What MA did you train before discovering I Liq Chuan?
 

I've noticed that most I Liq Chuan practitioners have a background in other martial arts. My background is in Jujitsu and Chen Taijiquan, and I've recently practiced ILC with others who have trained in Sambo, Yang-style Taijiquan, Wing Tsun, Chen Taijiquan, White Crane and Karate.

What MA did you train before discovering I Liq Chuan, and what is it about ILC that appeals to you?

Peter

Hi, Peter !
Sambo.
:D

i actually started out with ILC although i've been exposed to a bit of JJ since.

What kind of JJ stuff have you been exposed to - randori, joint locks, throws? I find I Liq Chuan shares some similarities with JJ, but the training methods are much more gentle, so there is less chance of injury, which becomes increasingly important as one ages.

Peter

it was basically a modified BJJ. i say modified because the guy would just show a few moves, but didn't have a curriculum of any sort.

it was fun to train with him and it was a good workout but nothing near the level of what the Sifu shows us.

I started with Shotokan Karate, following with grasps of diverse Wushu styles, after that I spent long time with Yang style Taiji Chuan and San Feng style Taiji Chuan, in last years I'm trying to learn I Liq Chuan.

Miro

Hi guys,

I spent a couple of years as a kid boxing. Then wing chun, qigong and ilc at 30. I had to stop wing chun due to other commitments a few years back, which was a shame as I enjoyed the club.

I find that ilc gives me much more than just learning about fighting, it enhances everything in my life, it constantly guides me to expand my awareness. I am a better person for it :clapping: I thank my lucky stars that I met Master Alex Lim and that he introduced me to this amazing art.

Steve

I did some boxing and judo when I was a kid - a long time ago- and started ILC a little over two years ago.

In addition to Jujitsu and Chen Taijiquan, which I studied for a number of years, I also attended various seminars for Wing Tsun, Krav Maga and Kobudo (traditional weapons such as bo, sai, tonfa and nunchaku), just to see what they were like. I've never tried boxing, which would interest me.

I discovered that whether you are studying weapons or empty-hand systems, it all comes down to balance, stability and the right body structure (stance, angles, etc.). ILC focuses on these issues right at the beginning of training, which makes a lot of sense.

Peter

We now have a Yiquan guy in our study group - an experienced martial artist. Some of Yiquan's training methods seem similar to spinning hands, but they tend to use a lot more pressure and driving force forwards. It turns spinning hands into a real workout.

Peter

Some more
 

Mine MA are:
2 years of free-style wrestling. Got my best rewards there. Unfortunately, I quit at the age of 6 years. So remember nothing from it. (I hope my brain/body) does :).
1 month of sambo :)
5 years of karate (shito ryu). Unfortunately my consiousness was basically turned-off at the moment. So to my mind I got virtually NOTHING from it. Shame on me!
6 months of russian hand-to-hand combat (Kadochnikov style).
2 years of boxing. This was interesting at first, with very fast progress within first 2-4 months. And then VERY little progress for the rest 1.5 years.

I'm surprised to hear that. I've read so many positive things about boxing that I considered it to be the gold standard in terms of effective self-defense. The footwork, endurance training and striking skills of boxing are said to be excellent.

What made the first 4 months so good, and the next 1 1/2 years so mediocre?

Peter

Well, maybe it was my case only.

Anyway, within first couple of months of intensive training you get a couple of strikes, a couple of typical ways to protect by either using your hands or moving. And you do get all this within the first months, in my case something like 4 months. Physical/endurance training was also progressing VERY fast initially. So even you are an absolute novice, within a very short period of time you can get some solid skills that can work well in the street, if are trained till the level when they become automatic.

And to get further progress you do have to study many other things like complex combinations, more complex moving, you need to really fine-tune your strikes, etc.
This is definitly important for any martial art. But boxing (at least where I trained) did not posses a very good methodology to give all these things.
Thus, the result was - there were people that peformed really greatly. Them even did some training similar to spinning hands (similar in a way people worked in a very short distance and in such a wait that they did not heart each other and were able to get intensive traning).
But these were talented people.
Others (and it were around 95%) did not perform anywhere close to these results. And the training did not even show a way to that it at end will at all possible. So it took me another 1.5 years to realize that. Of course, I progressed duing this 1.5 years, but not anywere close to the first 4 months.

ILiqChaun is exactly the way to all the things I lacked in boxing - working with the right feelings, having high concousness. So here I feel I'm progressing VERY fast, even much faster than the first 4 month of boxing. And the most interesting thing that I'm surprised after each class. Everytime I find out something SO Big that I missed previously.

However, it even makes me somewhat angry. I'm used that there are typically some learning curves - you get muc progress initially and little later. In IliqChuan so for the curve is upside down - it's an exponentional growth of feellings, understanding, etc.
So this somewhat scares me and I get angry. Because the more I train, the more I see that chances are I will not be able to master all this because of the amount to do ahead of me, it is not getting less each time, it's growing all the time.

Thus, I guess I did not find my limit in ILiqChuan so far. And I hope I will not find it soon.

i feel EXACTLY the same way! when i met alex (chief instructor of russia) he showed me a few refinements that made feel like i had been doing everything so wrong that i was infact a complete beginner, even though i was already instructor level 2!

I have the impression that learning I Liq Chuan relies heavily on the process of refinement: you are initially exposed to a certain movement, you practice the movement without actually feeling what is happening inside you (e.g., at first you just feel your arms waving back and forth), then as the movement becomes more natural you start to develop a feeling (e.g., sensing the absorb & project through your body to and from the ground as you wave), and once the feeling is there, the movement is further refined to become more accurate and effective.

Peter

Yes, it really seems to be a quite repetitive process.

And it looks like there are some tricks to make it somewhat faster.

E.g. if one manages to concentrate in such a way that he/she is very perceptive to feelings in the body, it takes much less time for the neurons to build the long-term connections between them, the connections that represent the feelings from some movements.

And in fact it seems to me that it is not exactly concentration. It is rather de-concentration in such a way that mind stops the internal thinking and is rather in such a mode that brain is feeling what is going on in the whole body, in many parts of it (e.g. in 13 points). It is more like meditation.

And concintration is put to keep oneself in this de-concentrate state, so that the objects of attention are not changed, they are just seen/felt as they are.

De-concentrate.....I like that VEB. And I agree with you that training can be like a meditation. For me that is the attraction of ILC. I've trained hard and soft styles and in the end it seemed that I was accumulating an enourmous number of techniques but I couldn't find a style that just cut to the basics. And I got very tired of different styles thinking that they have the inside running on MA. Generally there is very little flexibility between styles, most are fixed and can't accomodate difference. Changing styles is viewed as a lack of commitement and even if you have a higher belt in one style, if you change, you go back to the beginning because they can't accomodate your background. ILC simply absorbs you and off you go refining your practice from day one.
After 25 years training other styles, the first few classes in ILC were spent pointing out what was wrong with my structure! Ouch. This of course led to the question "what value was the teaching I got from these experts I've been training with?" Six years later I'm still working on a deeper understanding and feeling of those early lessons. Having said that I am able to see how all the punches, strikes, kicks, grabs, locks, throws etc. I have learned up are beneficial......once I make contact and bridge and take control using ILC.
One of the things I admire about Master Sam is his linking the mind/body via the concepts of mindfullness/structure. I think this is a very insightfull and brings the Zen priciples to a dynamic physical practice. And in Zen meditation the so called simplicity of watching the mind belies a lifetime of hard work for most practitioners.
I think it would be very interesting to analyse a bit further how people come to develop a practice of ILC and there must be some key differences between those people with and without a MA background. In fact there may be some benefit to develop seperate streams for these two backgrounds. I guess that just happens naturally based on each persons' ability.
Cheers

Chris, in fact it's not that I "invented" this term - de-concentration. The first time I've heard it from some Russian psycologist who specializes on extreme situations and mind states similar to meditation.
After that I noticed that the term is quite widely spread between good yoga teachers in Russia. These teachers typically have some medical background and tend to explain things in yoga not only in traditional ways, but also from the point of view of contemporary science. And they are using this term "de-concentration" to describe high-level meditative states in yoga - dhyana and samadhi.
Zen and Yoga have VERY many things in common and basically come from one and the same thing.
And I have to admit that I've been somewhat lucky to find a good and thinkful teacher of yoga and managed to get some small experience not only in physical exercises of yoga, but some phsyco-techniques of yoga.
That is why when I started to study ILiqChuan I was really impressed that the Merge concept of being in the flow, observing, reflecting and high level of Awareness are very similar to higher states in yoga (or de-concentration as this Russian psycologists says).
Simply in yoga you do some other things in such states of your mind. While in ILiqChuan you work on the basic exerices and with the partner to better understand your body, it's abilites and limits, point of contact, changes that come from the partner, etc.

Thus for me I would say that my yoga experience is more beneficial to IliqChuan than the MAs I used to practice before. It looks like I can use yoga's states of minds to do the IliqChuan training, but using something from other MAs would not do any good.

Anyway, maybe it's just my illusion and after some time I will realize that I will have to get rid of this yoga things later to get progress in IliqChuan.

And in fact this is someting Alex told me about in the Russian part of the forum where we tried to discuss this thing. Basically I was recommended to free up my cup from everything else before getting it filled in again this time with ILiqChuan.

Just wanted to add a few things here
 

In fact it was my yoga teacher who introduced me to ILiqChuan. He belives that ILiqChuan is one of the most powerful ways to practice higher states of yoga.

He did some ILiq himself simply by viewing videos. Unfortunately he is not interested in the martial part of ILiqChuan. So he neglected the partner training and all the benefits that come from it. Thus, finally he replaced ILiqChuan with some other practices.

And I for me found ILiqChuan to be one of the best things, maybe because I had around 10 years of MA experience before that? Who knows.

Anyway, now I do both yoga (both physical and mental exercies) and ILiqChuan. And I do not see any confilct between them, one comlements another. At least I see it this way now, being a novice in ILiqChuan.

Hi there,

I agree that the repetition is a good way of training. But not for its own sake. Sifu has often explained in course of his seminars that the attention is concentration on all our senses. So during the training we are supposed to pay attention to the process and to strive to understand how our movement relates to the principles. He also says that the attention is a universal tool.

Thus, the concept of "de-concentration" looks to me pretty like what is called in I Liq Chuan the attention. Or am I wrong?

Conflict or complementation?
 

Sometimes it is matter of time availability. If you want to learn one thing really good, the training takes a lot of time every day. If you want to learn two things really good, you likely get tough time with your family or the boss. Unless you are retired already:-)

Once one feels like being good in something already, it is very difficult to give it up in favor of something else. I have been learning Taiji Chuan for 10 years before I started with a sincere study of ILC. Before, there was a pretty long transition period, when I firmly believed that I can profit from both of the arts. Later I experienced and caused some confusions:-) Even later I noticed that it is easier to be focused on one art only. Now, I don't feel like having lost or given up something. Anyway, the principles in both arts are the same.

I knew a couple of Taiji routines before starting ILC. Now that I consider ILC as my main art, I try to use ILC principles as a tool to analyze my structure and find the absorb/project, open/close, condense/expand when I perform the Taiji routines. This has been beneficial, as the routines feel much more lively and focused now.

Peter

For me it's the same. But since I'm too new here, I might be wrong and mislead you. So I would recommend you listening somebody with bigger ILiqChuan experience.

Luckily, I got in to some serious time-managed troubles some time ago (around 5 years). So I really had to "upgrade" my TM skills. This gives me more time for things are important to me.

I guess, I'm covered from all fronts here :). I'm the boss to myself (as well as 45 other people), which gives me some flexibility in my work day (though it's not really short). I also have a good wife that understand me and shares some of the interests (e.g. yoga).

And it's not really 2 things that I'm learning. I cannot say that I learn yoga. I have 3 major types of yoga exercises:
1. 2 times a week for 2 hours classes with my yoga teacher. At these classes I primarily do some static exercises that help to re-build the internal structure of the muscles in a way that is very beneficial to health. One cannot have more than 2 times per week of this, since it is very stressful to the body. The program is about the same for about 3 years. And I'm somewhere in the middle of it. So I have about another 1.5 years to do this before I can move to some serious pranayama (breathing with delays) exercises for another 2-3 years (this will help to rebuild some other structures of the body, as well as brain).
2. (Almost) every day “turn on” exercises that take around 30 minutes and are directed to influence major marmas (similar and typically the same as meridian points in China). And also these exercises turn on the Awareness for the day.
3. Once in a while (maybe several times a week) I do some mental exercises and meditation for about 30-50 minutes.

Thus, combined I spend something like 6-10 hours per week for yoga. Sometimes (3-4 times per year) attend seminars of good teachers.

As for ILiqChuan, yes, this thing I’m learning, while in yoga I’m simply doing, because I know I need that (yoga is much more boring).

So for ILC I try to practice:
1. 2 classes of 3 hours each where I do all the major ILC work – meditation, preliminary exercises, 15 basic exercises, standing meditation and Macrocosmic orbit, form and partner training for sticky and spinning hands.
2. 3-4 times per week (around 1 hour each) I come to the guy we do partner training with and we simply do some of the spinning or sticky hands.
3. Almost every day at home I try to do the form for about 15-20 minutes just before going to sleep (this helps to better build connections between neurons).

Thus, ILC takes me around 12 hours per week.

This means that my combined Yoga and ILC classes take around 20 hours per week.

When I just started doing some active measures I was able to free up around 30 hours per week by simply hiring a driver for myself(who also does some other things for me). And I also had some other things done, so combined I freed up several times more time than I currently spend on Yoga&ILC combined.

Basically yoga gives me physical health and Awareness.
ILC gives me Awareness and MA skills.

And for me there is another important factor here for the time we spend on something. The time spend can be simply doing something. Or we can be Aware of what we do. I guess if we are more aware of what we do 10 hours of practice can easily be equal to 30 hours of less mindful doing exercises.

I agree that I’m to new to understand now that the Awareness concepts both in Yoga and ILC are the same and benefit each other. I do not see any conflict in the physical part of the yoga classes.

But what concerns Awareness in Yoga and ILC, I guess I’ll be able to more knowledgeably say something about it several years later, maybe giving up one of this. But as of now they seem to be the same.

At our last workswhop Sam talked about focusing your attention on your attention. At some point the mind has to stop the analysis and just being simply aware during your repetative training helps to de-concentrate.
I have a yoga practice as well, mostly asanas and pranayama. Although I would decribe them as complimentary I am struggling to find common elements other than at an awareness level. Most of the asanas are not natural poses and at higher levels get a bit extreme to say the least. The bandhas and extensions are not relaxed which is contrary to ILC.
And I think that the two practices actually come from different streams, which would explain their differences, in my opinion. The yoga pre-dates chinese MA and is based on ayurvedic knowledge while ILC would link back to traditional chinese medicine via the taoist practice. I guess they are both linked by the transmission of Budhist teachings.
I prefer the ILC approach and find that some of the local yogis take their practice a bit too seriously for me. My eyes glase over when they start on about all of the wonderful transformative aspects of doing a single asana. Of course to get the benefit, 'it has to be done correctly' which might explain why the benefits often seem to fall a bit short of expectations.
As far as time is concerned I wish I was retired. I find time to practice daily, one way or the other. Yesterday I had a nice 30km round trip peddle down to the Swan river and played around trying to find all of the circles in the saggital plane. I think we need a mathmatition to help!

Yes, it looks similar.

I alsmost do not do any extreme asanas, or "yoga-sport", as we call them at our classes. My are fairly primitive but targeted at working witht the largest group of muscles in the body.

As for the common elements with ILC, there are quite many both for the asansas and bandhas. E.g. when one starts practicing bandgas he uses all his muscles in the areas of interest and uses them very intensivly. As one gets more experience, he can use less muscles and at lower levels to turn on the same reaction in the body. Then he can get to a very-very small level of intensity to turn the reaction of the body (typically parasympathetic). Finally, one can bare think of the reaciton he needs and he gets it.

As I see it, this is VERY similar to the way we train in ILC - we first do the movement, preferably with big amplitude and a lot of power just to feel anything. As soon as we get this feeling, we can refine the movements, gradually decrease the amount of power we put there, etc.

Similar thing (though not that evident) is for asasans - we initally try to be able to get into it, then to keep it the needed period of time. Then we start feel our body better in the asanas, gradually try to refine them - get rid of all the other tensions and turn off other bodies.

If we combine this with high level of Awareness, we can do the asanas and at the same time observe what is going on with the body, as asanas typically influence one or several marmas (meridian points), which in turn do something with our body/mind.

Thus, to me all this is very similar. In ILC we simply train other things using similar principles (as well as some other principles).


I completly agree with you on the medical/health point of ILC and yoga. However, I somewhat disagree about the Awareness part of it. As far as I know Sam writes in his books and constantly says that ILC is a mix of Taichi and Zen.

So in my eyes we should focus more not on the medical part, but on the menta l- Zen. Zen is a derivative of Budhist that appeared in India. And both Zen and yoga share very many mental principles/approaches.

That is why I see no contradictions between the 2. For me yoga is health plus mental/awarenss(Zen), ILC is Zen plus MAs.

As I already mentioned above, I consider myself to be very lucky with my yoga teacher. I do know that around 95% of other yoga present on the market (at least our market) is not even close, can do harm, etc. So I cannot recommend yoga for anyone, especially if there is not a good teach (which really is a problem).

On one hand I would also like to be retired, but on the other hand, I guess practice is for life, not that life is for practice. And I actually find some beneficial things in other aspects of my life. So I cannot say being retired is critical for me.
As for the circles in the saggital plane - that a problem for me :) But I guess Sam would help us much better than any mathematician here.

When we train ILC the first step is to practice training to unify the mental and physical and then we train to unify the self with our opponent and the larger environment.
Yoga aims to achieve union as well. Mentally I can see the similariity, some of the principles are similar but physically I can't. I think the 2 practices are complimentary (as VEB and I have both found) and would recommend a good yoga teacher to anyone, but on the physical level I think the approaches are almost opposite.
My yoga experience is with astanga and iyengar. I noticed on the links page on the ILC home page there is a group teaching the UCB program and they have a taoist yoga, maybe that is the missing link for me! Maybe yoga is closer to the zhang zhuang practice mentioned in the UCB program.
VEB think your point about the extent to which one applys bandhas over time is a good one.
I agree that yoga is excellent for muscle group work. This year I've been focusing onthe trans-ab work coupled with engaging the thigh muscles and lifting the knees in order to connect the upper and lower body. This is an excellent practice for stabalisation. It took me a while to get this one but it has a wonderful effect of integrating the whole body.
Can someone explain how to cite quotes in these replys?

Hey Chris,
the only way I can do it is to click the quote button on the text you want to quote from and then you get a reply box with the quote in. I then just delete what I don't want to use. I'm sure there's an easier way:confused::confused:

On topic, I don't study yoga as such but I do study qigong and there are many different styles and approaches. I seem to understand from what's been posted above that certain poses use (here goes the word with much related debate)' tension' in local muscle groups. This happens in some qigongs as well. My understanding is as Chris said, that they are opposite ends of the scale. Ie 'Iron shirt' vs. 'Cotton Belly' is a valid question for MA, but not so much for health. The whole body moves from relaxation to tension, the heart, the lungs etc. so by 'tensing' the body and relaxing it you are 'helping' it stay healthy. It is also helpful to notice the difference between how you feel in these 2 states. ILc wants you to be relaxed, fine, stay aware, stay relaxed, if your yoga/qigong posture requires the use of local muscle tension then, fine, become aware. Just try not to get confused:D

my 2 cents

Steve

[quote=Steve Bobs;3455]Hey Chris,
the only way I can do it is to click the quote button on the text you want to quote from and then you get a reply box with the quote in. I then just delete what I don't want to use. I'm sure there's an easier way:confused::confused:

Thanks Steve

Just try not to get confused:D

Good advice, cheers.

Personally I do not know and easier way. I click "Quote" and then delete what I do not like. If I want to make a multi-quote, I use these things - [quote=Steve Bobs;3455] and then the other one that closes the quote. And I do as many of them in the text as I need.

It looks like I'm a little late to this discussion. It seems to me that "de-concentration" is most akin to the Zen concept of non-attachment. Being able to pay attention requires that we not become attached to specific thoughts; when we attach to specific thoughts, our attention becomes distracted and our ability to perceive becomes clouded. At least that's how I interpreted the de-concentration idea.

For me it is slightly wider than being attached to thoughts only, as I see it, we can get attached (concentrate) on any object, and then it get's changed itslef or in our perception. A small example - if we concentrate on our breathing, it changes in some way or the other. If we manage to "de-concentrate" and simply observe our breathing, it is not changed, we simply witness it. And it looks like this thing is universal to every aspect we can concentrate/deconcentrate on.

But physics has taught us that even the act of mere observation changes the thing which we observe, a la, the cat in the box phenomenon.

Well, it looks like it is especially true for the "concentration" mode.

P.S. BTW, I just noticed you have Concentration in signature. Thus, this discussion relates you directly :). What if we all agree that "de-concentration" is important as well :)

I've recently noticed that if my attention drifts during training, my focus on the opposite's upper center point of mass gets rather fuzzy, and my movements become inexact and ineffective. However, once I am able to refocus on the upper center point of mass, the movements again become exact and effective almost instantaneously. These movements and corrections are so slight that a person closely observing us wouldn't even be able to see them - but the perceived physical difference is enormous. So pay attention to your attention. :)

Peter

I have almost 7 years in Yang Tai Chi Chuan and some months in ILC depending on how you look at it.

A related question to this thread - do you still practice your previous martial art to some degree, or have you made a "clean break" in favor of I Liq Chuan? I ask because although I started with other arts, I find that I am becoming more and more focused on ILC training methods.

That being said, it's a difficult process to drop everything and start again from scratch after devoting so much time to and effort on previous training methods.

Peter

I dropped my previous Chen taiji training and only do ILC now. The process of breaking took over a year and a half. In the end, I'm glad I made a clean break. There are only so many hours in a day to practice, and my brain would probably become confused trying to integrate information from two systems at the same time. Plus, Sifu has a well thought out curriculum. Seeing a clear path of progression (as well as noticing significant personal improvements under Sifu's guidance) solidified my decision to switch to exclusively to ILC .

I do occasionally try doing bits and pieces of the previous forms I learned just for fun. After a few years of ILC training, I find that I analyze form movements in ILC terms, so my LaoJia YiLu feels completely different now. I keep thinking things like "no wonder this move never felt right before, I wasn't clear enough on my absorb-project, open-close, etc."

:D

Very True. Something I have been back and forth on. :mad: