Steven Chan Full Time Notes June 22 2010

by Steven Chan on 2010/06/21

While drawing the circle there must be no moving of the body.  However, the body must not move.  The arm must not be flimsy and must always be constantly pushing down.  However, half the energy that goes down must go up.  There is an invisible horizontal wall preventing the arm from going down to the ground.  This is an abstract wall, and it’s placement is of your own decision and position.  The head must be suspended by a string.  The head pushes upwards, however, there is an invisible ceiling on top of your head preventing your head from going up.  This gives you peng energy.

There are two walls containing the move of the circle.  These walls form a 90 degree bracket in which your arm can move inside.  However, your arm does not move along the bottom of the bracket to the corner and then go straight up, tracing the boundary of the bracket.  This action is called lifting.  Your arm should automatically seek the shortcut between the two walls.  This can be created by your energy going forward with a twist, with half the energy going down and half the energy going up.

When pushing against a wall, if you push into it head on, it will jam and get stuck.  However, if you are one degree off when pushing into the wall and apply a lot of force, it will slide along the wall instead of jamming.  Can one consider this movement?  If you start on point A and push until you reach and connect to point B, then you have not retreated and only advanced.  You are not pushing A, and then stopping to move and push B.   It is pushing on the same spot until the push results into a different space.   When you catch an opponent with this one degree push, the opponent can not fight back since you are not directly fighting them.

Every move forward has an equal movement backwards.

Related posts:

  1. Full Time Training on June 28, 2010
  2. “Chen Zhonghua As Pushing Dummy for Steven Chan and Push Hand Counter 2011” Online Video Trailer
Post Category: Workshop and Class Notes

About Steven Chan

Steven Chan is a student of Chen Zhonghua, the son of Chen Zhonghua's disciple James Chan and the nephew of Chen Zhonghua's disciple Si Chan. He currently lives in Vancouver, Canada. Taiji became an interest at the age of 17, as he would often hear his father and uncle discussing it. Yet, it was not until winter 2007 when he finally started to seriously train taijiquan. In summer 2009, Steven Chan went to Daqingshan for three months of full time training. In the clouds of Daqingshan he trained with masters Chen Zhonghua, Sun Zhonghua, Ni Yuanhai, and Cai Shengye. There he received many corrections to his forms and began to learn push hands. One morning he heard about a yilu challenge, which challenged someone to do 100 forms of yilu in one day. Hearing how the current record was 114 and how in the past Chen Fake used to do 100 forms in a day, he decided to try to beat the record. So the following week he started doing yilu at 5:30am. 3 changes of clothes later, at 11:30 at night, he finally finished beating the record. He had completed 126 full intent full length forms of yilu in one day, creating a new record. After returning from China, he entered a competition in Toronto. Competing in push hands, yilu, and sword forms, he won 3 silver and a bronze medal. In 2010 he returned to China for another 3 months of full time training. During this time there he participated and attended other competitions, eventually bringing home 4 medals and receiving gold for his broadsword and becoming the heavyweight taiji push hands champion of the Zibo international taiji competition.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Chen Zhonghua November 25, 2010 at 12:26 pm

Steven, three months after you started doing these circles, you virtually were not the same man as before. These notes helped you on Daqingshan. I hope you will continue to train with these notes by your side. It is those who MOVE ON from these notes that MOVE back in their taiji skills.

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