June 2007 Archives
The video is not of great quality since it's filming by a viewer at a competition, but the performance is rather nice. 42-step Taiji is the standard competition form, and has a combination of postures from various styles. Mostly Yang, but certainly Chen and Sun (I do not know anything about the other styles, so I can't tell). This is the routine that professor Li De Yin co-created. I started this routine when I lived in Pennsylvania, but I had to move before I finished it. Hopefully some day I will learn it again!
Practicing Taiji - specially Chen style - as well as slik reeling exercises requires a great deal of strength and flexibility in legs, hip joints and knees. Most of the exercises involve sitting low in a horse stance, shifting the weight from one side to the other in continuous spiral movements. There's also more of transitioning into empty stance from different low-height postures in Chen style.
Standing meditation helps a lot, and should be practiced in different forms. Horse stance and one-leg standing meditations would increase the strength of the muscles and joints.
Standing meditation helps a lot, and should be practiced in different forms. Horse stance and one-leg standing meditations would increase the strength of the muscles and joints.
While there are many books out there about Taiji in general and the simplified forms in particular, one cannot easily find books on older and longer forms such as Chen style old form. I ran across Old Frame Chen Family Taijiquan at a local bookstore, and found it pretty interesting.The book has some good introductory material about the history and foundations, and then describes the form posture by posture. Again, like DVDs, it's not supposed to be used as a self-teaching tool - one needs a a good teacher to work with. But it's a good reference when you're trying to figure out the details of a certain move you saw in the class.
The typesetting of the book told me that it was done by a TEX-like software, which brings out some nostalgic feelings in me being a computer geek and all. So that made me like the book even more :-)
The author, Mark Chen, seems to have a Taiji school in San Mateo area. Hopefully one of these days I should pay him and his school a visit, both to see how the school looks like, and also thank him for the book. Writing a book on a subject like this is not an easy task, and I'l sure it's taken him quite a lot of time and energy to get it done.
One of the good things about learning the Chen style for me is that I can go back and think more about how I'm doing the movements in Yang style. So for example, my 24-step movements are now rounder and more curvy. This is something that a couple of teachers told me at different points in time, and now I'm experiencing it first hand. Here is another demonstration of the 24-step by Su Renfeng - you can see how round and smooth the movements are:
The foundation of Chen taiji is built through a special form of Qigong, called Silk reeling on Chan Si Gong. Silk Reeling is a set of standing movements (I have seen a couple of "steps" also, but for the most part like many other forms of Qigong the form is done standing in one place) focusing on rotating the Dantian.
One of the key, basic moves is in fact placing both hands below stomach, on where Daintian would be (Dantian is the center of the body both vertically and horizontally, so the actual Dantian is inside the body) and rub it in spiral moves (some time in each direction). There are other moves in which you would move one hand in spirals, like the cloud-hands moves, and then two hands, and so on and so forth. In fact, these are the basis of most of the spiral moves in the form. The fact is that cloud-hands is built using these moves, so no wonder they do look like cloud hands!
There are also certain moves designed to stimulate the flow of energy by opening and closing certain muscles and areas around the Dantian, such as ribs.
Master Li says learning the form (such as the Chen routine) is relatively easy and can be done in no time. The real focus of a student should be on building the foundations using silk reeling exercises. Feeling Dantian and being able to control the muscles to rotate it is what takes time, practice, concentration, and patience.
One of the key, basic moves is in fact placing both hands below stomach, on where Daintian would be (Dantian is the center of the body both vertically and horizontally, so the actual Dantian is inside the body) and rub it in spiral moves (some time in each direction). There are other moves in which you would move one hand in spirals, like the cloud-hands moves, and then two hands, and so on and so forth. In fact, these are the basis of most of the spiral moves in the form. The fact is that cloud-hands is built using these moves, so no wonder they do look like cloud hands!
There are also certain moves designed to stimulate the flow of energy by opening and closing certain muscles and areas around the Dantian, such as ribs.
Master Li says learning the form (such as the Chen routine) is relatively easy and can be done in no time. The real focus of a student should be on building the foundations using silk reeling exercises. Feeling Dantian and being able to control the muscles to rotate it is what takes time, practice, concentration, and patience.
