Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 29, 2021

玄关设窍

xuan guan she qiao  (Level 9)

Mysterious Spot (Gate/Fortress) Setup Hole/Orifice

Orifice, e.g. pressure points in the body, middle of a tornado

Guan, e.g. physical, pivot of a lever

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 27, 2021

曲中求直

老架是直。新架是曲。

我们要的是直到卡住，绕过去。收肘整体式弯的，由很多直做成。

曲是两个直的。直是一个直的。

无极生太极，太极是两仪。

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 24, 2021

Three ways of talking about our actions:

1. Separation of Yin and Yang
2. In and Out
3. Lead

Other analogies:

1. Thread, fabric, needle
1. Needle is outside leading.  
2. Fabric is the barrier.
3. Thread is inside being pulled.
2. Leading thing must be hard, what is being led is soft.
3. Head must be hard, arm must be soft.
4. Bone is hard, skin/muscle is soft.
5. Top of the head must be hard, whatever below must be soft.
6. This is the training for reversal of yin and yang.
7. Soft means always going around.
8. Stiff is strong.

3 focuses on training yilu:

1. Heavy cloak on the shoulder to focus on stretching the head up.
2. Tie rubber band at the elbow to keep them from going out.
3. Put a spring-loaded rod between the two knees to keep from collapsing.

Any thing free is a catalyst.

Your existing things are 2-dimensional.  Our taiji trains us to be 3-dimensional.

Hand is 3-dimensional while the torso is 2-dimensional.

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 23, 2021

Going down - It needs to be led by the bottom.

Going left - It needs to be led by the left side

Going right - It needs to be led by the right side.

Going up - It needs to be led by the top.

Every move is a pull.

Exercise:

1. Use hands to hook on to the opponent. Let your bum free fall down, like letting your body weight hang down.
2. Wiggle the kuas to continuously take the space going downwards.
3. Don't let your feet hold you up.
4. The opponent will be dragged down by you eventually this way.

To peel the other person off, my movement must be perpendicular to the opponent's movement.

Exercise 1:

1. Stick the kua into the opponent (like to pry) with the front leg out.
2. Lock the front foot, move the kua forward to the opponent like pry.
3. At the same time, stretch the front hand out and around your opponent and eventually let you hand touch your own mingmen (spine). The shoulder can't not lean towards the opponent.

Exercise 2:

1. Stay a bit farther away from the opponent.
2. Put your front foot behind the opponent's front foot.
3. Your front hand grabs the opponent's front wrist.
4. There is a vertical line between your front hand and front foot.
5. We need to turn that vertical line horitonal on a plane.
6. If the hand is at 12 o'clock, make it 3 o'clock while the foot goes from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock.

Exercise 3:

1. Like in Exercise 2, we stretch the hand around the opponent, however, the opponent is resisting strongly. At that instant, we switch this rotational movement to a linear movement, the front elbow goes back, while the front knee goes to the front. The elbow and knee are going in opposite directions on the same plane.
2. If we start with a linear movement, we can switch to a rotational movement.
3. Eventually, we can interchange the two ways multiple times very quickly. It's the same idea as wiggling to get in.  If a statue is sitting on a sandy beach, we can dig away the sand underneath the statue to let it sink down. To avoid any tilting of the statue, we dig evenly around underneath.

Breakthrough: Going down

Tonight through zoom at the North American Practical Method Training Camp 2021, Master Chen Zhonghua was teaching people push hands. The two people engaged with one hugging the other. I experienced knowing the move that Master Chen would want in that situation.  I practiced it on my own thinking about how I would do it. It was the step-back-and-go-down move. Master Chen later instructed the students the same way. When I actually face an opponent, I may not be able to do it, but at least the thought was the same, and it would guide my training on this move.

Master Chen's comment: Makes one wonder why people can’t see it, can’t understand it and can’t do it.

I believe I can see it because there is the space in between the kuas that I can go into. When I get to the normal stuck position, there is such option available to me. However, if I can't move the kua in a certain way, that option of going down is simply not available, and I wouldn't be able to make the association of the words "going down" to it. This is a matter of 火候.

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 22, 2021

 3 types

1. 田秀臣、陈照奎  

2. 冯志强、陈小旺  Hitting

3. 洪均生、李经悟  Boucing

相由心生

The fact that you see something, it is because you make a connection. That something has always been there, but unless you make a connection, you don't notice it.

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 21, 2021

 五雷轰顶 wu lei hong ding

- God is talking to you. Out of body experience.

Six Sealing Four Closing

As we do the waist turn, the top goes to the left, the back of the knee stretches.  It needs to go under the thigh.

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 20, 2021

 天、人、地

Human is in the middle between Heaven and Earth.

Human is the relationship.

Chinese emphasizes on relationship.

Taiji is being the catalyst, and create a relationship between two things.

Positive Circle:

1. Incoming (from Heaven)
2. Action from gap/joint (from Human)
3. Push with Foot (from Earth)

Brain is 3 dimensional.

Human is 2 dimension.

To make it 3 dimensional, we need to use something outside of the 2 dimensions, i.e. outside of the human body.

Going up is live.  Going down is dead.

Growing a beard is towards death.

Up to age of 18, it is going up. After that, it is starting to downhill.

Rotate needs to stay with in a frame 格. 要不出格.

长劲、短劲、抖劲。

长劲、短劲都有动作。抖劲不是打人的，只是把人弹起来。

 能转的话，东西就会往外飞出去。

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 16, 2021

Story Time

In Phoenix, there was a person who was named Scott, aged 32, a lawyer, and had learned for 4 years from a famous Chen Village master.  He came to visit a morning training session at North Mountain during the Master Chen Zhongua's workshop weekend. After the training session was done, he asked to try with Master Chen.  Master Chen bounced Scott 3 times.  Ping Wei was so excited to see, and was sure that Scott would come to learn. After a while, Scott didn't come to ask, it turned out that his thought was that Master Chen had proved to Scott that Scott's own teacher from Chen Village must have been even better since that teacher was more famous. Scott decided to learn more diliegently from this teacher.

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 8, 2021

Turning Flower from the Bottom of the Sea

• Start by standing on one foot, and practice rotation.
• The right elbow goes sideways while the left arm comes up.
• The right fist continues to go horizontal, the left fist goes up vertically.
• One side horizontal, one size vertical. The middle is in the middle of the chest.
• The fists don't move, they are stretched from the middle of the chest.

Ball Launcher Mechanism

Everything moving to towards a common goal.

This is how the kuas rotate into the huiyin. This is also how the top of the head goes down the back into huiyin, everything shoots up the head.

Exercise 1:

Fingers/Hand do not move. The two elbows squeeze from the side into the center line towards the middle finger tip. The two kuas also open and squeeze towards the finger tip.

Exercise 2:

Two hands up after double downard squeeze, and before Punch to the Ground. Keep the two hands high up. Lock the hands, and knees. Let the kuas drop vertically towards the ground. This must create a stretch internally.

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 2, 2021

Kua physically can only go up and down.

Knee physically can only go sideways.

We need to produce the splitting energys all the time.

Turning Flower From the Sea Bottom

• We need to di a sudden stop in the middle to produce penetrating energy, and then let the motion continue on the same trajectory, as in 心口碎大石。

Six Sealing Four Closing

• Lock the middle of the chest, elbow-in with power, and let the shoulder stretch and rotate a lot to go to the other side to throw it back out.
• The same needs to be maintained during moving-step.

Do yilu with fajin for a month, so I am ready to do really do cannon fist.

Master Chen Zhonghua Online Lesson on July 1, 2021

0 - Wuji 无极

1 - Something comes out of Wuji

2 - Taiji 太极

3 - Trinity/Three Treasures/三才/Heaven-Earth-Men/Triangle/精气神

4 - Four shapes Sixiong/四象/东西南北/青龍、白虎、朱雀和玄

5 - Wuxing 五行 (cycle)

6 - Harmonies/3 Sets of 2

    External Set:

    Hand-Foot

    Elbow-Knee

    Shoulder-Kua

    Internal Set:

    Shape/Xing 形 is harmonized with Force/Li 力   (Structural Power)

    Force/Li 力 is harmonized with Qi 气

    Qi 气 is harmonized with Intent/Yi 意

    Intent 意 needs to come out of no intent (intent by nature, nature is not part of human/us).

7 - Seven Starts/Big Dipper/七星

8 - Bagua 八卦  64e+64 (governs human life/body), 128e+128 (governs human intelligence/mind)

9 - Jiugong/Nine Squares  (9 is highest)

Philiosopy (traditional) vs Religion (new)

Taiji's cycle is 3: Yin, Yang, and rooted in each other

3D is created by spinning a plane. 3D is created by an action.