Which part of the body moves;The right feedback is whent there isn’t any; Eyes fixed on one direction; 3 vertical lines on the body; What is loose; Magic number 3; Procedure: rigid then relaxed; Twist Towel Fetch Water detail; Two-person exercise; Climb and go over
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 76 min. In: English Year: 2009 Difficulty:1/5 At:Toronto
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Really enjoying this series of videos from Toronto in 2009. Very clear and generous presentation of material, an awe inspiring Yilu, and further insights into keys of Practical Method Taiji. Thanks for making them available…..
Just finished watching “Torant 2-2”. Highly recommend it. I always learn something new. I can’t Thank you enough for your teachings. A+
K-
00:24 to 00:40: Here Master Chen demonstrates an exercise that enables beginning students to understand the steps to stop using momentum when pushing. Leading to an understanding of ‘Not moving’.
00:41 Shows a small shot of ‘the right alignment’ to ‘repel/issue’. The full workshop video contains more details.
01:03 “Loose Hit; Tight Turn” (Song Da Jin na). Please note what Master Chen says: “If you don’t anything, I don’t turn. I’ll push…. But if you are strong, I’ll turn it….”
The terminology in the Chen style Taijiquan Practical Method is such that ‘Hitting’ is also referred to as ‘Pushing’ (and vice versa). A hit is a push, a push is a hit. When teaching students, hitting often produces a fright reaction, thus preventing the students from learning to make the correct moves. With pushing, the process of understanding starts without this reaction interfering with the learning process.
At 1:15 Master Chen moves his forearm and says: “I feel strong”, he touches upon a point that is often difficult to understand. Compared to the ground, his arm moved up vertically. However, in the Chen style Practical Method, this movement is considered a ‘Horizontal movement’, or, in other words, a movement (by the forearm) away from its axis.
At 1:17 his forearm makes a ‘Vertical movement’, being, an alignment displaced along the length of the forearm.
The caption “The right feedback is when there isn’t any at all” refers to the habit/need to ‘feel’ power in the arms when pushing, rather than learning to align the forearm along the vertical axis. When movement is properly aligned, the ‘strong’ local muscles of the arm that are used to make horizontal movements are not activated, and movement is generated by stretching distance muscles (for example: a fingers-elbow length stretch produces the bridge/unity of the forearm/wrist and palm). In other workshop videos Master Chen refers to tightening of muscles as ‘tying knots’. More on that later when I find an example in one of the videos.
From 1:25 to 4:39 are parts of the Yilu demonstration. Always nice to reinforce aspects of the form from different angles.
At 4:39 (to 5:27) is a small segment on the “Three vertical lines on the body”.
I gave a small introduction to this at the Pre-workshop introductory day in Sydney, and is most important in the achievement of understanding of ‘switching’.
At 5:58, no workshop goes without Basic Foundations demonstration and instruction, “Twisting the Towel”
At 6:55 demonstration and instruction of the Basic Foundation movement “Fetch Water” (including what not to do)
At 8:01 shows one of the Toronto workshop push hands exercise to teach proper alignment.
There is much more material in the Toronto Workshop video, and even looking back at them, I pick things up that my ears just wouldn’t listen to before.
1:00 For the topic at the moment, Master Chen talked about not moving the hand. Anything else can move.
1:24 Master Chen showed not moving the hand, but moving the body. Then he showed not moving the body, but moving the hand. This sequence of swtiching is very important.
2:30 Our movements must be clear. We want to use a structural time-based movement.
4:00 In reality, it is inevitable that we move. In order to have the effect of no movement, you can another movement to cancel the first movement.
4:44 Song da jin na. Loose hit, tight rotate. When your opponent is loose, you hit. When your opponent is tight/strong, you turn/rotate. For external style, there is no touching, so just straight into hitting, otherwise, time is wasted.
7:25 When we think we turn, we may actually ident our kua or bend at the waist. That is not turning/rotating.
8:10 When we turn at the top, there is a straight line poking from the bottom. Both of these must exist to have power. This is like how we operate a screw driver to fasten a screw.
9:00 The right feedback is that there isn’t any. We are looking to have maximum power. Where do we find it? It is when the opponent has zero power. If we have 25, and the opponent has 20, the effective power is only the delta (5). Our normal behaviour is that we like to engage, and feel the opponent’s power.
11:00 We have to not allow the head to move, so that we have a central axis for rotation.
11:27 Eyes must not follow the hand, otherwise, there is a high tendency for our body to toss.
12:20 Focus on doing one thing right at a time in training. If we don’t allow the hand to move, all other body parts will start to adjust to serve this purpose. This idea of just focusing on one thing at a time is what will allow us to build our skills. Many people try to do everything right, at the end they didn’t get even one thing right.
19:06 Three lines in the body: Centre line (fake), right shoulder-kua line, and left shoulder-kua line. Any part of the two shoulder-kua line can be used as a catch when the opponent touches us. One the opponent is caught, the centre one can be used to rotate. Eventually, that real catch can be transferred and it is no longer at where it is touched.
25:20 What is loose? It is when the object can only be picked up one at a time, like a chain. A board is not loose because we grab a corner, we can move the whole thing.
26:20 The magic number in taiji is 3. We can divide the body into 2 parts joined together like an open triangle. If we look at the arm, there is upper arm and forearm joined at the elbow. We must lock the wrist (called sitting the wrist), so that we can make the hand/fingers part of the forearm as one piece. Similarly, we must lock the ankle (called erecting the ankle). With this, we have one system for the entire body. Once we understand this model, we are free to make any combinations within this framework.
34:00 Inside must stay inside, outside must stay outside. Inside can be the dantian, and outside can be hand and foot. Elbow is somewhere between the inside and outside, and it must never cross the boundary. Their relationship must remain the same.
37:22 To have power, the two ends must not move, while everything in between goes towards the line formed between the two ends.
40:38 Twisting the towel: Use the waist on the central axis to power the hands. The size between the hands need to the size between the feet.
42:00 At first, we use the hand to power the hand, then use elbow to power the hand, use the shoulder, use the dantian. The dantian’s power is split, half goes to the hand, half goes to the foot. In order for the farther part to power the hand, whatever in between them must be locked or adjusted to say on a specific line, otherwise, the power can’t reach the hand.
46:00 Ultimately, we want the power to be coming from the foot because it is very far from the opponent. Do not be content with little success along the way. This may take 20 to 40 years of work.
50:00 Twisting the tower: The two hands are on the line. When we use power, we are off the line. We need to use a physical aid (rod) to help us stay on the line even with power. With the rod, we want a lot of powers on our arm to touch the rod as it travels along the rod.
56:10 By having a device that blocks the horiztonal movement, we can train a vertical search.
1:04:00 We want our movement to hug the hump to go over. If we go dead straight, we just get stopped by the opponent.
1:11:00 In push hands, we establish a solid spot on the opponent, we go over it.
1:15:45 During an action, there must be something not moving. After the action is done, you can then move it.