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Mente, diaframma, corpo

Negli ultimi anni lo studio ultra trentennale del Tai Chi e del Qi Gong della International Tai Chi Chuan Association, scuola fondata dalla ...

18 July 2013

About martiality

During past century last decades, Yang family talked about martial and civil aspects: in Tai Chi Chuan there must be both aspects, and/and, not or/or.
We can think civil aspect as the cure of the person, nowadays we could call it wellness, wellness cure.
If this and/and had been understood by martial arts, we would not have so many ex martial artists, or sportsmen, physically hurt,  they would have considered their own and their students’ health, avoiding exceeding trainings, useless and harmful.
On the other hand, many Qi Gong and Tai Chi forms in these last decades have become only wellness techniques, but they do not bring all the possible advantages in the practitioners lives.
It is true that medical researches clearly state that these two disciplines are healthy and many diseases are relieved by them, but still something is missing and, specially, an improvement of psychic health is missing. Many practisers, many teachers, have no advantages and psychologically they remain primitives, only involved by their narcissistic ego; once we could have called it napoleonic, today we could say berlusconic. Napoleons always fall down
This scarcity of personality is due to the lack of martiality.
What did Yang family mean with martiality? For sure not going around beating people, this kind of martiality is the only one known to mankind who have been killing each other for thousands years with any mean, devastating wars, tragedies between single persons, fightings inside families. Yang family masters did not fight, they neutralized. Neutralized the ones who tried to attack them, books tell of three generations of undefeated Yangs. This is unbelievable for a period when martial fighting was common, we had duels.
Let us learn that in life even the greatest champion or the strongest team loses in the end. How is it possible for Yang family to stay undefeated? Yang family fourth generation grew during Chinese revolution, had to stay hidden and times of duels were over. We have the solution to our dilemma by applying and/and: Martiality and Wellness. Yi and Qi. Qi is healthy, sure, it is the energy flowing in our bodies,  we are fine when it flows, Qi Gong, Tai Chi make the Qi flow.
Qi alone is not enough, Qi is vehicled by the Yi, by Martiality.
The Yi is our mind, if it is too martial is too stiff, we get obsessive, we follow mere rules, we get inflexible, we train too much.
If the mind is not martial enough we are overwhelmed by life, we go to bed at night realizing we have not had a minute for ourselves, we are at mercy of events, we have no Yi enough to do anything.
Honors to Yang family, and/and, Yi and Qi. If you are told, we do medical Qi Gong, run, if you are told, we do martial Tai Chi, run...

Carlo Lopez

Yang family VI generation