Month: December 2018

Tai Ji Circle’s winter health workshop with Shifu Liu was insightful, varying from advice on diet, to using Qi Gong sounds to warm us up, with a visit from Torben Hersberg an ace osteopath and colleague of Shifu Liu’s from Central London Osteopathy Clinic. The AGM preceded the Assessment awards, and food preparations in the kitchen took place while we practiced Chen Foundation and performances of hand and weapon forms.  Gary broke a concrete block, he made it look easy, but don’t try this at home!… he keeps up his training in the powerful Ying (hard) Qi Gong of Shifu Liu. Everyone was incredibly generous bringing all sorts of delicious party food. One of our students sang accompanied by Shifu Liu on the harmonica and they also sang Chinese songs together. Shifu Liu’s powerful voice soared out with a beautiful love song from his homeland Xinjiang, dedicated to his wife. Michael told us stories and we even learnt the first moves of Salsa. Great time.

Congratulations to the students who despite their nerves took part in and won 2019 training prizes at TJC’s Chen Assessments, awarded by Shifu Liu at the AGM and the following day in class for those who couldn’t make the party.

2018 was a good training year and Shifu was very happy with the progress on his students and this was a full and wonderful way to finish off; with students, families and friends. Thank you all for you support and help with clearing up… and have a wonderful Christmas and New Year in 2019.

TJC Assessments on Sunday 9 January

Before the Assessments began on Sunday, Shifu Liu demonstrated and discussed some of the specific yin and yang attributes of the Chen Style Taijiquan, fast, slow; soft, strong, the particular circular or twining movements that are characteristic. Other advice was on posture, keeping the head and body straight, maintaining your ten ‘doors’, with reference to keeping all the joints open and relaxed. Use of the feet to push the floor and lead the energy up towards the dantian, the waist and outwards through the hands to the finger tips, (the dantian is the main energy centre in Chinese medicine theory, located in the abdomen below the navel). The importance of relaxing the palms and fingers while keeping the fingers straight, relaxing the feet to enable the energy to flow to the toes, using the eyes to follow the hand… just some of the useful advise that he gave to us.

We would like to thank everyone who attended, especially the foundation group overcoming their nerves to take part, not easy, even for skilled practitioners.

Four foundation student members who have made the most progress, plus one sponsored prize, will be awarded our training prizes after the AGM on 15 December.