Twist Stance. Today we're going over turning into twist stance from cat stance. This is the simplest and easiest way to transition into twist. Twist stance is a great stance to help with grappling footwork and sweeps. The way it is trained in our temple stances it also helps with spiralling force through the body for blocks, punches and crushing step/foot hooking sweeps.
This week's video is about the Cat stance. This stance is great for mobility and training stability in the legs for kicks and sweeps. The body timing with the sliding of the foot is a great way to train retreating sweeps and how to use the full body for power and stance adjustment. Cat stance traditionally is the 5th stance in our temple stance routine, however, it is an important one to learn prior to moving into more difficult stances.
Sei Ma means slanted horse. Traditionally this stance is the last in the sequence of our basic temple stance routine, however, to make other stances easier to understand I wanted to present it first before moving on into the other stances. A good way to look at this stance is that it is a bridge between horse stance and others because of the shifting and splitting of weight distribution.
First 3rd of our Shu Family applications. These are the yin and completely yielding applications of the Cheng Man Ching form.
Developed by Dr. Tony Zayner after over 10 years of deep thought, consideration, dedicated practice and trouble shooting. These applications came about by striving to keep tai chi principles and taoist foundations of softness, yielding and complete relaxation in the face of pressure and hardship.
Tony began working on these yielding applications after many years competing in push hands and being very dissatisfied with the direction push hands has been taken. As well as a dissillusion with how tai chi as a whole is taught many times divorced of its most important Taoist foundations of yin yang balance.
These applications are an embodiment of our precepts of "Keep to the Tao, invest in loss, return to the root, never force, and never resist."
If you are interested in learning our applications of the Cheng Man Ching 37 posture form reach out to Dr. Bernard (Tony) Zayner, Greg Bell (based in and around Chicago IL) or myself down here in NC. :) I'd also enjoy bringing Dr. T down here to NC for a seminar. :)
Applications performed by Greg Bell and Chris Grodski at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, in 2000 something. This video is posted and shared with permission of Dr. Zayner.
Here's a simple explanation of how to start or setup your push hands practice. What is push hands? Push hands is an exercise to see how well you can maintain and regain your balance when someone is pushing on you. This is the very first step of push hands, creating a level playing field, starting at a neutral position. As you progress in our practice this learning of our balance and in turn rebalancing developes into deeper body awareness and yielding to allow the agressor to pass by you and/or how to capitalize on your partner's tension/momentum to achieve a more advantageous position.
Bow stance is the third stance in our temple stance routine. This stance is done to help establish proper linking of the legs to the hips for striking with the rear hand and rear leg. This stance will also help you establish what a proper horse stance is. Obviously these alignments and particular points of focus are to help you stretch the body so by the time you apply techniques your body will be more limber in their application. i.e. the heel is kept down to stretch the achiles, the front foot is kept turned inward to help align the body for sweeps, and the knee is kept turned inward to help with opening the front hip for maximum rotation of the hip. These are a few of the reasons for why we have these alignments in our bow stance.
Second stance is the same as horse stance except w/ a waist turn. This turning at the waist should be done without allowing the lower body to change, hips to shift or knees to buckle. This spiral turning of the shoulders helps to limber the torso for punches and other types of blocks, grapples or throws. The second stance is the second stance we train in our temple stance routine and all of these temple stances are done to help our students have good alignments and keep good health of the spine, legs and torso.
Kwan Ying Dao opening into horse stance 3
Continuing our instruction on opening into horse stance. Our third way of opening is the last beginner progression. Stepping directly into the horse stance can seem simple, but it has some complex spiral and timing. The student should have established proper timing of the hips from the second and spiraling into the stance should be instantaneous at this point. Stepping into the stance in this way requires a linking of the ball of the foot into the spiral of the stance. When done properly the whole body synchronizes and this step can be used to bump the opponent's hips off balance and brings about more solid stepping as a whole. This method echos the tai chi and wushu classical saying of "The qi should be signaled by the feet, drawn up through the legs, directed by the waist, supported by the spine, and reflected in the fingertips" as can be seen with the whole body coming together into the stance.
5 man form
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Set a goal to go through a form or work a single exercise, stance or posture at least once a day. If you start training in this way you may find motivation to do something else afterward. Start with small steps make it so easy you can't fail and enjoy the work! Down below is the first form we start off with in our kung fu practice. The 5 person form done slowly at first and at speed for a second time.
Music Credit: Metallica
Kwan Ying Dao Opening into horse stance 2
Horse stance is common to all traditional martial arts. Here is how we train the proper alignments and sequence of opening into the stance. This is the second version and should be done after one has established the proper feeling of spiraling and counterbalancing tension in the legs as well as memorizing the proper alignment and distance between the feet in horse stance.
Have a safe and great new year, we'll see you next year. :)
Kwan Ying Dao Opening into horse stance 1
Horse stance is common to all traditional martial arts. Here is how we train the proper alignments and sequence of opening into the stance. This is the most basic version, I'll be posting the second version next week. Stay tuned in. Have a merry Christmas and I'll see you again before the new year!
Old video I took back in 2017 on Master Gao/Ko stances! There are some corrections I would give to my form currently. In particular the position of my knee in some stances to be in line w/ the foot, but overall a decent video for reference. :) This is the full sequence we use in Kwan Ying Do of Gao stance work, enjoy my friends! See you in class soon.
Had a Tai chi AHAH moment had to share :) "Seek principle over perfection" lots of reasons why, enjoy your day my friends! See you in class on Wednesday.
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Taoist stretches/ movements
A bit of the 28 Taoist health movements, most of what I remember of them. With some Kwan Ying Do exercises mixed in... I'll post a more extensive list of the exercises after bit... it felt great dusting these off. Some of them I do more frequently than others.
Cheng Man Ching 37 posture Tai Chi form
Been a while since I posted one of these... soooo here it is :)
Cheng Man Ching's 37 posture Tai Chi form
Most important Tai chi principle! Enjoy the video. In a nutshell relaxation is not stacking...
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