Hi Brett,
Welcome to the forum! Are you in the U.S.? I don't know if you're aware but there are people teaching throughout the country (and the world for that matter) so you might get lucky and find some classes nearby.
We train the hip roll in a feet parallel stance as well as in a front stance.
Start by making half circles, upper half, lower half. Then do full circles in one direction, followed by the other direction.
Keep the weight balanced on the feet. The 15 are ordered the way they are so that they build on each other. so even though you're not doing "absorb project", you should try to have a quality of absorb and project when doing the hip roll. Same with the other exercises. So to answer another part of your question, you are training the hip roll every time you shift weight or change alignment from dantian to mingmen.
That's a quick and dirty version of it that ignores the finer points, hope it helps.
-Ben
|