In order to reach the level of taiji practice that integrates body and mind connection, you need to declare war against your own body. A dialogue between the mind and your own body must be initiated. After that, most of the work must be done by the body, not the mind.
—Master Chen Zhonghua at the New Hampshire workshop in Sept. 2013.
Do not believe your body does what you think it is doing! Your body has a mind of its own and is quite independent of you. It does what it wants and what it is used to.
Photos of the workshop can be found on Facebook.
The following are my raw notes from the workshop:
- Create the arch in different segments of the body from hand to foot
- Don’t move the hand, stretch the elbow from the hand.
- Always aim at the largest part of the body since we shoot all over the place, and it’s useless. For now, the torso, later the spine, even later something smaller. Read more
Just arrived last night. Ready for the workshop today. Here are some photos taken this morning:
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Shot during private session in Germany, this video goes through several basic principles in generating different forces to unbalance opponent during push hand.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:2/5 At:Germany
In this video Master Chen went through detailed nuances of the circle via student corrections. This is the definite video for details in circle, the mother move for Chen Style Taijiquan. Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 41 min. In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:3/5 At:Vancouver
Bruce Schaub Push Hands Learning with Chen Zhonghua 2013 in Toronto, Canada.
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For those who went. please leave comments
Still Water is a coded term used in old Taiji manual on how tremendous power can be likened like a flow of water. Master Chen show how to train for this and its application.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 15 min. In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:4/5 At:Daqingshan
Tuesdays from 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Content of Classes:
- Fundamentals of Chen Taiji Practical Method Read more
In the context of the first move of yilu, Master Chen taught various students how to do it with stretch and power.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 12 min. In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:2/5 At:Daqingshan
Demonstration how thick and thin shape relate to power
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 10 min. In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:2/5 At:Edmonton
Correction from step back to jade shuttle and few more moves. Focusing on common error on elbow-hand relationship.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 6 min. In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:1/5 At:Edmonton
Theory and demonstration of relationship between power and movement.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 16 min. In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:2/5 At:Daqingshan
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Theory & demonstration of how to create additional dimension to generate a vectored power
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 3:29 In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:3/5 At:Edmonton
Name: Don’t Move The Original
The front graphic features Master Chen’s own calligraphy of 不動 meaning “Don’t Move”.
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If I were asked what I thought the key to learning Taijiquan was, I would have to say that it is the ability to break and change old habits, both physical and mental. Because habits are usually formed at a very young age and have gone unnoticed for so many years, most people are slaves to their habits. Bad habits are usually very difficult to identify and in most cases, nearly impossible to break. Like everything else, I feel that in order to be able to understand and deal with a certain issue, one needs to go deep into the mind and explore its roots and how it actually functions in the human psyche. Read more
A series of yilu corrections of different students during May competition, it is a good video to see how different each students do the Yilu portion and common mistakes.
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 40 min. In: English & Chinese Year: 2013 Difficulty:1/5 At:Daqingshan
Tai Chi skills are acquired accumulatively (through hard working). If you don’t have a solid foundation, it’s hard for you to advance. Even if you can do foundations very well, you still have to be able to implement them into yilu practice. Push hand skills/abilities are rooted in yilu. Master Chen has presented us an overwhelming amount of knowledge. What we need to do is to digest and piece together his teaching into our own unified body of knowledge. One skill leads to another skill. Through practice, we are getting better. The criteria of “better” is not how “fine” you can do an specific form. It is how many skills you can relate and execute at one point. To learn is to synthesize.
Once the student is more advanced and the process of opening up the body is well under way, the body will naturally start adopting many of the fundamental principles of Taijiquan. When the practitioner is able to demonstrate that his mind and body both have a good grasp of such things as connectivity, separation, differential in movement and spiraling, the body will be able to move in such a way that the limbs will be powered by rotations occurring in different parts of the body, much like a gearbox. Once this has been achieved, the next step is for the student to meticulously go through each move in the form and learn its applications. In this step of the systematic process, the student will be required to experiment with and refine all of his knowledge and understanding and start applying it to real situations. This will help consolidate and solidify the practitioner’s overall understanding of the different movements of the form as their function and purpose will progressively become clearer. This is the point where everything starts to finally make sense. Read more
Demonstration on how to use the hand to create a ‘catch’ on opponent
Presenter: Chen Zhonghua Length: 21 min. In: English Year: 2013 Difficulty:2/5
I am impressed with how much work these boys put into practice everyday, and I can see their progress. They have finished learning
Yilu and sword choreography and now learning the details
Around 4 pm there is some shaded area where we practice before dinner. Video below
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We did part horse mane stepping foundation, we just do these along a line. Master Chen said this move require rotation so the body move in a straight line and the arms movement need to keep elbow in.
Another moving foundation is synchronized double negative circle hand opening, during closing we turn the body 180 degree to face the other side, step, then open the arm again. Master Chen pointer is to not open the hand out until you have sure footing, you can not do action during stepping, need to be ’empty’. This is a common error when student step in during push hand, as the tendency is force oneself in. If the opponent feel force then he will immediately resist
Before I came to US in 1992, I only heard about Master Hong Junsheng’s Chen Style Taiji Quan Practical Method. In 1998, I met Master Chen Zhonghua in Phoenix at a martial art competition Read more
Rick is on the right with yellow shirt.I just spent 11 or so days on DQS for a short trip as a prelude to full time training in 2014. I live in Beijing and train with the Beijing group under Master Sun Zhonghua’s direction, via Master Chen putting us together this year. I am an international student of PM, arriving in Beijing as of May of 2013. I wanted to offer some insights and review for those thinking of coming to DQS for the first time, I write this for you.
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Go out to train at 5:30am and these youngest fulltime students were already jogging around the taiji circle
Morning lesson: Moving step double positive foundation, common error is linking of the torso with the arms.
Keep waist on a constant aim, while two arms circle in their own line. These three directions are independent of each other. Each arm circles are independent, don’t make the two arms movement linked.
We are doing it in three steps, forward-backward-forward, then turn 90 degree, forward-backward-forward, so the result is the body move forward in a line, while the stepping is in 45 degree directions.
Arriving in August, the sun is already up at 5 am, the temperature go up to 30 degree today, compared to 37 degree in Beijing where I stay a few days
morning lesson： sequence in push hand, ‘ding’, get in, push, if it doesn’t work, ‘zhuan guan’
I showed Beijing Rick last night that when being pushed, he has to learn to ‘ding’ instead of turning his body to neutralize. Master Chen often told me I was moving too much when doing it the wrong way.
‘ding’ is commonly used as 顶住 which mean withstand.
