Practice, practice and then practice again

I just read a very good blog post about that and I guess I should give this a try.

Anyway, for the moment my training is based on 5mn warm up, then the yang long form (at least half of it since I continue to loose the track around the move 50 something…), then the few movements I know from the first Routine from Chen form.

I want to keep doing this training every morning, before taking care of my kids, bringing them to the daycare center, and then going to work …

I feel so much better after my practice. It’s not particularly physical or anything (it’s in general 30mn training after all) but I really enjoy it. And the very good part about that is that I continue learning the form, practicing what I know and studying what I still have to learn. Sometimes I replace the physical training by refreshing my memory using videos and/or books. It’s not perfect but that’s definitly better than doing nothing

Seminar with Master Yang Jun

I spent a little bit more than two days in a seminar with Yang Jun.

That was really a great experience. First of all, Yang Jun talked a lot about the use of explosive energy. That’s pretty close to what I hear on the chen form. But the most amazing part was simply to see this man move. He demonstrated several times some simple movement, but always with a precision, a smoothness …

The seminar started on friday afternoon, with two hours on the 10 principles from Yang Cheng Fu and the three first movement from the hand form.

This day was a little bit too short for me. Common, only two movement.

Of course the day after was not the same story : 50 movements in a single day. That was rough but interesting. I took a maximum of notes on the different explanation and clarification he gave.

The third days, was the rest of the sequence.

The only thing I was not too happy with were the dozen of questions people asked. I mean, common, you are talking to one of the best taiji player in north america, don’t ask him questions on where you should look while performing Single Whip when you have so much to learn and so little time. You can ask these kind of questions to your regular teacher.

Anyway, this seminar was good but definitly too short. I guess that I could do a dozen more and still have a truck load of information to learn from each of them

Praticing Taiji in every part of your life

In this superb blog there is a sentence about a master praticing the form while walking.
I have read that several time : you should practice taijiquan as part of your day to day life.
How can you achieve something like this ?
I guess that you need to be really good and to practice for years. But that a great objective.
I need to work on that a little bit more. How I could walk, type, work and practicing taijiquan at the same time….

I don’t think it’s the same thing as applying the taiji philosophy to our day to day life, it’s really praticing the movements in our life.

I’m wondering if my teacher could help me / guide me on this.

Interesting interview with Ma Hong

I was watching some interesting video on youtube about Ma Hong, when I found this interesting interview from Ma Hong

For me the best part of this interview is the last question about breathing.
I’m working on breathing techniques since I read the first book from Jou Tsung Hwa. The concept of “breathing without breathing” and concentrate on the dantian is a really powerfull one, but difficult to understand, and even more difficult to comprehend.

First post

I’m just a beginner in Taiji, therefore the only objective of this blog is to collect my notes about my personnal practice and understanding of Taijiquan.
I’ll use this blog keep tracks of my reflexion about Taiji, my learning experience, and anything I could find relevant to it.
I started practicing Yang form in 2006 in Montreal, QC. My objectives at that time were not clearly defined, I was not really expecting anything special from my first training. The thing is : I jost loved it.
So I continue practicing, as often as I can, I read a lot on the internet, and I am currently looking for some good books to learn from (not the forms but more the philosophy and theory behind it).
The more I practice, the more I like it, the more I read the more I want to learn…
Now I am practicing both the Chen and the Yang form. That’s a challenge to learn them both, I’ll need more than my life time to be really good at it, but I will continue anyway