Chen Zhonghua Taiji Academy Phone: 780-413-0454
Chen Taiji Practical Method and Hunyuan Taiji practical_method@outlook.com
October 6th 2020 foundations On-line Class
Today we worked on staying on the line, which exists between the front shoulder and the front hand, and beyond with the same trajectory . The elbow pushes into that line, Which is activating the elbow, thus forcing the handout. The elbow withdraws in a way that integrity of the line between the shoulder and the hand remains intact.
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Today Master Chen provides instructions and corrections on Six Sealing Four Closing.
– The shoulder has to totally disappear.
– The move is a rotation from the central vertical rod.
– Only rotate from the shoulder. The hand, elbow and shoulder is one piece.
Master Chen started today’s class with a story and a method people used to remember things precisely.
The story was about how the Secretary was corrected by an old person on the details of an event. The Secretary referred his speech to a document. However, it turned out that the document was incorrect, and the audio recording had the truth as pointed out by the old person. In today’s society, we rely on a lot of documents instead of trying to remember things in our heads. If the documents were actually recorded in correctly, we would have the facts incorrect.
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Chinese Class
Master Chen Zhonghua introduced Wild Horse Parts Its Mane as a foundation exercise. If space is available, we can do it as a line drill.
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We started with the various foundations. Master Chen Zhonghua mentioned that we must be able to copy the external shape first, e.g. he must be able to recognize which foundation we were attempting to do. If we were doing the yilu, others must recognize that we were doing a Chen Style Yilu, and then a Practical Method Yilu.
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…during the Sept 23 Zoom class GM got that gleam in his eye, we’ve all come to know, “Little sparrow wags its tail…” and he went on to share a story about developing the skill of intention and about the skill of not telegraphing intent through micro-level somatic signals…
Exercise 1
Open the kua to cause a horizontal rotation. Lock the top by using one hand to the hold the wrist on the other side. Stretch the fingers. Where the middle finger is pointing at changes as the rotation caused by the kua happens.
Open the right kua to turn left.
Open the left kua to turn right.
Don’t let the left knee point down when opening the left kua.
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We started with double positive circle.
We used a rubber cord to tie to elbow to the waist, so that the elbow does not move by itself.
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Today, Master Chen corrected the following students’ partial yilu:
Single Whip
Master Chen used the foot shovelling out in single whip as an example to talk about the concept of using a stick to pry open something. We shove the stick into a crack, then the front end of the stick cannot move anymore and stays in the same place. We can then make the crack bigger by prying with the stick. The key is that the one of the stick is not moving. As we pry, we may meet resistence, we can add a longitudinal rotation as we pry, it will allow the stick to go over the resistence. Regarding the single whip, we want to make sure that the toes do not point up as we shovel so that we can apply the longitudinal rotation on the entire left leg. As we shovel the left foot, the weight must stay on the right foot. As we shift over to half horse stance, the longitudinal rotation on the left leg occurs at the same time. Read more
Six Sealing Four Closing 六封四闭
Grandmaster Hong Junsheng studied the names of each move. He looked into the origin of these names, and how the pronounciation might have changed when the information was passed down based on the dialect of the region. The dialects in China can be so different that people from one region might not understand people from another region at all.
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Master Chen demonstrated the foundation exercise Moving-Step Shake the pole, which is the positive and negative circle. He held a real pole to begin with to show the idea behind the foundation exercise. He locked his fron hand, which was holding the pole as a pivot. The rear hand moved the pole. Read more
Master Chen corrected a few people’s partial yilu today. Each person should remember himself/herself the stopping point, and so it can be continued from that point in future lessons when it is that person’s turn for correction again.
To stretch, we need to so find anchors on the two ends.
Empty means solid, it means power.
We need to find a line in ourselves. Master Chen showed Tinh Thai a version of fetch water that line up her rear elbow with the front hand. We need to make sure that the front shoulder is not in the way.
If we want to have grip in the hands, we need to have grip in the teeth and in the toes.
Moving Step Positive Circle
Morning Session
1-2-3 in general means that we must have a method, and there is a procedure.
We have to listen with our eyes. We can’t just close our eyes and say that we are listening.
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These are my notes from Master Chen’s zoom lesson on Re-calibration, on August 11, 2020
We need to tune a thermometer. First we find the zero. We set a standard then we can use it to measure Read more
Recently, I attended a Practical Method seminar with Master Chen, hosted by Ping Wei in Phoenix Arizona. In preparing for the seminar, I “learned” the first thirteen moves of Yilu form so that I could follow along as much as possible. I believe the seminar was supposed to be regarding the first thirteen moves of Yilu form and foundations. Read more
Yilu and foundations are for warm up
Chen Zhonghua’s Sept. 2019 Toronto Practical Method Workshop videos.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: English Year: 2019 Difficulty:3/5 At:Toronto
Day 1
Jieshou, a Chinese word that means “accept hand”, is a term used in Practical Method. You will get an idea of what it means after viewing the video clip.
It is important to know that Practical Method does not allow head-on collision in making initial (or any other) contact with the opponent.
This is a clip of teaching video at the Dec. 2019 New York workshop.
Ottawa Broadsword Seminar on Oct. 26, 2019.
渥太华讲座场地20191026 – Walking towards the Legion Hall.
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This is where we held our first Ottawa Practical Method Seminar in March 1998.
渥太华讲座场地20191026 – 3
Front Door of the Legion Hall
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Front of the building of the Legion Hall on Montgomery.
The gears twist on either side of the spine and your intention along with where you are looking can send power in any direction you want. You can also add better control by also changing the percentage of each lever. with straight spine hold with front left kua use right hand across. them Opening kua to right
Power comes from restrictions, stretch to point of rotation, Movement is muscle., no movement is a lever
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When practicing yilu:
Notes from Grandmaster Zhonghua Chen Workshop on Sept. 14 & 15, 2019, Edmonton, PM Studio
埃德蒙顿2019.09.14讲座合影。本文作者是右四（后）。 Read more
So we were doing lots and lots of six sealings four closings exercises at the end of the Vienna Workshop. I was leading the group and counting. Then, at #476 something in my hip cracked open. A rush of pure energy run through my body and I felt like a conductor between heaven and earth, and then … Read more
First I had to not push the opponent and just find the wall with my back. When it wasn’t working so well it was because I was too far from the wall. It got a little bit better, but I was hitting the wall too straight so my stretch wasn’t as long as it could have been. Once that was fixed by lowering more to hit the wall, my fingers were not angled correctly towards the opponent and extending past the demarcation line. Once all those things were corrected, I was able to push better. Read more
Positive circle steps. There are two steps and one modification. They are in, turn and out. Read more
2019.09.08 pm Read more
Comments on 2019 North American Practical Method training camp
From my perspective, this year’s training camp was outstanding! I came with the thought that I had progressed a lot but after a short time I realized (as usual) I have so much to learn. I am basically a very beginner but I can see that each time I attend a function with Master Chen I can get a little better grasp of what he is teaching.
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Notes from Day 1, Phoenix Practical Method Workshop
These are pretty rough, just short statements.
Every movement needs to have intent and some reference. When we do taiji we need intent. Taiji is governed by yin yang.
We need to see what is really there. Usually we think we see but that is not what is really there.
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