Schedule and Teachers 2012

Sep­tem­ber 21st to 23rd, 2012

Date/Time 10:00–13:00
Workshops:		 15:00–18:00 19:30–22:00
Fri­day, 21. 9. 2012 Zhai Hua
Nils Klug
Ron­nie Robinson		 Prac­tice in pairs -
Sat­ur­day, 22. 9. 2012 Tomasz Nowakows­ki
Bar­tosz Samitowski
Sasa Krauter (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, she could not attend because she was sick.)		 Prac­tice in pairs Gala-evening
Sun­day, 23. 9. 2012 Paul Sil­fver­stråle
Zdenek Kur­fürst
Lau­ra Stone		 Prac­tice in pairs -

Teachers

Paul Silfverstråle

Biog­ra­phy: Has stud­ied Asian mar­tial arts for over 25 years, and is a stu­dent of Dan Docher­ty since 1998. He has lived, trav­elled, prac­ticed and taught exten­sive­ly in Europe, Chi­na and SE Asia, and spent thor­ough time in Malaysia and Sin­ga­pore prac­tic­ing with Wu-style fam­i­ly. Paul is an inter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment win­ner in forms, push­ing hands and San Shou, and many of his stu­dents have also been suc­cess­ful on the inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion are­na. He works pro­fes­sion­al­ly teach­ing and prac­tic­ing Tai Chi Chuan, func­tion­al train­ing and TCM acupuncture.
Top­ic: Five close quar­ter strate­gies in push­ing hands:

  • Mian – Softness
  • Nian – Adherence
  • Lian – Con­ti­nu­ity and connection
  • Sui – To follow/allow
  • Bu Diu Ding – Not oppose and not let­ting go.

Work­ing with these themes in Fixed and Mov­ing Step sce­nario adding applications.
Stu­dent lev­el – Begin­ner and up.

Links:

Nils Klug

Biography: Nils Klug has stud­ied Tai Chi Chuan since 1988 and has been teach­ing since 1990. In the same year, Nils began study­ing with Grand Mas­ter William C. C. Chen, and became his cer­ti­fied instruc­tor in 1993, the same year he found­ed his own Tai Chi Chuan school in Han­nover, Ger­many. In addi­tion to his per­son­al train­ing with emi­nent instruc­tors such as William C. C. Chen & Dr Tao Ping Siang. Nils has been an active pro­mot­er of tai chi chuan through his annu­al Push Hands Meet­ing, the largest push hands meet­ing in Europe, and his reg­u­lar teach­ing in Europe, where he also serves as Pres­i­dent of the Tai­ji­quan & Qigong Fed­er­a­tion for Europe. Nils pro­duced a few Tai Chi Chuan DVD’s and is work­ing togeth­er with Ron­nie Robin­son on a Euro­pean Tai Chi Chuan- and Qigong- por­tal called “Tai­ji-Europa”.

Top­ic: Tai Chi Body Mechan­ics in Push Hands
We will work on the con­nec­tion of feet and fin­gers, “Sung Kua” and the “Meta­phys­i­cal Heart”. The work­shop is open for begin­ners and advanced.

Links:

Bartosz Samitowski

Biog­ra­phy: Bar­tosz Sami­tows­ki has been study­ing Chi­nese mar­tial arts since 1991. He trained sev­er­al styles of tra­di­tion­al gong­fu, includ­ing 10 years of Tai Chi Chuan. Since he met his cur­rent Sifu – Sam F. S. Chin, the lin­eage hold­er of I Liq Chuan, his entire focus of study shift­ed to this Art. With Mas­ter Chin’s approval, he opened an offi­cial I Liq Chuan school in War­saw. Serv­ing as an inter­na­tion­al instruc­tor of CFILCA (Chin Fam­i­ly I Liq Chuan Asso­ci­a­tion), he gives reg­u­lar sem­i­nars in Poland, UK and Norway.

Top­ic: I Liq Chuan is called a “mar­tial art of aware­ness”, based on Tai Chi prin­ci­ples and Chan (Zen) phi­los­o­phy. The sem­i­nar will offer an intro­duc­tion to the phi­los­o­phy, con­cepts and prin­ci­ples of the sys­tem and an over­look of the prac­tice of the style with appli­ca­tion in part­ner work:

  • Solo train­ing (“uni­fy the men­tal and phys­i­cal”) — 15 basic exer­cis­es, body mechan­ics, Tai­ji, Yin and Yang, demon­stra­tion of the forms of the style and in-depth part­ner-work with cho­sen appli­ca­tions to show the principles
  • Intro­duc­tion to part­ner train­ing (“uni­fy with the oppo­nent”) – the qual­i­ties of the point of con­tact, full­ness & empti­ness, spin­ning hands and sticky hands exercises.

Links:

Zdenek Kurfürst

Biog­ra­phy: Zdenek Kur­fürst is a stu­dent of Jim Uglow (who is a stu­dent of Yang Ma-lee from Yang Fam­i­ly). Zdenek has stud­ied Asian Mar­tial Arts for over 25 years and he is cur­rent­ly pro­fes­sion­al­ly teach­ing Yang fam­i­ly Tai Chi Chuan in Brno and Prague. He is reg­u­lar­ly trav­el­ling to Lon­don to learn from his teacher and also to Hong Kong to learn from the Yang fam­i­ly. His oth­er career is Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Feng Shui.

 

Top­ic: Tra­di­tion­al Tui Shou (Teui Sau) Train­ing in Yang Jia Tai Ji Quan (Yeung Ga Taai Gik Kyun)
The work­shop is open for all lev­els practitioners.

Links:

Sasa Krauter

Biog­ra­phy: Sasa Krauter did a mas­ter in sports and edu­ca­tion, is a sports ther­a­pist (DVGS) and a Tai­ji­quan and Qigong teacher (WCTAG, DDQT).
She is involved in the train­ing of future sports ther­a­pists and Tai­ji instruc­tors in Ger­many and Europe. Since the mid 80’s Sasa Krauter has devel­oped an active inter­est in east­ern philoso­phies, mar­tial arts and in par­tic­u­lar self-defense. Besides the mar­tial aspect, she is espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in the ther­a­peu­tic and men­tal sides of Tai­ji­quan. She is also prac­tic­ing Zazen.

Chen Tai­ji­quan accord­ing to Chen Xiaowang has become her path, which com­bines health, men­tal devel­op­ment and mar­tial art. She per­ceives Tai­ji­quan as a pos­si­bil­i­ty to edu­cate body and mind. In her class­es her objec­tive is to trans­mit some of the rich­ness of this art.

Top­ic:

Push-hands helps us find a safe pos­ture and prac­tice deter­mi­na­tion. Every­one has the pos­si­bil­i­ty to test one’s own struc­ture and one’s own stand in a play­ful way through a sequence of method­i­cal­ly devel­oped exercises.
This may include exer­cis­es like fixed-step Push Hands (Ding­bu) as well as mov­ing-steps Push Hands (Houbu) or also sim­ple appli­ca­tions for self-defense. Thus, push-hands offers a joy­ful pos­si­bil­i­ty to explore mar­tial aspects of Tai­ji­quan with­out risk.

Links:

Ronnie Robinson

Biog­ra­phy: Ron­nie Robin­son has stud­ied tai­ji­quan and qigong since 1981 and has been a reg­u­lar instruc­tor at major Euro­pean events since the mid-1990’s and is an active pro­mot­er of Chi­nese Inter­nal Arts serv­ing as Sec­etary of the Tai­ji­quan & Qigong Fed­er­a­tion for Europe, Edi­tor of Tai Chi Chuan & Ori­en­tal Arts mag­a­zine (UK) and co-Direc­tor of Tai­ji Europa – an inter­na­tion­al web portal.

Top­ic: A Med­i­ta­tive Approach to Tui Shou (push hands)
In these ses­sions we will try to apply to tools of still­ness and lis­ten­ing to allow us to explore the qual­i­ties of struc­ture, aware­ness, root, focus and intent. Acces­si­ble to all irre­spec­tive or experience.

Links:

Zhai Hua

Biog­ra­phy: Shi­fu Zhai Hua prac­tices Chi­nese wushu since her ear­ly child­hood. Her first teacher was her father Zhai Hong Yin who brought her very soon to first places of wushu com­pe­ti­tions. She con­tin­ued with her study at uni­ver­si­ty in Tian Jin and after fin­ish­ing with her study she con­tin­ued to Sin­ga­pur, where she became the main teacher of Asso­ci­a­tion Chin Woo. That time she met grand­mas­ter Zhu Tian­cai, one of the four Bud­dha war­riors from Chen­ji­agou, became his per­son­al stu­dent and so rep­re­sents the 24th gen­er­a­tion of Chen Tai­ji­quan teachers.
In 1996, she moved to Prague, Czech Repub­lic. She found­ed the Czech Ath­let­ic Asso­ci­a­tion Chin Woo, where she con­tin­ued to teach shaolin kung fu, Chen Tai­ji­quan and oth­er wushu styles. Mas­ter­ing of a huge spec­trum of wushu prac­tices and life­long expe­ri­ence with teach­ing makes her a very ver­sa­tile and expe­ri­enced teacher who is able to esti­mate tal­ents and poten­tial of students.
She recent­ly leads wushu school Zhai Hua Wushu Insti­tute which at the one side offers tai­ji class­es for a wide audi­ence and at the oth­er side trains wushu team to mas­ter advanced wushu for com­pe­ti­tions and exhi­bi­tions. She is a direc­tor of Czech Wushu Asso­ci­a­tion which pro­motes Chi­nese cul­tur­al her­itage in wider con­text includ­ing tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese food she serves in her new­ly opened restau­rant with home­made Jiao Zi.

Top­ic: Fight­ing aspect of tui shou

  • Com­ing out of basic move­ment prin­ci­ple of Chen Tai­ji­quan called Silk reeling
  • Under­stand­ing of hid­den lever techniques
  • Per­cep­tion of partner’s move­ment, art of bod­i­ly under­stand­ing of his inten­tions and attack leading.

Links:

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:
The appli­ca­tion of “Shapes of Bal­ance” sys­tem (struc­tured devel­op­ment of per­cep­tion) into prac­tice with partner.
We will be work­ing with “Lis­ten­ing” (ting jin) and “Inter­pre­ta­tion” (dong jin), feel­ing, con­scious of:

  • bal­ance of structure
  • mind inten­tion
  • tim­ing
  • emis­sion 13 Basic Tai Chi forms of kinet­ic ener­gy (inter­nal force),

in dif­fer­ent lev­el tuishou and applications.
The work­shop is open for begin­ners and advanced.

Links:

Laura Stone

Biog­ra­phy: Lau­ra Stone cel­e­brates 40 years of prac­tic­ing and teach­ing T’ai Chi Ch’uan. Her pri­ma­ry teacher is Grand­mas­ter William C. C. Chen. Oth­er teach­ers that have inspired her include Dr. Tao Ping-siang, Mas­ter Peter Ral­ston and Mas­ter Tuan You-chang.
Along with the basic prin­ci­ples of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, core themes for Lau­ra are con­tact, space, ground­ing and har­mo­ny, in one­self and with oth­ers, also under stress. In addi­tion, she is fas­ci­nat­ed with the art of push/sensing hands and T’ai Chi box­ing as embod­ied metaphors for relationship.
Med­i­ta­tion, piano, psy­chother­a­py and body-mind dis­ci­plines are part of the mix that inform her T’ai Chi Ch’uan. Lau­ra found­ed The Stu­dio School of T’ai Chi Ch’uan (Deven­ter, The Nether­lands) in 1996 (www.thestudiotaichi.nl)

Top­ic: The joy of rela­tion­ship and play­ful interaction

In these work­shops we will:
Inves­ti­gate the dynam­ics of effort­less move­ment and pow­er. Play with soft com­plete con­tact while allow­ing space for one­self and one’s part­ner. Become aware of the appli­ca­tion and release of pres­sure. Dis­cov­er habit­u­al pat­terns and new ways of respond­ing. Rest in the present moment. Expe­ri­ence the joy of play­ful interaction.

The foun­da­tion is Grand­mas­ter William C. C. Chen’s T’ai Chi Ch’uan. The work­shops will be giv­en as a pro­gres­sive series and are open to all styles and lev­els of prac­tice. The exact con­tent of indi­vid­ual and part­ner (push hands and appli­ca­tions) prac­tice will unfold accord­ing to those present.

Links:

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