Formosa Neijia

My teacher Chen Yun-ching is in the June edition of Inside Kung-fu. If you hurry, you can catch the article, which is excerpted from Jess O’Brien’s book Nei Jia Quan, 2nd edition: Internal Martial Arts.
In the article, Chen laoshi brings up some interesting points. One of them is that push hands should be thought of […]

[Read more →]

One of the main things to work on in taiji IMO is mastering the individual postures. This forms the bulk of my practice with form work coming in second. I take each one of the moves from my Chen Pan-ling form and do them individually as straight line drills. This is perhaps a unique feature […]

[Read more →]

After translating the Chen Pan-ling form names, I was left puzzled by a few of the quirks I encountered. Here they are:
1. 撇身pie shen — what exactly does “pie” mean here? This is a fairly rare verb.
2. 如封似閉 rufeng sibi — seal and close. This one seems a little odd, too. What is being sealed […]

[Read more →]

So many posts to write, so little time.
Before I forget, the 2009 Chen Pan-ling camp details have been released here. This will be 10 days of training and assorted sightseeing in Kaoshiung, Taiwan. The dates are 16-26 January, 2009. The location will be interesting — it’s to be held at the Kaoshiung Confucius […]

[Read more →]

Here’s a little translation project I did while I was on my recent “break.” This is a list of all the Chen Pan-ling taiji moves in Chinese and in English. Some of these names are slightly different from what you may have seen in the translation of CPL’s taiji book because I felt a new […]

[Read more →]

This is Taipei teacher Huang Lien-shun doing the Chen Pan-ling baguazhang. As you can perhaps tell, this spot in Canada is pretty popular. Huang isn’t a baguazhang specialist BTW. He’s someone that grew up in Taizhong and loved training all of the material from Gao Fang-xian and Chen Pan-ling as a child. He never […]

[Read more →]

I’ve gotten several complaints about Chen Yun-ching’s baguazhang DVD and I’ve recently had the chance to review it. I want to offer a response but first I want to say clearly that I don’t represent anyone in any way and this response is just my own thoughts.
I’ve seen Chen laoshi demo the bagua several times […]

[Read more →]

I planned a longer, more in-depth post than this today, but I’m felling really under the weather. So a short note will have to suffice.
In Japan, Chen Pan-ling’s taiji is called shuangbian taiji — meaning “double-sided” taijiquan. His books all list it in the materials that he taught. It’s last on the list under taichichuan.
I […]

[Read more →]

This past Saturday, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with one of Taiwan’s top teachers — Chen Yun-ching. I met him near his home in Taizhong and we chatted and compared practices for a couple of hours.
One of the main things that I got from the conversation is that his father’s martial arts were […]

[Read more →]

Here is Chen Yun-ching showing some mixed movements from his father’s martial arts. I contiue to be impressed by these clips and I hope that James Sumarac continues to put more of them out.
Chen starts with a shaolin movement similar to taiji’s press (ji). Notice the blending of vertical with horizontal movement. This is […]

[Read more →]