Class name: Introduction to Traditional Embodied Chinese Culture

800-1000 word analysis of one exercise that you can do, using the exercise to develop a ‘term’ that allows you to develop your reader’s understanding of the elements in the exercise and what it can achieve. Assume that the reader knows nothing about embodied movement. For example, one ‘term’ might be ‘alignment’.

Please make sure to use the tools of keypoint, technique, and principle in your analysis. I am going to give some examples from the Kaimen exercise.

NOTE: because I am using this exercise to explain things, I do not want to see exactly the words I am using in your analysis. You must use your own words for this exercise.

A principle is an underlying concept or theory or purpose to a movement. So, for example, we have been working a lot on the principle of ‘the softest is the strongest’ or ‘effortless effort’ – ie intentional movement that is relaxed being more effective than movement that is tense and trying too hard. Many of the principles are related to daoist ‘sayings’ such as this: ‘the shortest is the tallest’, or ‘complementarity’ (yin and yang relationality). The principles are often apparently paraodoxical, but usually work out in practice. The daoists liked paradoxes because they make you think about the underlying assumptions in what you are doing, so that you never take anything for granted. Fundamentally, they point you back to the relationality of yin and yang, that you cannot have one without the other eg you cannot have darkness without light.

A technique is usually a movement that is an application of a principle, a tool to generate an effect – but quite subtle and often complex. For example, the way that you coordinate raising your hands with moving into dragon in one of the kaimen we have done, calls on the ‘complementarity’ principle. So does the balancing of up and down, or forward and backward, in that kaimen. Without this complementarity, or fluidly adjusting balance, you would fall over.

A keypoint is a specific detail, without which the technique will be weakened – for example, if you do not have your heels in line in a particular forwards (eg dragon) or sideways (eg leopard) stance, what ever technique you are practising will be less effective. Keeping your hips square forward is one keypoint in the kaimen exercise that allows you to focus your energy to front and back, and to up/down, and not get disracted with lateral movement.

https://www.studypool.com/discuss/37786174/see-cla…video notes class