Yilu Challenge

The Sydney Practical Method workshop will be back on Nov 29th to 30th, 2025. Discover Master Chen’s incredible Taiji skills and gain insightful guidance in your taiji journey. He has the missing piece that many people are looking for. New to the workshop? Prepare to be amazed. Returning participant? We look forward to training with you again.

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It’s been 10 years since I first visited Daqingshan and began my journey into Practical Method. This year, I had the opportunity to return so I took it.  Daqingshan remains an amazing place to train and refine your taijiquan.  The daily schedule maintains your focus and takes away distractions from learning.  The coaches provide finer detail, guidance, and are a source of inspiration for the results they have developed from years of dedicated training.  While my grasp of Chinese is still poor, it improved a lot in the last 10 years from listening to shifu’s Chinese lectures; I think I can understand about 80% of the taiji lectures versus 30% of the stories.

Some of my own learnings from this trip:

• Details in the positive circle to connect the power to my feet:
  1. The line is along the front inner thigh 45 degrees upward from the dantian. At the start of the first move, the tip of the hand (finger) is on the line.  The elbow is on the outside at about a 45 degree angle to the hand, to allow the arm to rotate into the line.  At the end of the first move, the hand and the elbow (the front forearm), the front kua, and the rear foot are all on the line.  Overall, the action pulls into the dantian while the outer points are pinned.  The front kua is high, the rear kua is low to line up with the rear foot.  The rear leg acts as a prop and the front leg maintains the angle of the prop.
  2. When turning the waist, the power is on opening the kua via the front foot such that both the thighs rotate.  The rotation must catch the elbow, and there should not be anything added by the arm or rear shoulder.  When it catches the elbow, the finger will be thrown outward by the rotation of the forearm, much like twisting towel.  Be sure to not turn the torso away from the line.  This error is most easily caught by looking for a toss of the rear shoulder.
  3. When sending out the hand, ensure the front kua does not move horizontally (typically caused by turning the torso) and that the rear knee does not move forward towards the hand.  The power is on the rear knee opening backwards.  The chest concaves and presses down to open the armpit, which presses down to open the elbow, which aims at the finger.  Overall, this keeps the shoulder capped so it doesn’t rise up.
• How I’m currently doing the negative circle (have yet to verify these points):
  1. Again the line is along the front inner thigh.  Starting hand position is the same as positive circle.  The rotation of the arm is opposite the positive circle.  Stretch the back of the front knee to bring up the front kua and concave the chest.  Stretch the body down and backwards to open the armpit and pull the elbow in from the top.  I believe the elbow will end up at the same point as the end of the second move of the positive circle.  The hand must not leave the line, or else you lose your pivot point for the rest of the move.
  2. The rotation of the waist catches the elbow and causes it to open to the hand, causing the arm to rotate, with the front hand and the rear foot on the axis.  Compared to step 2 of the positive circle, the thighs rotate in the opposite direction, by action of the rear kua opening.
  3. I believe the action on the legs is much like in step 3 of the positive circle, being on the rear knee.  Like in the positive circle, do not let the front kua escape sideways.  The front hand keeps its bearing on the 45 degree line.  The chest concaves, the armpit opens, and the elbow opens so that the shoulder does not rise.
• Proportional movements: Movements are proportional to a center. Relative to the center of the entire revolution, the rotation, the expansion or contraction must all be proportional, or else the center will be lost.
• Direction is incredibly important.  It is tricky too, because I have a tendency to toss towards the direction I am thinking of rather than stretch proportionally.
• Fist covering punch partner exercise:
  • Partner stands with belly on the fist, feet perpendicular to the person performing the action.  The partner puts one arm on the elbow of the punching hand and one arm on the back.  The outside points for this exercise are the two hands vs the belly.  The space within needs to expand by the action.
  • First, fill up the space to the fist with the chest, armpit, and elbow opening, enough to connect the foot to the hand.  The partner can add tension by squeezing the back and the elbow against the fist to the belly.
  • Rear knee opens backwards.  Power is on the knee, not added by anywhere else.  This should cause the hands of the partner to not move and the belly to get stretched back.  One error is a toss (both the partner’s arms and belly move in the same direction / equivalent to the actor’s shoulder or back moving forward with the fist).  Another error is to fight with the arm, which will feel like a fight against the points held by the partner.
• Finer points on turning flowers out the bottom of the sea (hai di fan hua):
  • Fix the head on the axis.
  • Point on the dantian over the raising leg does not move (neither vertically or horizontally).
  • Start with counter rotation of the waist, bringing the raising leg’s arm across the chest and the other arm down.
  • The standing leg’s knee is opening, as if standing up, but the torso has to squeeze down so that it doesn’t rise up.  It causes the dantian to rotate, throwing out the fists and bringing the knee up.
• We worked on a push hands move with Linda, but I don’t know if there’s a name of the move:
  • Step behind the partner’s front foot; you’ll be aiming along the line of the this leg, so it should position behind the partner’s tailbone.  One hand over the shoulder, the other closing up the front.  One side controls the front, the other controls the back.  Pull into the dantian.
  • Open the chest from the tanzhong point to the opponent’s weak point, aiming 45 degrees downwards.
  • It felt like one of the starting moves in the Hunyuan form to me.

We were at the Sydney Practical Method workshop. Master Chen was demonstrating a partner exercise with me, to show the attendees. The exercise was to fix the front foot, and I had my right leg in front of his left leg. Read more

• Circle: the circle drawn by the shoulder must be bigger than the circle drawn by the hand.
• Exercise: use a support for the front wrist, like a chair. The wrist cannot move (but it rotates). Do a negative circle with the rest of the body going up and down. The middle today is the shoulder, the two not moving ends are the rear foot and the front hand.
  Going down is physical at the beginning, later on is how we connect to the foot.
• Every move in Yilu is to tie and untie a knot, to lock and unlock the body. We need a lot of torque and twisting.
• Training process. We go from a unary system (based on one) to a binary system (based on two) to a ternary system (based on three). Three is stable, but not usable. So we go to a quaternary system (based on four) and we’re in chaos again and come back to stability in a quinary system (based on five). Five, like the five elements, means stable. Three is structural stable, five is rotation. To have stability in space, we need to rotate, we need to have five.
• The interaction between the five elements, based on Dantian/centre, means stability. Chinese value the colour yellow, like yellow earth. It represents stability and for this reason is the colour of the Emperor.
• Training exercise: “Fist draping over body”, “Lean with back”, “Fist covering hand downwards” with power. The intent: we have to throw something out of the body. At the beginning don’t worry about the structure, later on we can control it.

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• In fighting we need to be in a position where our opponent can only see our fist, not the body. (Can somebody please write the Chinese word for it? I recall the sound, but not the spelling). The ni position is the opposite, the body is exposed to our opponent.
• Kick with the heel: as we extend one leg ,the body has to go down for the kick to result in a straight extension. It has to remain on the track.
  Generally we have to remember: the pivot must be anchored (stability=dot), the movement must be on the track. In doing the Form we cannot add these things too early.
• Learn to listen to the sounds. Clothes, stepping, breathing… it gives us a wider view of the system. The ability of replicate the sound relates to the ability of replicate the move. “Body breaking wind” sound.
• To dig/scoop (chinese wa includes both concepts). We used “cloud hands” for training the digging. Lock the front hand and foot and use the middle (elbow-shoulder-kua) to dig. Lots of power on the kua, because of the kua cannot move, the resulting action is a rotation.
  To dig properly we cannot move the rear shoulder. Two body parts not moving, only move the middle. It is humanly not possible, we have two but we need three. If we can do a little bit of it, we already have uncommon abilities.
• In learning the count is one-two-three, in the real move everything is performed at the same time
• Increase differential: capacity to move the body without moving the outside.
• When we dig, we cut something off of our opponent

During the 12/22/21 English Zoom class, Master Chen showed some clips of Chen Xu aggressively overwhelming a student.  I think I saw how he did it.  Besides taking the student’s space, he moved as if he was a chainsaw; that is, just as the teeth on the chain bite into the wood and are pulled backward by the chain, Chen Xu’s feet caught on the ground and were pulled backwards, which pulled him forward.  He never punched or even pushed, he only pulled.  Even when he had pulled himself to the student he never punched or pushed.  He continued to pull, not so much with his legs, but with his arms as he clawed his way around the student.

Maybe the way you fight using tai chi is the same way a tiger attacks.  Predators never punch.  In fact, the only reason they extend their front legs is so that they can pull them back.  I don’t remember where this saying came from, maybe xingyi: ”The hand never comes back empty.”  In other words, the hand or claw is extended, grabs something and then pulls back.

So, I suggest an English name for Chen Xu: Chain Saw.  Chen Xu and Chain Saw even sound pretty much the same!

• For a while I had experienced tightness in the shoulder while performing Yilu. This is also apparent when practicing Basic Foundations, specifically in a three count Positive Circle right between Step 2 and Step 3.
• In a recent online lesson on 18th August 2020, an Master Chen gave an instruction on second count of the Positive Circle. Excerpt from Kelvin Ho’s notes http://practicalmethod.com/2020/08/64906/ In the 3-count positive circle: In with elbow, turn with kua, out with hand. When we do turn with (front) kua, the rear kua does not move. This action itself has already started to drive the hand out. When the front kua can’t go anymore, we open the armpit, and the rear knee while the rea kua is still not moving.
• After practicing according to this instruction by sequentially focusing on (1) opening the front kua, then (2) the rear knee and armpit. This completely changed my Basic Foundations and Yilu.
• When splitting in step (1), there is a clear ‘hit’ point where continuing the action beyond this will cause the front shoulder to get stuck, the chest will pop, and the torso will toss sideways.
• By locking in position at the ‘hit’ point and switching to open the rear knee and armpit without moving the rear kua, the split in step (1) is continued while the body itself remains stable.

1. Front Kua splits to
2. Rear Kua / Front Shoulder / Front Knee
3. Rear Knee / Front Elbow / Front Heel
4. Rear Heel / Front Finger / Front Toes

• These moves are sequential.
• What is done must be maintained. Nothing can be undone.
• Overall there is only one outcome of splitting on the 45 degree line.
• In each segmented step, the action is on a specific body part. In order not to break this action, the other body parts adjust in position without themselves moving.
• Different body parts are used to complete the one action in a sequential order.
• In the final step, the end result is that the power is on the front finger and rear heel.