Master Chen Ziqiang in London, 2019

In April 2019 Master Chen Ziqiang returned to London for a series of workshops with Tai Ji Circle, a year after his 2018 visit. Over the visit the workshops covered Foundation training, Dajia Yilu, Taiji Ball, double swords, and Push Hands with Qinna.

It was a wonderful first day of workshops with Master Chen Ziqiang. A lovely group of us studied the practice and theory of Foundation training. Huge thanks to Lai and Michael for some tricky and detailed translation.

The important first step of Chen training is the standing posture, Zhan Zhuang. It requires total concentration on body position, placement and posture.

After the Dajia Yilu workshop, Raul shared how it felt to have his posture corrected:

Some of those feelings when Shifu Chen Ziqiang corrected my posture are similar to when Shifu Liu does. They change the intensity and feeling of the posture. That does not mean you have a lower posture, but a better alignment, so you feel like some parts open, and you feel that bubbling up in certain parts of your body.

When he was correcting me, he said that when you turn to one side, the hips sink down and there is a slight rotation of one of the hips backwards before turning to the other side. That was really interesting but challenging at the same time. Logically it makes sense, but I still struggle a bit to bring that into practice.

Thanks very much to Raul for his feedback.