Workshop With Grandmaster Chen

William C. C. Chen leading a session in the Long Form

On this spectacular autumn weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, the Tai Chi Center of Madison and resident teacher, Jody Curley, hosted a Tai Chi workshop with Grandmaster William C. C. Chen. I’ve written before about this amazing man. He’s now 78 and moves like a much younger man, due, of course, to 60 years of perfecting his art. He teaches and gives workshops worldwide but also writes and investigates the physical aspects of human existence which he calls “Body Mechanics.” He is always seeking to improve the communication of his ideas to others and is fascinating to listen to during these workshops.

I only attended a few of the sessions but I was rewarded with many insightful observations and demonstrations as he took us through the Short Form or the Sword Form. I’ve been working on my own --- no classes --- for over a year now and I try to apply things I’ve learned from Jody and Master Chen. I try to feel “winding up the heart” and “leading with the fingers” and “waking up.” It takes more discipline to work on your own, but there is a wealth of ideas that comes from a concentrated dose such as this special weekend was.

Grandmaster Chen and Jody Curley

Grandmaster Chen was kind enough to bring copies of a draft of an article he has written entitled, “Fingers is The Work of Art,’ soon to be published in one of the leading Martial Arts magazines. In it, he analyzes and describes in detail the role of the fingers in various physical activities from golf to bowling to boxing and Tai Chi. He separates the fingers into two groups: the thumb, index and middle finger into the “index fingers,” and the ring and pinky fingers into the “pinky fingers.” In fact, at the beginning of our workshop session on the Short Form, he distributed rubber bands to the group, placing them on our hands so that the rubber bands ringed the “index fingers,” making us aware of these two groups.

Nerves of the hand, showing Median and Ulnar groupings

The index finger group is controlled by the Median nerve while the pinky finger group is controlled by the Ulnar nerve. Each set of fingers can be thought of as having separate functions: the index fingers as action fingers and the pinky fingers as pre-action fingers. Now this all may seem pretty complicated, even obtuse, but consider a simple movement in which the hand rotates. The axis of that rotation is along the line of the index fingers. The pinky fingers turn around that axis and the index fingers spin or twist. To further complicate your contemplation of this example, realize that during this simple movement, the big toe presses down and the inner thigh muscles contract, thereby connecting the feet to the hands through the waist (winding up the heart before action, then energizing).

There was a session on applications which focused quite a bit on boxing techniques. We spent a lot of time hitting a pillow held against a pillar and learned how to hold the fist loosely, without clenching the fingers, and to match the power of the punch to the amount of resistance it encountered. One workshop attendee mentioned to me that she had never done any of the push hands or other more “combative’ activities before and hadn’t realized how much fun they were! There is something very invigorating about landing a punch, particularly when you can feel the winding up of the heart, the arching and rotating of the hand and the whole connection to the feet that is involved in the mechanics of a punch.

We also practiced the application of “Brush Knee,” learning how to uproot an opponent who was punching toward our groin. When my partner resisted my attempt to brush aside his arm, I could not move him. Once I learned to use the “waking up” technique, placing my “brushing” hand under his arm and straightening my body from the hips, I could move him easily and he could not resist. So much can be learned by working with another student of the art that it makes me question my lone wolf attitude these days. It is all the more important to seek out and attend these kinds of workshops and to experience the teachings of unique individuals like William Chen. It’s not for nothing that they call him “Grandmaster!”