Thursday, November 24, 2016

It's not the same

Today, in my Angus Glen taiji class, I received a comment from the student indicating that what I taught was the same as what I was just demonstrating the way I practiced.  The comment was primarily based on the look of the form.  I was doing a much lower stance compared to theirs. I went on to explain that as one progressed one would need to keep challenging one's limit.  Going low in the stance was one of the methods. It trained the leg strength, it allowed one to discover structure alignment, it locked up the body so one can train moving the parts one can't move before.
This incident reminded me of a story told by Master Chen Zhonghua that one of his students, now disciple, asked to learn the form he first saw meeting Master Chen.  Master Chen's response was that he had been teaching the student that form, which was yilu all along, but in the student's mind, he was not the same.

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