This is a sort of “part II” to my “Stillness within Movement” thread.
There I described something I had “achieved” during my Silk Reeling exercises. Now, having stumbled onto that, I’m not sure if I should try to bring the same thing to my form practise.
Yes, I’d ask my Shifu, but he’s gone back to China for a month or so, so I’m on my own and this question is really bothering me. So until that, let’s hear your insights. They’ve been interesting before.
In Silk Reeling, never mind what posture, I find the movements to be caused by just a) moving my waist and b) twisting my joints. This is different from how I did in beginning, where I sort of swished my hands around to replicate my shifu’s movements. Now I have stopped swishing around, and start the movement in the waist and put all the smalll circles in it by just twisting the joints.
So, the question is (in addition to, am I doing right in doing this), should I try to do every movement in the form like this? Finding the ways to twist the joints to cause the proper arcs of movement is hard, so just moving my (swishing, using muscles, etc) hands is what I’ve previously done and found easy.
I have feeling I’ve stumbled onto a major treshold in my training.
I hope I have managed to describe this adequately. It’s a bit vague, but I’m hoping someone who has already gone through a similar thing might give me some insight.
Any thoughts?
(Edited to include this note: I’m talking about Chen style Taiji, FYI. I’ve no experience in the other styles.)
I’d say yes. Move from the waist (actually the kua, or hip joint for a while) I’ve been doing this for years and developed a solid punch from it. Funny thing is, now that I’ve done that, I’m going back to initiating from the hands. The difference is my body automatically lines up behind the strike now. Totally different feeling from when I started, I can just move my hand now and bring a lot of power behind it.
It’s no so much that I’m concerned about leading from the waist/kua (that’s something my shifu has said I should do), but the action of the hands.
It’s like I don’t really move them at all (horizontally or vertically), just twist the joints to get the desired movements. It’s odd and difficult to explain.
A good way to look at it would be to envision doing the movement, then stopping the waist movement, but letting the hands continue that twisting. My hands wouldn’t really move much in a horizontal/vertical sense, since the waist wouldn’t be moving them, but would just turn and twist in place. I wonder if that makes any sense.
Yeah, it makes sense. Do this to see if your doing it correctly. Have someone put their hand in a ward off position and then place your hand on their forearm. When they drop their hand, yours should naturally fall. This is basically a test of your relaxation. If you do this, your waist IS driving your hands, you just don’t “know” the feeling yet. If not, I’m out of ideas.
Who is your Chen Taiji teacher? Is it Wang Feng Ming by any chance? I study with a student of Feng Zhiquiang in Seattle.
Anyways, you want the waist to move. But you shouldn’t focus too much on it . If you “try” to move the waist you will lose the “essence” of the movement. This is how it was explained to me today in class.
It seems as though you have had a bit of enlightenment or revealation in you training. this is good but remember things like this happen when we dont try. I just happens, but the moment we try to hard to grasp this feeling the faster it slips through our fingers. So I wouldnt try to attempt to duplicate that feeling but rather be aware of when it returns. I was always told to move from the point in the middle of the body called the Fu Zhong shin,when playing tai chi, when you move form this point every thing around if will follow kinda like the center of a tornando. However once you start to concentrate on the movement mentally or use YI your body will automatically tense slightly causing the movemnts to tighten ever so slightly wich will impeed what it is you are trying to do! do I make any sense to you ? It is obviously hard to explain feelings and what one should or should not feel, but if you have an understadning that you dont own your feelings and realize they are simply borrowed, you will have a better time understanding what it is you are supposed to feel! I aplogize if this post was a little deep in subject but you question warrants such a reponse. good luck and merry x-mas your freind E.D
It sounds to me like you are advancing well. But don’t focus too much on “making” anything happen by turning your waist, as you will be trying too hard. But to answer your question, yes, every movement in your form should be done like this. The Classics tell us that power comes from the ground, and is controlled by the waist, which causes it to manifest in the rest of the body, and also that if one part (your waist, for example) moves the rest must move as well. Pretty soon, you will move like this naturally, and that’s a good thing. Keep up what your doing.
Fu-pow, my taiji teacher is Lu Baochen, a recent arrival to Finland from Beijing. He’s also studied with Feng Zhiquang, but also under other masters (Baji, Xinyi and Bagua). As I understood it, he feels there is a lot different teachers can teach dedicated students. Quite a few taiji folks from the Wang Fengming (and other schools as well) camp came over to study with him.
When I met him, the old adage “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear” rang in my head. I can’t say enough good things about him.
