陈中华老师直播课20200817笔记

 学习

听老师的话。
例子：不要用自己的心思做拧毛巾，虽然当时不是老师以前说过一样。
拧毛巾：手不动，用跨顶手出去。
提水：专注练胯，用跨顶。趴下，用屁股顶。屁股是胯的后面。

动作要按比例。下面大，上面小。
如果胯是动作三，手的动作是一，力量到手上的有二。 （对）
如果胯是动作一，手的动作是三，力量到胯上的有二。 （不对）

对大自然的应知是通过自己大脑理解，但偏差很大，练拳就是把这偏差减低/拿掉。
Conversion theory is universal.
e.g.
1) Car converts gas into explosion, vertical shaft action, wheel pushing against the ground, car moving forward.
2) Water goes from sky, down as rain, into the ocean, back up to sky as vapour.
转换理论是存在我们周围的。
例如：
1）汽车将气油转化为爆炸，垂直轴作用，车轮推向地面，汽车向前行驶。
2）水从天上掉下来，像雨一样落到海洋中，再像蒸气一样回到天空。
吃饭就是能量转唤。

我们的拳把横力变竖力。
例子：肘往横，力往竖到指头

T-bar：横转竖走

Third Taiji workshop with Master Chen

I just had my third taiji workshop with Master Chen in the last weekend (May 22-23, 2010). I had an extreme great time in this workshop. I was really glad to have him confirmed my little improvement thus far, in particular: my yilu form is starting to take shape, and I am not moving my hand (or at least as much as before).I would need to continue to work hard, so that I don't regress, and hopefully continue to improve.

In this workshop, I felt something different. It wasn't like Master Chen teaching things any differently, it was me who seemed to be able to follow what he said a little better. I got more out of it than previous times. I was fortunate to be able to spend a bit more time outside of the workshop with him as well. The causal conversations with him during lunches and dinners, or in the car gave me a deeper understanding of him as a person. Besides his great taiji skills, Master Chen is a great teacher because he has terrific skills in teaching. He was a teacher of students ranging from kindergarten to Grade 12 in the public school system. He traveled all around the world teaching taiji to people with different cultures, characters, and learning abilities. I was also impressed on how he was able to point out a non-technical issue for a couple of students, and that issue hindered them from making progress. While we are doing exercises or performing yilu, he walked around looking at every student giving advises and correcting mistakes. We only had 13 students in this Toronto workshop, but he did the same thing with 65 students in Italy. I admired his passion and dedication.

He noticed that I asked fewer and fewer questions in each workshop. Part of it was that I was asking questions based on my normal logical mind and non-taiji knowledge, as he pointed out they were basically irrelevant to making progress in taiji. As time passed by, I began to understand that point. Another issue for me was that once I had a question in mind, I wouldn't really listen until I asked my question and got an answer. That obviously wouldn't be good.

The following are notes I took during the workshop:

Day 1

• Two touched points create a "vertical" line or an axis.
• Foundations:
  - Single positive/negative left/right
  - Double positive/negative left/right
• Find two anchor points and aim your push from the waist to the middle of the two points.
• Let the opponent overpower you and use that as one of the anchor points. The other is the foot.
• Exercise: Have someone stop your shoulder moving horizontally forward.
• Eliminate the space between you and your opponent, create space within you to clear.
• Keep the pressure constant on the opponent (keep engaging the opponent), then add something else.
• While holding a 100-pound ball, one cannot react to a poke without dropping the ball.
• Exercise: Touch and keep the pressure while you move.
• Move the arm/hand to fit, once you can't move, rotate something, e.g. kua.
• Ying and Yang are two dots on the circle.

Day 2

• Circle: learn to get stuck at two positions:
  - When the hand is extended.
  - When the elbow is stuck in the ribs.
• Dantian is like a river. It never moves. The energy from the hand and foot meets at dantian.
• Rotate when hit (reactive).
• Everything is at 45 degrees.
• Keep the missing/invisible side of the triangle in the body fixed/stable.
• Exercise: Absorb impact and extend the arm and rotate.

My first formal taiji lesson

My master is Chen Zhonghua, http://practicalmethod.com/.
The way he teaches and his form are different from many other forms I have seen. It is more practical as the name itself suggests. His way is called Chen Style Taiji Practical Method, which he learned from Grandnaster Hong JunSheng. He teaches theory and forms at the same time. Although it will take a long time for me to be able to really fight using taiji, I can understand the possibilities, and he showed a lot of applications.

In his teaching, his taiji to other taiji forms is like Christianity to other religions, meaning that there is really only one true taiji, just like that there is only one true religion.

One of many important things in taiji is to keep the back straight all the time. Keeping the back straight isn't really that easy itself. What I think of it being straight isn't really straight, and that is the first thing I needed to focus on. The new way of keeping the back straight may also help me play better golf as well.

Speaking of golf, there are a lot of similiarlities between golf and taiji

1. First impression: they are both exercises for elderly. How wrong am I?
2. They require precision and repetitive motions.
3. Waist (dan tian) plays an important part.
4. Back should be staight
5. The whole body needs to coordinate to perform an action.
6. Commitment and practice are vital in improving one's skills.

Taiji is definitely something interesting to pursue for a lifetime. My journey has just started.