Chen Style Taijiquan and Hunyuan Taiji email: practicalmethod@qq.com

Master Chen Zhonghua’s Toronto Workshop March 2020-3
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 9 min. In: English Year: 2020 Difficulty:2/5 At: Toronto, Canada

Movement is yin, and structure is yang. Master Chen demonstrated what that meant in this video. There were also other discussions on yin-yang theory, which requires constant practice and understanding.

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These are my notes from the 2 hour lesson Master Chen did on twist towel.  I missed the beginning of the lesson, so if anyone could fill in the gaps I would appreciate it.

• Redirect lightning through you to the ground

• When doing twist towel, lock the 2 ends, move the middle.

• We can’t actually not move the head, we are not open enough, but we try to move the head only 1 unit; the kua moves 3 units. (Something moves 2 units. I missed this.)

• the kua moves the hands. Like moving a book on the table. The book doesn’t move by itself.

• Our body has a tendency that every body part likes to follow the other body parts, but it’s just tossing

• You need to have independent moves

• When you hammer a nail, the swing is a swing, the straight line is a straight line. The hammer swings, the nail goes in straight.

• E.g. a kid jumping to reach a basketball net. They run fast, then stop under the net and jump up to reach it. They don’t use the run and convert it into a vertical jump

• Thrust is still there. Convert your run to the movement forward

• The vertical move is designed to power your arm

• First we try with bending at the waist forward and backward, but actually, it’s a vertical move

• The shoulder goes down, the heel pumps to move the kua up towards the shoulder

• We all need to re-calibrate. We think we are doing everything with the kua. Actually we are doing very little.

• Your hand is tied to your opponent

• Your kua needs to go to your elbow, not your shoulder

• This is a characteristic of our system. There are 3 parts to each move so it can apply to any body part

• Power comes from the kua, there are no individual moves

• Zhuo. Connect between kua and elbow. It means clutch.  Or to adhere.

• First we train to isolate body parts so that they don’t affect each other. Then they must be able to engage and disengage

• it is exactly gears

• The centre cannot move, you can’t reach out, you only extend

• This is the connection we want: the opponent is on your foot

• Kua very big, shoulder is zero

• During training; foot to kua to elbow to hand, this is the alignment

• During Push hands, when you touch your opponent; hand to elbow to kua to floor. Your opponent feels it on their foot.

• This was a characteristic when you touch grandmaster Hong. You touch him and you immediately feel like you’re floating, or something is wrong with your shoes

• Energy alignment (? I missed this)

• Application is 用法

• 打法 is free fighting

• The kua is the semi opposite of the hand. The foot is the complete opposite of the hand

• At first, when you begin learning, you use your kua to mirror the opponent’s hand.

• Then as you get better, use your foot to mirror your opponent’s hand. You mirror from below, so your movement is much bigger than your opponent’s move

Master Chen and Kelvin Ho provided instructions and corrections on the following Negative Circle procedure.

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