Knowledge : Workshop and Class Notes

At the January, 2011 Maple Ridge Workshop, Master Chen talked about the levels of skill in push hands.

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Push head into cua to get into correct cua so you can lift foot.  Toes pull you.  Read more

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At the Maple Ridge workshop last weekend, Master Chen went over again the mini lessons he covered in his Edmonton Full Time videos.

Master Chen demonstrated that tossing and double heavy is the same mistake. I used to think that double heavy is only applied when doing a linear move, pushing and pulling.
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While drawing the circle there must be no moving of the body.  However, the body must not move.  The arm must not be flimsy and must always be constantly pushing down.  However, half the energy that goes down must go up.  There is an invisible horizontal wall preventing the arm from going down to the ground.  This is an abstract wall, and it’s placement is of your own decision and position.  The head must be suspended by a string.  The head pushes upwards, however, there is an invisible ceiling on top of your head preventing your head from going up.  This gives you peng energy. Read more

Rion Swanson

Thank you again Master Chen and Allan for your time, energy, and patience this weekend at the seminar! It was excellent as always.
Below are a few brief notes. These are but a few key points and are as I remember so therefore may need correction! Read more

Master Chen mentioned in the last workshop about the concept of 45 degrees. He was referring if there was an incoming energy directing at you at 45 degrees, one way to react would be to push at 45 degrees w.r.t to your body. Doing a rotation would be the same thing.

Here is my understanding after thinking about it:
The outgoing energy will be perpendicular to the incoming force. For the rotation part, a tangent of a circle is always perpendicular to the centre, so it is the same thing.

Earlier today, I was doing some gardening at my backyard. I had to create a flower bed, so I needed to remove some existing grass. I was using this half-circular flat shovel usually used to create a nice edge. At first I was using it perpendicular to the ground, trying to cut through the grass and its roots by hammering it or stepping onto it. It didn’t really work. The shovel wasn’t sharp, and a fair amount of the force going down to the ground was bounced straight up back to my hand. By accident, one of the hits landed at 45 degrees to the ground, and on impact, the shovel slided across horizontally, and it worked much better like a knife this way, and my hand didn’t feel any rebounding force. I believed that this could be explained in physics, however, the more important point was that Master Chen demonstrated something quite similar before.

You push on something in one direction, and since the hand couldn’t get advancement, it went to a different place.

I found this taiji thought during gardening interesting.

What does it mean by not moving the hand?

Here is my understanding:

If I would like change the location of the hand relative to my body, e.g. the current location of the right hand is at the level of my belly button, and the destination is at my eye level in front of the right shoulder, how can I achieve that without moving the hand?

1. Don’t move the hand, but I can move any other part of the body to achieve the same result.
2. Keep the hand at the same coordinates in this three-dimensional space, and sink my body down, which in turn causes my elbow to go from above the hand to below the hand. Then perform the 2nd half of the positive circle.

2010-1-2
1、（腰胯）拉直后，无腰、无跨，此时可以保持腰不断劲。（沉肩、坠纣、头顶、双腿与丹田形成中轴——中正？）。 Read more

1. 出手不出肘；收肘不收手。 Read more