Iron Wire and Taiji???

[Ging18]

I was wondering if there are bad effects when practicing both forms that i think oppose to each other like iron wire, sam chien (tense) etc... and taichi, taiji (relax) etc...

[Asmo]

I'm not really qualified to say much about this, but maybe the book Shaolin White Crane by Yang Jwingming will help you. He speaks about balancing hard qigong with soft qigong.

Don't know if TSK needs balancing with other qigongs. I don't think I heard about any of that being done by any of the old masters in our style. Yet many became old in a healthy state!

[PM]

it is a common misconception to consider tit sin kyun to be "hard" hei gung or ying gung. tsk is an internal exercse, nei gung. the saying goes, "hard as iron, soft as thread" - gong yau (hardness and softness) are the 2 core principles of tsk. the interplay of these two is one of the keys to the mastering of tsk. there is a lot of softness and relaxation in tsk.

i see no need to "balance" tsk with taijiquan, on the other hand, practicing tsk and tjq would not cause any harm; tjq is a wonderfull art on its own and i personally have a great respect for it (i especially enjoy Yang tjq).

however, my point is: tsk has to be performed at least 2 times a day, which takes cca. 1 hour or longer. common traditional long Yang taijiquan takes also cca. 10, 15, 20 minutes or longer (depends on your lineage). serious practitioners of tjq say: the first hour of practice does not count. so the real question is: am i serious about practicing tsk/tjq? do i have a time and patience for it?