The Essence of Shaolin White Crane: Martial Power and Qigong

Rating:
Summary: Another fine book by Dr. Ming
Review: 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.


Rating:
Summary: One of Dr.Yangs best
Review: This is undoubtably one of Dr.Yangs finest books. Being into real Gung-Fu, Wu-su for fifteen years now, I can certainly say this with certainty. It has all the excellent information in a clear format that I have come to expect from Dr.Yang. I especially loved all of the stories of Chinese wisdom that he put into this book. Such information is important when you are publishing a book about martial power. It helps to keep the reader on the proper path. This book is an excellent balance between internal and external QiGong. This Book also really helps to categorize and organize the great number and variety of Qigong techniques. This is quite helpful to know what you are doing, and to help you then create and much better balance your Qigong training. Whether it's still soft, or still hard, moving soft or moving hard Qigong, you can put them all into one of these categories. Whether Wai Dan or Nei Dan, it's can all be organized in this way. Also, the various blend of eastern and western explanations that are put in this book, further enhance ones understanding and comprehension in the field of Qigong as a whole. Anyone who has some basic to interemediate knowledge of Qigong, will find this book very helpful in bringing them to the next levels of understanding and ability. Beginners should also have little to no problems finding many techniques that they can do as well to begin thier journey into this most amazing and exciting of fields. All the best to you all.

Rating:
Summary: One of Dr.Yangs best
Review: This is undoubtably one of Dr.Yangs finest books. Being into real Gung-Fu, Wu-su for fifteen years now, I can certainly say this with certainty. It has all the excellent information in a clear format that I have come to expect from Dr.Yang. I especially loved all of the stories of Chinese wisdom that he put into this book. Such information is important when you are publishing a book about martial power. It helps to keep the reader on the proper path. This book is an excellent balance between internal and external QiGong. This Book also really helps to categorize and organize the great number and variety of Qigong techniques. This is quite helpful to know what you are doing, and to help you then create and much better balance your Qigong training. Whether it's still soft, or still hard, moving soft or moving hard Qigong, you can put them all into one of these categories. Whether Wai Dan or Nei Dan, it's can all be organized in this way. Also, the various blend of eastern and western explanations that are put in this book, further enhance ones understanding and comprehension in the field of Qigong as a whole. Anyone who has some basic to interemediate knowledge of Qigong, will find this book very helpful in bringing them to the next levels of understanding and ability. Beginners should also have little to no problems finding many techniques that they can do as well to begin thier journey into this most amazing and exciting of fields. All the best to you all.