In the positive and negative circles, the thigh rotates outward in the opposite direction from the turning of the waist. This, along with tucking in the tailbone and pushing out the lower back, helps to keep the front flat so as to attain “no indentation and no protrusion”. So if the front is flat then the kua can’t fold (indentation) and the butt can’t stick out (protrusion) so the kua must only move downwards as the thigh rotates outwards for this move.
Kham Serk
I wanted to say thank you as I succeeded to use what you taught us at the last seminar when facing a very bad situation. Last Friday, I was seriously verbally aggressed and threatened with a knife and taiji philosophy saved my life. I used a lot of psychology, lots self-control not to show my fear and to disarm my attacker, and good communication skills that also disarmed him. I managed to get out of the situation without a single scratch god thanks! I was thinking of those principles that you taught us and I used them in a psychological fight instead of a combat fight and it worked very well. Read more
I watched the Toronto Workshop 3-4 video today. I got a different understanding on the material presented. Although I was there at the workshop, I didn’t really understand much at the time as I was so new to Taiji. I had no clue on many of the concepts.
I just had my third taiji workshop with Master Chen in the last weekend (May 22-23, 2010). I had an extreme great time in this workshop. I was really glad to have him confirmed my little improvement thus far, in particular: my yilu form is starting to take shape, and I am not moving my hand (or at least as much as before).I would need to continue to work hard, so that I don’t regress, and hopefully continue to improve.
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.
Head Shaolin & Tai Chi Chuan Instructor
(Posted with permission from the author)
Within Chinese culture, any traditional skill may be passed down from master to disciple, whether it be martial arts, scholarly arts, painting, cooking, even the art of being a barber or an executioner. Becoming a disciple forges a unique bond between you and the long line of ancestors who forged your tradition before you. It is a very special relationship between master and disciple, full of ritual and meaning. You become family. However, like so many aspects of Chinese culture, it is woefully misunderstood by outsiders. Read more
Master Chen Zhonghua is a young person (aged 45 in 2005) of the old school. He is from an unbroken line of taijiquan lineage. He is much more concerned with the proper transmission of the art than the promotion of taiji for self defence and health. This is not to say that his taiji does not include these two aspects. Read more
5:00-6:00 pm
Most traditional Chinese martial artists use ‘internal’, i.e. the timed squeezing of their torsos, to STOP or brake the momentum of limb movement. What you do is to START (and brake and stop) the movements of your limbs using the timed pressure in your torso.
Hello all my Taiji brothers and sister!
I just registered this site, and breaking it in by dropping you all a line and say “hello”. I look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones on Daiqingshan this August! I will be accepted as a disciple! I am very excited about it!
Nicholas
This article first appeared in the May/June Issue of Brazil Tai Chi
Magazine (Revista Tai Chi Brasil), and has been translated from
Portuguese to English. Read more
