day 218: transitioning back to chen tai chi

concepts:

• listening
• chen push hands
  

lessons:

• Yang tai chi
• Chen tai chi
  

last Sunday was a bit of a transition period. since we finished the 7-star mantis lien jian form, it was time to transition to something new.

we spent a fair amount of class time going through some applications in the Yang tai chi short form, since Jeanette is just learning it (she's a new student, and a friend of Jo-san from their days in Taiwan). this lasted about 2/3 of class.

after some time Sifu said we should discuss what we'd be doing with our Sundays from here on. he said he'd like to continue on with Chen tai chi, particularly pao quan. however, he said we'd have to do some work before we started with the form, particularly in terms of Chen push hands.

Sifu reminded us that Chen push hands is very different from the typical Yang-style that we commonly see, with Chen push hands (at least, the way he learned it) is much more dynamic and involves footwork, legwork, changes in direction, multi-planar movement, and use of space (literally, you don't stand in a static location, but instead move all over the ground).

Sifu also said we needed to become more intuitive with the tai chi method of changing and mixing yin & yang forces to produce misdirection and fool the opponent. this is critical, since so many of the techniques in tai chi will not work without this element.

Sifu began us with a series of drills on ting, learning how to move around and redirect incoming fists while stepping along a line. he had us do this in pairs, with one partner being the attacker and the other being the defender, first going forwards and then backwards, and then switching roles. since there were only 3 of us learning this (me, Phunsak, and John Eagles), we rotated as partners.

this took the remainder of time, with class ending a little after 1pm.