Collaborative Hapkido? Have you seen this?

[disgruntled]

the one thing that i do find books more useful for is the internal side of MA. i find that in class a instructor often does not have the time to explain all the subilties of the internal aspects, or due to a language barrier, cannot really explain them. books do a better job a lot of the times. they can also spend a lot more time talking about one aspect.

[Koutaishi]

Originally Posted by disgruntled

the one thing that i do find books more useful for is the internal side of MA. i find that in class a instructor often does not have the time to explain all the subilties of the internal aspects, or due to a language barrier, cannot really explain them. books do a better job a lot of the times. they can also spend a lot more time talking about one aspect.

This is one thing that is lost when the traditional sempai/kohai arrangement is also lost. Luckily, it can be regained with private study, as you say.

[disgruntled]

Originally Posted by Koutaishi

This is one thing that is lost when the traditional sempai/kohai arrangement is also lost. Luckily, it can be regained with private study, as you say.

can you elaborate? did they ever really have the time to train one student to their fullest? i always assumed that was a movie thing.

[Koutaishi]

Originally Posted by disgruntled

can you elaborate? did they ever really have the time to train one student to their fullest? i always assumed that was a movie thing.

Not necessarily to the fullest, but many older masters would retire into the wilderness to contemplate existence. (I believe that part of this was fear. In the wilderness, it's less likely that a young samurai seeking fame would come to attempt to defeat the old master). Particularly intrepid students would seek these men out and, in exchange for work done helping the old man live, the old man would teach the student.
The big difference isn't just the amount of time working with one student, though. If two people are together almost constantly for a year, they will talk about a lot of things. When one of those people looks up to the other as a near parental figure, a transmission of ideas, not only regarding the martial arts, but also regarding how the student should live his life. What he should eat to remain healthy. Spiritual concepts. Etc... will be passed on to the student.
Once a student's formal training with a master was done, he may go back to his own land, where there might be a more formal school where he can continue his training, but with a much greater understanding of the basis of the information. He also stood a better chance of surviving the real training: That is, the field of battle.

[disgruntled]

interesting.... that is along the story line of Drunken Master (with Jackie Chan), so i assumed it was just a movie thing.... but i guess it makes sense that it is a cultural thing that the movie was based on.

[sirdarksol]

Yeah, I don't know just how prevalent this truly was, but there are stories of it happening. David Lowry actually learned in this manner. Some of my favorite martial arts stories revolve around this kind of thing. While fables may not be the greatest indicator of fact, they almost always contain some kernel of truth, and these fables all have enough similarities and yet are different enough to suggest that this did happen from time to tim.