Friday Night Guest Instructor: Karel Koskuba

Richard and I began teaching taijiquan and related arts at the Peace Memorial Hall, Codicote, in 1990. In our longest-standing class the hard core of our senior students and instructors gather every Friday to train advanced forms, two-man routines, push hands etc. Moreover our lineage coach and mentor, Professor Li Deyin and Master Wang Yanji come here each year to instruct and further our know-ledge of Chinese martial arts.

This year my father and I thought it worthwhile to supplement the Friday evenings entertainment with the occasional guest instructor. On 11 March 2005 our first visitor was Karel Koskuba and his good lady Eva. Karel is a true traditionalist and acknowledges my dad as his first teacher of taijiquan. They both moved on to form their own associations and have flourished in different directions but with the same aims: a greater understanding of internal power. So the subject for the evening study was the Development of Internal Power.

Eva Koskuba is a successful teacher in her own right and a great partner in Karel's work. She is also rare in the female gender in the push hands arena as all who have engaged with her will readily attest. I consider them the genuine article, good friends and have both respect and admiration for them.

Twenty-four students signed up for the three-hour workshop and the feedback has been entirely positive. Karel's teachers in Yang style are of impeccable lineage, Masters Chu King Hung, Chu Gin Soon (not related, only in martial arts) and in the Chen style the erstwhile head of the family tradition, Chen Xiao Wang. I understand Karel visits China annually to further his studies and in recent years he has been studying in depth the lesser-known art of yiquan (mind boxing). In 1999 he became a student of the 3rd generation yiquan Master Yao Chennguang.

Although the theme of the workshop has universal application to internal martial arts (especially taiji), the techniques and methodology were inspired by his yiquan experience. The presentation is scientific yet practical, his method was supported by theory and application. This introduction to Karel was both thought provoking and illuminating. It reflected the work required on our basics and many students found it difficult to maintain the postures and hold the structures. My personal thanks to both Karel and Eva and to all the delegates for their support.

Simon Watson

Footnote from Richard Watson

Much of the evenings work was drawn from the yiquan basic postures:

PING BU: Even Stance

PING BU: Even Stance Empty Posture

PING BU CHENG BAO ZHUANG: Embracing Posture

PING BU KAI HE SHILI: Open Close Strength Testing

Despite this, it was not yiquan specific and I feel the presentation was very clever in that it was aimed at a taiji audience. I think everybody enjoyed the pushing hands session. The anatomical corrections to our postures were great, as was the information regarding the muscles that move us in contrast to the muscles that hold us up.

Longfei Newsletter Volume 6 Issue 2 Table of Contents