During a brief practice before breakfast, Shifu commented on my six sealing four closing. He said in this move the front arm is creating space as we open the kua. When we create space, we must take that space over, filling it in. This is our advantage over our opponent. If the opponent fills the space in before us, it becomes his advantage. So, there is a subtle move of the torso on that side to fill in that space. If we move too much, we are moving the center. If we move too little, we leave an opening for our opponent. For many of us, including me, we often tend to move slightly back when we open the front kua, back loading. This gives even more space for our opponent to fill in. So, it will take some hours of practice to make the proper move automatic.
Gerry Gebhart
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This is my video as requested by Kelvin for his sword class. First thing I notice is that I need more practice!
There were many corrections and a number of important conceptual points on how to learn.
-We have 2 general types of movements
Action movements are what the particular form is about in order to execute a particular application on an opponent. Must be accurate.
Adjustment movements are to position body parts to be in place to execute the action movement. Accuracy in getting there is less important.
We must know the difference. We tend to not know or show the difference.
-Master Chen repeated the instruction, as he has many, many times, to listen and watch as he explains. Do not attempt to copy while he is explaining. We miss much of the instruction while we attempt to copy. I have heard this so many times, yet I was copying while he spoke in the class this morning.
-Not one move in PM Taiji is like any other in life or sports. We must see that the moves are unique to PM Taiji. MC does not move like an average person, but the average person, as in we his students, THINK we move like MC. He has said to me specifically in other zoom classes that I make a good copy of the moves, but he can see that I do not really do the essence of the moves. We tend to compare to other movements and other sports, but PM is different from those moves. I must say that I make many of these comparisons. I would say my whole education has been based on building on comparisons and it is a very difficult thing for me to not compare PM to other human activities. I can see now that recalibration must happen without these comparisons.
