Over the past two decades, author Nigel Sutton has traveled throughout Asia in search of the martial arts, special skills, senior masters, and sacred knowledge. He spent decades in the company of masters, listening to their stories, learning their arts, and documenting their lives. He came away with much more than skills and knowledge; he discovered the Way. In this engaging work one can discover the inner lives of the world's leading martial arts masters and the secrets of their fighting arts.
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent study for those interested in deeper understanding,
By
This review is from: Searching for the Way (Paperback)
For people who are primarily interested in T'ai Chi as a form of exercise or mental health only, this book will either be an eye opener, or will not be of interest. The author goes into great detail about his experiences with many high level practitioners of the art in Asia, and places a strong emphasis on application of the T'ai Chi principles in combat. His anecdotes regarding his teachers are fascinating, and liberally sprinkled with practice notes and "pearls of wisdom" for people interested in leaning T'ai Chi as a true martial art. My only reason for not giving the book 5 stars is that I found his prose somewhat disjointed (although following his train of thought is not difficult if one pays close attention.) Overall, I recommend this book highly for people who are interested in the deeper aspects of T'ai Chi as a martial art with combat applications, or perhaps those people who would like to hear stories of people who have mastered this martial art...
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An entertaining journey, with a number of pearls,
By
This review is from: Searching for the Way (Paperback)
Mr. Sutton isn't the best writer in the world, but he is adequate. I found myself liking him after initially being turned off by some of his awkward sentences. He is very self-deprecating, very real. He was someone I could relate to who just so happened to have to spent a ton of time in the Far East talking to and training with a number of martial arts Masters.
The uniqueness of Mr. Sutton's book is that much of his experience is from Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, rather than China itself. And most of his experience is through the Cheng Man Ching filter-- he even contends that some elements of Master Cheng's Tai Chi transmission in this part of the world may be more authentic than those in the USA/Hong Kong... Since that was his main art, that's mostly what he looked into when he went to the Far East. That being said, Mr. Sutton basically just tells stories-- like you were sitting with him in a restaurant over tea and chow fun. The stories are overall pretty entertaining, and you get a good number of pearls for training. These are usually conveyed by Mr. Sutton as quotations from the masters he spent time with. By pearls, I mean training tips or insights that one feels will help with one's own training or progress. Despite a reasonable amount of experience in internal martial arts (9 years) and extensive reading, I found about a dozen pearls in Mr. Sutton's book. Some I had heard in some way, shape, or form before, but others were refreshingly new or at least a different way to look at things, that I hope to make use of and see where they take me. Mr. Sutton covers sections on Tai Chi, Push Hands, Weapons, Applications, Qigong, Competition, and others, just trying to kick around ideas and convey his interpretation on things. He never claims enlightenment or demigodhood or anything, and one has to respect that in someone who spent that much time with such a diverse range of high-level masters. And again, he never force feeds you-- he basically says "This is what Master X said under these circumstances..." Rarely, Mr. Sutton says something to the effect of "I think he meant this..." I'll put it this way-- I felt that Mr. Sutton was more genuine in trying to pass on what he had learned, and provided more insights in the process, than BK Frantzis did in his book "The Power of Internal Martial Arts", which is an analogous work to this one.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book!,
By . (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Searching for the Way (Paperback)
As a long time martial artist and a current practitioner of the Cheng Man Ching style of Tai Chi, I found this book to be one of the most fascinating and entertaining books ever written on the subject of Tai Chi. Not so much a how-to book, but rather the story of Sutton's own training in Malaysia.
It had me wanting to hop a plane to Malaysia to search out some of Sutton's teachers. Highly recommended.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
