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Some rejected publicity shots for the next year’s workshop on the Taiji Spear in Nantes, France for Thierry Doctinal’s group (http://www.tai-ji-centre.net/). I am looking forward to teach this form since I have not taught it for a long while and that will force me to do some practice!
Some photos of the push hands we did in Munich last weekend (24-25 May). We took photos using a high speed camera showing students pushing me and then I push them and compare the two sets together to see how important it is to maintain one’s structural integrity as we push:
Below are some Tuishou photos taken in the last Taijiquan workshop in Nantes with Thierry Doctrinal (http://www.taoouest.net/), my French workshops organizer and the last picture is with Jerome Touzain (http://touzaintaichi.free.fr/topic/index.html), who met me years ago in Sydney. We have been together for close to 10 years now, on and off, so it is my pleasure to continue to train with these guys, who have become more like friends than students over the years.
Thanks Thierry and Jerome for being there with me every time I go to France, your continual presence is greatly appreciated.
Every time I go to teach Feng Shui in Krakow Poland I also take the opportunity to teach a small group of my Taiji students. We don’t meet all that often so it is not easy to find a place to practise, but last week we have been lucky and went to a very nice Wing Chun School run by Sifu Andrezj Szuszkiewicz (www.wingchunkungfu.pl). We thank him for his generosity and he also took the pictures of our training below.
The first picture shows us beginning to train in push hands and the usual way is to start with static push to the body, to train the students how to use the body as a conduit to transfer the opponent’s force to the ground by being “fang song” (letting go of the tension in the body). The second picture shows me getting on my knees to show the finer points of posture integrity while the others looked on. The third picture shows a group shot of my dedicated students who gave up their Saturday night to train with me. The last picture show me with Sifu Andrzej in front of a painting of Grandmaster Yip Man.
I just finished teaching a weekend workshop in Nantes, France, on the Yang Family Sword Form and the Five Animals Qigong Form. Some of the students have been with me since 2001 and it is satisfying from a teacher’s point of view, that some of them have improved noticeably in the last couple of years.
I was talking to one of the workshop participants in the train from Nantes to Paris and it was good to hear that he praised one particular senior students being so solidly rooted and powerfully connected, that no matter how he tried, he was sent flying in push hands! Now he is hooked with what we are doing.
My daughter Anna is turning 30 (we are celebrating the occasion in Paris) and that is how long I have been learning Feng Shui, but I studied Taijiquan, Choy Lee Fut and Qigiong long before Feng Shui; so what do I have to show for nearly 45 years of learning? Nothing much, except vitality and happiness and the fact that I still get a kick out of doing them every morning and that is what matters most to me.
Look at all my students in the photos below, they are all smiling and having fun and they do stick around, we are more like a family then a school and I learned just as much from my students as I have taught them, so what more would a teacher wish for?
I think Heaven and Thierry, my friend and organizer, for this privilege.
Greg Winder, one of my old friends, who is also a Lohan Qigong practitioner and a great artist, has done a series of beautiful drawing on the Da Lohan Qigong form. You can find out more about Greg’s work in his blog: http://greg.exblog.jp/by Master Chen Yong-Fa, after the Lohan 18 Hands and the Siu Lohan form and before Tai Git Kuen (Taijiquan) and Mo Git Kuen (Wujiquan).
It uses the mind intent and visualization as main means of circulating the vital qi in the body, hence there is little movement comparatively speaking and the form is done sitting in a meditational posture but strictly speaking it is not meditation in the true sense. It is a Qigong exercise because the aim is to move the Qiby making Yin Yang with movement, breathing and conscious striving, rather than just watching your breath and emptying the mind.
The easiset way to answer this question asked by Henry Fong is to look at the meaning of the Chinese characters in the names. Lets start with Taijiquan.
The character “quan” means fist and the Chinese generally would say: “da quan” or “lian quan”, that is to say hit with the fist or train with the fist. In another word, “quan” has the meaning of being a martial art. Since “Taji” refers to Yin and Yang, so Taijiquan in essence is a martial art using the principles of Yin and Yang.
“Qi” in Qigong refers to the Vital Qi that keeps us alive, and “gong” means a skill or an exercise, so Qigong in essence has the meaning of an exercise or a skill that cultivates the Vital Qi in our body.
Therefore one is about the cultivation of the Vital Qi and the other is about using the fist for self-defense. But the two are not separate things, because withour cultivating the Vital Qi, we cannot be efficient in using the fist, that is why the Chinese has a saying, “If (we) train the fist without the excise (to nourish the Qi), then it will be (an) empty (task) for the rest of our life.”
The problem is nowadays very few people do Taijiquan as a martial art, they do it as a Qigong instead, so gradually we have forgotten the true meaning of Taijiquan and mistaken it as another form of Qigong. One of my old teachers use to say, “What they do is Taijigong and not Taijiquan”!
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