Another session in the park yesterday and it was nice. The weather wasn’t too hot so I was hyped and ready to rock. I started off the session with a little bit of zhanzhuang. The blowing wind and the quit sounds of birds really helped me get into the “special place” as I felt serene. I actually get into that zone much quicker when I do zhanzhuang outside than inside. I recall reading something in the Way of Energy book by Kam Lam Chuen mentioning the affects of doing zhanzhuang near trees. Maybe I established some sort of connection

After feeling gounded, I proceeded to go into the chen laojia yilu form. It wasn’t too bad, the flow was ok, but not as smooth as I had hoped for and wished for. Often times, I felt some tension in my wrists, especially during the kick part in the second section of the form. I think I was locking my wrists in weird angles a bit too much. I gotta straighten that line and let the qi flow to the fingers. Overall, it was a pretty good form, but nothing to be really excited about. Perhaps just more work.

Afterwards, I went into the yang long form. I really felt the flow and connection when doing this. Perhaps b/c I was really focusing on the structure and the alignment of my wrists and postures as it’s quite easy to do in the yang. I felt the flow, I felt connected, I just felt good. This reminds me of a comment I received from a reader of the blog, he stated:

In Yang style, you can’t hide behind a huge curriculum; you’re taiji is either good or it isn’t.

Wow.. how true is that? This is exactly what I’ve been feeling, but I want to keep an open mind to both the chen an the yang. I’ll do both until I feel that I really need to make a decision and really focus on path.

A friend of mine suggested the idea of having a primary and secondary art in training in case one of them strart to plateau or whatever, then things don’t get so boring. I’m curious if the primary and secondary should be in the same art. For instance, chen as primary and yang as secondary (or vice versa ), or perhaps taiji as primary and something like liuhebafa as secondary?

To me, the latter idea makes a bit more sense as I don’t have to worry too much about them interfering with one another. Also, with the LHBF, it’d primarily be focusing on the 12 animals of LHBF and their applications and body harmony. Have been away from LHBF for some time and going back and doing some of the dragon form, I kinda miss it. I really don’t consider the standing zhanzhuang to be a second art as I don’t really consider myself practicing yiquan as a system, but more just the standing element.

The idea of allowing the energy or incoming force to transfer to the rear heel is is pretty basic principle, however I must admit that I don’t really heed too much attention to this idea in my own forms practice. Sure, I consider the stability and alignment but I generally don’t think about the incoming energy transfer in a particular movement, but I think this needs to change.

I was sent the video of Chen Zhonghua’s (CZH) (aka Joseph Chen) 2005 seminar workshop (doesn’t appear to be available yet, but for other workshop videos see the following link) and towards the beginning of the disc CZH demonstrates a sort of fajin type of forward stepping technique. What became of interest to me was how the technique was vaguely similar to the “chicken step” method of xingyi and the idea of using gravity to your advantage when performing a technique. However, Joseph explained it a bit different and he spoke about how the first part is too be able to transfer any incoming force into the rear heel.

What then really caught me was how he explained a practical application for this usage and how it applied to the fajin technique. Basically, if the incoming energy is transferred to the rear heel, this means the forward foot can be lifted and moved because the energy has been sent to the rear. In application, this can be used to nudge oneself closer into an opponent and use the front leg as a fulcrum to apply pressure to topple an opponent. WHOA… This may not seem like much but it really made me think about the practical applications of taiji, but not just taiji but in any movement. This idea is making me rethink how I evaluate structural alignment. I used to evaluate it in terms of knee/toe/hip alignment but the flaws in any stance really come to light if force or pressure is applied.

Above is only my initial impressions of the video and I look forward to watching more. Joseph goes into such great detail and provides multiple examples from multiple levels and viewpoints that his principles come across loud and clear. Best of all, it’s in english which is a major plus for me!