Thanks to Bill Vanderhall and Steve Chan we had a great weekend of Taiji training and learning.
We worked on yilu practice and corrections with some applications examples to help with training. Some corrections were:
- After the first Buddha’s Warrior Attendant Pounds Mortar make sure to sink the elbow and point the right hand to the right before moving into Block Touching Coat
- When transitioning from Six Sealing Four Closing to Single Whip, make sure to point the left hand forward (in the direction of the Single Whip)
- Keeping the knees in the correct position while moving forward in Upper Cloud Hands
We took moves from corrections and drilled them
- Upper Cloud Hands stepping using arms and hands to hold the fixed knee in place
- We worked on the move Turn Right and Kick With Right Heel after the Tornado Kick. We worked on producing power and balance in the kick, as well as the structure that the arms should maintain through the kick. We then combined this with the unnamed Turning flowers out of the bottom of the sea after the kick, working on how to use the power to turn and change direction.
We tried some applications of the hand parts of Turn Right and Kick With Right Heel to feel how the power should be applied and what direction it should move in.
After yilu practice we ended with some sensitivity drills we ended the first day working on matching and adding in different positions.
A key principle that we looked at throughout the workshop was “Inside stays inside; outside stays outside”. We looked at this principle in each drill and correction we did.
The second day was more yilu practice and corrections. We reviewed moves from the first day and worked on them in more detail. We did further drilling of individual moves, adding more principles and corrections each time.
To end the day we looked at a few moves from erlu and looked at how “Inside stays inside; outside stays outside” applied to these moves
- ” The whip wrapping around the body” we looked at the transition between setting up the application and executing it. After getting in, the contact point only needs to be set up with minimal movement, the rest of the application is just properly stretching the arms out
- “The posture of the splitting power” we used a similar principle of getting into the right position first, then stretching out properly
It was a lot of hard work but I learned a lot and had a great time training with the knowledgeable Maple Ridge group.
