Swimming Dragon Qigong

Today I had a good go at learning the beginning of Swimming Dragon. I have videos from 6 different teachers including the current lineage holder and his 2 principle students and their students, and I went through the first 2 minutes of the form with each of them.

Well, they all do different things. The timing of the limbs and body are different, the hands are different, the movements are different and so on. Each person is doing his creative variation.

Additionally some areas of the form are quiet vague with lots of ad libbing, and others are quite tight.

I haven’t done tai chi before so I don’t know if this is normal, but … looks like a load of ***p if you ask me.

In the past I have done wu shu forms and karate forms, and there is only one way of doing them … and this is indicated by their martial properties. If you do not block properly then you get hit in the head, quite simple.

Whereas in these gentle tai chi forms … it really could be total BS and nobody would know. Lots of these practitioners look like they are half asleep anyway.

Does it really matter if (in a particular move) the hands are crossing at the wrist or at the palms ? Does it matter if your right hand is turned inwards or partly outward ?

Well I bloody hope so !!!

Otherwise what is the point of doing the form if everyone is doing something different. Is the form doing anything or are we just passing the time ?!!

This is making me thing that perhaps the real reason for learning martial arts vs slow ‘stuff’ … is that you can test whether the martial arts are ‘real’ quite simply and so you are more likely not going to spend your time learning garbage that someone half remembers their grandpa teaching them.

Too harsh ?