Cook Ding's Kitchen: Tao, The Watercourse Way

Cook Ding's Kitchen: Tao, The Watercourse Way: I posted before about ChunLiang Al Huang , who was one of the early Taijiquan teachers in the US, and part of the Human Potential Movement ...

Love the freedom of movement and how he isn't stuck in "posturing"

Feet and Earth

I came across a great quote from Thich Nhat Hanh " Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet".

Which reminds me of how how I was taught , when placing the foot on the ground it is with sensitivity as you may need to pick it up without lurching or being off balance.

The ground may have an obstacle, hole, maybe avoid a foot sweep or you want to kick. Don't be mentally double weighted in your stepping.

Cook Ding's Kitchen: The Aging Martial Artist

Cook Ding's Kitchen: The Aging Martial Artist: There was a post over at Budo Journeyman about aging and training. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here . I found myself in a...

Getting Value from Push Hands

A few months ago I had a comment on post with a link to an article looking at why practice Pushing Hands and what are our goals.

I particularly like the sentence "push hands works to undo a person's natural instinct to resist force with force, and teaches yielding and redirecting of force"

So much of what you can see on the internet from pushing hands competitions appears to be resistance.

Dr Chi Chiang Tao said 20 years learning to yield, 1 year learning to push. 

Here is the link to the article by Alan Ludmer Getting Value from Push Hands

Cook Ding's Kitchen: Mind Like Water

Cook Ding's Kitchen: Mind Like Water: Over at the Isshindo blog , there was a post about Mizu no Kokoro, Mind Like Water. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here . Mi...

The Legs

 Watch this

Exercise to integrate the arms and torso

 I've probably put this on here before but repeating it as it's a great exercise.

Once you've got the hang of the arms try it with the legs, standing on one and tracing the yin/yang symbol with the other.