Enjoyed the article and your critique. A fairly good discussion- better than many threads.

So many articles in MA dont even try to be analytical- at least the article tries to do so. With a scholarly hat most martial arts articles could be regarded as junk-
as is the case with the the common one upmanship posts on forums. One has to sifta lot to find an occasional gem. On soft and hard- much depends on the epistemology that the reader is using and thinks that the writer is using. In martial arts- atleast many of them in TCMA involves heightened awareness, intuition and feeling--- so the hard/soft distinction can be intuitively but clearly understood but may not be as clear in ordinary prose.

Because POVs can be involved-- to the extent that I have seen some(havent seen all) well known hung gar masters move I would regard them as more hard than soft from my POV.... though they like Yee sifu would say that they fuse the hard and the soft. The sanchin breathing and iron wire alone would make it harder than I care to be....but I dont do hung gar. Just interested in having some understanding of
other arts that I dont do.

joy chaudhuri