I love this time of year. Every 6 months, the Grandmaster comes to town. We do testing, a tournament, and a seminar. Since I got my black sash and belt, the testings have been less frequent for me, but still, it’s great to see the people that I go to school with test and pass milestones. <\/p>\n
This particular time around, however, I did test. 2 years ago I got my black sash, so, by the calendar, it was time to test for my second degree black sash. Lot’s of people seem to give me that confused look when I tell them I have a black sash in tai chi. They don’t understand what that means. When you say “tai chi” to someone, they immediately think of some slow Yang style tai chi that old people do in the park. Yes, we do that, but oh, so much more. I will explain. <\/p>\n
When you join Shaolin-Do, you can join the internal program, the external program, or both. Well, what’s the difference between internal and external? This isn’t really common knowledge, so I will try to explain…<\/p>\n
Internal Martial Arts: Slower, softer movements. More focus on internal power generation, concentration, and control. Internal martial arts encompass such practices as Taichi (various families), Pakua, Hsing Ie, Meditation and some others. <\/p>\n
External Martial Arts: Harder faster movements relying more on muscle power and strength. When you see most “kung fu” you are seeing “external” martial arts. <\/p>\n
I don’t want to go into a long winded explanation of this and there is quite a bit that I am leaving out. If you really want to read more on it, there is a ton of information out there. <\/p>\n
I digressed. Sorry. <\/p>\n
So, this time around, I tested for my second degree black sash and passed. This test includes 8 animal pakua, Yang Taichi broadsword form, and Yang Taichi broadsword form 2-man set. I can now learn a bunch of new stuff. <\/p>\n
Tomorrow, the Round Rock school is having their tournament. I will be competing in the taichi portion of things… wish me luck! There are some really talented people over there that will put up some pretty good competition. I will do my best. <\/p>\n
Sunday, Grandmaster Sin will be teaching out the 1st road of meteor fist at the Round Rock school. Although I have taken this already, it was about 3 years ago in Kentucky. I can still do this form, but the review will be great. I am really excited for Victoria to learn it too. It’s one of the most badass katas I have ever seen. <\/p>\n
Thankfully, I am finally getting sleepy again… I need to be up early tomorrow, so I’ll wrap it up here and end by saying congratulations to everyone that tested and passed. Don’t forget your “old” material and get ready for lots of new stuff!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love this time of year. Every 6 months, the Grandmaster comes to town. We do testing, a tournament, and a seminar. Since I got my black sash and belt, the testings have been less frequent for me, but still, it’s great to see the people that I go to school with test and pass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familyofgoldsteins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}