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This thread is dedicated to comments, impressions and questions about seminars held by Sifu in various cities throughout the world. Feel free to contribute.
good idea starting this topic peter!
anyway, it sounds like a great workshop all around! i had planned on trying to test ofr level 6 in two weeks but i i just wrecked my back on saturday and i'm not sure 9if ill have recovered enough to make an honest go of it.
Peter,
since you have mentioned me in your seminar notes, let me tell you a little about where i come from (in martial arts). After some years of tae-kwon-do and karate I came to the internal art taichi (yang style) and standing qigong a la Yiquan. Lately I have started to focus more on the internal basics, which in my view form the core of all internal martial arts. Kelley unintentionally led me to checking out i-liq chuan by the way and the content he communicated on the tcc list on the internet. So when i found out that the Sifu himself would come to Austria, I jumped on the opportunity and I have not been disappointed. I learned a lot from him and the workshop participants and will now start working on the basic exercises (thankfully I could buy the respective DVDs and the book on the system at the workshop), so that when a nice opportunity arises in the future to train with you guys again, I can bring a little more experience to the table.
Special thanks to you and Miro for the warm welcome and the personal instruction in-between and my congratulations on your successful advancement in the art,
Edgar
welcome ot the forum edgar!
Hey Everybody!
Just wanted to share a few photos from this past weekends workshop in Santa Fe. The trip was great! The group there was small but very enthusiastic, which is always a pleasure. We even had someone come all the way down from Portland to learn from Master Chin. He was so impressed that he's asked us to go to Portland to give a workshop there in January.
Saturday was an awesome day all around. We really spent a lot of time going into the fine details of the art, then after dinner I went to the park to get my interval training done (my fight is this Sunday so I couldn't miss any training), then back to Ion's house to work the mitts. Afterward Master Chin joined us outside, along with Ion to work on some spinning hands. We wrapped up around 11:30pm, ate an awesome dessert then hit the jacuzzi under a beautiful Santa Fe night sky! (You can still see a ton of stars at night there, unlike here).
Anyway, here's the link to the album...
I'll try and post some video sooinsh but it probably won't happen until next week.
This year we had a group of about 30 participants who came to our 3rd annual ILC seminar in Vienna: 9 from Munich, 6 from Warsaw, 1 from Belarus and 13 from Austria. I think someone counted that there were people from 10 different nationalities who attended the seminar. The youngest participant was a 9 year-old girl who had an amazing ability to concentrate and pay attention during the whole seminar.
w00t! who was in Munich (since I've been to NM and trained with that group I might know them). PM if needed. looking forward to the fotos!
His name is Thure Meyer.
yeah Peter sent me foto of their little girl with Sifu. quite an awesome pic. I haven't met Thure yet though.
This year Sifu led his fourth annual ILC seminar here in Vienna, Austria. We had 41 participants, a record number, with students coming from as far as England, France, Germany, Norway, Russia, Belarus and Japan to attend the seminar. Each year, the seminar becomes increasingly focused on ILC, as the number of dedicated and graded students grows and the number of casual drop-ins decreases.
During the seminar, Sifu stressed the importance of always moving in accordance with the proper principles - let the principles lead, and our actions will be correct. He mentioned again that playing and training are two different things: when we train, we follow the principles, understand what is happening and cooperate with our training partner. When we play, we simply try to make the best use of our abilities.
We did a variety of partner exercises to develop a better feel and understanding of fend energy, and devoted a day to working through the 5 elements (earth, metal, water, wood, fire), discussing how each cycle relates to the human body (e.g., 'wood' corresponds to the liver and gall bladder). My notes are pretty bad at this point (sorry Sifu!) - can anyone else perhaps explain below which organs are linked with the other cycles?
On Sunday night, after the weekend seminar concluded, a smaller group of about 12 instructors and ILC group leaders from around Europe drove to a beautiful, spacious country house in Lower Austria, about 90 minutes outside of Vienna.
During these 3 days of training with Sifu, we discussed how to build our respective groups, structure training opportunities and implement the ILC system. Sifu also spent time with each individual to help them prepare for their next gradings. I greatly benefited from the chance I had to spin with Sifu.
The final day was dedicated to gradings - within the Vienna group, students passed the gradings for 2nd level instructor, 5th student level as well as 4th student level & 1st level instructor. From England, students passed the gradings for the 1st and 2nd student levels. The Polish group, which was by far the largest single group, passed their gradings for 2nd student level and 4th student level. At the end of six hours of grading, we were all pretty exhausted, but happy.
I think Sifu was also very pleased with the week in Austria - ILC is gaining a solid foothold in Europe, skill levels are slowly but surely improving and the various ILC groups within Europe seem to work very well together, creating a strong feeling of community among the groups in the various countries. This can only help ILC to further grow and develop in the future.
Peter
Hi Peter, thank you for your note. It's been a great and extremely productive time in many ways - for each of us' personal training, for the development of our groups, deepening our understanding of the principles and for socializing. Many thanks to Sifu, Miro for organizing and all participants for training together.
Inspired by your question, I've just created a topic in the forum addressing your question about the elements + organs:
http://iliqchuan.com/forum/five-elements-nei-gong
Bartek
Vienna, June 2009
The seminar in Vienna had about 20 participants from a number of different countries: a group of 5 came with Frank Bauche from Germany, Mariusz, the head ILC instructor from Warsaw, Poland, attended, Dima came down all the way from Belarus (over 30 hours on about 5 different trains), and there were several people each from Slovakia, Austria and the United States.
The make-up of the group was interesting: there were about 6 dedicated ILC students from Vienna, two professional dancers who enjoy ILC for the body work and circular movements, as well as several advanced martial artists from other styles (Karate, Kung-Fu and Tai Chi) who wanted to check-out what ILC has to offer (to take a peek at the competition?). In addition, Walter, the head Yiquan instructor in Austria, also attended.
It was fun training with these guys, but it got a little rough at times. We were doing sticky hands training when I glanced around, and saw one of the visiting martial artists holding another visitor in a head lock! I was thinking "When did headlocks become part of sticky hands training?" Dima and Miro seemed to have fun testing themselves against the visitors from these other, harder, styles. Sifu simply said "Stop!" when things got a bit too intense.
One participant, Edgar, drove up from Graz in Southern Austria to participate, based on on-line encouragement given by Kelley to have a closer look at ILC. Although he's a couple of hours away by car, he said he'd like to come and train with us for any weekend seminars we might hold.
One of our guys here in Vienna, Lubo, did the grading for the 1st Student Level in front of the seminar group and passed with flying colors. Lubo is very enthusiastic about learning ILC, and has been working hard for eight or nine months, so we were all pleased that he did so well. Miro and I were graded on Monday after the seminar. Miro successfully passed the 5th Level Student grading, and I earned the 1st Instructor Level.
Anyway, these are some of my initial impressions of the seminar ....
Peter