At the Ottawa Nov. 12-13, 2016 workshop, Master Chen Zhonghua talked about when doing twisting the towel or six sealing four closing, our hands and elbows must stay on the same line. Where was that line exactly? We often just imagined where that line was. He told us to use a physical object to guide us, and he used a stick to show us. In today’s class in Toronto, we started with twisting the towel and covered what I learned at the Ottawa workshop. We went on to use the railing at the community centre to do the six sealing four closing exercise.
Instruction: Move the hands back and forth on the line(railing)
Restriction: Hands must stay on the horizontal railing.
Feedback from students:
- A student who just started in Practical Method immediately asked what his kua should be doing. This is referred by Master Chan as the Kua Syndrome. We only want to focus on the topic at hand, and do not worry about other things or we will be distracted.
- As the distance between the front hand and the rear elbow increased, the students realized that other body parts would need to be adjusted to allow that to happen while staying within the restriction, e.g. at the beginning they were standing on the side of the railing, they later realized, it was better to get closer or even get under it. In Practical Method, as you train more, you will be given more and more restrictions. Your ability to keep your actions stay within those restrictions will increase over time with training.
- The instruction was very direct, but the result was indirect that there was a lot of training in the joints.
