Got a chance to taste some pizza from Chen Xiao Wang over the weekend and man was it good 
I’m not sure I could handle anymore since my legs are pretty much shot right now. For those who haven’t been to a seminar with CXW, he kinda has 3 ways to teach corrections. He calls them Soup, Spaghetti, Pizza. If you ask for soup, you’ll get some light posture corrections, more like a general idea. With spaghetti you’ll get a bit more on the structural alignment in a pretty high stance, enough to make you feel the burn in the legs.
With pizza, it’s the whole nine yards. He asks you to get into a posture and tweaks EVERYTHING. With me, I had some tweaking in the angle and placement of my hips, shifting of the arms/shoulders/fingers, he ran his fingers down my spine and adjusted neck, mid back and mingmen area, he then went back an shifted my hips just enough to send a rushing pain down my right leg. I’m assuming his shifting released the tension in my hips and sent it all down into my thighs.
I had asked for corrections in one of the silk reeling exercises and his first deal is correct alignment. Then while I’m holding the posture in agony, he starts to walk me through the posture noting all the places the qi should be during each count (hand, elbow, should waist, dantien, etc). He breaks the exercise down into 4 counts. At each and every count, he’ll adjust again to make sure weight is not being shifted to compensate for the pain.. he has a pretty good eye for these kind of things. On top of that, if anyone asks a question, he asks them to come up and he demonstrates the corrections in front of the whole seminar audience. I literally had to try and look “into the distance” to keep my mind strong so that I would not collapse.
There were actually three brave souls who stood so long in postures and he kept tweaking them they there whole body began to shake and just when they’re about to fall to the ground he would catch them. Quite a sight! It was a great seminar and I really felt I learned a lot more about silk reeling, believe it or not, it was a 2 full day (around 6 hrs/day) of just silk reeling and standing meditation, but the amount of detail he gets into and his teaching method and corrections are just phenomenal!
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May 30, 2006 at 8:41 pm
From the Archives: Pizza From Chen Xiao Wang at wujimon
[...] Pizza From Chen Xiao Wang [...]
June 2, 2006 at 6:29 am
Where is the mind? at wujimon
[...] Before reading his post, I would answer the mind would be at the hand. When I learned taiji, I was taught the following qi/intention path (this is also emphasized by CXW and noted in a previous entry): [...]
June 26, 2006 at 5:54 pm
wujimon » Blog Archive » The Transmission of Touch
[...] Robi Sen writes about his recent experience in a workshop with Chen Xiaoxing. Reading his entry reminds me of my own experiences in a workshop with Chen Xiaowang, in that both entries relay the importance of touch. A lot of what’s written about taiji is really philosophical and esoteric which much chatter about universal energies and what not, but I whole-heartedly agree with Robi when he wrote: Chen Style has a tradition of teaching via touch. [...]
October 5, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Finding Our Taiji Learning Style « randomly wujimon
[...] I had the gross form sequence down pat before coming to class. These corrections were like the ‘Pizza’ in Chen Xiaowang talk. The class time frame was usually 1.5 hours and we would sometimes get through corrections [...]
November 21, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Where is Qi? « randomly wujimon
[...] and elbow region during this movement. Then it suddenly dawned on me, I had a flashback of my seminar with Chen Xiaowang, and remembered that he often asked folks: “Where is the qi?”. In this posture, [...]
February 19, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Chen Xiaoxing’s USA Seminar Schedule « randomly wujimon
[...] February 19, 2008 I missed Chen Xiaoxing (CXX) last time he came through the US, but he’s making his way around again. This time, I may have the opportunity to check him out! I’m pretty excited about the whole thing as the last time I attended a workshop was back in like 2004 (Pizza With Chen Xiaowang). [...]