Taijiquan: Through the Western Gate

by Rick Barrett

Written specifically for the Western practitioner, Through the Western Gate blends modern science and philosophy with the traditional wisdoms—drawn from classic t'ai chi literature—that underlie Chinese martial arts. Author Rick Barrett authoritatively describes a wide range of movements, practices, and positions in the context of such topics as being in the zone, effortless power and force versus power, the whole-body energetic connection, instant meditation, and energetic coherence. Step-by-step exercises help make this sometimes daunting discipline simple and accessible.

Genres: Martial Arts, Philosophy

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2006

Reviews

[Foxthyme · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love it! Rick Barret translates all of those mysteriously described tai chi concepts and practices into terms and scenarios more recognizable and familiar to North American practitioners. He does this thoroughly, simply, and extremely well. There is now no reason you can't take your tai chi practice up a level...or many levels.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where it stays grounded in tai chi application, this book is excellent, and across the board it’s engagingly written. I struggled with the substantial portion of the book devoted to a survey of mainstream (or at least semi-mainstream) scientific support for energy medicine. Doing good, accurate reporting of scientific or medical research for laypeople is incredibly difficult, even for experienced science journalists, and whereas Barrett is clearly an expert on Tai Chi, Qigong, and much else, these sections could have been improved by an editor with the right experience (and preferably without a horse in the race in terms of the conclusions to be drawn from the research).

[Anne Beardsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book should have been named "Over the Western Wall: Bloody but Unbowed."
After all, a gate is a place in an otherwise difficult-to-overcome wall that facilitates entrance. It lets you in. Sifu Barrett's Western 'Gate' is something that makes entry at all very difficult. It is an hindrance to be surmounted. It is an obstacle in the path of progress. It is, in fact, a high wall that you must climb.

To help you scale the daunting Western Wall, the author first gives a delightful (but three solid chapters long) discussion of how things can be real and indeed ubiquitous and yet not physically seen or noticed. He makes a good case of how something you don't fully understand cerebrally can be real.
The next nine chapters are spent trying to make qi, energy work, and the most inner aspects of Taiji understandable cerebrally.
....and here I begin to have problems. Oooo, lots.
You see, I know too much about the things he's attempting to tie qi to.


Let me be clear. I believe in qi/internal energy/whatever you want to call it.
When this author uses personal experiences and anecdotes, he's great.
When he speaks metaphorically (muscular tension is like a hand on a gong, that stifles the vibrations and stills the ringing) he's good and insightful.
When he gives practical hints and tips, he's worth paying attention to.
When he attempts to give all this a tight scientific basis, he's downright painful to read. (And internal energy is totally vibrations in the connective tissue of the body, and it can store memories and make calculations like a second brain, and it's all some kind of electromagnetism, and you gotta make the waveforms coherent (it's good in the heart, so it must hold true for the whole body) 'cause then you will have unending health and move to a higher state of being...)
Although I would love it if these things were true. It would be so easy to test for the things he mentions, and easy to cause the 'qi effect' in the human body by outside means (perhaps sonic-induced localized vibrations in the tissue?). And then we'd never have to practice again.

Look, in-depth physics and biology just aren't his thing, okay? I'm sure he's a great Taiji teacher.

Sadly, pages 77 - 204 of this book seems to be pure speculation as to the biophysics of internal energy. [Pages 13 (where the book really starts) - 76 and 205 - 245 are very good. Those are the parts where he speaks like a martial arts teacher.]

If I had not actually felt internal energy myself and had a personal conviction that it is real, I would have closed this book saying, "Well, he's a very nice man and all, but I just don't believe in fairies." Even with what I've experienced, I had to forcibly remind myself several times that the things he has felt and done can still be valid...even if his speculations into the physical causes of it don't repay close inspection.
People can be correct about the fact that what they do works, even if their ideas about how and why are totally off.
After all, ancient people who cleaned wounds still lived longer, even if 'ritual purity' wasn't an effective principle.

He loves to cite experiments ...that have been revisited by other scientists, with very different results. He delves ever deeper into physics, throwing out more and more concepts that he simply doesn't understand very well: vibration, coherence, liquid crystal communication, etc.

The way Sifu Barrett so badly wants it all to work...just doesn't work out.

He is James Oschman's most dedicated disciple.
I do not have a high opinion of the scientific validity of most of James Oschman's work. Quite a number seem to get different results when other people try them.
What James Oschman suggests might be possible, Rick Barrett takes and runs with, exuberantly certain.
Blithely name-dropping scientific principles and anatomical facts, he then transplants things into scales and systems where there is no evidence that these exact principles ever worked....and in some cases, significant evidence it just doesn't.
He takes a few examples and soars into rock-solid generalizations ("All energy is a pulse!" Well...) and then moves even that into places it doesn't belong.
Some of his ideas I am simply unsure about. Mr. Barrett isn't unsure about anything.

It's probably quite comforting to people who didn't at least major in physics. We live in a world where we take great comfort from knowing that someone understands a phenomena; that it is knowable.
I don't know how my car's engine works; maybe you do.
I don't understand exactly how bioluminescence on deep-sea creatures works; but my husband does. That's enough for me. Knowing someone gets it, I can just take it on faith.

Perhaps a lot of people look at this assortment of abused scientific principles and think how nice it is that somebody gets it. Internal energy is, apparently, known. And therefore believable.

And Mr. Barrett probably hasn't actually done much harm with his speculations. After all, Taiji seems to work no matter how you think the energy is derived.
His martial arts are probably solid. He probably can do internal work well.

I loved the way he began by talking about how a thing can be not-previously-noticed or not-well-understood and still be real and true. And how he ends by suggesting that hard physics should not be our only means of gathering information; that we should be allowed to learn other types of things through other types of experience also.
I just wish he believed it.

[Darin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was too mystical for my tastes. Many books on the internal Chinese arts discuss chi in a mystical sense, but they typically still contain some information that I find useful. This wasn't one of those.

[devin ronaldson · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this book.

[Corey]

I'm friends with the author's son!