Chen Style Taijiquan and Hunyuan Taiji email: practicalmethod@qq.com
Foundations on line notes ~ October 13th 2020 by John Upshaw
Kelvin Ho lead us through a positive circle stepping back drill. With our front hand out, we would step back with a rear foot causing us to go lower, we rotated/shifted from our front kua to our rear kua, rotating the elbow in on the same line with hand staying fixed on that same line…like a spear, tip pointed at the opponent. By using my kuas in this manner, my range increased.
The subject of the lesson was foundations/positive circle.
Master Chen provided some history of China and the development of taijiquan. He also related a story about how the Practical Method foundations were developed. Read more
Master Chen Zhonghua started with a story about the history of China and Chen Style Taijiquan. Before the first Qin emperor defeated 6 other kings and united China, there was the period of Spring and Autumn 春秋 (which has nothing to do with the two seasons). Back then, there were 800 states, each had their own cultures, and they all flourished. Today, there are different levels of governments in China: Federal, Provincial, and County. The Chinese government wanted to get rid of the county level government, but they couldn’t done. Each county turned out to map back to the old states. The Chinese government had full election for village officials, but there are large families at the county levels, with full election, these large families will gain control at the county level goverments. These families managed to get around the one-child policy themselves.
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Once again Master Chen found it necessary to tell us how to learn. Many of us were practicing as he was teaching. And of course, I was one of them. He was giving each of us a private lesson and we should have been listening intently. At that point, practicing was just a distraction. Yes, practicing is totally necessary, but not when the teacher is telling us the important things that other teachers would call secrets and probably wouldn’t even teach. If we’re at all smart, we’ll take advantage of the wonderful opportunity Master Chen is providing. Read more
Today, shifu emphasized on how to learn. The first thing about learning is to listen to instructions and then to copy. Some people tried to copy without listening to the full instructions, and that won’t be a success copy either.
To copy, it’s to do everything exactly the same by definition.
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The subject of the lesson continued working on six sealing four closing.
Master Chen said that people can train for many years but never make the change that will help them improve. They keep doing the same thing that they always have done. We often say old bottle with new wine but in China it is turned around, old wine in new bottle.
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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
