My regular push hand class has pushed me further and further away - the “things I thought I knew” column is migrating to the “things I don’t know” column. So i’m losing my balance more often, and losing concentration more often as well, while I ride the transitional learning curve.
One of the bad habits [...]
I’ve been struggling with the “peng” jin and can’t quite find the right balance between Peng and Muscle. Peng, it seems should have a balloon like quality to it - soft when in contact with something, but strong in terms of the quality of the expansion. It’s the soft and strong that i’m trying to [...]
Wujimon wrote an interesting post on how tai chi is taught through the transmission of touch. The lessons learnt from these corrections normally far outweigh any other class room exposure I’ve had. I especially remember the “don’t look down” criteria. I have a tendency to look down to check the posture alignment but was always [...]
A night of table-tennis which gave me more than I expected - an improved game by using tai ji training principles!
Kua is the link between your hips and your thighs. That’s my basic understanding of it. But a good test of a relaxed kua is when you can’t find your kua! The tension between thigh and hip disappears. I’ve actually felt this in a teacher. But I can’t reproduce it myself. Only very rarely that [...]
Knee pains are really common in Tai Chi. I remembered my first time (!) when I had a knee pain from doing tai ji training. It was quite frustrating especially when I asked the teacher and all the teacher said was… “yes, there must be something wrong with your stance”. The teacher might have good [...]
It’s 5.30am. My watch alarm rang. turned it off. and then my other alarm clock rang, which i have to get up, walk over and switch it off. Time to wake up i guess. Maybe i should try the method of how to get up right away when the alarm clock goes off, as proposed [...]
I’ve been trying to train a bit longer now that I have more time in my hands. It’s not going as planned. With all the good intentions of training longer every time i stepped out the door, always end up coming back earlier than intended. Today, i tried training the very basics of standing with [...]
My teacher gave me a very useful mnemonic yesterday. It’s when using 玉女穿梭 or more commonly translated as Fair Lady Playing/Working/Weaving shuttles.
The mnemonic only works well in Mandarin, so my English speaking readers will just have to remember that after guiding the opponent’s attacking hand upwards, your own attacking hand should immediately enter into the [...]
Do you hate waiting? Waiting for your turn in the queue, waiting for the bus to arrive, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for the clothes to dry, waiting for the lift to open its doors while you frantically press the “up” button, waiting for the perfect Tai Ji teacher to appear? Waiting for [...]