Greetings all!
I was browsing through a book on xingyiquan which made reference to a core series of movements which relate to the 5 elements of (I believe) Taoist philosophy.
The book spoke of a system of production and conquest, i.e. Metal produces water produces wood produces fire produces earth produces metal, and that each element "conquers" one other in thew list. The related movements where said to work in the same way. The diagram of this made a nice Pentacle. Earth was said to be the core of the 5 as all the others and all life stemmed from it and eventually returns to it.
As a bit of fun I started trying to assign kata to each element, attempting to keep in mind the idea of conquest and production and basing my choices on the feeling and applications (as I see them) of the kata.
The list I eventually came up with (using Shotokan versions of the kata) went as follows:
Earth - Tekki Shodan
Metal - Jitte
Water - Nijushiho
Wood - Bassai (dai and Sho)
Fire - Empi
As a system of deep study I found this to be a pretty complete list.
I was curious as to what kind of lists others would come up with and their reasons for matching up kata a to element 2 etc.
If anyone is interested I will post the reasons for my choices another time, got to rush off now.
P.s.
Just incase anyone missed it, I know jack about Internal martial arts, chinese philosophy or TCM I just found this an interesting angle of looking at kata. Please don't let that deter those of you who do know from deepening the discussion!
PPS
I also had an interesting thought about force fitting kata apps to an element in order to slip the kata into that elemental classification and provide bounds for the katas study. Perhaps a fun exercise for those of you who see myriad applications to kata moves.
Ok now I really am going!
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It's Shotokan not Shoto-can't!!!
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