How to go around opponent centre.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 12 min. In: English Year: 2014 Difficulty:2/5 At:Toronto
“Go around the centre” Online Video Trailer
How to go around opponent centre.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 12 min. In: English Year: 2014 Difficulty:2/5 At:Toronto
Previous post: André Yilu Dec.28 2014
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
if the trailer makes you think “wow” already, then get it. great teaching – and you also get a great animal metaphor 🙂
it also goes into the difference of principle and technique
Welcome everyone to this video! I have provided the following guided reference. Please feel free to ask any questions related to the video.
0:27 Master Chen pushed a bit into the student to find out where the centre was.
0:55 Master Chen pushed into the right arm of the student to catch the centre and made sure that it did not move. While maintaining that, Master Chen added another direction that was about 90 degrees to the original direction where he used to lock the opponent’s centre. The result was that the student was rotated around that centre located roughly from the top of the head down through his chest. Note that he took several steps, because Master Chen repeated the same action as many times as the number of steps taken. We can not do full rotations, we can only one segment at a time to build up the larger rotation. This is an application example of what we mentioned last week at http://practicalmethod.com/2015/01/joints-as-anchor-points-online-video-trailer/.
1:36 Repeat the same procedure to test out the non-moving dot in the student. This was again found to be in the middle of the chest.
1:53 The non-moving dot was protected. Master Chen’s energy went over that dot. Eventually, the dot was forced to move backwards indirectly.
2:03 The dot was at top of the student’s right elbow. Master Chen stretched his own body over the rod created between the student’s right hand and right elbow.
2:33 This 2nd demo on the same student was similar but not exactly the same. The stretch created was bigger, hence the arc as well. The difference was caused by the amount of resistence exerted by the student. Master Chen’s stretch had to match that.
3:00 We can either find or create the dot. To create is to draw a response out of the opponent. The actions we perform to create the dot must be useful (meaning be able to affect the opponent). If it is not useful, the opponent does not need to respond.
3:20 Master Chen stretched himself around the back of the opponent to go over. The dot was at the slight right side of the the student’s dantian.
4:32 It was very important to understand the meaning of Master Chen’s words, and not to change his words to suite our own understanding.
5:59 Principle vs Technique: Aim at the nose is an example to illustrate the idea of aim. We can aim at different targets at different times. The importance is about the aim. We can’t change the focus to the specific target, such as nose. In this example, aim is the principle. When the focus is on the nose, doing this or that to the target is a technique.
Another example is about 5 dollars being money and a chair not being money. We couldn’t change the nature of the topic. When we talk about going over, there is a fixed dot, and there is an action going over. The action itself can be big or small, and the fixed dot could be big or small, but regardless, the statement of saying going over a dot remains true. The situation can in practice be affected by many factors, but we have to see what is common about it despiie the distractions.
Kelvin, is the principle of going to the other side or going around the centre, as shown in this video, the main goal of taiji? Is this principle the goal of all moves in the Yilu? If not, how many main principles do you know of?
I would say the main goal is to be able to split yin and yang whether it is in our body or opponent’s body. The only main principle is separation of yin and yang. Everything else is just a representation of it.
8:37 Master Chen’s demonstrated how he got in without presenting any threat to the opponent, and thta is key in not causing any movement or change to the non-moving dot.
10:00 We don’t let the opponent what we really want to do until the last minute. If the opponent knows too early, they will react, go away, block you, or do something that will prevent us from doing what we want.
11:20 In Taiji, we must make the opponent’s abilities insubstantial. It does not matter how big or small they are, it is irrelevant, they will lose regardless.