Thank you for the clarification. It sounds like I did misunderstand what you were saying. And I was having trouble making that sync with what I’ve seen you post in the past. Something seemed genuinely “off” and I couldn’t make sense of it.
I think we are very much on the same page, actually. As Ive said, to me what makes it traditional is largely its age, having been passed from generation to generation. It’s age will mean that there are holdovers from an older era, but at the same time that should not be all that it is about. What is key to it’s being passed down is that it works, and still works in the modern age. If it did not work then it would have stopped being passed down.
But at the same time it does get changed by every generation. Some of it is just human idiosyncracies but it can also be due to better insights into training and application methods and incorporating material and approaches from other methods. So as you say, it is both traditional and modern at the same time and I agree with that.
I would say that your example of the foot sweep is a good one. Personally, I would never say that doing the sweep higher makes it foreign to the system. In my opinion, you learn the sweep a certain way but then have freedom to apply it in any way appropriate and necessary. So if it is formally taught as a low movement but you apply it as a higher movement, in my opinion that is still the same technique and falls within your freedom of application to fit the circumstances. To say that nobody in Jow Ga does it that way strikes me as odd, to be honest. But at the same time it can be a point of evolution if it catches on.
At any rate, thanks for the clarification, I do appreciate it.
