or your arguments, but in figuring out how to fight while wiggling my toes. It’s really, really hard.
So is throwing a kick for some people. Perhaps you just are not at the toe wiggling anti-chi blast techniques yet.
This thread sort of makes my brain hurt, but here’s something to consider
The magician and haux debunker James Randy (sp?) has for close to 30 years offered a million dollars to anyone who claimed to be able to do a super natural feat if they would do it under scientific test conditions…
Only three people have taken him up on the offer and all three were humiliated in public when their scams were revealed…
If someone can jump up two stories, there’s a million dollars waiting for you
http://www.randi.org/research/index.html
Here’s the link…