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Lately, I have been coming across more and more references to the ‘Taiji Bell Body’. One explanation I have heard is to extend the dantien in front and the mingmen behind you in such a way that your body creates a bell shape. Ok.. sounds about right, but how?

Then, I ran across the following definition which outlines the 5 points that make up the Taiji Bell Body (Source: Yang 22 Movement Extract by Wei Shuren):

1. Neck - The hoop that maintains the bell. Movable.
2. Chest - ‘dead’ zone, unmovable
3. Waist - central point, movable.
4. Midpoint between waist and tailbone - unmovable
5. Tailbone (Coccyx) - clapper of bell, movable

One thing about the 5 points caught my attention, that is the idea of the tailbone being movable. Maybe it’s a subtle movement, but in my own practice, I don’t consciously try to move my tailbone much at all. In fact, I generally try to keep it elongated as I’m working on the ‘head up, tailbone down’ bow in my own practice.

There is not that much information floating around the web regarding the Taiji Bell Body, so I am unsure about it’s significance.  Regardless, the concept of the “Taiji Bell Body” is something I will put on the back burner for now until I understand it. Practice, practice, practice

Last night after about 20 minutes of zhan zhuang standing meditation, I do as I normally do, that is go into the Yang long form. However, this time, I mixed things up a bit and did “zhan zhuang taiji”. This is basically, taking the form but then holding movements for an extended amount of time.

For me, I have gotten into the habit of holding each posture for about 6 breaths. The amount of time can vary depending on how deep my breathing has gotten. Additionally, instead of just holding the end postures of the movement, I decided to hold each transition posture. The simplest example to illustrate this would be to hold the “step forward” transition in between 2 consecutive brush knee and push steps.

In this type of practice, I can really feel all the tension held in my body. As such, I have changed things a bit to have a higher and narrower stance. One interesting tidbit was to notice at what point I began to feel tension in my rear supporting leg when stepping forward.  This exercise really impacted the length of my step!

One of the harder postures to hold was the ‘raise hand’ posture in Yang style. This was causing quite a bit of strain in my left leg. I guess I have been neglecting this type of posture or just merely glossing over it in my practice.

I remember the first time I did this kind of training was under the TT Liang Yang style camp. Normally, the TT Liang form is done to music with Master Liang counting the beats in the background. Each posture has a set number of beats. For example, Raise Hands would be done to 2 beats, while Single Whip was done to 6 beats and brush knee was done to 4 beats. Sometimes the teacher would mix things up and have us hold the end posture for 6 beats of a metronome. While appearing simple, if we really try it and not try to make it an endurance exercise, it can really shed lot of light about the tension in our bodies.

I vividly remember a class in which I asked the instructor “how high should we kick in the form”. He said you should kick about as high as you can easily do 6 repetitions of the kick on one leg. The instructor then lined us up, put bean bags on our heads and had us do about 6 sets of 6 repetition kicks on each side. Since I had come from a wushu taiji background, my kick was done slowly and with the heel about nose height, but after doing the above exercise, it slowly moved down to about solar plexus height.  Now, I do heel kicks about abdomen height and toe kicks about chest height.

On a side note, I called the event organizer of an upcoming Fong Ha workshop and he basically said to be prepared to do about 1.5 - 2 hrs worth of meditation a day! I am still around the 20-25 min mark in my zhan zhuang training, hopefully by the seminar I’ll be around the 40 min mark.

“Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

– Henry David Thoreau

More and more, I have been noticing a shift within my own training. The main emphasis has been zhan zhuang with a sprinkle of form play thrown in the mix. The shift is I don’t really worry about ‘how I look’, ‘how low is my stance’ or ‘how is this fajing’ anymore.  Additionally, the whole martial side of the fence has taken a back burner for now.

Am I becoming a “Tai Cheese” practitioner or one of those “Rainbow Taiji Folks”? Perhaps, but I think it really is about perspective. I have no grandiose dreams that I will be able to bounce someone off me using empty force energy or like that.. right now my main goal is to feel healthy and enjoy my practice. 

I really wonder about the role of fate and it’s play in my own life. There have been some major changes on a personal/family/professional front within the past couple of months and it’s eerily coincidental similar changes are happening on my taiji goals and training.

This reminds of of the “Uncarved Block” in the Tao of Pooh:

One of the basic principles of Taoism is P’U, the Uncarved Block. The essence of the Uncarved Block is that things in their original simplicity contain their own natural power, power that is easily spoiled and lost when that simplicity is changed.

Source: Just-Pooh.com - The Tao of Pooh

In light of Ralph’s “One Hundred Days“, I decided the timing was right to jump in myself and train consistently for 100 days. I am actually planning to attend an upcoming workshop by Fong Ha, a practitioner of Yang Taijiquan and Yiquan. It just so happens the workshop is roughly 100 days away! What a coincidence.

Last night’s zhan zhuang began with a rough start. I was a bit tense after a long day. I started off with a basic wuji stance with hands at my sides. I kept the stance pretty high without a desire to go low. Right off the bat, I could feel the tension in my hips and thighs. My mind was wandering, and images of The Peaceful Warrior flooded my mind where Nick Nolte asks the young athletic if he can ’stand like this’ and proceeds to do what I think is a zhan zhuang embracing the balloon posture. I pushed the thoughts out and focused on the inner smile.

Practicing the inner smile allowed me to really sense the tension in my body. The tension in my lower back was brought to the front of my attention. To address this, instead of tucking the pelvis, I worked on lengthening. I picked up this exercise a while back. Basically, instead of forcefully tucking one’s pelvis under, I imagine a pulling down force that causes my lower back to straighten. While they may sound the same, the latter has worked out very well for me.

As I was lengthening, my hips were slightly flexing causing me to sink a bit lower in my stance (maybe 5 degrees or so). The more I did this, the more I began to feel as if I was sitting on a chair! It literally felt as if an invisible chair was behind me supporting my body. The tension in my thighs and hips dissolved.

Next, I incorporated the imagery of head erect, but instead of hanging from above, I imagined something pulling me from above. While keeping both forces (down through tailbone, up through head) I began to feel as if I was floating, yet firmly rooted.  The more I pulled up on my head, the more the tension along the inner side of my arms went away. It was wildly strange, yet very exciting at the same time because I felt as if I tapped into something and I did not want to stop.

The coolest thing about the whole ordeal was it literally felt as if I was maintaining the universal post or standing stake zhan zhuang posture WITHOUT EFFORT. I was not trying (physically nor mentally), I was just there, just in it, just being. This sorta felt like my previous zhan zhuang adjustments, however this time, I was not leaning forward, I did not feel like I was going to fall backwards, and the whole ‘pulling from above’ added a new dimension to the stance and training that I have never experienced before.

After zhan zhuang I went into the Yang Long form and instantly I noticed a difference. I felt very grounded and rooted in my movements. I was not doing the minor adjustments to my stances, I was not checking my transitions, all of it just flowed and moved very smoothly. The brush knees were executed without hesitation and adjustment during each transition. Overall, the form felt much, much better.

Man.. this could not have come at a better time as I am still experiencing some knee pains.  Anyhoo, while perusing taiji literature, I ran across the following passage:

7. The knees

Avoid downward pressing of the knees. Imagine the knee is always directed upwards when squatting down, pushing forward or forming a horse stance.

– Source: Neigong.net - The Quintessence of Wu (Yuxiang) Style Taijiquan

In my own training, I have been intently focusing on sinking down into the soles of my feet. I imagine the tension in my body going down into the ground. As such, when I do feel some strain in my knees, I imagine that tension going down. I guess, in a way, I am willing the pain to go down into the ground. However, after reading the above passage, my mental intent is most likely resulting in a downward pressing of the knees!

So, in doing some zhan zhuang, I imagined my knees directing up. Whadda ya know.. less strain. I tried some side to side chen style shifting, less strain. I formed a bow stance and imagine the knee pushing forward, less strain. The strain is lessening to the degree that I barely feel any strain or tension in the knees.

Amazing what a little bit of intention can do..

Since I don’t often practice taiji in front a mirror, I catch myself looking down to check my stances. I have been corrected on this more than a couple of times from my Chen taiji instructor. He would tell me to try and *feel* the correct alignment instead of looking down to check.

What this ultimately means is I still have difficulty keeping the first point of the 10 essential principles of taiji as noted by Yang Chengfu. That is:

An intangible and lively energy lifts the crown of the head.
This refers to holding the head in vertical alignment, with the spirit threaded to the top of the head. One must not use strength; using strength will stiffen the neck and inhibit the flow of chi and blood. One must have the conscious intent of an intangible, lively, and natural phenomenon. If not, then the vital energy will not be able to rise.

– Source: WhyNaturalHealth - 10 Essentials of Tai Chi Theory

I guess it really means that my basics are not quite there, else why would I need to check my stances? In fact, a bow stance should be ingrained within my body now, but I admit that it’s not. Sometimes, I feel the width of my stance is too narrow or the angle of the rear foot is just not right. Another thing I will check is the angle of my shin in relation to the ground (going for a 90 degree angle here).  Additionally, for some reason, the angle of my rear foot in repulse monkey is never truly *right*…

For some reason, I have a problem with single legged stances. In golden rooster stands on one leg, I often check the alignment of my hips because I will usually sink into the hip of the weighted leg to compensate for my lack of balance resulting in the plane of my hip extending beyond the edge of my foot.  I check for this type of thing in every balance or single legged posture.

Maybe if I practiced in front of a mirror or recorded myself on video more I would not have to check myself during form practice… Anyhoo.. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing as I am more aware of my own shortcomings, but looking to check stances must be rectified if I am to adhere to the first principle and keep my head on tight

Over the past couple of days, I have had to stop practicing due to experiencing sharp knee pains. Now, this is not a new thing as I have always had knee pains, which I attributed to my high flying, low stance training Wushu days. However, the only major difference in my training is that I have been focusing on Chen Taiji instead of Yang Taiji…

Over time, I became a bit leery about Chen Taiji due to the high emphasis on side-to-side motions within the form and stances. In fact, the signature Chen stances (lazy tie coat, single whip) are all side shifting stances. While at first, this may seem like no big deal, but IMO, my knees feel MUCH better if I do forward-back motions instead of side-to-side motions. Perhaps this is a sign of fate, eh?

Based on the picture of knee anatomy, a majority of my knee pains feel like they are coming from the medial and lateral meniscus. In an article called, “Runner’s World: My Knees Ache” I could have Patellofemoral pain.

[A] Patellofemoral pain can be caused by alignment problems, damage to kneecap cartilage, overpronation, or muscle/tendon weakness or tightness. … Strength training, wearing a knee brace, taping your arches or wearing an orthotic, and replacing worn shoes or wearing motion-control shoes can help.

I used to wear those Polyurethane knee braces but then took those off. I have been trying to pay careful attention to the alignment of my knees, especially the knee to toe alignment.  I have switches shoes and now wear indoor soccer shoes with high arch support for training (though doesn’t help when I train indoors, which is most of the time). 

However, one thing I notice is that I feel the pain pretty sharply during side-to-side motions (as stated above) and during transitional movements within Chen, especially during the transitions that include the foot stepping out sideways. 

I found a passage that talks about “Q Angle“:

Q Angle. Although some investigators believe that a “large” Q angle (Figure 3) is a predisposing factor for Patellofemoral pain, … “normal” Q angles vary from 10 to 22 degrees …

– Source: Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome: A Review and Guidelines for Treatment

Does this mean the knee should not move more than 22 degrees sideways? Perhaps my hips and butt muscles aren’t strong enough leading to insufficient support during knee tracking?  Alternatively, I have often heard that if your hips are not loose and flexible enough, then your knees may hurt and to raise your stance until you attain a certain amount of flexibility and softness in your hips/kua. In my own practice, I have raised my stance to the point that I bend my knees maybe 15 degrees (very high stance compared to the chen 90 degree parallel thigh goal…) and I still encounter the issue.

Anyhoo, I think my solution will be to cut back on Chen Taiji and start doing some stretching and strengthening exercises shown on the FamilyDoctor.Org website.  Oh well…

I am a practitioner of abdominal breathing and during one of my sessions, I recalled a memory with an old chen teacher of mine. He was talking to the class about abdominal breathing and the roles of ‘heng and ha’ within the taiji form. He then proceeded to tell us that we should try to “Breathe with the Back”. We all sort of looked at him a but funny.  The instructor then got into a Chen stance, and then did some abdominal breathing. He gestured to each one of us to come and but our hands on his lower back.  To our surprise, his lower back was expanding with his breath!

To this day, I am still unable to do this! I guess it means I need more training or need to relax my core a bit more to allow my diaphragm to expand. I then found the following passage:

When our breathing is full and deep, the belly, lower ribcage, and lower back all expand on inhalation, thus drawing the diaphragm down deeper into the abdomen, and retract on exhalation, allowing the diaphragm to move fully upward toward the heart.

– Source: Deep Breathing Exercises

Come to think of it, I think my abdominal breathing is more focused on breathing with the belly instead of trying to engage my diaphragm!

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).

I have always been a fan of CXX’s flavor and execution of Chen Style Taijiquan. He has this relaxed and flowing demeanor and cadence about him that I really dig. I’ve often noted that to me, he’s like a mix of Chen Zhenglei and Chen Xiaowang, but has his own personal flavor and flair.

After contacting my local event organizer, it seems the content of the seminar will focus on movement principles and posture corrections through Silk Reeling Exercises (SRE) and Laojia Yilu. This is perfect!  HOWEVER, the down side is most of my current taiji training has been focusing on Yang Style Taijiquan

But on the flip side, this feels like an opportunity that I should not pass up. So, that means that I will be switching gears and doing some more Chen to get up to speed and prepare myself for the seminar. It would be a shame to attend the seminar, only to be tired out within the first couple of hours or so…  It sounds funny, but for those who have never been to a weekend seminar before, the goal is to work on one’s endurance leading up to the seminar. After all, each day will consist of anywhere between 6-8 hours of taiji per day!

For more on Chen Xiaoxing, check out Kungfu Magazine: The Simple Wisdom of a Village Grandmaster. For a clip of Chen Xiaoxing in action, check out:

URL: http://youtube.com/watch?v=fJQLQ4ITRA8

URL: http://youtube.com/watch?v=MwDUqtXLGc8

URL: http://youtube.com/watch?v=WoMMkdiRNFM&feature=related

The seminar schedule as well as some contact information:

Grandmaster Chen Xiaoxing’s USA seminar schedule - 2008

April 19/20 - Seattle, WA
kim@embracethemoon.com
http://www.embracethemoon.com/

April 26/27 - Chicago, IL
aloria@uchicago.edu
http://home.uchicago.edu/~aloria

May 3/4 - Washington D.C.
stefan@truetaichi.com
http://www.truetaichi.com

May 10/11 - Bellmawr, NJ
mitchmagg@aol.com
http://www.angelfire.com/ma4/taichi/index.html

May 17/18 - San Diego, CA
tao@taoistsanctuary.org
http://www.taoistsanctuary.org

** Details and links courtesy of ChenWired: GM CHEN XIAOXING’s USA seminar schedule - 2008

I take the same route to work every morning, yet this morning, something felt different. Perhaps it was the snow on the branches or the beaconing light of the service truck that made the route feel “new” again. I’m not sure, but it was a strange feeling, one that I have not felt for some time.

I have started reading the book, T’ai-Chi Ch’uan Lessons with Master TT Liang again.  I have read the book before, but this time through, things feel new.  The simplicity of the format and message make more sense now than they did before. Passages that I threw aside as mumbo jumbo now have more meaning.

Repulse the monkey is no longer just some arm movements, but it now had deeper meaning than it once did. From the outside, the movement appears simple, yet executing this simple movement can take years of practice to master.

Sing … as if no one is listening.

Dance … as if no one is watching.

Love … like you’ve never been hurt.

Live … everyday as if it were your last

Last night during zhan zhuang, I had quite a difficult time releasing the tension from my calves. I tried to use quite a bit of mental imagery of melting down, sinking to bubbling well and into the earth, etc etc, but it was difficult.

Then I remembered a story I read about TT Liang encountering a taoist recluse in the mountatins. I believe the story goes that Liang was showing him the form and when he got to the ‘rooster stands on one leg posture’ the taoist said, ‘no good, no good’. The taoist then approached Liang, touched his calf and said ‘wood’. The taoist then did the posture himself and asked Liang to touch his calf and to Liang’s amazement, it was soft as cotton.

At this point, I would say my calves are like decomposing wood, still slighty soft, but brittle. Softer than metal, but not as soft as wood. Someday, perhaps I can achieve cotton.

Not sure if it’s the reduction in coffee, the increase in sleep, the increase in meditation or all of the above, but lately I’ve been feeing much more ‘alert’ when I do taiji. I have basically modified my own schedule to include zazen and zhan zhuang before bed. In addition, I have cut out ALL coffee intake and try to get to bed by 10pm resulting in an average of 6.5 hrs of sleep a night.

In the past, I have written about how felt sleepy during meditation [If you're tired then sleep] but lately I no longer feel tired. Sure, sometimes I don’t ‘feel’ like meditating and would rather just go straight to bed, but I choose to ’sit hard’, and ‘just do it’.

I start off the session with some basic breath counting, usually 2 cycles of 10 counts, and then I just sit. Even if I start off the zazen session tired, once I get into it, I feel very alert.  Time also seems to pass by much quicker now and I don’t have as much pain in the back or legs as before.  When I feel like it, I then switch over to a standing zhan zhuang wuji posture and then cycle through a couple of yiquan postures.

With the energy flowing, I go straight into some form practice. Lately, I have been concentrating 90% of my time on Yang taiji.  There’s just something about the Yang form.. plus, when I have tried chen, my knees will soon start to hurt, even in a high stance. I still think it has a lot to do with the side to side shifting in Chen, whereas the Yang is more forward and back movements. My knees like forward and back movements

It is quite nice to go directly into form work after a good session of meditation. My mind is clear and I feel alert. A couple of nights ago, I felt as if my eyes were like a hawk flying through the air looking for the mouse in the field. I know.. a bit cheesy on the imagery, but that’s exactly how I felt. As I moved, I was completely aware of my surroundings and body. My steps were light and nimble and I exerted just enough muscle to correctly form the shapes I was after.

One of the nice side effects is I have absolutely no issue falling asleep afterwards. Before, I used to be a bit wired and found it slightly difficult but now it’s a cinch. I likey

After reading about the free trial to Chen Zhonghua’s online workshop, I had to give it a try. So, I went the online workshop home page and read the description about membership benefits. They are as follows:

Contents updated weekly, bi-weekly or monthly in the following:
Learning through video clips. Online video with written

instructions. Mini Lessons on concepts and techniques.
Section on Common Errors in Taiji learning.
Online discussion forum. Daoist/Taiji stories.
Discount products on select items. Workshop listings.
Direct online submission to a variety of sections.

Sign up NOW to receive information and benefit FREE.

Okay, sounds cool. So how do I sign up? It was a little confusing for me at first, but I had to look around for the ‘register’ link on the webpage. I have updated the benefit summary above with a direct link to the registration page. After getting to the registration page, you MUST click on the ‘FREE’ icon to sign up for the 3 month free trial. After that, you will receive an email that is used for validation purposes.

After loggig into the site as a registered member, I notice a little section in the lower left hand corner that is listed as a “Private Shop for Registered Members”. This is basically a little store where members can purchase things like a video clip of Hong Junsheng and Xu Guicheng Push Hands for $1.00, 2002 Hunyuan World Notes PDF for -$0.12 (that’s right, a negative costs for an item. I guess it must be free then??), and payment methods for attending workshops and classes. Nothing too fancy yet..

The “User Menu” contains links to instructional videos, notes, routine names, free downloads. Being the cheapskate that I am, the first thing I checked was the free downloads.  Most of the free material was workshop registration and waiver forms. However, also under the PDF section was the 2002 Hunyuan World Notes PDF that was referenced in the store section. I guess it’s free after all! This PDF contained roughly 6 pages of notes covering positive/negative circles and other important points for practice. Definitely a good read and worth time to register for the site!

The “Advice” section contained articles about workshops, some stories (most found in other places on the net) and quotes. Then I noticed a section called Mini Lessons.  These were little training tidbits to keep in mind while practicing taiji.  A lot of these contained quotes from Hong Junsheng. Some of the snippets were written by Chen Zhonghua. Others were written by “Administrator” and “Editor”.   Personally, I think it would be nice to have a consolidated page dedicated to Chen Zhonghua’s mini lessons instead of mixing it in with other authors.

Next I headed off to the “Common Errors” section of the site. This is of interest to me as I find the Hong Practical Method as taught by Chen Zhonghua  to have different perspectives on the ‘principles’ of taiji (Ex: Misunderstanding Double Heavy?).  One of the more interesting articles was about habit and learning. To find out what that is, you’ll have to register on the site and read for yourself

The “Instructional Videos” section mostly contained links to videos on Youtube with some extra text commentary.  The commentary is pretty good and definitely adds an extra dimension to the material.

I tried to check out the forums, but unfortunately they were down.. :(  I was hoping to read about some interesting discussions between Chen Zhonghua and some of his students. Perhaps it will be up and running before my trial ends.

I then tested out the “Direct Submissions” feature where I can submit my own FAQs and news, but I got a message stating I was not allowed to submit. When I clicked on my ’subscription page’, I was taken back to page that asks me if I want a free trial or pay for membership.

Overall, it’s not bad for a free three month trial, but I was hoping for more. Actually, I was hoping for some kind of feedback system where you could submit a video of yourself to Chen Zhonghua for some personalized feedback. This was the first thing that came to mind for me when I read ‘online workshop’.  Perhaps something like this could be implemented on the site’s forum where you post a video of yourself online and have critique come from either Chen Zhonghua or some of his disciples. That would be super cool IMO.

Perhaps given more time, the forums will be in working order and the site will be redesigned a bit to make navigation easier. I’m keeping my fingers crossed as this could really turn out to be something cool depending upon implementation and dedication of the community members.

Last night I was doing some single handed silk reeling exercises and noticed I had a bit too much tension in my arm during ‘count 2′ of the exercise. To briefly describe the posture, count 2 of the single handed silk reeling exercises consists of the weight being mostly centered, hips and shoulders squared facing forward and arm/hand in front of the body.

Basically, I felt there was too much tension in my forearm 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, the answer to that question is dantian. Then I placed my mind on the dantian and lo and behold, I instantly felt the tension release from my elbow and forearm!

It’s amazing how much control the mind has over the body. I realize more and more the key is going back to the basics. When in doubt, go back and review the foundational material. Review zhan zhuang (standing meditation) and seek to find it’s connection to the current issue. Review silk reeling and look for connections. I remember asking my instructor how much standing and silk reeling should a person do in relation to form work. His answer was it depends on how good the person’s silk reeling and standing is….

There’s this age old saying:

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

I often think about this quote as it relates to my own situation. Basically, I like to hop and try to look for ‘the next big thing’. Over the past year, I’ve considered hopping within the Chen Style framework, thought about Wu Style, and proceeded to relearn Yang style on my own.

A buddy of mine once told me that most people will hit a plateau in taiji training. The first time I hit one hard was during my training of single handed silk reeling. I was really getting into silk reeling training when suddenly, my single handed methods just didn’t feel right. I got pretty frustrated with pushing myself over and over that I basically stopped doing single handed silk reeling all together. I would still do the double handed silk reeling and dantien rotation stuff, but totally skipped the single handed.

It wasn’t until I attended a workshop with Chen Xiaowang and got a good dose of pizza, that I finally was able to break through the barrier of the plateau. Once again, I saw progress, there was a clear path and goal in my training. But once again, the test of solitude has taken it’s toll and I began seeking other routes and methods.

Last time, it was single handed silk reeling connection, the current time, it was the integration of Chen Xiaowang’s ‘one posture, two movement principle’:

You have the one posture, two movement principle:The first principle the dantien moves side to side, turning, spiraling,and changing. Connection as above (standing post), maintained in moving, dantien moves the body responds. The second principle the dantien moves forward and backward. The movement corresponds to the dantien movement to another — transition from one movement to another — fundamental. Not spiraling. Once you understand the posture and the movement principles you understand all forms, applications, or any weapon. If you don’t understand these principles, you are like a tree without roots and you can’t grow.The two movement principles can combine into one because of the similarity.The chest/waist change the move, opening and closing.

– Source: Tai Chi Chuan Pedagogic Center - Discussions with Chen Xiaowang

Basically, it can be said that all movement within the form can be broken down into either a side-to-side movement of the dantien or a forward-backward movement of the dantien. Each physical movement stems from the rotation of the dantien. Each physical movement is a manifestation of dantien rotation.

Okay, that sounds easy enough, so why is this so hard to integrate into form training?  Within the silk reeling context, there is a mind component in conjunction to the dantien rotational thought. Basically, the mind or ‘yi’ (intent) travels around the body during the execution of the movement [for more see: Where is the Mind?]

To take the analogy one step further, each posture of the form can be broken down into their silk reeling components. The simplest example is to take ‘wave hands like clouds’ and view that as two alternating single handed silk reeling motions. After identifying the silk reeling component, tack on the mind intent path and then mix in the dantien rotation while keeping 50% of the mind empty. Doh!

It’s easy to see now that I was often violating the last part above about keeping 50% of the mind empty and relaxed. As quoted from the above linked article, “Half the mind concentrates on the movement itself, the other half of the mind is empty or open”.

So, taking things full circle, I believe after taking a break for a while, I am now able to come back and tackle the integration of taiji concepts into my forms training again. I’ve been doing Chen taiji for the past couple of weeks and must admit, it feels good. I really like the standing meditation, silk reeling is making me feel good and alert and forms training is fun again. I no longer cringe like I used to.

When people ask me for advice on whether they should go buy a book or DVD to learn a new style, I often tell them just to practice what they already know and have received formal training in. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”  Sounds like good advice.

Last night, my son decided to try and follow along during my form practice. I started off with the ‘hotel taiji’ versions of the sets, that is the first 5 movements of the long form. First was Yang, then to mix it up I did some Chen. He was able to follow along well with the Yang but during the Chen, I noticed he was mainly just shifting back and forth in a horse stance.

It’s been quite a while since I did Chen, and after seeing my son try to mimic me, I noticed something about the Chen. While on the outside things appear to just be shifting horizontally side to side, there’s quite a bit more going on. More specifically, in my own practice I noticed more ‘twisting’ of the thigh muscles during the transitions.

For example, in Lazy Tie Coat, there is a right sideways shifting motion. Instead of just shifting directly to the side and sticking the arm out, I recalled the idea is to shift first, then turn. That is, shift the hips to the right, while maintaining the correct alignment between the outer edge of the foot and the right hip. Only after the shift has been completed, do I begin turning the body towards the right, thereby opening the right arm.

While this is all basic stuff, the thing that I noticed right away was a feeling of ‘dynamic tension’, I felt as if my body was wringing a towel dry, that sort of twisting nature. I was able to feel the ‘twist’ through my legs, up the torso and into my arms.. very nutty!  It’s been a while since I felt this type of thing as I have mainly been focusing on Yang style. Perhaps this dynamic tension and twisting is also found in Yang too. If so, I haven’t quite found it in my Yang practice yet.

I think a majority of taiji classes on the market basically consist of a monkey-see, monkey-do approach. That is, someone in the front of the class is working through a form and the individual person tries their best to follow along. I used to train in this yang style studio and on my first day of class, I was thrown into the mix and tried my best to work my way through the ENTIRE yang long form!  Sure, I had someone in all four directions from myself to follow, but it was quite a feat and very humbling at the same time. Quite frankly, I didn’t want to go through that ordeal again..

But then after the initial group run of the Yang long form, we broke out into smaller groups and worked on various parts of the form. Since I was a beginner, I was grouped with other newbies and we worked the open taiji and first grasps swallows tail with a senior member of the class.  The corrections were very high level and usually focused on form sequence.  This was the basic structure of the class. If you wanted more correction or ‘face time’ with the head instructor, it usually entailed getting private lessons. From what I heard, private lessons lasted 1 hour and costs about $40/hr or so. Topics ranged from philosophical insights to physical form corrections to applications.

With my first Chen instructor, the class size was pretty small (around 5 students), so it had a different vibe to it. There was some ‘follow along’ in the beginning of the class to briskly do a single execution of whatever form we were working on at the time. After that, he would normally teach us the next couple of postures in the set and then individually work with folks on corrections.  The corrections in this class were mostly on form sequence with some detailed physical corrections sprinkled in. The physical corrections addressed things like formation of the wrist in a given posture, the height of the hand, the angle of the elbow, the arc of the circle, etc.

With my second Chen instructor, the classes were pretty much all private and consisted primarily of physical corrections. It was assumed 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 for 2-3 moves. I’m serious, we only covered 2-3 moves in 1.5 hours, but the corrections were very detailed. These topics ranged from dantien rotations, qi intention path, angle and motion of the kua, testing of ‘fang song’, etc etc.

One of the things I really liked about the detailed corrections route is a majority of the corrections can be universally applied. The angle and motion of the kua correction can be applied to almost any posture in the form for further investigation. Likewise, the dantien rotation can be applied to any posture in the form. Basically, once the core principles of the teaching were understood, these core principles or concepts could be applied to any movement.  This allowed for me to really work on concepts and principles on my own time instead of worrying about form sequence or minute physical placement of elbows, hands, etc.

While I feel there is merit in all of the approaches above, I think the goal is for us to find a teaching/school style that suits our own learning style. I know for me, I will probably never again take large group lessons. I just prefer either the small class setting or the private instruction route. But to each their own, some like the social functions, some like the laid back approach, others prefer to eat bitter

During our last dance class the instructor reintroduced the fox trot to us. After doing the tango and waltz for some time, the fox trot was quite easy to pick up. The basic pattern was slow-slow-quick-quick.

After getting down the basic pattern with tempo, we were introduced to the fox trot grapevine. This is a common step found in other fitness related activities, but the gist is basically moving sideways, while alternating stepping behind and in front of the supporting leg.

We were then given the task of nearly traversing the whole length of the room using the grapevine fox trot. This was much more difficult than it sounded as one of the requirements is to keep out shoulders square facing each other while our legs pointed the direction of movement. This really works on isolation of the hips and shoulders in movement (quite the opposite from taiji).

He then gave us a hint to think about the concept of ‘push and pull’ within dancing. After watching him demonstrate it again, I noticed that during the setup, there was a strong turning of the hips to the direction of motion. This results in having the ability to ’step through’ with the leg instead of step around. Additionally, there was quite a bit of ‘pushing’ with the foundation leg in the movement. In order to truly push with good power, the hips have to really be squared up so that one can ‘push through’.  Can we clearly differentiate between pushing and pulling in our movement?

Also, he emphasized in dancing the importance of weight changes on the foot. You have to really be clear of which foot is weighted and which foot is not. Always move with the un-weighted foot. Are we able to clearly define the weighted foot? Are we able to clearly define the transfer of weight within the foot (from heel to toe)?

With these points in mind, we attempted it again. While the result was better, we were still unable to hit our mark. We only made it about 90% of the way down the room, but this gives up something to work on.

My training time has really taken a dive lately but an opportunity presented itself to me a couple of days ago. My son was having ‘one of those nights’ at bedtime. So, I came in and did a new game with him called ‘Big Boy Sleeping’. The gist is he would sleep by himself, get his own water, etc while I was in view. Additionally, if he got scared or needed reassurance, I told him to call out ‘Ba Ba’ and I would respond.

During his self soothing time, I could have easily sat on the couch in his bedroom and dazed out the window. Instead, I took this opportunity to squeeze in a bit of training. With all the fire fighting at work for the past couple of months, I decided I would do some zazen to center myself. I found a big cushion and placed it near the opposite corner of the bed from my son. I then sat down and focused on my breath. Counting my breath and thinking of the air flowing through my nostrils, I heard a call for ‘Ba Ba’. I responded, ‘Ba Ba is here’ and my son went back to self soothing.

After a period of time in zazen, I found it increasingly harder to maintain my posture. My back was beginning to slouch and I started tilting backwards. My hips still aren’t flexible enough to hold the zazen posture for very long. I decided to switch to some zhan zhuang.

My son heard the rustling as I stood up. ‘Ba Ba is just going to stand right here’, I told him. He responded with, “Don’t leave me alone Ba Ba.” My heart warmed as I heard his response, and I assured him I would not leave him. I got into the wuji zhan zhuang posture and easily called upon the inner smile. Standing, I was shocked to feel how much tension had gotten into my upper shoulders and mid back. ‘Melt the tension down’, I told myself, ‘Melt the tension down and release the energy into the ground’.

The tension in the mid back was the most peculiar as it was mostly a couple of muscles on the left side of my spine. Had I been slouching at work? Had I been leaning more to one side? Perhaps it’s the build up of carrying a laptop to and from work using a briefcase style bag. I may need to switch back to my backpack style laptop holder to equally distribute the weight across both shoulders.

I slowly raised my hands a bit to do the ‘embrace the ball’, but at the dantien level. Wow.. the accumulated tension in my forearms and hands was crazy! Again, I told myself to melt away the tension and visualized a downward melting energy in my body. Noting the tension had not completely melted away, I lowered my hands down and remained in the wuji posture for the rest of the session.

Looking at the clock, about 40 mins had passed and my son was sound asleep. It was a good session

I am beginning to realize there *is* such a thing as information overload.  I have so many RSS Feeds that it’s impossible to stay on top of them all. The solution: View each feed and determine if it stays or goes. Make the decision up front and stick with it. Sure, I may miss something or not hear about it within the first couple hours of the story breaking, but if it’s truly pertinent news, it’ll find its way to me.

In addition to trimming RSS feeds, I have pretty much cut out visiting forums from my daily routine. I don’t even remember the last time I visited EmptyFlower to see what’s the hub bub on the taiji chatter. Just to test, I looked the first page of posts on the taiji forum, nothing of interest.

There’s this idea called the Signal to Noise Ratio, converting this to more layman and info tech days, I basically translate it to mean, if you have too much noise, you may miss the signal.  Instead of spreading my attention too thinly, why not focus. 

I was looking over the Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan text translated by Louis Swaim, when I ran across the following passage covering the ‘Beginning Form’ posture of the Yang long form:

Movement Two: The two elbows sink down and naturally lead the two hands slowly and steadily pushing down until they are near the thigh (page 27)

This describes the sequence after raising the hands to shoulder height in the beginning of the form. What really caught my attention was the whole notion and emphasis of the elbows leading the hands.  After reading this, I realized I often focus on my hands instead of thinking about the elbows in a transition.

It’s easy to focus on the hands, but if we truly consider the 6-joint harmony, more attention needs to be paid to the elbows. Ideally, when we move, the hands should be connected to the feet (joint 1-2), the elbows connected to the knees (joint 3-4) and the hips connected to the shoulders (joint 5-6).

Let us go back to the second movement in beginning form. After reading this, I tried doing the move, this time, focusing on the role of my elbows. Right off the bat, I felt a distinct difference in execution. My arms felt more relaxed when I focused on the elbows leading the hands in the downward path! Doh!

To test this out some more, I tried a couple of others moves that had downward components. Repulse Monkey - yup.. felt much better when the elbows lead the hands. In executing brush knee and push while focusing on the elbow of the brushing hand, the movement took on a totally different quality. Focusing on the elbow, resulted in a feeling as if my brushing arm was more ’rounded’, expanding beyond the physical structure of my body.

Okay, what about the flip side. What does focusing on the elbow leading the hands do in upward and forward components?  In raise hands, focusing on the elbow resulted in my forearms feeling less tense. Much more relaxed. In repulse monkey, when the rear hand came near my ear, I focused on getting the elbow ‘into position’ before thinking about extending the hand to do the push. Whoa… much different. Not only was the section from the elbow to fingertips more relaxed, the movement also felt more powerful when connected to the knee in the rear weight shift.

Wow.. crazy how one sentence made such a difference.

Reading Taiji.quest.ion’s post on Sunlight and Shadow made me think about advice I often hand out, that is, Look for a teacher, not a style.  I’ve often encountered various forum threads or emails about what style is the best, but to me, that’s really the wrong path, IMO. The important thing is finding a good teacher.

Let us consider the phrase again:

Look for a Teacher, not a Style

For me, I would take this even further to note the importance of finding good, local instruction. I cannot emphasize the importance of working with a real, live instructor. We’ve often heard the saying that our true selves are revealed through the eyes of another. This is because we often project certain things on ourselves that can result in a rosy view of reality.

For example, I thought my stances were really good and low but after working with my chen instructor, he showed me the error of my ways. He introduced things to me that can only be felt. Now, when I do the form, I can easily feel when I’m off, or just not settling right in my stancework.

In addition to corrections, a good instructor will teach us how to learn. Instead of spoon-feeding everything, a good teacher will show us how to discern the answer for ourselves. When I asked questions about a specific posture, I tended to get a question in response. This caused me to think about my actions. Is my movement inline with the principles of silk reeling?

What really got me thinking about this whole ordeal is a comment Taiji.quest.ion made about missing chen. I have to admit, that I am in the same boat as him and do miss my chen style.  This is the style where I’ve received the most instruction and hands-on correction. With my yang, I am basically going self-taught as I’ve only had formal instruction via the TT Liang CMC style Yang, but I’m currently doing YZD flavor of Yang.

Upon inquiries, I’ve often advised people to find the best local instruction first. If someone has a background in taiji, then I advise them to continue working on their material until they find local instruction.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Perhaps, I’m just not ready ready…

Ralph wrote a post titled Peace and Quietude which he stated:

My teacher said to me recently that one of the keys to understanding Taijiquan is attitude of mind, this is one of the first things to learn.

…

I realized that developing Zhan Zhuang is not necessarily about physical endurance [although I accept that it may be for some] it is about state of mind, meaning that in order to stand for extended periods of time, one needs to be in a state of quietude.

I’m sure we’ve all heard stories of how yi (intent) leads qi, but the question often arises, how can we gauge our level of yi? I remember back in my college days, I was easily able to stand for 40 mins without a problem. The first time I tried zazen (zen meditation training), I didn’t really have any issues calming the mind, I had issues with my knees and ankles hurting.

Fast forward a bit to more present time and I can definitely notice a difference. Life is not as simple as it was during my college days. Work, family, world of warcraft make their way into my thoughts regularly. I’m constantly trying to ‘take the mind back to the breath’ during static posture training.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the years of working at a computer is starting to manifest itself in my shoulders and neck. Sure, I try active sitting and reminding myself to relax, but when we’re playing fire fighter in our daily routines, it’s hard to keep the lessons of taiji in mind.

Today is Friday, and as such, I’ve put on a nice Hawaiian flower type shirt to remind myself to slow down a bit. To quote a comment by Rick Matz:

“Speed” is quite often an illusion.

After reading Zen Habits: 5 Powerful Reasons to Drive Slower, I was reminded of a time after my Sat morning zhan zhuang, taiji and tea session. Both myself and another follow taiji enthusiast left the parking lot at roughly the same time, but I came out slightly ahead. I was driving my normal 10-15 mph above speed limit and making good time until I hit a red light. As I looked in the rear view mirror, I saw him behind me smiling. When the light hit green, I sped up switched lanes and passed a couple of cars. He was way behind me. A couple of road lights later, he pulls up beside me and waves to me.

The worst part is I know he does not speed. He drives the speed limit and instead of stopping abruptly, he tries to coast to stop. Ever since this time, I’ve reevaluated my need to drive fast. Now, at most, I drive 5 mph above speed limit. In addition, I don’t worry about people passing me or cutting me off. I let other drivers in.  This drives my wife nuts! She calls me ‘old man driving’, but I tell her this is the way I drive. I am noticeably much calmer and relaxed amongst all the crazy road-raged drivers.

This got me thinking about taiji. How many times during the form is our mind already on the next move? I remember some of my first form corrections were to ‘finish the move’. I didn’t quite understand this initially, but basically I was mentally moving on to the next move before the completion of my current move. From his perspective, I did not complete the intention of my form.

From a chen perspective, form postures tend incorporate the following mental intention: qi at dantien, qi at back, qi at shoulder, qi at elbow, qi at hand, qi at waist, qi at dantien. Often times, I would get to the ‘qi at hand’ and move onto the next move.  This resulted in a slight break of the silken thread, if you know what I mean.

So, how do you drive? Do you feel your driving style has any relation to your taiji?

ZenMindSword posted an entry on his blog outlining a ‘Pumping Metal Iron’ puzzle. The gist of the puzzle is to try and unbalance someone if a biomechanically and structurally inefficient posture using White Crane Spreads Wing.  The inefficient aspect is the position of the right hand and elbow.  Keeping the right hand near mouth level  and fingers pointing up with a very bent elbow, try unbalancing someone. For more details of the puzzle, do check out his post linked above. I wanted to repost my experience in his comment section here:

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Source: Pumping Mental Iron VIII, Comment #22

Finally had a chance to give this a try. I got into position as described above (note, slightly different than how I normally perform WCSW). I then asked my partner to slowly push me and to do this continually while I adjust.

The first thing I noticed was I began to feel tension in my thigh instead of my arms, shoulders, and hips. To me, this is a good thing as I’m able to redirect the energy partially down, though not all the way down into the ground. I had to readjust a bit to get the tension to subside and redirect down through the right foot (weighted side).

As I began to try and push, I noted that I wanted to incline my right hand forward and pull my elbow back. I tried again, readjusting to keep the right hand pointing up. Neither position worked and my partner noted muscular force in my push.

I switched and tried with a weighted left leg. Structurally, I felt more stable but was still unable to shift my partner. I then played around a little and tried pushing shifting the weight from right to left leg. With this, I was able to slightly unbalance my partner, though nothing fantastic. In this scenario, not much muscular tension was noted by partner, however I believe this is mainly due to having a sound structure and using gravity and momentum to do the pushing.

Lowering my stance did not really help with pushing, just assisted in absorbing incoming force. Again, inclining body forward mainly assisted in absorbing incoming force in my own scenario. However, while in this stance, I began to mentally try and project myself forward while maintaining my current shape. I tried picturing myself behind my opponent. While I felt much more stable this way, partner was not unbalanced.

I asked which felt better, with my fingers pointed up or inclined. Partner noted fingers pointed up felt better, meaning felt less isolated muscular force. To me, this make me think the mind intention is able to easily unify the body with the hand in this position. Quite contrary to what I would normally think as it’s structurally less sound than the inclined fingers position!

My main goal was to try and project the push, not from my hands, but from my whole body moving forward. Instead of trying to project energy from hand, I tried to first project energy from both hands forward simultaneously and then connect the projection with the chest and then slowly try to unify projection connecting the legs. This resulted in almost creating a ‘wall-like’ imagery of myself with the whole wall moving forward.

While it was fun, my partner noted at the end, “It’s not gonna help by looking at me that way either” I guess in my mental projections I was doing funny looks with my eyes trying to ’see through and beyond’ them.. heheh

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First off, I never really considered trying White Crane Spread Wings (WCSW) in this manner to try and unbalance my opponent. The normal application is to block a low kick and high punch at the same time, or block a low kick while giving a left shoulder stroke attack. But what about the idea of just holding the posture and then trying to unbalance.

Doing this puzzle caused me to question how I look at applications as I never considered this scenario. How often do we practice the mental applications? We often hear how taiji unified the body and mind, but most of the applications I’ve done and seen only really deal with the body aspect. While it’s true that most of these applications are often considered ‘fake’ as noted by FormosaNeijia’s, The Myth of the Deadly Old Man, but playing around with this whole intention business really opened the doors of possibilities for me.

There’s something about this intention stuff, I’m not really sure what or where it will lead, but there’s something there… The funny thing is my first foray into ‘intention in taiji’ was via Chen Style Silk Reeling. “Where is the Mind?” is a common question asked by student who ask questions. What I mean is, where the mind goes, the qi will follow. In Chen, this results in the mind going from dantien -> back -> shoulder -> elbow -> hand -> elbow -> waist -> dantien and continue. By thinking in this way, the physical shape can be corrected to synch with the mind.

In Yang, for me, there’s less physical shape to work with, resulting in a bit more mind work. Where is the mind? Where is the intention? Where is the projection? Due to the movements being physically simpler than Chen, IMO, there is much room for mind/mental training. Yet another layer is peeled away ….

In any internal martial arts (IMA), we’ve all been told stories of masters having the ability to mysteriously uproot an opponent with little to no movement. We’ve even heard stories of qi projection and being able to knock down distant opponents. It’s easy to be a skeptic and consider it all fake until we’ve had the chance to experience such phenomenon.

I must admit, I’ve only truly felt this type of thing maybe once or twice. In a 12 animals of Liu He Ba Fa workshop with Wai Lun Choi, we were learning the applications for the dragon form.  He spoke about the sinking energy and how we must use our mind to sink the energy down. In addition, he emphasized the importance of protecting our breathing. If something can affect or impact our breathing, then we are ‘dead’. He was a way with mortal terms

Anyhoo, as we were working with partners on applying the application, he went around and demonstrated on some folks. I was one of the lucky folks who had the opportunity to attack him. I came in with a punch, then all of a sudden, I was heading towards the ground face first. It felt as if my forward momentum had been interrupted and redirected directly downwards. The crazy thing is I did not FEEL anything.

So, how did he do it? What’s his secret? I don’t really know, but I do know that during the workshop he heavily emphasized the notion of practicing slowly, calmly with full intention of the mind. He emphasized that we should practice at a level 2 on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most tension. He emphasized zhan zhuang and that we should do it to calm our mind. He emphasized the importance of breathing and noted that if someone can interrupt your breath, they got you.

In a subsequent class, I was working on this application with a partner. To try and make the application work, I was biomechanically trying to coordinate my arms with a sinking. While it did work a bit, I never quite got the same effect. Then I tried something different while maintaining the same physical structure. This time, instead of trying to pull my opponent down, I just thought about my own energy sinking. My opponent punched, immediately after making contact, I thought about my energy sinking down, and the opponent followed. We both looked at each other bright eyed and amazed.

Is this the paradigm shift that ZenMindSword is referring to?

To understand this type of uprooting method, one needs a paradigm shift otherwise it will sound like new age hocus pocus or even plain nonsense to cheat the gullible.

Over the weekend, I watched Superman Returns.  In it, Lex Luthor notes, in referencing Kryptonian technology, “that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (as quoted from Arthur C. Clarke’s Three Laws of Prediction).  Is it all just a bunch of new age magic?

Recently a coworker of mine walked by complaining of knee issues. I asked briefly show me his golf swing and I noticed a couple of big alignment no-no’s right off the bat.

First of all, I pointed out it appeared that he was twisting from the knee instead of turning from the waist.  I noted in taiji we have a rule where the knee should point the same direction as the foot. He appeared a bit perplexed so I demonstrated what I saw him doing with his knee and what he should be doing. I’ve always felt this is the best way to try and teach something as it give the person a concrete example of right and wrong.

Next, I showed him how he could turn his body by turning with the hips and folding with the kua. We did some stationary turning exercises (in front of my cubicle… ) to reinforce the idea. He immediately noticed a difference and commented how he felt different muscle groups activating by turning in this manner.

He showed quite a bit of interest so I also spoke about how the tip of the knee should not past beyond the tip of the toe. However, I explained that I like to be a bit more conservative and not allow the knee to go beyond the instep of the foot or past the acupuncture ‘bubbling well’ point.  As an aside, I’ve seen some master keep a 90 degree angle of the ankle between their foot and shin. This is something I am working towards.

Next I explained how in taiji, the outer edge of the hip should not go beyond the outer edge of the foot. This was a hard one for me to grasp and integrate into my own training as it’s easy to ’stand lazy’ and sink into the hip joint instead of keeping the hip aligned and letting the energy sink down into the foot and ground. (Great exercise for Putting Practice into Daily Life)  The effect is quite obvious if we try and turn the body with the hip aligned and with the hip extended.

To top it off, I gave a little dash of harmony.  I explained in taiji, we try to harmonize the elbows and knees. Everything starts together, everything stops together. I then demonstrated this concept in the motion of a golf swing. They do not have to move the same distance, but the elbows should not finish their range of motion before the knees. As an enrichment exercise, I asked him to think about the harmony between the shoulders and hips.

In the end, I told him these are some of the principles of unified, whole-body movement in taiji. While all of them may not directly apply to golf mechanics, think of these the next time you swing the club and either feel pain or a disconnect.

The last time a coworker wanted to tag along in my session, she basically said she would just like to try and follow along and do whatever I normally do. I told her I tend to start off with a bit of standing meditation before going into silk reeling and ending with form work. Being she didn’t want any formal instruction but wanted to just follow-along.

I did my normal routine. Some light stretching of the arms, neck, waist, knees, etc. After which, I went directly into about 20-25 mins of zhanzhuang broken down into quarters. I did roughly 5 mins or so of just wuji (hands at side), then shifted to another 5 mins of hand near dantien. After that, did roughly 10 mins of ‘embrace balloon’ or universal post posture and ending with 5 mins of hands at side near waist posture. I recall peaking over to check on my coworker during the embrace balloon phase only to see her shaking a bit, so I asked her to lower her hands to about abdomen level instead of heart/chest level.

Fast forward to the next day, I asked if she wanted to come along and she smiled and declined. Because of this, I’m a bit hesitant of introducing newbies to things like zhan zhuang, static posture training, and isolated movement exercises. This is a bit saddening as I feel these are the core foundational exercises and things that will give you the most ‘bang for your buck’ exercises.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a long-time taiji practitioner where he basically mentioned how people have preconceived notions about taiji. They think it’s just moving around all gently and soothing which results in a huge disconnect when they begin to realize it’s hard work. Sure, it may look easy just ’standing’ there, but when you ask someone to do it for 5 mins, they cringe. Tell them a minor requirement is 20 mins per session and they think you’re nuts.   

Yesterday, another coworker wanted to tag along to see what all this taiji hub bub is about. Instead of going through my normal routine I started off with some silk reeling, then the first section of the yang form, followed by some taiji stepping exercises and ending with a very small bit of zhan zhuang. I told her the session was a high level overview and should be used to ‘wet one’s appetite’ about taiji. Since I’m all about being a ‘taiji-herald’, I want people to become interested in taiji, even if that means I must veer off my own training for 1 day :0)

While playing the Yang long form, I suddenly got this weird feeling of ‘cultivating potential’. Not really sure how to describe it, but it felt as if I was ready at any and all times to release this energy I was building up. The form began to feel like I was slowly cultivating potential energy.  As I moved, from one grasps swallows tail to the next, I never once felt as if the energy had been released.

Even when I played postures like Single Whip or Part Wild Horse’s Mane, I never felt as if the energy leaked. Even though Brush Knee Push Step has a strike, I never felt as if the energy was released during the strike. The energy just slowly flowed into the next transition, like a smooth, unbreaking wave.

Rounded and expansiveness body, yet concealing the hidden power ready to be released at any given time.

Where I live, it seems as if the weather basically jumped from winter to summer. Last week, temps were in the 50F range and now they’re 70F. While I do enjoy the bright sunny day, I don’t like to train when it’s too hot or humid outside. I remember last year, I went outside to the nearby park when it was like 92F! The weather was SO humid and I really didn’t want to sweat, so I did my chen form in an ultra high stance.

Yesterday, I started off the session with a bit of zhanzhung under the shade of nearby trees. I then went straight into the Chen laojia yilu set. The set felt nice, but I began to sweat a bit after beginning the second section. While sweating is not necessarily a bad thing, I’m not fond of heading back to work drenched in sweat.

After finishing the Chen set, I did a round of the Yang long form. Even to this day, I’m still amazed at how different the 2 sets feel. The Yang set felt nice, light, smooth and not much sweating. My mind was calm and I could feel the slight breeze blowing against my arm. A great way to finish the training session.

This morning after reading Taijiquestion’s comment on little time spent on Zhanzhuang, I had a flashback of my primary schooling days. In math class, near the end of the chapter, there would be “Enrichment Exercises” that would often be used for extra credit.  These type of exercises generally go above and beyond the current curriculum, often times providing a little more challenge for those up to the task.

In my own experience, the first time I was introduced to Zhanzhuang, the instructor had the class do about 5 mins or so. He then told a story of how his instructor required at least 20-25 mins before class, and then he proceeded with the current day’s lesson. Back in my wushu days, my teacher would often times show us a little exercise we could work on. He’d only spend a couple of mins going over it and then moving on. In a couple of weeks, he’d ask us to demonstrate the exercise he had shown us to see if we were practicing it. Ever since then, I’ve often viewed these “couple minute overviews” as “Enrichment Exercises for extra credit”.

These enrichment exercises are the ones that are barely spoken of, yet very important. Generally, the “grading” is received in the form of a nod or slight smile. The credit is moving on to bigger and brighter things.

My wife and I are getting into “Bronze” level material in our ballroom dance lessons. Bronze level mainly focuses on technique for given dances. For example, we got some detailed correction on the Waltz frame.  Basically, the wrist must remain straight, yet the palm of the hand should be on partner’s shoulder blade. The only way to really do this is adjust the height of the elbow and to compact the frame.

As we held the frame and received corrections, I got flashback of my taiji days feeling the burn.  It is hard to keep the elbow at shoulder level, while the shoulder is relaxed and extended back, while keeping the palm of your hand on your partner’s shoulderblade. I kept getting blasted for my shoulder not being relaxed enough!!  Then during the dance, I kept on getting blasted for letting my elbow drop!  I tried to cheat a couple of times by resting a bit during the crossover breaks or underarm turns, but once again, I was blasted. Keep the elbows up throughout all movements!

All of this emphasis on elbows and shoulders reminded me a lot of my own zhanzhuang training. I’ve been taking it easy and doing mostly chen style zhan zhuang where the main posture is to keep the hands at heart level or lower, depending on one’s ability to relax. I’m gonna kick it up a notch and go back to yiquan postures for zhan zhuang. There are a couple of postures where hands are kept at shoulder level and then transition to hands at eye level. A bit more variety in the yiquan positions. Also, I’m gonna practice doing zhanzhuang holding the waltz frame!

Next, we were introduced to the concepts of “soft legs” within the waltz. This means, no locking of the legs, keep the knees bent. Ahh.. something I connected to This actually made the ’side-together’ steps of waltz basic much easier to do. We were much more mobile and were able to quickly move and change directions. I started going a bit lower and got blasted for not going too low! The instructor said I’ll lose mobility if I go too low. Just keep the knees slightly bent.

Hmm…. agile footwork concepts? I think we can all see the connection to taiji.

The hardest part of the evening was working on leading, partnering and combinations. To mix things up, the instructor had us move a little closer to another couple in a lesson. They threw on some waltz music and had us go at it. I had to really work on leading and being assertive and slightly aggressive as the instructor thinks I’m a little too nice While dancing, I had to maintain awareness of my surroundings at all times. While spinning and leading, making sure I don’t run into the other couple or the instructors walking around. We worked on footwork and how to get out of corner and binds by MIXING AND MATCHING elements of the steps we’ve learned. Note the word ELEMENTS… This is about combining movements together based on patterns of the basic footwork.

If an underarm turn begins during the back-side-together of the basic pattern, what other steps can we go into from this position? This is where you can mix say an underarm turn into a 5th position open break and changing it into balance steps. The idea is to be aware and have the ability to adapt to changing conditions.

One of the funnier things is while we’re dancing, the instructor would start talking to us to try and distract us from our steps. He said dancing is all about feeling it. Once you begin to feel the music and feel the flow, you no longer have to think. If you try and think too much and plan too far ahead, it’ll be too late.

Below is a clip of the 2005 World American Standard Waltz Final. Note the frame of the male lead, especially the right arm!

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaU0nzfkNBY

Back in college, I ran into a couple of fellows teaching at the local recreation center. One of them was teaching Muay Thai while the other was teaching Shootfighting. They were basically competing in the fighting circuit and therefore were always on the lookout for training partners. What’s a better way to get training partners than to offer free instruction?

After my cousin trained with them for a bit, I decided to join in on the fun. The Muay Thai class basically consisted of A LOT, and I mean A LOT of conditioning training. We jumped quite a bit of rope barefoot (not fun when you whip yourself in the foot!) and did a lot of kicking drills against the Thai pads. To practice knee strikes, one person would hold a thai pad against their chest while the attacker did a neck clench and proceeded to alternate knee strikes repeatedly. Pretty fun if you’re the attacker, but not so fun being on the receiving end!

I recall often coming home with purple shins and ankles. I’d be somewhat crippled for a couple of days and often applied a ton of tiger balm and other bad smelling ointments to my body.  One night while looking at my bruised body, I asked myself: Why am I beating myself up?? I couldn’t help but to think about the same quote from one of my favorite taiji movies:

“There must be some d*mn thing wrong with you.. You’re torturing yourself. No one hits you, so you want to hit yourself!”

– Tai Chi Master/Puppeteer on Drunken Tai Chi

It’s strange to recall, but this was the time in which I decided to begin taiji. I realized I missed doing forms and I wanted to cultivate my mind and body instead of beat it up.  Such fond memories came rushing back after I saw the tai chi lesson training clip from the movie on Youtube

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoIVqCnS944

I first started formally learning taiji through a university setting. As such, the program was provided as a ‘physical education elective’ with a high emphasis on doing taiji for health. The class primarily focused on learning the forms. You learned the 24 form, then proceeded to the 48 form, eventually learning the 32 sword. Some times, I would stick around after class and ask the instructor about various applications and how they applied, and he would show some high level ones. Not too much formal training in applications but a little taste.

During this time, I would often head back to my hometown over summers to train with my wushu instructor. He tried to teach me taiji before, but I wouldn’t have it as I felt it was too boring compared to all the wushu stuff I was learning. But this summer, it was different as he knew I was training in taiji.

In between class, my wushu instructor saw I was working on the last section of the 48 form. He came over and said, “Not bad, now punch.” So I proceeded to punch him. Let me sidetrack a bit, in my wushu training, my instructor believed we would not truly learn to block unless we knew we could get hurt. So when he said punch, this really meant to punch. Of course, I don’t attack with 100% power but probably around 65% or so, enough that if you get hit, you’re gonna feel it. Ok.. so I punched and then he said, “attack, again, again”. Basically, he was telling me to just attack him with whatever I felt was good at the time, whether it be a kick, punch, backfist, whatever.

This went on for a bit until I realized he was doing the movements from the third section of the 48 form to counter my attacks! Since I knew the form, I tried to attack in such a way that it would be impossible for him to get off the next move, but for some reason, it didn’t work! I knew ’snake creeps down’ was often done as a sweep under to someone kicks so I punched when I knew that move was next. He just stepped to the side and did a shoulder bump, still following the sequence of the movement!  Later, during the formal taiji class, he had us work on various applications for part wild horses mane. He showed how it could be used as an arm bar, shoulder bump, striking attack, etc etc.

Fast forward a bit and I’m at a new school. This new school offered various styles of instruction (taiji, xingyi, bagua, liuhebafa, mantis, etc).  After some time at the new school, I noticed one thing in common. After learning the choreography of the form, they would then break each form down and train the apps via 2-person drills! The taiji style had a whole separate class for push hands training and 2 person sanshou form.

For example, in the liuhebafa class, each student would learn the choreography to the 12 animals of liuhebafa. After that, each animal would then be trained with their applications. Perhaps a class spent on the application for each animal. We’d try to see how the application worked given the choreography of the form. This was quite an eye opener as it really demonstrated where various ’sinking’ energies were required and the role of unified body movement came into play to effectively pull off the app. For example, in the Dragon form, there’s a downward sinking action done. If the application for this movement was attempted using isolated arm movement, it was almost impossible to pull off on a semi-resistant opponent. However, if the whole body sunk in conjunction with the ‘closing’ of the back, this was quite easy to do and required very little effort in terms of arm movement.

A similar thing was done in the Swimming Dragon Bagua class. After learning the form, each movement would be trained with their martial applications. We were exposed to all the qinna and throws found within the form. Again, quite eye opening and very enlightening.

Even to this day, when I practice the sets where I trained the apps, I notice a distinctly different ‘vibe’ while doing the form. We’ve often heard that when doing the form we should imagine and opponent, yet when fighting we should imagine we’re playing the form. How is this possible if a simple application is not shown for a particular movement?

Perhaps we should just ignore applications all together an just train the energies, right?  I’ve been doing this method for a bit of time and I admit there are still some movements in the form that I have no idea what they are for. I just kinda do the movement thinking about my qi path. Is this building the correct intention?

For me, I happen to believe there’s something special about the forms. They were developed in a particular ordering and sequence for a reason. They are not just one-off applications here or there that just-so-happen to flow into this next move that may or may not having a ‘linking’ application.

This idea of linking applications is what really impressed me when I first saw form application clips provided by Chen Zhonghua. It impressed me enough that I tested it out and was able to successfully pull off the application with little to no effort (Experience with 6 Sealings 4 Closing Application)!  I noticed a similar coverage of linking applications in my review of the Yang Long Form DVD.  This coverage of linking applications within forms gives me hope and belief about the ‘genius’ of the set. Much thought went into the development of the set, not just from an aesthetic, beautiful choreography perspective but from a martial effectiveness mindset. After all, we’ve all read stories about how taiji was developed after observing a fight between a snake and a crane.

Another legend states that Zhang Sanfeng watched a crane fighting a snake. Even though the crane tried to spear the snake with its beak, the snake was so flexible that it could not be speared. From this, Zhang realized that softness and flexibility can overcome strength and created a martial art.

– Source: http://members.fortunecity.com/chentaiji8/history.html

Also, in Hong Junsheng’s book, he notes Chen Fake telling him that all movements in the form serve a purpose and no movement is wasted.  If we consider taiji to be a martial art, I would expect each movement to have a martial function and relevance. Is this asking for too much?

Over the weekend, I showed my wife a video I captured of myself doing taiji.  In this video, I do the first 5 moves of yang and then the first 5 moves of chen. Her first reaction when seeing my yang was, “If this isn’t ‘old man’ taiji, I don’t know what is..”, but then she noted that I was very smooth and appeared quite calm and relaxed in my execution. She also noted I appeared quite ‘connected’ in regards to the upper/lower parts of my body.

She then watched my portion of chen.  At first, she noted how chen looked kinda weird (this was in the transition to buddha warrior). Then she made some comments about my feet shifting around a bit and how the height fluctuated slightly during transition movements. She noted I need to work on more leg strength to even out the chen.  In addition, my upper and lower halves appeared disconnected compared to the yang.

In the end she said, “You do Yang better than Chen”. One of the peculiar things about my wife is that she has been consistently able to spot things in my taiji at a very early stage. She told me, very early on, that when I started chen, my intentions were off. My mind was not in a correct state as I appeared very ‘vain’ and that it looked like I wanted to kick someone’s butt in my execution of chen. This correction later exposed itself to me, as outlined in my Removing Chen Creep post.

Almost by fate, Formosa Neijia wrote a post titled, Beginning Shen training and Chen Style. In it, he notes:

This topic is interesting because it shows a weakness in the focus of most Chen styles. The majority of the time, Chen people focus on body movement at the jing level. (In the qi paradigm there are three levels: shen, qi, jing.) This emphasis can go on for too long, with the qi and shen levels being practically ignored in some schools.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a very long time. At this point, I’ve actually been teetering on 3 different paths.

1. Focus on Yang
2. Focus on Chen Village Method
3. Focus on Hong Junsheng Practical Method

By focusing on Yang, I don’t have to worry too much about the body method and I can start focusing on the qi/shen phases of the qi paradigm. This is almost like heading down the mind/mental path as opposed to the body path.

By focusing on the Chen Village method, I’d have quite a ways to go in regards to the body method. But I’ve at least headed down this path a bit so I’m a little ways along, but I could definitely see plenty of more time being spent on the body requirements of chen. One of my main hesitations on this path is that I no longer do chen in low stances and fear much of my future corrections will emphasize on going lower (not my goal). I would much rather focus on things like silk reeling and qi pathways, etc.

The final thought was to switch all-together and focus on the Hong Junsheng Practical Method. However, doing this would basically entail throwing out everything I’ve basically learned and start over from the beginning. While this is not so bad, there would be an inordinate amount of focus put upon the body method.

One question I’ve been asking myself is, why the desire to learn the Hong Practical Method? The main reason is because it’s practical. It ties together the martial elements with the physical movements for each and every movement of the form. The martial artist in me needs this association. I need to know what I am doing has martial value and not just waving my arms about.

But then it dawned on me, in my review of the Yang Family Long Form DVD by Yang Jun, he also outlines applications for each and every posture of the form, including the transition applications! I actually already had access to what I wanted, application examples for the postures of the form. So if I really wanted to, I could focus not only on the practical aspects of yang but also delve deeper into the mind/intent work of the yang set. How could I have overlooked this??

I remember the first time I saw someone perform Wu Style, I found it rather peculiar. It appeared ‘a lot’ like Yang style, but with some slight differences. Most notably was the ’slight forward lean’ that’s characteristic of the style. Then, when I saw the ‘taiji roboto‘ video I was even more intrigued. The idea of breaking the form down into a ’square form’ so that everyone learns the EXACT movements before smoothing it out in the ’round form’ is awesome! Talk about a great path/route to learning!

Then I came along a forum thread titled The Differences between Yang and Wu, where forum poster, wuyizidi, outlined the following:

Standard step means when you step forward or backward, the space between the steps is one foot (your own foot) wide and one foot long. This is the distance a practitioners with good basics can comfortably cover while supporting all his weight on one foot.

This is harder then it sounds. You can test yourself by putting all your weight on one leg, bend it as low as you can while your nose, knee, and big toe is on one line, then move your free leg forward as far as you can in xu bu, or backward in gong bu. For that free foot, the entire foot should touch the group, not just the heel or the ball. See if the difference is at least one foot squared.

This is for training. In real fighting, how big your step is is entirely dictated by the situation. The most important thing is that when you move, you can be agile and stable at the same time. In Wu Style, the standard step is used to develop these qualities: forcing all the weight onto one foot at all times develops root, while at the same time giving the other foot maximum freedom of movement.

Hmm… What is the effect upon agility in lower stances? I remember a couple years back I was showing a coworker with a background in aikido and krav maga some chen taiji. I did a demo using quite a low chen side horse stance. He then asked me what would happen if someone tried to sweep my front foot. I told him to go ahead and try. So he did, but since I was quite ‘rooted’ in my stance, I was able to absorb the attempted sweep and apply a little push with my hands knocking him back. Looking back, was this taiji?

Furthermore, I’ve noted more than a couple of times where I’ve broken structure, especially during transitions. Not only is breaking the knee to toe alignment bad from a taiji perspective, but it’s doubly bad from a ‘healthy knee’ perspective. Hmm.. maybe there is some merit in this notion of Standard Stepping…. I’ve tried the exercise described above and I admit, it’s not easy! It was rather eye opening and mind boggling (doh!! can’t believe I used the word ‘boggle’.. I know who to blame for that! )

For