We are prepar­ing the 8th Inter­na­tional Push Hands Meet­ing 2019 in Prague for you.
Dates: 13th-15th Sep­tem­ber 2019

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Schedule:

Fri­day		10:00–13:00 Work­shops:	14:30–16:30
		Gor­don Faulkn­er Tomasz (Thomas) Nowakows­ki	Prac­tice in pairs
Sat­ur­day		10:00–13:00 Work­shops:	15:00–18:00	19:30–22:00
		Tina Faulkn­er Elders Gor­don Faulkn­er Zbig­niew Tracz	Prac­tice in pairs	Gala-evening
Sun­day		10:00–13:00 Work­shops:	15:00–18:00
		Tina Faulkn­er Elders Otakar Cho­chola Tomasz (Thomas) Nowakows­ki	Prac­tice in pairs

• Work­shops – Expe­ri­enced teach­ers will present their meth­ods of work in Tai Chi Chuan and push hands.
• Prac­tice in pairs – Par­tic­i­pants will indi­vid­u­al­ly agree on how they want to prac­tice in pairs. They will prac­tice in 10-minute rounds. Par­tic­i­pants will agree on the type of prac­tice (free push hands vs. form push hands, with steps vs. with­out steps). The lev­el is always adjust­ed to the prac­ti­tion­er with less expe­ri­ence.
• Gala-evening – Space for pre­sen­ta­tions of styles, schools and forms as well as a friend­ly meet­ing.

Teachers

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Tina Faulkner Elders

Biog­ra­phy:

Tina began train­ing as a young child in Gong Fu and Chin Na with her father, Gor­don Faulkn­er. Dur­ing this time Gor­don was also teach­ing the inter­nal prac­tices and med­i­ta­tions of Man­tak Chia. Over the years Gor­don would fre­quent­ly host one of Man­tak Chia’s most senior stu­dents and illus­tra­tor, Juan Li. These ear­ly encoun­ters sparked a life­long curios­i­ty for Tina and an eager­ness to learn Tai­ji.

At twen­ty she moved to Bei­jing to study Daoyin Yang­sheng Gong at the Bei­jing Sports Uni­ver­si­ty, grad­u­at­ing in 1996. At this time she entered inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions, win­ning a num­ber of medals. Whilst liv­ing in Bei­jing, Tina began study­ing with Mas­ter Shi Ming, a nation­al trea­sure of Chi­na and author of Mind Over Mat­ter.

On her return from Chi­na, Tina oped her own school in Aberdeen (Scot­land) and taught reg­u­lar­ly in Amer­i­ca. She had the priv­i­lege of study­ing with and host­ing Pro­fes­sor Li DeYin on a num­ber of occa­sions and also act­ing as ambas­sador when Pro­fes­sor Li DeYin was invit­ed to teach in New Hamp­shire, Amer­i­ca.

Tina has con­tin­ued to return to Chi­na, over the years, study­ing ‘Health Qigong’ known as Daoyin Yang­sheng Gong at the Sports Uni­ver­si­ty of Bei­jing.

Around ten years ago Tina was intro­duced to Mas­ter Chen LiSheng, 15th Gen­er­a­tion Dis­ci­ple of Wudang Xuan­wu. Tina’s school has recent­ly been award­ed the first Teach­ing Coop­er­a­tion to the Wudang Daoist Wuji Gong­fu Acad­e­my, there­by cre­at­ing a direct cul­tur­al link to Wudang Moun­tain. Now her con­tin­ued self cul­ti­va­tion takes her to WuDang to study Tai­ji­quan, Qigong and more recent­ly Baguazhang with Mas­ter Chen.

Tina reg­u­lar­ly hosts Mas­ter Chen LiSheng in the UK and organ­is­es study trips to the Wudang Daoist Wuji Gong­fu Acad­e­my, Wudang, Chi­na.

Her school has been run­ning pri­vate and pub­lic class­es as well as teach­ing in the health­care sec­tor for near­ly twen­ty years. Some of the organ­i­sa­tions include the Con­fu­cius Insti­tute of Aberdeen and the Mag­gie Cen­tre for can­cer care.

Top­ic:

Sān Quān (3 Circles)

The ‘3 Cir­cles’ are exer­cis­es to loosen the kuà, jiān and yāo; they are con­sid­ered fun­da­men­tal to help devel­op a deep­er under­stand­ing of inter­nal and exter­nal struc­ture through which to move force.

Wu Gōng (5 Bows)

The ‘5 Bows’ pos­ture looks to devel­op an under­stand­ing of con­nec­tiv­i­ty through the body.
All of these exer­cis­es work on the more sub­tle art of Ting Jing (lis­ten­ing ener­gy), enabling a per­son to focus the mind and uti­lize the body cor­rect­ly to devel­op their prac­tices.

Gordon Faulkner

 Biog­ra­phy:

Gor­don Faulkn­er is the Direc­tor and Prin­ci­pal Instruc­tor of the Chan­quan­shu School of Daoist Arts, a school that teach­es Yang­sheng (nour­ish­ing the vital prin­ci­ple) prac­tices that cov­er mar­tial, med­ical and med­i­ta­tion­al arts.
Recog­nised for his out­stand­ing abil­i­ties in these fields in both the West and inside Chi­na, in the ear­ly 1990’s he was invit­ed to study the Daoyin Yang­sheng Gong sys­tem with Pro­fes­sor Zhang Guangde (one China’s ‘nation­al liv­ing trea­sures’) of the Bei­jing Uni­ver­si­ty of Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion. Lat­er he became one of the first West­ern­ers to be qual­i­fied as a Senior Inter­na­tion­al Judge cer­ti­fied by the Chi­na Daoyin Yang­sheng Gong Asso­ci­a­tion and the Chi­na Wushu Soci­ety.
Lat­er still, in an offi­cial cer­e­mo­ny held at the same uni­ver­si­ty, Pro­fes­sor Zhang accept­ed him as a closed door dis­ci­ple (Ru Shi Di Zi) and made him a suc­ces­sor to the Daoyin Yang­sheng Gong lin­eage, where he has been encour­aged by the uni­ver­si­ty to start pro­duc­tion of health rou­tines for the west­ern cli­mate.
He is the Pres­i­dent for Scot­land & Wales in the Euro­pean Daoyin Yang­sheng Gong Fed­er­a­tion, Spe­cial­ist Advi­sor to the UK Qigong Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion and for a time he was part of the Inter­na­tion­al Heal­ing Tao orga­ni­za­tion and was a Direc­tor of the Euro­pean Heal­ing Tao Instruc­tors Asso­ci­a­tion. Gor­don Faulkn­er has taught through­out Europe and the USA and reg­u­lar­ly gives sem­i­nars at Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Med­i­cine con­fer­ences.
On the ther­a­peu­tic side Gor­don is a prac­ti­tion­er and teacher of Chi­nese Ther­a­peu­tic Mas­sage.
Named ‘You Lisu’ at a cer­e­mo­ny at Wudang Moun­tain (the birth­place of Tai­ji­quan) he became a dis­ci­ple of Mas­ter You Xuande and was induct­ed as a 15th gen­er­a­tion mas­ter of Wudang box­ing.
Gor­don is an Armed Forces Vet­er­an with 22 years’ ser­vice in the Roy­al Air Force and in that time has had mar­tial train­ing with, been trained by, and ulti­mate­ly trained mem­bers of all branch­es the British Armed Forces. He was a founder mem­ber and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Roy­al Air Force Mar­tial Arts Fed­er­a­tion until retire­ment from mil­i­tary ser­vice.
He is a Fel­low of the Roy­al Asi­at­ic Soci­ety and a mem­ber of the Soci­ety for Anglo-Chi­nese Under­stand­ing.
Author of the award-win­ning book ‘Man­ag­ing Stress with Qigong’ from Singing Drag­on Pub­li­ca­tions. The exer­cis­es in this book are in use in sev­er­al Maggie’s Can­cer Care Cen­tres.

Top­ic:

Chù Shou (Touch Hands)

The sense of touch is sub­tle but pow­er­ful. The palms and fin­ger­tips in par­tic­u­lar take in a huge amount of infor­ma­tion, feel­ing and read­ing their envi­ron­ment. It is through the sense of touch that we can com­mu­ni­cate, under­stand and respond in a push hands set­ting. Impor­tant­ly, it is not just about receiv­ing infor­ma­tion, it is about how we inter­pret the infor­ma­tion received.

Tàijí Qín Ná (Seize & Hold)

Using the more subtle and internal principles of Tàijí to manipulate joints and control limbs.

Zbigniew Tracz

Biog­ra­phy:
Zbig­niew Tracz – Zbyszek comes from Poland. He start­ed learn­ing the art of Tai Chi Chuan in 1995. From the begin­ning until now has been learn­ing in school Cen­ter of Taoist Arts Gold­en Hill of Tomasz Nowakows­ki. Since 1999 he has been in this school as an instruc­tor.

He prac­tices the styles Yang (Tomasz Nowakows­ki) and Chang Sam Fung Tai Ki Kung (Dr Ming Wong C. Y, Tomasz Nowakows­ki).

 

Top­ic:
We will work on how to find relax­ation and opti­mal body pos­ture while stay­ing in touch with a part­ner. We will treat push-hands prac­tice as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op sen­si­tiv­i­ty, study our own bal­ance, pos­si­bil­i­ties and lim­i­ta­tions, and to rec­og­nize the same in anoth­er per­son. The work­shop will be a chance to talk about it on many lev­els.

Links:

Cen­tre of Taoist Arts Gold­en Hill (home page)

 

Otakar Chochola — taoist name Mao Zi Pei (Abundant Rain)

Biog­ra­phy: Start­ed his Tai Ji prac­tice 1997 under lead­er­ship of prof. Mario Topolsek, lat­er stud­ied with mas­ters Zhai Hong Yun, Zhai Jun, Zhai Feng and Dou Wan Chun. Since 2008 he began to fol­low the tra­di­tion­al taoist lin­eage in kung fu acad­e­my in Wudang, Chi­na. He was accept­ed as a mem­ber of 16th gen­er­a­tion and school con­tin­u­a­tor there.
He is cur­rent­ly work­ing on engag­ing the prac­tice of inter­nal qi gong tech­niques in com­bi­na­tion with wild moun­tain rid­ing in the coun­try­side where the direct self-reflec­tion is nec­es­sary.

Top­ic: Tai­ji body work out. Strength­en­ing and pro­long­ing the basic move­ments of Tai­ji, build­ing inner strength through flu­id­i­ty. Resis­tance train­ing. Strength­en­ing fin­ger struc­ture — Posi­tion and Qi Gong. Using snake tech­niques for tui shows. The sem­i­nar will not include tui show train­ing.

Links:

• Float­ing clouds (home page, Czech)
• Wudang Kung Fu Acad­e­my for Tra­di­tion­al Taoist Inter­nal Mar­tial Arts

Tomasz (Thomas) Nowakowski

Biog­ra­phy: Tomasz (Thomas) Nowakows­ki liv­ing in Lon­don, visu­al and mar­tial artist. He has stud­ied dif­fer­ent mar­tial arts since 1966 and has been teach­ing T’ai Chi Ch’uan and Qi Gong since 1982. Dur­ing last 30 years Thomas has taught Tai Chi Chuan and Qi Gong in many coun­tries: Aus­tria, Czech Repub­lic, France, Ger­many, Italy, Poland, Slo­va­kia, Tai­wan and Unit­ed King­dom. He has lead work­shops at his own school as well as for dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies, cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. Thomas was a judge at Open Nation­al Cham­pi­onship of Tai­wan in 2004. He is co-founder The Cen­tre of Taoist Arts Gold­en Hill (Zlaty Kopec) in Prague, Inter­na­tion­al Push Hands Meet­ing in Prague and founder Tai Chi Art Cen­tre Lon­don. In 1990 he met his cur­rent teacher Dr Ming Wong C.Y. and has stud­ied his fam­i­ly style Tai Chi, Tai Ki Kung San Fung and some tech­niques and the­o­ry of Chi­nese med­i­cine. Thomas is the author of “Shapes of Bal­ance” sys­tem (struc­tured devel­op­ment of per­cep­tion).

Top­ic:

“When you under­stand a tech­nique, you know a tech­nique. When you under­stand a con­cept, you know a thou­sand of tech­niques.”
Under­stand­ing a con­cept is the core of my Shapes of Bal­ance teach­ing sys­tem.

The top­ic of my work­shop will be prac­ti­cal research a con­cept of Chang San Feng 13th Fun­da­men­tal Forms Tai Chi in indi­vid­ual forms and their appli­ca­tions with part­ner in Tuishou (Push­ing Hands). Based on the com­par­i­son exam­ples from San Feng and Yang styles. We will be work­ing with tim­ing, coor­di­na­tion, bal­ance of struc­ture and aware­ness of move­ments in action with part­ner.

Links:

• Cen­tre of Taoist Arts Gold­en Hill (home page)
• Tai Ki Kung