GM Private Lesson Review, Roy Croucher, Sept.29/20

by Doug Gauld on 2020/10/02

…GM gives Roy opportunities to try to use PM to move him in push hands…very focused session…

RoySept22-20 v2

  • GM got Roy to use a high back chair, rested an arm on the chair back, and drop the body, maintaining contact with the chair back as the body drops
  • all moves have a corollary in the vertical plane of the body, if the arm moves out horizontally its because body structures, either observable external parts like dropping the whole body or unobservable internal movements must occur to create the movement;  vertical body expansion can contribute to extremity movements
  • GM uses a stick to put an imaginary ‘pin’, a kind of the physical point of reference to the centre point where Roy needs to work on opening up his shoulder structures, this exercise gives Roy a proprioceptive biofeedback mechanism so he can begin to create a training connection for each correction of body part alignments
  • Yilu review; rotate along the vertical axis of the central body, must be two-way reciprocal stretch while not moving
  • another body loosening exercise involved Roy trying to drop his kua/shoulder constructs on one side while elevating the kua/shoulder structures on the other side of his central axis line, think of an umbrella that raises half the canopy on one side while the canopy lowers on the other
  • midline vertical separations/rotations create potential horizontal movement
  • Yilu, for ‘fetch water’ transition move, just let palm drop from beside left side of the face before creating rotations to draw water
  • “elbow finds kua more easily than hand finds foot”, elbow/kua can be an easy connection as well
  • precise rotation on the exact centre is not technically possible, we always (GM says including him) wobble
  • micro & macro adjustments with every body part are required constantly, the body must move ‘lock to lock’, each move must be precise enough to create a Peng infused position that can absorb and reflect huge explosive combat energies being applied to it
  • try to make all moves using the structures below the belt to mask true intent, less telegraphing
  • use strength and torsional potential energy of the achilles tendon stretching on punches
  • we must within our capacity ‘beat up our bodies’ to try to get to the kind of movement that we are conditioned against in all of our lives
  • PM is unnatural movement from the standpoint of how we learn to move our entire lives, PM detrains all the bad habits we’ve developed and gradually opens our bodies/minds to allow for more correct Taijiquan separations, yin/yang splits..

…learning to live a breath at a time…

About Doug Gauld

took one two day workshop with Master Chen years ago in Victoria...studied with Gord Muir in Victoria for about 5 yrs, during that time was coping with spinal arthritis (ankylosing spondylitis)...have moved back to Edmonton to be closer to family...trying to learn more about art...it has helped with my arthritis and perhaps if I learn it more completely and make my practice better my health will improve more than it has already...

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