CompleteMartialArts.com - The Essence of Shaolin White Crane--Martial Power and Qigong
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 796.80951 EAN: 9781886969353 ISBN: 1886969353 Label: YMAA Publication Center Manufacturer: YMAA Publication Center Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 352 Publication Date: 1996-05-25 Publisher: YMAA Publication Center Studio: YMAA Publication Center
Reveals the secrets of Chinese internal power development.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: The best Book ever ! Comment: This book is awesome , is perfect people this book word your money and time . Customer Rating: Summary: excellent!!! Comment: ...as usual, Dr. Yang does it again with this exceptional work. Buy his books...honestly, buy them all! You can read this many times over and still keep learning new things and getting new ideas. Pretty much like all of his books. Thank you yet again, Dr. Yang. You make me feel humble knowing there are still true masters living in this world. Customer Rating: Summary: Another fine book by Dr. Ming Comment: This is another of Dr. Ming's excellent books on the Chinese martial arts. I have many of them, including his complete video tape series on chin na, and regard his books and videos as a source of quality information.
There are a number of crane and white crane styles, such as southern white crane, northern black crane, eastern Tibetan white crane, and at least four styles of southern white crane are known. All have their own unique stylistic qualities but share with the others a common core of crane techniques and an emphasis on both hard and soft aspects. The feeding crane is a form rather than a style, and the "vibrating crane" is a fa-jing or explosive chi energy technique. (I don't propose to get into a discussion of chi principles here or their validity, I just mention this for factual purposes).
I should mention right off that despite the title, most of this book is actually about white crane chi gung principles and practice. In fact, 178 pages of the book are devoted to it. There are separate chapters on stationary soft, moving soft, stationary hard, and moving hard chi gung, and a related chapter covers Jin, or energy and power production. Only the last 55 or so pages are actually devoted to the martial applications, so if you're primarily interested in those, perhaps this book isn't for you. However, the photos showing the martial applications are very clear and of value also.
One interesting thing I noticed was how combat realistic the hard, moving chi gung was. Just from the photos, it wasn't easily distinguishable from a real white crane kung fu form. Oddly enough, one of the chi gung postures resembled one from Indonesian Panca Indra Suci Pentjak Silat, an interesting coincidence.
White Crane kung is considered to be an especially refined style of kung fu. It has had an important influence on karate styles such as Okinawan goju-ryu and shorin-ryu, and also Yamaguchi's Japanese goju-ryu has at least one hakutsuru or white crane form. (In fact, I once saw a film of Yamaguchi's funeral and one of his top students performed a white crane form in his honor). Three of these occur in a number of variations in the Okinawan styles. (It's known that aged masters taught different versions to different students on the same day. Whether this was the result of age-related memory deficiencies, shall we say, or some other factor isn't known.) The white crane master, Go Ken Ki, is usually credited with introducing these forms into the Okinawan karate styles.
In addition to its influence on karate, white crane is important in the history of the Chinese arts not only for its own stylistic innovations, but also for its influence on tiger-crane styles such as Hung Gar and other five animals type styles, which incorporate the crane as one of the five animals (the others being dragon, snake, leopard, and tiger). There is also the older Ha Se Fu or "5 Lower Tigers" style, which contains a white crane form. Unlike Hung gar with its extremely long forms (the first form in Hung Gar is over 200 moves long), their forms are shorter and have only one for each animal, which is kept separate from the rest, rather than integrated, as in Hung Gar.
In addition to the above, there is also a chapter on principles and concepts common to all kung fu styles (such as hard, soft, jin energy training, chi, and so on), and there is also a nice history of white crane and kung fu, including some interesting stories about legendary masters and their exploits (which are basically de rigeur in any kung fu book).
Overall, this is another fine book from master Ming emphasizing mostly the more advanced, internal chi gung training of white crane, which should be of interest mostly to intermediate and advanced students who already have some idea of the martial applications and perhaps want to know more about the internal aspects and mental training as well.
Customer Rating: Summary: A valuable White Crane reference Comment: The White Crane is a southern chinese kung fu style, and Dr. Yang's reference sets the standard. The White Crane style is a parent art from which many southern styles developed (including Wing Chun, Japanese and Okinawan Karate) so it is worth studying.
Included is the martial theory behind the system, featuring lengthy discusssions on Qi & Jin and their martial applicability. A martial artist of a style that is descended from the White Crane will find much to enhance his own understanding of his art.
This is mainly a reference material, as Books and DVDs do not make good primary instructional material for martial arts, so plan on attending a seminar or finding a good local school to get the most from this book. Customer Rating: Summary: Michael LaRoda Comment: Being a marital artist myself for over thirty years I say this book has been most fulfilling after becoming bogged down in the working society and not having time to work out, I was greatly discouraged at the rate my knee joints developed arthritis like pain. Before reading the book I forced myself to work leg work to see what would happen and in a few short months I was walking without a limp. After reading the book I can see that in a few short years continuing down this route would soon result in painful joints again. Not only has this book pointed to a more complete and sensible direction for my martial arts, but also a way that has already improved the quality of my life.
