So I have started reading the first book in Jan Diepersloots warriors of stillness trilogy. There is a lot of exiting stuff in the book, particularly about standing meditation. However there is one thing I wonder about. When Jan describes stepping exercises he emphasises that you should press down with both feet or at least constantly have a tension between the feet/legs while stil moving from the center. I have tried it in my own practice and it does seem like it adds some power to the movements or at least much more attention on the relationship between the movement of the center and the feet. However it seems to conflict with my idea of being light as Sam Tam always emphasise. Can you elaborate on this? Peter Hi Peter, I agree that the books contains a lot of information and it is exciting to hear about Diepersloots own personal experiences. The first book - the one that you are refering to - is from a time period where Diepersloot was into the teachings from Cai Song Fang. Cai Song Fang was originally taught in the Yang Shou Chung tradition(Yang Chengfu´s son), and changed quite a bit later on, excluding a lot of the Form movements and basically did Wuji standing, som Stepping exercises, partnerwork and a few exercises he created himself (pure yin, pure yang). So the way the stepping is described - feeling some tensions between the two legs - is definitely quite different from the way Shifu Sam Tam adresses stepping. I´m pretty sure that Diepersloot wouldn´t describe or teach the tension stepping today. But it is a very usefull method to focus on for a while - just as it is with many other things - and then let go of the exercise later on, once the lesson is learned and well integrated in the body. Hope you can use my answer. Torben
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 14:58:40 +0000
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