Chen Zhonghua’s Absolute Beginners Online Lesson on August 17, 2020.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 34 min. In: English Year: 2020 Difficulty:1/5 At:Edmonton Chen Zhonghua Taiji Academy
Knowledge : Body and Posture
Chen Zhonghua’s Absolute Beginners Online Lesson on August 17, 2020.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 35 min. In: English Year: 2020 Difficulty:1/5 At:Edmonton Chen Zhonghua Taiji Academy
Master Chen Zhonghua’s Toronto Workshop March 2020-1
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 13 min. In: English Year: 2020 Difficulty:2/5 At: Toronto, Canada
In this video, Master Chen explained what it meant to have a tiger’s back and a bear’s waist, and how to practice it correctly. The close-up view allowed us to see his body movements, and how he corrected the students’ mistakes. It allows the body to be more structured, and the arms to move more freely, and not affect the body by mistake.
We will practice cave in the chest and round the back in the Power Hour Class on Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 8 am ET. http://voov.practicalmethod.ca
Thus far, the videos I have selected as curriculum have been focused on the functional aspects of using ones own bio-mechanical structure and the structure of the opponent to “take up space” for the gaining of strategic positioning and for martial purposes. The video “Step up to Ji” gave a basic procedure of how to make contact while matching power and move in other body parts that adhere to the Practical Method’s principle of separated and sequential movements. In the following video, “Move into Empty Space”, several lessons were taught by Master Chen in various ways to take up the opponents space and demonstrated a few examples of applications, such as going down and adding a dimension.
In this video, Master Chen teaches additional methods of taking up space by “whatever happens, you fill in the gaps”. It is taking out space, working with space, playing with timing, and/or playing with structure. The information from the previous video online classes come into play. Significant additions are made in this video that further advances ones’ repertoire on how to use ones’ structure and the intentional use of working with space as a means of building martial skills and abilities.
Master Wang Zhanjun uses the video clip “Sink the Waist to Press the Elbow and Whip” to analyze taiji in his teachings. The animation at the end was created by Xu Jingpeng. Master Wang is the son of Grandmaster Wang Xi An, one of the 4 Tigers of the Chen Village. Wang Zhanjun is also. Ten-time National Push-Hands champion in China.
31st Daqingshan Chen Zhonghua Practical Method Seminar.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: English Year: 2019 Difficulty:2/5 At:Daqingshan Chen Zhonghua Taiji Academy
31st Daqingshan Practical Method Seminar. Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: English Year: 2019 Difficulty:2/5 At:Daqingshan Chen Zhonghua Taiji Academy
This photo was taken on Nov. 20, 2012. Thanks to Wei Ping and the Phoenix Group!
Chen Zhonghua in Sedona 2012
Chen Zhonghua’s 31st Daqingshan Practical Method Seminar video. Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: Chinese Year: 2019 Difficulty:2/5 At:Daqingshan Chen Zhonghua Taiji Academy
31st Chen Zhonghua Daqingshan Practical Method Seminar video. Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: Chinese Year: 2019 Difficulty:2/5 At:Daqingshan Chen Zhonghua Taiji Academy
31st Chen Zhonghua Daqingshan Practical Method Seminar. Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: Chinese Year: 2019 Difficulty:2/5 At:Daqingshan Chen Zhonghua Taiji Academy
Master Chen Zhonghua’s Sept. 2019 Toronto Workshop on Practcal Method.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: English Year: 2019 Difficulty:2/5 At:Toronto
Master Chen Zhonghua’s Sept. 2019 Practical Method Workshop in the Toronto area.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: English Year: 2019 Difficulty:2/5 At:Toronto
Chen Zhonghua’s Sept. 2019 Toronto Workshop Videos.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: English Year: 2019 Difficulty:3/5 At:Toronto
Chen Zhonghua’s Sept. 2019 Workshop in Toronto.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 5 min. In: English Year: 2019 Difficulty:1/5 At:Toronto
Foot Hand Separation Exercise 2019.09.09 in Toronto, Canada.
With 6 sealing 4 closing, the forward fingers poke forward and the rear elbow pulls backward, and there is a straight line from the front finger to the rear elbow that stretches.
My practice is to take 3 random points and line them up.
For as long as I can remember my mother has been telling me that I have two crooked little fingers just like she has. It is nothing serious, if you look carefully, you may notice a little hump. As a young girl my mother had tried to make her little fingers straight by squashing them between the lid of her school desk. Somewhere along the line she must have come to peace with her crooked little fingers because she seems kind of proud that I inherited this quality from her.
Tile hand: my crooked little finger
Taken in June 2019
Taken in June, 2019
Taken in June 2019
Today, I trained with John Dahms. We discussed about creating a shell around ourselves to prevent ourselves from moving. Creating such a shell is only half of the equation, the other half is that we must stretch/expand the inside as much as possible. This is like a fight between containment and breakout. It is a conflict that we must find a resolution. I think of it as building up a bomb, and then doing a controlled release of the energy through a narrow tube aimed at the target. For this to work, the person doing the containment should be different from the person trying to break out, so that each person is not affected by the other person when performing the desired function. The difficulty comes when in reality there are no two people, but just myself. Ideally, I would be required to split myself into two. In actual practice, we need to use different body parts to perform these separate functions, so they don’t interfere with each other. These actions must be clear. Read more
During practice on Dec. 23, 2018, we were practicing how to move in after making contact with the opponent. The particular exercise involved the two right forearms touching at one point. One person attempted his best to prevent the opponent from coming in, including moving his arm around. Everyone did this exercise against the others one by one. One student observed that when I showed how to move in, the opponent always appeared to have stopped his arm movement as soon as I started to move in. Others would struggle to fight at the upper body or the arm with the opponent. I found that being an interesting observation. Another student commented that he didn’t react or do any subsequent action when I moved in because there was no feedback/trigger to tell him to do anything, and he would just “watch” me coming in. I further demonstrated what they tended to do, which was to push his hand/arm forwarded as they moved the body forward, in which case, the opponent would respond immediately and stop me from coming in possibly using different methods. There should be no push at any time. Read more
Precision is a word consistently used in Practical Method Taijiquan. But what does that mean in terms of practice? One aspect during Yilu is to not only complete the movement, but to know exactly where that move is aiming towards (which is why knowledge of applications is important). It is not enough to repeat the move, but to understand the energy alignment and aim. As our training continues to develop, and we become more aware of additional body parts (ie: to become aware of the elbow, become aware of the hip, etc.), we are able to aim more pieces towards the same objective – making the move more effective as each body part compounds power on the next.
That same exactness and consciousness of movement is required during push hands. When the foot is being moved, it’s not being moved forward or backwards, but to a very specific spot. The practitioner needs to be aware of exactly where that foot needs to be for that situation, and move it there with purpose.
Every interaction needs to move towards a goal. Too often we push to get a feeling of the other person, to practice getting in a favourable position, waiting for the opponent to make a mistake to capitalize on, etc. This is following our own familiar pattern. Within taijiquan we must be able to change the energy of the interaction without changing the shape.
Efficiency of movement is not changing the position/contact points in order to get into a place that is familiar to us. Rather, it is often to be able to capitalize on the position you are already in. Become comfortable despite being in an awkward position. You have to be able to let go of your ideas on what is a bad position in order to achieve a certain objective. It is often when we feel our body is uncomfortable that our body fights back, getting in our own way of being able to do what we need to do. The mind needs to let go first, train, and the body will follow.
http://practicalmethod.com/2010/05/yilu-detailed-applications-1-online-video-trailer/
Master Chen’s comments:
Read more
I have fascia problems that limit and sometimes interfere with certain movements originating from a car accident and then being pushed on my tailbone 15 years ago. In October, my physio-therapist told me that my hips are opening and to continue with whatever exercises I was doing. I simply said that I am doing a Tai chi form that emphasizes stretching. She indicated that the stretching was breaking up the fascia. Read more
This video describes in taiji what we do is equal and opposite to the result we desire.
Read more
We worked on a few different moves in the form today. The first 3 moves required standing on one leg.
- White Ape Presents Fruit (Drilled 50 times on each side)
- Kick with Right/Left Heel
- Turning Flower out of the Bottom of the Sea
- Punch to the Groin
- Punch to the Ground
- Turn Over Body and Double Kick
1) Maintain a non-moving vertical rod from head to left heel throughout the action.
2) Hold the right forearm in front of the chest with a fist, while the left fist is on the side of the body.
3) Throw the right fist down to the right side as hard as possible with a raising right knee to create a scissoring effect, while throwing the left fist up to the left ear.
4) There should be no tossing or turning of the body, but there is a spiral stretch along the vertical rod.
One of my corrections from Sifu during a private lesson in 2015 was on separation of hand from my head. For instance, when out with hand in Single Whip, as I placed emphasis on the stretches when my hand went out, my head would follow…this would occur at varying degrees, yet that isn’t relevant because any deviation of the head changes everything as I will get to soon.
Short lesson by Master Chen Zhonghua:
Today, we focused on the details of 3 foundation exercises:
- Twisting the Towel
- Fetch Water
- Six Sealing Four Closing
