This was a professionally produced introductory short for our new satellite school in Paris.
陈氏太极拳 Marin Spivack Chen Shi Taijiquan Gongfu Jia Er Lu section Rambouillet France 2024
Traditional five sequences of Yilu
Chen Taijiquan Workshop Rambouillet, France 2023 a Triumph of Perseverance!
It only took us 3 years to finally make it happen. Rambouillet, a little over an hour outside of Paris, if Paris forgets it has traffic, It’s a beautiful quiet forested town. We tried to do this pre-Covid and got blocked by Wuhan Bio-hazard labs apparently. Flights cancelled, lives disrupted, paranoia cultivated etc. Finally we made it happen and it was wonderful to see students after three years. Although it was a small (and excessively dedicated) group, we had attendance from Australia, South East Asia, Ireland, and France, well and myself.
It was an excellent week of hard training. A good training room with mats made for a rather sweaty and ‘impactful’ throwing study, which likely saved some injuries. We trained outside at the Bergerie Nationale which is lovely and forest-y with clean air and history.
It’s all been a blur now as I try to nurse my stiffening legs. I am certain we covered a lot of material, I just cannot remember what it was. I am guessing foundational bitterness, Tuishou detail, grappling methods, Qinna tecniques, some striking and maybe something else, qigong maybe? I hope we do this again, with some frequency. New interested folks, don’t be shy. Make your presence and interest known.
October ’22 Fort Collins Chen Taijiquan Workshop was great
The weather was sunny and actually quite warm (thanks global warming) bright fall leaves, much yellow and red. A bit of fire and wine and a whole lot of practical application, form and drill practice made for a memorable, fulfilling and rather sore and exhausting experience. Looking forward to doing this again in Likely April. Thanks to all who endeavored.
Now we offer some old skool 1993 style super cool play by play secret mystery Taijiquan deadly techniques for your imaginative world:
September 2022 Short Practice Demo, Yilu
Younger Generation Coming Up
It’s good to start young. Long term physical health habits, hard-won gems of detail in traditional Taijiquan Gongfu are difficult enough to find in adulthood. If one starts on this path early that is a lucky fate and can inspire an embodied active physical and energetic life.
2022 Spring into Summer Tuishou Activities
Spring was slow and summer has been welcome. Much gongfu activity continues as students and family grows and progresses. We post a bit less these days. As we are not commercially oriented, we are mostly training methods and approach rather different from the majority and so not really “radio-ready” for the most part, but we are putting in the training to produce quality gongfu.
Gongfujia Fort Collins #8 April 2022
Marin Spivack Chen Taijiquan Gongfujia Fort Collins #8 April 2022 workshop was a great time. Lately it’s just been too busy and too detail-rich to get into posting much content. Most of it is well beyond the scope of the public internet. it was exhausting, fun, and rewarding.
Oct 2021 Fort Collins Workshop #7 Successful
After more than a year of delay we were finally able to host our 7th Colorado workshop. It was not without some difficulty and a lot of nasal swabbing & testing. The weather was very bright and clear with beautiful fall leaves and no rain, thankfully.
We covered mainly basics and applications, leaving form to our online training and library resource which has been highly and rather unexpectedly effective. On Saturday the 23rd we had almost an all day long tuishou gladiator summit which was a lot of fun and quite exhausting, but it’s been a long time. People are done with non-doing at this point I think.
We had I guess 15 people and hopefully a lot of new ideas and points to improve to hold us for a while until the next visit in a number of possible locations. Thanks all to those who attended, new and old. We all hope to do this again soon and create more opportunities for practice and progress.
