[HQ] I Liq Chuan Documentary...

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[ashe]

shot for Russian TV. Finally got all the subtitles in as annotations. hope you enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcZfB0piBs0

[Howard Popkin]

cool, really cool

[ashe]

thanks Howard! I didn't get a speaking part, but I did get cast as an extra (some still photos of my fights and meditating in the temple made it in to the doc), so now I can say I've been on Russian national TV! lolz...

it was really nice for Sifu to be able to show and talk about a full range of the art, so I think it helped show that SIfu has not only great skill, but also is such a great human being as well.

[Byron Foster]

I am at the seminar now. Will report back when it is done.

[ashe]

It was good to meet you today. Looking forward to working with you more tomorrow!

[Mark Jakabcsin]

Thanks for posting this Ashe. Interesting and well worth the time.

Take care,

Mark J.

[ashe]

just wanted to follow up on the workshop from last weekend in LA. we had a really great turnout and overall a really good weekend. There was lot of background noise the first half of Saturday due to the fencing class on the other side of the facility, but once they cleared out, we started to find our rhythm and things went really well. It was great to meet a board member (Byron) and spent some time training with one of my seniors, Steve Arboleda. all in all a great workshop!

if you would like to check out some of the photos you can visit http://iliqchuan.com/content/socal-2012

http://iliqchuan.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/1000003/so_cal_2012_13.jpg

[bob_stra]

Thanks Ashe; I hope to catch up with Sam when he's here in Oz next in August (?)

[ashe]

Yep, should be there in August. Probably the second or third weekend of the month. I'll try to post the details when it gets closer. There's also an east coast Oz workshop in the works as well.

[Eric Joyce]

Very cool Ashe. I enjoyed the video. Thanks for posting.

[Byron Foster]

I attended the Sam Chin seminar in Santa Ana last weekend.

This was my first Chinese martial art seminar.

First part was Sifu Sam Chin discussing his philosophy and concepts for about 45 minutes. He had very detailed explanations for everything.

He has these 13 points (Knees aligned with big toe, head positions so the crown is suspended, etc) that you need to maintain in order to have the right alignment. Keeping all of those straight in your head while moving is a bit of a challenge, when you are new to it like I was.

Spent time moving our hands in different planes and trying to develop a connection with our centers. Then we moved onto "spinning" where partners face each other and spun our hands against each other in circles while trying to maintain the hand-body connection we were working on before. That is really challenging. I was trying to move with my center, but under pressure, my shoulders kept turning back on. It is way easier staying relaxed spinning my hands in empty air, but when I actually had to apply the movements in a very limited and controlled setting one-on-one, not so successful. Keeping the 13 points straight was really difficult, but you got immediate feedback when you were doing one of them wrong, especially when we started to push and pull on each other.

Now that we had feedback working under pressure, we went back to moving our hands in the different planes solo, then we went back to paired partner practice. Overall it is not a bad strategy. Learn a concept, try the movements solo, then apply them with a partner dealing with actually forces, get the feedback on what you are doing, then back to solo work for retuning. Rinse lather repeat.

During a break, Sifu Chin asked me if a concept that he demonstrated was similar to anything in Aikido. I then showed him a copy of Endo's "Atari and Musubi" DVD that I had on my Kindle Fire. After watching for a few minutes, he said "Yes, we do the same thing" and then bounced me around for a while to demonstrate. It was fun.

I had a reasonable amount of one-on-one time with him. I just could not penetrate his defenses. He was always able to get to my center, even when it looked mechanically like I had the advantage.

The terms like condense, dissolve and expand from the back were rather new to me. So was the concept that each point of contact had a circle (or sphere) that had a center and therefore a cross in it. Each quarter of the circle, as divided by the cross, required a different type of movement to transverse. Although it made things seem complicated a first, it actually made it simpler since all the movements were described in detail.

Sifu Chin developed a system, put a lot of work into it. Deconstructed and then reconstructed it for the masses. He is also a likeable guy, approachable, interested in our feedback and opinions, tried to answer our questions and gave everyone some one-on-one time.

Two of the senior students gave an informal demo of advanced spinning, which looked like high speed paired tai chi. It was actually quite impressive since when I worked with them one-on-one in class, they were pretty solid and I could not get them to move during our push-pull exercises.

Summary: I need to wait a few months to see how my Aikido will changed based on this exposure. It was definitely worth while and I recommend it to anyone wanting to expand their knowledge of how the martial arts body works.
:D

[ashe]

Hey Bryon,

thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!

wrapping your head around all the concepts in the beginning can seem overwhelming for sure, but for instance, when all the 13 points are lined up properly, it feels a certain way, so it's really just ONE thing your looking for, the feel of that alignment. then when something slips out, it's sort of like a "sore thumb" if that makes sense...

then as your awareness expands you just keep recognizing another quality (like at the point of contact, and so on) and it just becomes another part of that feel.

some people can be put off by the highly technical aspects the training, but the application is very free.

anyway, i'll be back in LA in July to work more with the local group if you're interested in getting in some more work with our framework.