Knowledge : Learning Method

Master Chen Zhonghua’s choice of language is straight forward and literal.  However, I find myself like many others having a difficult time understanding his instructions at the beginning of the Practical Method journey. It’s not that I didn’t want to follow the instructions. Whatever I did just seemed not matching what he meant. Instructions such as putting the left hand in front of the right hand gave me a hard time. The reason was that what I thought was front was not the same as what Master Chen intended front to be.  Let’s say setting up the hand positions is the first step, and other things are built on top of it. If this step was not done correctly, everything else would also be wrong. Therefore, it was utmost important to get the first step correctly.

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 Fetch Water

• Lock the front knee
• Lock the rear shoulder
• Push the front kua into the line between the front knee and rear shoulder
• Make sure that train the full range of motion
• At the tail end, nudge a little attempting to go beyond the current maximum Read more

We covered the following tonight:

Negative circle

1. Do it in a way that the arm triangle does not change shape externally.
2. Focus on the opening of the shoulder and the elbow
3. Think of the forearm and the upperarm rotating longitudinally and independently.
4. When doing elbow in, make sure that the shoulder is down. This is like instead of getting the elbow to go over on its own, make the shoulder contribute half the effort by going down, so that the elbow can go over by completing the other half. Read more

1. Create an account on YouTube if you don’t have one yet.
2. Shoot your yilu video in landscape mode like the above picture.
3. Upload your yilu video to YouTube.
4. In the description of your YouTube video, add the following:
   1. Name: Your name
   2. Location: Where was the yilu was recorded at?
   3. Date: Which date the yilu was recorded on?
   4. Yilu Count: Approx. # of yilus you have practiced so far, please see http://practicalmethod.com/pm_practice_record_main/pm_practice_personal_totals/.
5. Copy the link to your YouTube video.
6. Create a new post at this website:  http://practicalmethod.com/wp-admin/post-new.php
   • If you have access problem with this link, please contact Kelvin Ho at kelvin.ho@practicalmethod.ca, as you will need author access to this website.
7. Paste the link in the body of the new post.
8. Edit the title of the post in the following format:
   • John Doe Yilu on Oct. 26, 2020

1. Smart phone
2. Tripod
3. Notebook

The first two items allow your camera to be set at the appropriate height, distance and angle for the teacher/instructor to have an optimal view to provide feedback to the student. These items can be replaced with other equipment that can provide equivalent adjustment of the camera.  The 3rd item facilitates note taking (don’t forget to post your notes too at the website).

During a workshop earlier this year, Master Chen recommended that we utilize the “Yilu Record” tab to track our practice. As a result of starting this, I have found that it motivates me to basically do more, and to practice more consistently. Recording progress provides definitive feedback on effort and accomplishment. I have found it to be a very positive tool and extremely easy to use.

Your Next Step After A Workshop
HONG KONG CHEN STYLE TAIJI PRACTICAL METHOD 香港陳式太極實用拳法·WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2017
I watched master’s videos; it was the one where he demonstrated with Master Michael Calandra to be exact that got me curious. I thought, gosh, there is something very different here. He bounced and dropped people with what seemed to be minimal effort. I sent Master Chen an email asking if I could have a look at his next workshop and he gladly invited me. After driving about forty-five minutes to Langley, I sat and watched, and sure enough, it was the same as what I saw in the videos. The only remaining thing to do is to have a try. I walked up and asked Master Chen if I could push him (in hindsight, that was pretty stupid – the right kind of stupid for learning Practical Method). Read more