Tai Chi Basic Movements - Dao Juan Gong

[origami_itto]

Interesting.

I think the usual idea for foundation exercises like this is to focus on one thing at a time, which is easier for a student. Refine that to a high degree, THEN put it together in a form with all the other medicine.

I know the Yang manuals specifically state this is the way to approach learning the forms. One posture at a time, string them together later as an advanced practice. Don't get too hung up on specific order.

[D_Glenn]

In reality though Silk Reeling isn’t a foundational exercise. It requires superb and finite control of the 3 layers of abdominal muscles to properly do them. Before you can even start using them you first have to get your Yi to take over their autonomic functionality from your Po. That’s a process in and of itself. A process that is more easily learned as a side goal while doing the form.

.

[charles]

Don't Chen folks routinely practice silk reeling exercises? Positive and negative circles?

Chen Taijiquan isn't a homogeneous single thing any more than the other styles of Taijiquan. Different teachers teach different things and use different terminology for the same thing and the same terminology for different things.

To the best of my knowledge, only Hong and his style refer to "positive" and "negative" circles. Hong did not teach "silk reeling exercises". The basics that he taught he called ji ben gong.

They do, but per CXW advice, they shouldn’t be. He said he regrets ever teaching them because he wasn’t aware how people exaggerated their importance. Thinking it was the golden treasure. When in actuality it’s just Fool’s gold and the real treasure is in the form.

CXW taught variations on two circles and called those "silk reeling exercises" (chan si gong). By contrast, Feng Zhiqiang taught a very complex series of exercises that he called the 18 ball silk reeling exercises. They involve far more than the basic two circles, including martial application for most of them. Some of them are simply actions taken from forms and practiced in isolation. CXW might be correct in his assertion regarding the exercises he taught. By contrast, Feng stated that if one didn't have time for forms, one should practice neigong, which includes the individual exercises.

[charles]

In reality though Silk Reeling isn’t a foundational exercise.

I disagree in the sense that silk reeling (chan si) is an important foundation for much of Chen Taijiquan. All movement should incorporate it.

I agree that it is an advanced skill, but foundational, since so much relies upon it.

[robert]

I think the usual idea for foundation exercises like this is to focus on one thing at a time, which is easier for a student. Refine that to a high degree, THEN put it together in a form with all the other medicine.

I learned silk reeling from CXW and that is basically what we were taught. His silk reeling exercises are pieces of the form. The front facing circle can be seen as one arm's movement in cloud hands. He had SREs with front facing circle both with and without stepping. He said it was easier to learn the body mechanics in a simple movement as opposed to learning the whole form. Break it down and look at a small piece. Also, when learning the form if you have a problem with a part of it, break it out and make up your own silk reeling.

CXW did say that learning standing and silk reeling first was non-traditional and he developed the method with the urging of the Chinese Wushu Association. The CWA said that people weren't getting taiji and asked if there was some way to make it clearer or something to that affect. Personally, I like the approach.

[yeniseri]

Experientially, the individual posture movement per repeated posture practice is part and parcel of training that is done before learning the whole form itself!
It is part of 'neigong jibengong' as a way to prepare the practitioner for 'owning practice' over x period of time.

Other individual posture practice(s) are a combination of taijizhuang (static posture holding-single whip, hands strum lute, etc) and repeated posture practice as in 'brush knee x times, grasping bird's tail, yun shou (hands in clouds). Repulse monkey/Step back can be done static feet with moving waist/yao, or moving feet with corresponding coordination with yao/waist (daimai) integration as it should be!

[D_Glenn]

Oh yeah CXW also said that Single Move Practice is probably more important than the form. Just pick any movement from the form and practice it standing in 1 place alternating side to side, or do it as a line drill with stepping and alternating right side and left side. Learning to connect ones core musculature to the extremities is learned while doing a large variety of different movements. There’s so many connective tissues involved. Bring your full arsenal of movements up to speed together.
In the Bagua that I practice we typically train what we call the Lion system and it’s basically similar to Chen Taijiquan in that it moves from the waist/dantian and the waist is what provides power to the hands. Single Move Practice is the core of our style of Bagua. Standing in place; Line drills; Doing strikes on a square pattern; and doing strikes with 180 degree turns in stepping. That’s how I learned to use my Dantian to drive my movements, which is called Zhuanhuan.

[origami_itto]

So there are theories that each of the movements is more or less impactful to various meridians and channels. In holding or repeating them it's said to work the energy in those vessels. Single movement practice combined with this aspect results in the qigong drills and supplementary exercises.

[BruceP]

fake it 'til you almost make it

changing the tune x5 is too many times...

[origami_itto]

[Appledog]

The bigger question is- do those movements have a valid martial application? If they do, good. If they don’t, then why are they being practiced.

This is a good question, if you like we could explore this issue.

Don't Chen folks routinely practice silk reeling exercises? Positive and negative circles?

Yes and no. It's a bit of a meta issue. If you are interested we can explore this. The CXW comment would also be interesting to analyze. One request though. I don't get the music video thing, so I would personally prefer if you didn't post them on the thread, because I don't understand. Or please explain what you mean by posting them.

[origami_itto]

Don't Chen folks routinely practice silk reeling exercises? Positive and negative circles?

Yes and no. It's a bit of a meta issue. If you are interested we can explore this. The CXW comment would also be interesting to analyze. One request though. I don't get the music video thing, so I would personally prefer if you didn't post them on the thread, because I don't understand. Or please explain what you mean by posting them.

Get it? Just responding to BruceP's "Fake it till you make it" with "Act like you know" sort of a synonymous sentiment.

Sure let's talk about silk reeling.

The overarching thread here is to show D_Glenn how he's contradicting himself there, not to be jerks about it, but more for self awareness.

The "single posture practice" is just a less formalized set of "supplementary qigong exercises", innit?

The difference being the qigong exercises are potentially tweaked for more potent effect.

[Appledog]

Don't Chen folks routinely practice silk reeling exercises? Positive and negative circles?

Yes and no. It's a bit of a meta issue. If you are interested we can explore this. The CXW comment would also be interesting to analyze. One request though. I don't get the music video thing, so I would personally prefer if you didn't post them on the thread, because I don't understand. Or please explain what you mean by posting them.

Get it? Just responding to BruceP's "Fake it till you make it" with "Act like you know" sort of a synonymous sentiment.

Sure let's talk about silk reeling.

The overarching thread here is to show D_Glenn how he's contradicting himself there, not to be jerks about it, but more for self awareness.

The "single posture practice" is just a less formalized set of "supplementary qigong exercises", innit?

The difference being the qigong exercises are potentially tweaked for more potent effect.

What D_Glenn has said in the past has been interesting, however, it has also been contradictory in certain respects. For example I don't think anyone is going to kill you for riding a horse. I mean, they wouldn't even be able to catch you, because horses are pretty fast.

Anyways, I like your observations about silk reeling. It seems as if CXW, Feng, and a number of others have created silk reeling exercises, despite it being well-known that you don't really need to do them. I would ask, why don't you really need to do them, and if so, why then are they taught? Why the need to isolate it and create this framework of "silk reeling sets" or set exercises for it?

Second, there has been a running theme recently among several posters where people say that if a movement does not have a direct martial effect, or is not done in a "neigong" way, it is not useful. So I like what you said about tweaking for potency. What reasons could there be for practicing a move or a technique isolated from a more "resistive" situation? Also, what exactly are, if any, the martial applications of silk reeling? I can think of quite a few, such as monk ropes a tiger.

[origami_itto]

Anyways, I like your observations about silk reeling. It seems as if CXW, Feng, and a number of others have created silk reeling exercises, despite it being well-known that you don't really need to do them. I would ask, why don't you really need to do them, and if so, why then are they taught? Why the need to isolate it and create this framework of "silk reeling sets" or set exercises for it?

Second, there has been a running theme recently among several posters where people say that if a movement does not have a direct martial effect, or is not done in a "neigong" way, it is not useful. So I like what you said about tweaking for potency. What reasons could there be for practicing a move or a technique isolated from a more "resistive" situation? Also, what exactly are, if any, the martial applications of silk reeling? I can think of quite a few, such as monk ropes a tiger.

I could tackle this from a number of angles, but I'll just pick the simplest and most obvious. Don't know about what anybody else may have said about anything, this is my synthesis. I don't study Chen and my understanding of their silk reeling is rudimentary at best. This is my looking at it from my particular perspective, mainly Yang and Xingyi.

In strength training there is this concept of "Isolate then integrate". Individual exercises like bicep curls target specific very limited muscle groups to reach target strength or stability goals, and then train those developed muscles to work together.

For the sake of THIS DISCUSSION, let's shorthand that as an "external" approach, not to become baggage that is carried over into other discussions, just putting a tag on it noting one quality of this practice.

These sort of exercises are the same concept, but carried into movement first, and then strength.

Instead of isolating one body part, we are isolating one movement, one circle, one plane at a time, using the whole body, or at least a larger piece of it.

Once we have gotten an actual intellectual understanding of the circles and planes, burned in the neurology that operates it, and have conditioned the (initially very weak and overlooked) specific musculature that supports and motivates it, you can start playing with it and deriving the free circle and spirals.

If you just start imitating the outer shape of the movement without building the specific inner conditioning, you're not yet doing "it".

So instead of a spirograph or tank tread, you've got scribbles and a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel.

So if you have strengthened the inner connections and have internalized the paradigms of movement and sensation, THEN you can start having folks challenge that movement.

Everybody wants to jump ahead though, myself included.

I could get as deep as you like on the topic.

[everything]

reasons

some other strength? flexibility? weird articulation? some kind of mental mind/body challenge? breaking down the movement prep to be able to better do your application moves? arguably a lot of these can be filed under "neigong". otherwise maybe "waigong". so perhaps they don''t really fall outside "application or neigong" reasons.

I think the point/question people are making/asking is - what is your specific reason for these specific things? do they fit under those reason categories? Why did you call them "basic"? "important"? "you will experience results"?

taught

An ex wrestler friend once told me a lot of his skill and strength came down to using his big toe. If I told you out of context here's an exercise for articulation of the big toe, it would make no sense. If I told you it's important for wrestling, it might make more sense. If exercises lost their context over time, presumably people could be "doing it wrong" or "for no reason". If you say it's "important", presumably you claim to have the context/reasons.