Interview Li Suiyin

[shin101]

Ein Interview mit ihm und eins über ihn im Zusammenhang mit seinem diesjährigen Besuch in Deutschland.
Für den ein oder anderen vielleicht ganz interessant.

Mit ihm:
Tai Chi ? eine Wissenschaft des Kosmos – Epoch Times Deutschland (http://www.epochtimes.de/809407_tai-chi-eine-wissenschaft-des-kosmos.html)

Über ihn:
?Je länger man übt, desto wohler fühlt man sich? – Epoch Times Deutschland (http://www.epochtimes.de/796607_-je-laenger-man-uebt-desto-wohler-fuehlt-man-sich-.html)

Und wer den Mann gar nicht kennen sollte, kann sich hier einen kleinen Eindruck verchaffen:)

Li Suiyin Baguataijiquan Bajiquan - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RObcvaFbUc)


Liebe Grüße,
Shin

[Klaus]

Der ist schon wieder weg ? Wann kommt er wieder ? Ich kenne jemanden der dringend ein Seminar mit ihm besuchen müsste.

[T. Stoeppler]

Scheint ein guter Mann zu sein!

Gruss, Thomas

[GilesTCC]

Scheint ein guter Mann zu sein!

Das ist er. Letzte Woche habe ich einen Bericht bei RSF gepostet, und wenn dieser Thread sowieso im Gange ist, dann würde ich ihn auch hier reinstellen.
Ist aber auf Englisch und ich habe leider keine Zeit bzw. Muße, den Text ins Deutsch zu übersetzen. Also wenn das nicht passt, weil KKB eben ein deutschsprachiges Forum ist, dann einfach wieder löschen - ich bin dann nicht beleidigt...:)

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A couple of weeks ago I participated in one day of a public seminar in Berlin with Li Suiyin and then took a private lesson with him a few days later. I planned to write this account a lot sooner but I had some kind of flu for a week or so and didn’t have the time and energy.

I had been interested in experiencing his teaching for some time, firstly due to an old acquaintance in Germany (Udo) who had started learning seriously from Li Suiyin some years ago (after many years of EMA and IMA martial arts training) and had then seriously improved his skills, and of course through the postings and videos of Omar a.k.a. Bailewen here on RSF.
All that follows is based only on the aforementioned brief encounters and is quite subjective! I don’t speak Chinese (I just recognize and speak a few words or phrases) but there was good interpreting both times.
Anyway, I wasn’t disappointed. First of all, the man himself seems quite a traditional teacher in the sense that, in group seminars at least, he attaches some importance to questions of form. The participants were required to stand in clearly defined rows in space, practice the ‘performance salute’ in detail and he ticked off a few people for sitting down when he was explaining something, commenting that this was rude. True, of course. And he doesn’t smile just for the sake of it. At the same time, I quickly felt quite at ease because it became clear that parallel to the ‘old school’ manner he is enthusiastic about teaching, generous with relevant individual correction, not at all arrogant and actually quite benevolent. And he has some really serious gong fu – more of that later.
In the group seminar we spent the first hours with a series of solo jibengong exercises, mostly short repeating sequences, most of which combined some kind of discharge/fajin element with stretching out and returning to centre.
Among others, this included the two exercises briefly illustrated from 3.05 to 3.35 in a vid previously posted here (Li Suiyin Baguataijiquan Bajiquan - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RObcvaFbUc) if you’re interested), but both of them further developed to include different directions, often changing quickly. Indeed, the majority of the basic exercises were notably ‘three dimensional’ in nature. He constantly emphasized the interplay of strong intent in the mind with maximum relaxation in the body, connecting heaven and earth (or simultaneous up and down if that seems too esoteric), thus leading towards effective and grounded movement. This approach is familiar to me in principle as it’s also a major feature of my current style, but it was notable that he gave clear group and individual corrections for this, with an excellent eye for the little moments when you unconsciously stiffen up and/or lose structure. For him, it seems, it is important to include ‘fang song’ right from the start and not as an ‘add on’ later. But as said, he also stresses the use of strong mind and intent to such an extent that there’s no danger of the ‘relaxation’ becoming non-functional. I’m reasonably fit, but after 20 minutes or so I was down to my sweaty T-shirt in the cool training hall and stayed that way for the next 2 to 3 hours of ‘basic solo’ training.
He also talked about the importance of incorporating ‘reverse’ or ‘Taoist’ breathing in the exercises if possible and discussed some general health elements. Among other things, and now I use my own words and possibly impose my own interpretation, he stressed the importance of achieving a state of mind during training which is also compatible, or indeed beneficial, for everyday life and contact with others.

In the afternoon we did variations on standing postures. And that was hard work again, with flowing transitions (and no rest) through ‘embracing the ball’, the Pipa posture from tai chi, Santi from xing yi and the twisted ‘guard’ position from bagua (sorry, forget the name). Here too, plenty of individual correction. Then we spent a lot of time on his version of Pi Chuan, going up and down the hall for a long time. This was fine by me, and generally speaking I prefer to do fewer exercises and let these sink into my body and mind more instead of something new every five minutes. It was impressive when he demonstrated the move with more power: very sudden, very smooth and very powerful, all in a highly economical movement. In the xing yi too he constantly stressed that we should let go of excess tension, feel relaxed and let the mind create the power instead of trying to force anything. Once again, clear in principle but his argus eye quickly detected the moments when I drifted into trying to ‘muscle’ the Pi instead of letting it flow. I really don’t know whether this is standard teaching procedure for xing yi because my experience with this art is much too superficial.

OK, enough of that. The following week I took a private lesson with him where I had requested correction on use of the mind and, if possible, lots of tuishou. I was really hoping that we could get into some free play but was careful about asking this too directly in case this was misunderstood as a challenge. (Very impolite, bad for learning anything in depth and in this case pretty dangerous for yours truly, especially because I'm still nursing an injured finger). He greeted me in a very friendly manner and for the first half of the lesson his Chinese host in Berlin provided good translation. To begin with came the standard ‘diagnostic’ request to show a part of my form. As the years pass one gets used to doing this... Then he gave a few external corrections and a few questions about where I was coming from tai chi-wise – which is often hard to answer, especially through an interpreter, so I basically kept it to “sort of Yang style, same-same but different”. Then we progressed to tuishou. First a couple of simple patterns where he emphasized turning the body/waist to neutralize (familiar, but with fine points that were still very useful) and neutralizing in the torso through a special breathing method (new for me). Having presumably found my fixed step /fixed pattern tuishou to be acceptable, we then gradually and organically progressed to more free play (yeah...!), moving about as much as possible within the confines of a small living room. And this is where I really got the chance to feel his qualities. His listening abilities are excellent: when defending his changes are often very small, soft and instantaneous, often with a ‘melting’ feel to them, very hard or sometimes (for me) almost impossible to detect but bringing him at once into an attacking position. And in the attack (strikes, locks and [potentially black-hand] throws) he is swift, comes from unexpected angles, and with a kind of ‘brutal but relaxed’ quality that left me in no doubt that I would immediately be hors de combat if he wasn’t being nice to me. But he was being nice. After a while the interpreting host had to leave but by that then we were having a good time of it: communicating without direct language, laughing a lot and with Master Li getting warm enough to take off his pullover. His attacking techniques were, as said, very varied but one of his special moves seems to be a kind of Pipa attack above with a simultaneous sweep of my weighted front leg. ‘Then don’t put your weight in your front leg at the wrong moment’ you could say and you’d be right, but with his melting ‘now you feel me, now you don’t, BAM!’ quality he often tempted me in without me feeling it. One time he sent to a horizontal position in the air before I crashed to the ground with an impact that must have made the neighbours in the flat below fear for their ceiling. (I stand head and shoulders above him and I’m over 20 years younger). What I also found notable was the, let me say, 'unassuming' and matter-of-fact way that he did many of these techniques. Just standing there, as if he were opening a cupboard in the kitchen or swatting away a fly. But very heavy when they arrive. That made it very hard to sense the techniques coming or to counter them.
I was ‘testing him politely’, sometimes I felt I may have got through his first line of defence, perhaps made him take a step back, but at the same time he had a second and probably third line of defence ready for me (‘penetrating the wire to die in the minefield...’). All the time he wasn’t only uprooting me and trashing me (with restraint) but also explaining the defenisive and offensive moves, letting me try them and correcting me. I felt he was giving me as much as was possible, subject to the conditions and the limits of my abilities. In the end it was me who said we had to stop (!) because time was up and I had to get to work.
What we didn’t do was move into ‘sparring’ or go full speed on techniques. It wouldn’t have been appropriate under the conditions (first time meeting etc.) but for me on that day it wasn’t necessary either. I could feel what he was doing with me, how precisely and effectively he responded to and countered my ‘attacks’, and could extrapolate that into the following potential levels. Of course, I would be very interested in experiencing what tactical options and moves he and/or his style uses to respond to various kinds of ‘realistic’ striking/grappling attacks. But maybe another time, and I don’t have any serious doubts that he can deliver the goods there too.
At the end he gave me some good tips, said a couple of nice things about my (middling) abilities and we said goodbye.
In many ways he has a similar approach and qualities to my own teacher of the past 10 years, so it wasn’t like I was entering a completely new realm of experience. That probably helped me to understand (more or less) what he was doing a lot of the time. But Li Suiyin really has a profound level, in my perception he is a ‘real deal’ traditional (I)CMA man, and I have only met/felt a few of these in my travels so far. This with full respect to all the practitioners, Chinese and Western, that I have met who are also very good and have impressed me, but for me this is a level up. When he comes back to Germany next year I hope to learn from him again and for a longer period, and in the meantime to train some with a couple of his long-standing students here in Berlin.


Schöne Grüße,

Giles

[shin101]

Der ist schon wieder weg ? Wann kommt er wieder ? Ich kenne jemanden der dringend ein Seminar mit ihm besuchen müsste.

Er ist Ende Oktober wieder nach China geflogen. Wann er wieder kommt weiß ich nicht. Freunde von mir waren dabei, ich denke das sie bescheid bekommen werden, wenn er wieder kommt, vielleicht darf ich das dann hier ankündigen.


Liebe Grüße,
Shin

[lucutus]

Wer Li Suiyin verpasst hat, kann ihn in 2012 wie folgt erleben:

Dresden :
21.-23.09.12 Tui Shou
29.09. - 30.09.12 Camp
06.-07.10.12 Bagua Zhang + Kun Wu Schwert

Anmeldung und Infos:
Meister Li Suiyin 2012 (http://www.taijiquan-saechsische-schweiz.de/aktuelles/meister-li-suiyin-2012.html)

Hamburg:
12.10.2012 Qigong
13.10.2012 Taijiquan Yang und Yang Bagua
14.10.2012 Tui Shou

Anmeldung und Infos:

Qigong
Meister Li - Wu Wei Schule für Tai Chi und Qi Gong (http://www.wuweiweb.de/seminare/qi-gong/meister-li/)

Taijiquan + Tui Shou
Yang Tai Chi - Wu Wei Schule für Tai Chi und Qi Gong (http://www.wuweiweb.de/seminare/tai-chi/yang-tai-chi/)

[Richard22]

Krass, das Video.

"Under my direction the student continully improves."

Fechtergruß