Practice Yi Lu segmented for 10 years. If not, you are moving all over. That is wrong. Every move must show exactly what you are doing. If you don’t finish the moves, you will not synchronize and it is as if you are speaking a different language from Practical Method Chen Taiji.
Once you learn the choreography, your ability is highly dependent on the rhythm. If you don’t know how to stop in each posture, you will have no rhythm.
Center must be clear. Our center should not move, and should look very stiff. Do not allow your hand to come back to your body. That feels smooth, whereas the correct move feels as if stuck. However, you need to leave your hand forward even if you feel stuck. When your hand comes back to you, you loose everything. When your body does a true rotation you do not have a backward move. If you push a wheel barrel up a hill, when you let go it will go back and run you over. You should use your foot to jam the wheel before moving the hand forward. That is how we do cloud hands. When moving forward in cloud hands you never go back. If you go back, it is as if the wheel barrel rolls over you down the hill. These are difficult moves because of the rhythm. Without this rhythm you have no power. Imagine fighting your opponent. You move hand forward and you jam it so your body can move forward. You advance and jam it, the advance and jam it, and so on. With people who have no previous experience, you copy the practical method and that is good. It is difficult to pick up these differences when coming from another style.
When you train and you guarantee one position is right, other moves will be out of position. You go back and correct that other move, and so on.
Center pose is done in Chen style Practical Method Taiji as a transition move and not a posture.
Last move of six sealings four closures you cannot make the chest bigger. Use the Kua to make the posture bigger. In middle cloud hands make the chest smaller as if squeezing right through one shoulder, then another shoulder. Also, when the chest is big, it becomes a target in a fight.
Initial closing postures, do it while crunching your stomach. That develops your abdominal muscles for taiji moves. When we make the chest small, the back should become big (stretched out).
