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What is purpose of solo forms and where did they come from?

December 22, 2009 on 8:13 pm | In Teaching Insights and Lessons | No Comments

my answer: purpose of forms- ingraining encoded combat techniques in your mind-body memory to gain a reflexive response in a fight or flight situation. It is often used to gain health, strength, for sport, and spirituality.

Forms embody the spirit and tradition of a particular group of people. Chinese Martial arts were from ancient military tribes,clans, and army for conquering and defending from invaders. Temple styles also developed systems using forms. Taoist and Buddhist temple forms came from places like Wu Dang, Shaolin, Ermei, Huashan, Maoshan, and other traditional Chinese mountains and places with temples and monks. Confucian scholars as well prescribed society to learn health training exercises and forms. Doctors of Chinese medicine got involved with study of acupuncture, herbs, and diet and came up with a variety of health forms like du-na, dao-yin, and wu-xing forms. Performance martial arts came from Chinese Opera and Circus. These were traveling groups from the silk road who were skilled in wrestlers, acrobats, artists, knife throwers, contortionists, performance of various qigong feats, and breaking bricks skills, to new a few. There were family styles where people were dedicated to the study of forms handed down from ancestors. There were combat forms studied by masters who were involved with the security of the Royal family, Merchants, Gold, and wealthy people of status from thieves and gangs. There were Lei Tai events who was best in village, best in a particular city. People in sports got involved and began evolution of various forms as sports ‘physical education’ with places like Chin Wu, and sport colleges. In the 1900′s sports competitions started to evolve, organized to share in combat traditions, masters collaborated like the Nanking 1930′s and an Olympic demo in Berlin in 1936. Many forms were shared with the public and simplified. Post World War II created the Chinese revolution and martial arts forms split from people who migrated to Taiwan and abroad vs Mainland China. PRC China evolved into pre- and post- cultural revolution with traditional vs modern martial art forms. While Taiwan and those who fled communism kept many of the traditions unaltered, PRC’s modernism of “compulsory” forms altered from traditional forms for public health and sport was developed for regional, college and city team competitions in PRC China. Also the international community has learned forms from many athletes, coaches, and masters when they migrated to many countries around the world.