So we were doing lots and lots of six sealings four closings exercises at the end of the Vienna Workshop. I was leading the group and counting. Then, at #476 something in my hip cracked open. A rush of pure energy run through my body and I felt like a conductor between heaven and earth, and then …

Ok, I admit. It wasn’t like that. We were doing those mentioned exercises and at some point Shifu just said: „… Look at Pawel, his kua is open.“ I simply continued counting and leading through the last few exercises of the Vienna Workshop. I was too surprised to react differently.

During my own practice, before the European tour 2019 I started the realize a new possibility to move my hip. With that I mean the hip area. Something became different. It felt like „more space to move“ and also „moving in a different way“. I couldn’t get this quality of movement every time, though.

Vienna was the 3rd Workshop on the tour this year (2019) and I was assisting Shifu again on the tour by filming the workshops, making fotos, managing the tour and so on. I also got lot’s of input and corrections on the two previous workshop by Shifu. And I was training much more than usual. I tried to do everything with this newly found quality of movement. So it became more stable and reproducible.

Being more reproducible I also had the chance to „observe“ what is happening a little bit better. It turned out, it was the rear Kua that made the difference. It somehow synchronizes with the front one and (this is how it feels like) drags the front one back.

Speaking about this „sensations“ doesn’t make much sense, so I won’t continue here. It’s hard to verbalize those sensations, but even if I could do that in perfect English it wouldn’t be worth much, since those are my sensations. Other people could feel something entirely different.

What did change? I can rotate my torso on the Kua. I need to get rid of the old move which is basically „moving the torso“. I’m a slow learner, though. I will need more time to figure out what I can do with it. And more partners. But another thing that I realized is, that it seems to give me a bite on the opponent. Need to dig into that.

The Vienna Workshop was in March. Back then I could do this „new move“ only with right side in the front. The other side felt jammed. After being in Toulouse on the 3rd European Chen Style Taijiquan Practical Method Meetup I can do it on both sides. This is because I was practicing much more than usual. Again the secret to progress is EXERCISE.

How much could I achieve if I could just do more than I usually do?

http://practicalmethod.com/2019/09/my-kua-opened-up-at-the-vienna-workshop-2019