Training notes: Your Impressions of the 2009 Intensive in NY
 

There was a lot of information provided at the 2009 Intensive at Sifu's house in NY, and all the participants are invited to share their impressions and training insights in this thread. By pooling together our impressions, we can help each other to understand some of the various principles and ideas discussed at the Intensive that we did not immediately (even begin to) grasp at the time they were discussed.

Peter

I look forward to reading this discussion since I was unable to attend.

+1 :)

Some of the concepts that came up at the Intensive off the top of my head:
tally, matching, shadowing, circle, circle with center, center to center, circle with cross, 4 quarters, two-dimension energy, projecting to the mass, spider web, pivot points, point of contact, the complement of yin and yang....

Peter

Any elaboration of these would be great. I'm particularly curious about tally and spider web.

At Sigong's home. Diary.
 

The full version with photos will come after coming back home. The translation will possibly come tomorrow, if the google translator makes any sense


10.02.09 Day 1. Arrival.
My 10 hour flight seemed very shot because i had two extra seats nearby and slept well.
My Sipo met me at the JFK airport at half past six. Sigong was driving around waiting and came as soon as Sipo called him.
First we went to the Chinatown to buy food for the workshop. It is really the small part of China) Characters everythere, all the district full of of small shops and supermarkets. We bought food in the Changfa supermarket. Different kind of vegetables, seafood (with even turtles there) an rice, rice, rice...

after buying the food we went to some Chinese restaurant for dinner. The food was tasty, the only problem was to make a choice of the dish, because the menu was really big.

Then we drove to the Pleasant Valley. I slept all the way and woke up only when we stopped near the Chin family house. I heard my voice saying: "Home!"
Sipo laughed anf said "Yeah! I-Liq-Chuan Home!"

The house is really beautiful. There are two floors there and the basement, which is the gym at the same time. Sigong's was very kind to let me sleep upstairs in Chi Min's (his elder son) room.

11.02.09 Day 2.
I woke up at 7. The weather in NY is really jumping. That was a sunny warm day.
After having a breakfast i watched the Chinese series which Sigong was already watching. It was about struggle between Chinese and Mongolian during the reign of the Yuan dynasty.
Sometime later, about 9 o'clock, i started to warm up. Sigong told me to do a wrist circle with maintaining tension. He said that this is very good for the ligaments and tendons.
He stressed the particular attention on doing 9 solid 1 empty and keeping on wrapping, no matter what the movement is. He said that it is necessary for me to build up the power of the feet and so it necessary to do a lot of wrapping with spiraling.

I've been doing the exercise for some time when Dima came. Dima is one of the Sigong's students. He is Ukrainian, but lives in the US. He is learning Iliqchuan for about a year and moved to NY especially for it.
Sigong told him to do the same exercise. He wanted as to find the relationship between the feet and the body. He said it was about working on elasticness, so we had to maintain the tension.

We did the spiraling of the wrist with the wrapping until 13 an then went to the Sam's club to buy something for the intensive. Sam's club is the name of the supermarket. "Good name" - said i to Sigong. Yearh! My Club! - Said Sigong laughing.

After that we came to the chinese restaurant and ate a lot of different tasty food. Sigong talked a lot about the complete circle at the point of contact. It was amazing when he showed us one thing. He let us push his finger with other finger and than changed the polarity. The feeling was exectly as if you are pushing the rotating ball, though the finger stayed static.

When we came back home we continued to train at the basement. We did a lot of spinning with Dima and Burny - the another student who came to the intensive. Sigong stressed the attention on completing the circles by recognizing the cross.

In the evening we talked about Bruce Lee and his level of understanding the martial arts, and then looked the photos of the russian iliqchuan school. Everybody was really impressed by the size of the group in Vologda, which is on calendar brought from Russia.


12.02.09 Day 3.
Another jump of the weather. Windy and cold.
Several students arrived that day. We did 15 basic with Jeff, and then did spinning with Dima, Burny, Ben and Joe. Sigong again stressed on completing the circles, center to center, circle with center and a circle with cross.
In the evening Richard an Rosalie Vespa (Both the disciples to Sigong) came. They brought Peter, the guy from Austria. They were stuck in the traffic for 5 hours. When they arrived, we watched the DVD from Riga's workshop.

13.02.09 Day 4. First day of the workshop
Sunny day. We had breakfast at 8. 3 russian-speaking guys arrived that day - Igor and David from NY and Sergei from Ekaterinburg (Sigong calls it Siberia, BTW), and some more people.
We started at 10:30 and did solo spiraling with wrapping the feet until lunch. Then we had an hour brake and continued with partner training doing close-close and open-open, training 4 strategies . We finished the program of the day with meditation on the senses.


14.02.09 Day 5. Second day of the workshop
This day we had more spinning. Sigong stressed the attention on that is vital to do a complete circle. And the way to do a complete circle is to go through the 4 quarters. But still in order no just to DRAW the circles, but to DO the circles, it should have the pull-push energy to the center, as the concept of "circle with center" says. So the concept of the circle with center is the tool to realize the principle of the circle.


When we were young our father often said: "You even can not complete the circles!!" - said Sigong, laughing. There was a great burst of laughing. It was really funny.

Then Sigong showed the controlling of upper and lower mass. We practiced it and then finished with meditation.

I took about 90 minutes of video notes with my crackberry so in a day or two I'll distill them down into the main points (althoug victor has already done a pretty good job).

Mostly I always find out a lot of what I need to work on more during the intensives.

This year I realized I need to improve the spiraling from the feet, and especially that I need to get more precise on recognizing my opponents mass (center to center) and even more importantly circle to center.

I say even more importantl because it's actually recognizing the center of the circle that allows to to create the circle itself. Without knowing where the center is, you can't find the cross and thus won't be able to even see the four arcs, let alone connect them into a circle.

Well, spider web is pretty simple. When Sifu puts his hands on the opponent's forearms, there is enough pressure that he can feel his opponent's structure and the quality of his contact with the floor. Sort of like sending a radar signal down to the floor which bounces back up. He said that this is similar to what a spider does: if anything touches the spider's web, the spider feels the vibration instantly.

Thus once Sifu has established this kind of contact, he has already harmonized himself with the opponent, and can no longer be surprised, since he can clearly sense every movement.

Peter

you can view some of the photos i took here

sorry some of the shots are so blurry, but my blackberry seems to only take really clear shots when i'm outside with plenty of light. otherwise they seem hazy.

also, thanks to everyone from ILC Russia for the gifts brought along by victor!

Thanks for the clarification. I understand the concept and have heard it referred to as having great sensitivity. I just never heard Sifu use the term spider web before. Of course it makes sense and does help one visualize the concept.

Nice photos Ashe. They make me regret even more not having been able to be there.

Thanks for sharing. Looks like it was a blast. :)

it's more of an analogy than an official term

i.e. "the feeling is like a spider web"

i was looking forward to meeting you, so i was bummed you didn't make it as well.

I got out of the workshop the need to spin more slowly, to work slowly through each element of the spin while evaluating my structure using the spinning force of coordination to ensure that I'm moving correctly.

As always, the intensive was inspiring, and I'll be training much harder in the near future to work on this stuff.

Ben,
Nice to meet you at the Intensive. I got out of the workshop the need to understand the underlying concepts and principles better. As my understanding grows, I hope my spinning ability will also improve. One step at a time.
Peter

I realized at this intensive that my ability to physically manifest circle to center and center to center is lacking. Doing the 5th circle made it clear to me that I'm no where near precise enough in my spinning.

It was nice meeting you too. Definitely one step at a time.

One more thing I was thinking about last night was the importance of feeling the fingertips as they land during the spinning to pull exercise. Sifu has probably talked about this before but it was the first time I was able to pay attention to it.

Hi Qiang - ok, I just figured out who you are - the famous master of meditation. You seemed very precise to me when we spun, so I guess preciseness is all relative to whom you are spinning with. BTW, I enjoyed listening to you play the guitar at the Intensive.

Peter

Yeah, it's me, Johnny. I hide behind my Chinese name.

I guess precision is relative. It's good you didn't hear me flub the notes on the guitar. That's another thing I don't practice nearly enough. :p

Hi Ashe,

You took some notes while you were at the Intensive, and have now had time to reflect about what you learned there - would you like to share some of your thoughts with the rest of us?

Peter