CompleteMartialArts.com - Taijiquan: Through the Western Gate
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Manufacturer: Blue Snake Books
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 613.7148 EAN: 9781583941393 ISBN: 1583941398 Label: Blue Snake Books Manufacturer: Blue Snake Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 250 Publication Date: 2006-01-26 Publisher: Blue Snake Books Release Date: 2006-01-26 Studio: Blue Snake Books
Written specifically for the Western practitioner, Taijiquan: Through the Western Gate blends modern science and philosophy with the traditional wisdoms—drawn from classic t'ai chi literature—that underlie Chinese martial arts. Author Rick Barrett authoritatively describes a wide range of movements, practices, and positions in the context of such topics as being in the zone, effortless power and force versus power, the whole-body energetic connection, instant meditation, and energetic coherence. Step-by-step exercises help make this sometimes daunting discipline simple and accessible.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: This is THE tai chi book Comment: Let me mention that I am a student of Rick's.
This book is great! It's clear. It's useful! When people ask me what this whole tai chi thing is about it can be hard to explain to people. Feed them the same old "chi flow, meditation, opening joints etc...." and they will walk away having the assumptions they had about the art reasserted. And they will not be any more inclined to study it.
Let's face it, a great deal of the taiji practitioners in america are those who would not really be doing anything physical except taiji. If someone is going to choose to spend their time playing taiji instead of something else, they need to know why it is worth it. However beneficial relaxation and health are, they are not usually high on people's lists of priority. Tell people they can become stronger instantly? Tell them they can better ways to respond to anything? Tell them that many of the patterns they have been using their entire lives are inefficient and that there is a better way? That is how to interest people (me included) and that is the promise of this book.
Whenever I've quoted from this book (or told people to read it) it's always challenged people's assumptions.
This book outlines an approach that is essential to westerners. We live in a fast paced society. Pretending that we have the patience to sit around doing a form for 15 years before we learn the inner workings is not realistic. We need to have an intellectual model for what we are working towards, even if we are far from it. That doesn't replace the hard work that is needed to get there, but it allows you to stay interested/engaged enough to carry it out. Customer Rating: Summary: very interesting Comment: A personal take on why some people find it so hard to reach higher levels of skill in the art.
I wish that the author has not used the word 'energy' to designate phenomena such as chi, jin and others. However, the point that he makes is very valid.
Customer Rating: Summary: ....! Comment: If there were a modern day council of the remaining living martial arts masters, to decide which writings from antiquity up to the present time should be canonized into a martial artist's bible: This would be one of the first among the few works included from this century. That being said, Just read it, it may accelerate the progress of your practice exponentially. Customer Rating: Summary: It's Still About Faith Comment: First and foremost, I want to applaud Sifu Barrett for his effort. We need more books like this one, where experienced internal martial artists do their best to convey what worked for them, what insights helped them attain higher levels of skill. Sometimes, that's all we can do, and the effort sure is appreciated.
Overall I liked Sifu Barrett's insights and approach, and there are some exercises in them that I was unfamiliar with that I will try and hope to gain more insight from. However, from a thesis-critique standpoint, there are serious flaws in Sifu Barrett's arguments.
The good: Sifu Barrett I think tries his honest best to convey his understanding of internal martial arts and associated phenomena. He deals with the principles of structure, softness, qi/energy and tries to give us a paradigm about how to think about it. Barrett does a very nice job of taking real world scientific examples as parallels and using them as analogies for how to better understand the more esoteric concepts associated with Tai Chi. He also references a number of interesting but relatively unknown scientific theories to support his own perception of qi energy etc.. He gives specific exercises, clearly described, with adequate supporting photos, to help cultivate awareness, qi, and softness. Particularly for beginners, this is a superb way to "get a grip" on some of the concepts. A nice way for Western minds to have a starting point when tackling these "mystical" Eastern concepts.
The bad: Sifu Barrett's book begins with the hypothesis that since the scientific method cannot completely explain some of the phenomena associated with Tai Chi, that therefore something else must be going on. He proposes terms such as "energy coherence" and "tensegrity" and effectively explains their foundations to describe these phenomena. So far, so good. Problem is, the linchpin of his hypothesis are examples wherein an untrained partner is able to dramatically improve his/her ability to withstand force by pointing his finger, or reverse scenarios. According to Barrett, these acts cannot be explained by Newtonian physics, and therefore he proposes the utilization of his terms to try and convince us that what is happening is about an energy field and/or conduction of energy along soft tissues rather than nerves. My concern is that I *can* explain his initial examples using a combination of muscle kinesiology and Newtonian physics. There is no mysticism in his initial examples. Most experienced Tai Chi practioners with scientific or engineering backgrounds likely can explain it, as well. It has to do with transmission of force more efficiently through the truncal axis with certain alignments and muscle tensions, and thence into the ground. Moreover, in the examples where Barrett pushes superhard and cannot budge his inexperienced protege-- well, we all know that the *pusher* has much to say about how such force interacts with the "pushee"-- whether it uproots or drives more solidly into the ground. An experienced practitioner like Barrett no doubt has the ability to do either.
Thus, with his leading examples of "energy coherence" reduced in my mind to Newtonian physics and physiology, despite his claims otherwise, the rest of his contentions lacked credibility in my mind. Some of the higher-order stuff that he talked about later in the book (augmenting one's own aura and/or presence, or detecting disturbances in ambient qi) that I cannot explain nor validate at this point, then become, in my mind, once again, about faith. I cannot completely accept his explanation of energy coherence because his initial examples are flawed.
If Barrett had kept this book to one of analogies, as a way of saying-- this is how I think about it, this is what I do, this is how I perceive this-- it would be a much stronger book in my mind. Like I said, he gives some superlative associations with real world scientific parallels. In fact, Barrett may have realized this, because the second half of the book is all about parallels, and he really makes no esoteric claims. But he shouldn't have in the first half, either, because I am still left with the question of-- does Barrett really have "it", or not?
I do believe that his connective tissue theories in the latter part of the book may have some validity to them, and I like his "tensegrity" model a lot (think suspension bridge)-- but they are beyond real scientific validation. Even Barrett's narrative seems to shy away somewhat from alleging that such phenomena are really really real. In some cases he talks about his own inconsistent success in these realms.
I will have to check his scientific references-- but in the meantime, Barrett definitely presents some juicy paradigms to chew on. I have not yet tried his exercises for improving "presence" and such for an extended period of time, however, so who knows? I remain suspicious, however, that such phenomena can appear experientially validated because of the power of suggestion.
Unlike other reviewers, I did not find myself saying "Wow"-- it was more like "Hmm, I don't think so, I can explain (and do) that" in the first part of the book, and "That's an interesting way of looking at it, I'll try it, but I'm still bummed by your claims in the first part of the book" in the second part of the book.
Worth reading. But think of this more as philosophy and friendly suggestions rather than a thesis. Customer Rating: Summary: Great for the begginer and the experienced practicioner Comment: I have been studying Martial arts for 5 years and energy work has always been a part of this. This book has helped to reinforce some of the concepts already taught by my instuctors and it also helped clarify some of these ideas. In my opinon the greatest strength of this book is the clear simple language used.Mr Barrett's exercises where so simple to do and explain to others that I used them in my own class to help teach our younger students.I also really enjoyed the fact that Mr Barrett has found a way through to science to help support what energy practitioners have known for decades that Chi is real and can be used.Through this book I think he dispells some of the myth surrounding CHi and the meridians. BUY THIS BOOK.
