– Movements need to be deep enough to make sure every body parts are stretched out. To feel the bottom. Fingers touching the wall and body sinks to find the solid.
– Add intentional power in practice, which will add extra stretching in each move. Master showed the first two moves in the first form. First move arms are like steel, solid and firm. Second move on the turn, elbow is with the kua. Otherwise, we will be just swinging our arms, which is shallow practice. Master demonstrated Parting the wild horse mane to show how to rotate on the shoulder-kua line to move the torso to cover a big range. Not only to move the bottom, the bottom need to go over, without any change on the top. The feet is quicker than the hands.
– Master used a piece of wooden board to show two different types of moves. One is pivoting on the nail which is in the center of the short edge to rotate. The other is the board is totally parallel, no wobbling, to move forward or back. To move forward is the sticking power, to move back is the sucking power. Like the suction cup or magnet. In push hands, this is called enticing the opponent into emptiness. You find the surface and the dead center to cause your opponent double heavy.
– Form 3 Six sealing four closing. We practiced the power points on this form. Two eggs, one horizontal, one vertical.
Action of digging. Use a spoon to get water from a bowl. The spoon goes down with the edge touching the water, lock the tip of the spoon, rotate, then you can curve the water out without disturbing the water. To dig and rotate is to clear. Adherence 着。
Three levels of gear. 1. Arm and elbow in position. From the fingers, stretch the wrists to open then lock. Only move the elbow. 2. Elbow catch the kua. So you are not floating, become heavy. 3. When kua pushes up interacting with the elbow, the front heel kicks into the floor without changing anything else. Then you are grounded.
– Shoulder exercise. Place the forearm on a 45 degree draft table and sink/stretch the shoulder down (digging), which will cause the rotation of the torso, not turning randomly. Rotation vs turning. When we rotate, the shoulder-kua vertical line does not wobble. Stay in place only go up and down.
– If we don’t have enough range of motion, we use Taiji moves to stretch. If we use other ways, it will not be appliable to Taiji.
– At the beginning, it is all moves. Taiji motion is all gears. We need to create a closed circuit gearing system.
