Key words: Elbow kua position. Thresholds. Fire schedule.
-Ground dragon is bow and arrow move. There is no up and down movements. Anchor the L foot, pull so hard and large the body gets low, split left and right so wide that the body goes down. Twist from kua to go forward without getting up.
-Movements need stay large for a long time until everything inside is all exercised. Find the edge and every move you stretch a little bit more to increase the quality. It will appear you are pretending at the beginning. Training becomes more insubstantial.
-Whatever appears to others, we never get small. Everything opens up from inside through grinding and rotating, causing the outside to spin. Create large curvature in the body. Never have loose moves, always stretchy moves. Single whip, cave in the chest then the two hands can stretch.
-Elbow has to disappear, cannot be out. Also buttocks cannot be out, if so, the thigh is too long, we rotate kua(tuck the buttocks) so the thigh becomes shorter. How to hide the shoulders, how the shoulders rotate to become a smaller obstacle (a smaller outer surface). These will make sure arm and thigh length contained. If the hips are locked, the head will appear going down.
-3 – 9 – 36 – 72 thresholds. Go through fortresses. You train until you come to a threshold, open the door and you come to another fortress. Every time you go through a fortress, you go to a bigger place, opening to a wider field, like people going from kindergarten to university. It is a larger place but fewer people will pass. In Taoist theory, there are 72 of them/devils and if you pass them, you become humanly immortal. It is rare to go through 3. Thresholds are not fixed, but it might be something like this: 1. doubt in yourself 2. think the teacher/system is wrong 3. you totally understand and you think you got it. You can come to a point physically you cannot change any more and mentally it becomes a club, because the real work is too hard. You can come to a point you really don’t know what to do and you have to give up. A lot of people quit before entering the door of Taiji. When you think you got it, you never hear it any more. Or you keep hearing it so much (but not getting it) to an extent, you will give up.
-The habit. You are doing the same think again and again, to overcome that is very hard!
-Fire schedule. Just right. Hands feet and head reach out to maximum but cannot lose the connection with dantian. They are like a kite attached to dantian with a string. Don’t lose the string. When you are in position, use dantian to pull and see if the connection/control is still there. Dantian is for balance. It is like you are standing on a cliff, reaching out with your arm, to a certain point you won’t be able to come back. Same thing when you are small, can you still go out/open? This is huohou火候（fire schedule）. Find the place in right angle right size. How to use this in real training? Master used an example of finding the right spot for the feet in half horse stance. Once you find the perfect position, use two pieces of board/stone/cement to lock it, and train in that position. Ability comes from small things, small things that you do not pay attention to. Story about the belt. Belt with the right size limits dantian, and then charge breath to it. The belt becomes hard, locked up, then you can rotate (only hard things can rotate). Right size for shoe grip. Regulate how much power to charge the shoulders according to how strong the opponent is. A space just right for your kua feet size, where you can have both mobility and stability. When 2 kua/dantian stretches, power goes to two feet that you feel so solid(cannot only go to one foot or one foot more than the other). When you move, you must catch two feet, can feel two feet, can power up with two feet.
