Liked on YouTube: Connect internal early in square form

Connect internal early in square form

A Youtube video:  Early work for Square Form  (connect internal early in square form)

Master Stephen Hwa makes the case that learning to connect the arm to the core should be done immediately upon the beginning study of the Square Form. Usually one learns Square Form, Round Form and when one is good in the Round Form they start to connect. He adds, however, that in doing it this way one's Square Form will be different. Without knowing this then one has a difficult time knowing where to place hands and arms in relation to the body.If one says "you have to connect" however, then you will know where the arms and hands should be. You will not make incorrect or indecisive movements of the arms because you will lose the "connection". At 3:00 one sees the students attempting to connect arm and leg to explicit movement of the back. The emphasis is on how the lower back should feel in spite of the difficulty.

Overreach with the arm...you will feel the back

 Jim R said: It is indeed the 1st thing of importance to connect both arms to the core. Here's something my teacher taught me which is normally done with the teacher stretching out a student's arm. I discovered on my own that you can DIY

Just stretch an arm to full straight extension, as though you are overreaching for something, and continue the stretch till you feel backstretch, go as far as you can. Once fully extended gently use the back and only the back to pull the arm back a few inches, repeat, repeat the following instructions exactly. You now have a rudimentary arm-to-core connection...now read on to see where you are headed.

"The important thing is first to connect your arm to the core. Once you are connected, the push forward movement of your arm will teach how the abdomen should react. Once you are good at that, you can reverse the procedure by moving the abdomen to move the arm forward. There is no simple way to explain how the muscle in the abdomen should move"

Courtesy of Master Stephen Hwa @ Teachable.com

"Dear Master Hwa, When I try to move my arms from my back muscles, as you recommend, I feel the movement of the muscle in my stomach area (core muscle?). Does this mean that I am doing the movement correctly?"

Stephen Hwa

Reply

"You got it!! It is the purpose of this exercise to connect

arm movement to the back and the abdomen muscles so that eventually you can use the energy of these muscles to power the arm movement."

"Sir, what should you feel in the abdomen? As you push forwards, do you pull the abdomen to the right? Or should it feel like your pulling the abdomen backward and to the right? Many thanks."

Reply: "The important thing is first to connect your arm to the core. Once you are connected, the push forward movement of your arm will teach how the abdomen should react. Once you are good at that, you can reverse the procedure by moving the abdomen to move the arm forward. There is no simple way to explain how the muscle in the abdomen should move"

Yes, Master Hwa has 'Fajin"

 Classical Tai Chi: Homepage

https://classical-tai-chi.teachable.com

Researchers ask these questions: But where is the stuff of neijin? Can you as a Taijiquan practitioner tap into neijin to beat back a bully? How does Qi meld in with muscle actions? From the perspective of Classical Tai Chi however, how does one form an "energy path"?

A logical place to start with is the waist, even if one never had lessons from Master Hwa. A researcher asks: But doesn't waist power indeed seem mundane in light of the grandioseness of neijin truly or falsely intimated, by lots of Taijiquan practitioners? Are we short or long on our potential to produce the waist power that the human body is capable of? Do we or do we not have limits in our ability to improve upon it in training?

Any weekend golfer, tennis player, etc. can go on Youtube, find lots of videos where they are told to use their "waist". I would say, however, they know very well the limits of their drives even after private "lessons. So where is Neijin? Does Tiger Woods or Roger Federer have it, because they have waist power, can they do a one-inch punch, should be easy right? Isn't fajin a rather simple action after all? One steps on the gas and it goes so why not Tiger...but wait a minute hasn't he had numerous surgeries for his knees, etc? So it has to be something else like perhaps a regulation, control of the body in a Tai Chi way.

It would seem that all of Tiger's motion is coming from the power of the torso meandering into the legs and knees with all of the attendant injuries. So isn't it logical to assume that the area below the waist, let's call it so the hips should be Tai Chi regulated? So as a car the wheels cannot be unaligned so that tires are not uneven, who wants tires that sputter off the road. We have talked about a "whip-like" action in Fajin, with no attendant "reaction force" just see Master Hwa's Youtube video on Fajin.

Grasp Bird's Tail with no Chinese

 How can I "Grasp the bird's tail if I do not speak Chinese" is the name of a book that is presumably on Caligraphy as it relates to the names of Tai Chi movements. I have studied spoken, written Chinese language and Chinese calligraphic brushwork. There are no “ancient Chinese” deep dark secrets to the names of the movements in Tai Chi. Wu Chien Chuan was an officer in the Imperial Palace guard and taught a martial art, not the DaVinci Code. Martial arts have “Yi” or in English “martial intent” There is the very unpoetic “ Step Back, Deflect, Punch” then there is the “Step Up Grasp the Peacock’s Tail” and seemingly appealing to all Astrologer’s...the “Step Back Seven Stars”. To say that the names of movements are vague is an understatement whether in Chinese or English. The names and “meanings” are also different between Yang, Wu, Sun, and Chen styles to further complicate, even so far as to use different written characters. I can’t imagine a great deal of literacy to begin with for many of the early martial artists so what they wanted to convey is anyone’s guess. One thing is understated nowadays and that is how much new age aficionados muddy the water about Tai Chi to begin with... much less their flights of fancy about deep, dark meanings. I have found this type of thinking over the Tai Chi Classics as well which very often uses “prehistoric mystic terminology from Taoist philosophy and Chinese medicine”. So in either case the use of such terminology is anathema for any beginner to understand concepts…I don’t use them when teaching, nor does Master Hwa. In any event, he feels the Classics are treated as “holy writ, but unfortunately filled with glaring errors in how to do the Tai Chi”. The most glaring of course is the admonition to "...move everything when one part moves..." which if followed could benefit Orthopedic surgeons more than Tai Chi students.