Schedule

place: Stř­elecký ostrov (Shoot­ing Island)

12–14 Sep­tem­ber 2025

Friday

• 10:00 ‑12:30 —  workshops
• 14:30 ‑14:50 — prac­tice in pairs: Tap Sao
• 14:50 ‑17:00 — prac­tice in pairs:  Free push-hands
• (17.00 — 18:30 — Pri­vate fenc­ing lessons for long-term stu­dents of Tomasz Nowakows­ki only. Sor­ry for the others.)
  19:00 — .. Those inter­est­ed can meet for din­ner togeth­er. Pivo­var Národ­ní, Národ­ní 8 (map)
  (Not includ­ed in the reg­is­tra­tion fee.)

Saturday

• 10:00 — 12:30 —  workshops
• 14:30 — 14:50 — prac­tice in pairs: Tap Sao
• 14:50 — 17:00 — prac­tice in pairs:  Free push-hands
• 17:00 — 18:00 — break, prepa­ra­tion for “Gala” evening
•  
• 19:00 — … forms exhibitions
• par­ty

Sunday

• 10:00–12:30 —  workshops
• 14:30–14:50 — prac­tice in pairs: Tap Sao
• 14:50–17:00 — prac­tice in pairs:  Free push-hands

• Work­shops – Expe­ri­enced teach­ers will present their meth­ods of work in Tai Chi Chuan and/or push hands.
• Prac­tice in pairs
  • 4×5 min­utes of Tap Sao
  • Free push-hands: Par­tic­i­pants will indi­vid­u­al­ly agree on how they want to prac­tice in pairs. They will prac­tice in 10-minute rounds. Par­tic­i­pants will agree on the type of prac­tice (free push hands vs. form push hands, with steps vs. with­out steps). The lev­el is always adjust­ed to the prac­ti­tion­er with less experience.
• Gala-evening – Space for pre­sen­ta­tions of styles, schools, and forms as well as a friend­ly meeting.

Teachers

• Mau­ro Bertoli
• Mar­tin Neumann
• Tomasz Nowakows­ki

 Mauro Bertoli

Biography

Mau­ro Bertoli

Mau­ro Bertoli, began his mar­tial train­ing as a child, first prac­tic­ing Judo and then con­tin­u­ing with Karate and sub­se­quent­ly with the Shaolin of Mas­ter Chang Dsu Yao.

In 1987 he began prac­tic­ing Tai­ji­quan (Tai Chi Chuan) style “Yang”, from that moment the
grad­ual detach­ment from exter­nal styles to ded­i­cate him­self “body and soul” to the “inter­nal”
styles, reach­ing after a few years, the rank of black belt and Instructor.

After the death of the Head of the School, he attend­ed numer­ous cours­es and sem­i­nars, and
in 1994 he found­ed togeth­er with oth­er prac­ti­tion­ers the “Grup­po 108” asso­ci­a­tion that aims
to deep­en and spread the Chi­nese inter­nal styles, con­tin­u­ing to attend sem­i­nars of various
inter­nal styles with Mas­ters of the high­est lev­el and of var­i­ous styles. In 1995 he met Master
Yang Lin Sheng and became his stu­dent, obtain­ing the black belt and also becom­ing an
instruc­tor in the Tai­ji­quan dis­ci­plines “Chen” and “Yiquan”.

In 2001 he made a long study trip to Chi­na prac­tic­ing with sev­er­al Mas­ters. He collaborated
with Fed­eri­co Mot­ta Edi­tore for the pub­li­ca­tion of an ency­clo­pe­dia, deal­ing with the part con­cern­ing the art of Taijiquan.

In 2013 he found­ed and became pres­i­dent of ARTY (Tai­ji­quan Yiquan Research Association)
and obtained the posi­tion of Nation­al Mas­ter with CSEN (CONI rec­og­nized Sports Promotion
Body) while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­tin­u­ing his learn­ing and research path.
He has par­tic­i­pat­ed as a teacher in numer­ous and pres­ti­gious inter­na­tion­al sem­i­nars with
hun­dreds of prac­ti­tion­ers from all over Europe, such as the “Tai Chi Tcho” in La Chaux-de-
Fonds (CH) in the 2015 /2017/2019 edi­tions, in 2017 at the 6th Inter­na­tion­al Push Hands
Meet­ing in Prague (CZ), in 2023 at the “Inter­na­tion­al Push Hands Meet­ing” in Han­nover (DE),
in 2024/2025 at “Tai Chi Cale­do­nia” a week-long event in Ster­ling in Scot­land (GB).

He has thir­ty years of teach­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly of Yang style Tai­ji­quan, Sword, Neigong
and Tui Shou (Push­ing Hands) gained by hold­ing cours­es and sem­i­nars in Italy and Europe.

Workshop Topic

Link

• https://www.taijiquan.it

 Martin Neumann

Biography

Mar­tin Neumann

After gain­ing ini­tial expe­ri­ence in judo and inten­sive karate train­ing (Shotokan), Mar­tin began prac­tis­ing Qi Gong and Tai Chi Chuan in the Bei­jing and Yang styles in the GDR at the age of 16. Twen­ty years ago, he met his cur­rent mas­ter, Fer­nan­do Chédel. After ini­tial dif­fi­cul­ties – much of it dif­fered from what he had pre­vi­ous­ly believed he knew or was capa­ble of – he immersed him­self more and more deeply in his Ma Tsun Kuen style over the years. 

Mar­tin also draws inspi­ra­tion from oth­er schools and teach­ers. He col­lab­o­rates with var­i­ous teach­ers, with whom he gives dia­logue-based work­shops. He runs the DAO Zen­trum Berlin and teach­es at sem­i­nars in Ger­many and internationally.

The prac­ti­cal side (Tui Shou and appli­ca­tions) of Tai Chi Chuan plays a cen­tral role in his train­ing and teach­ing. He is con­stant­ly search­ing to explore the effec­tive­ness of the nat­u­ral­ness and imme­di­a­cy (Zi Ran) of Tai Chi Chuan in its under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples of effort­less­ness (Wu Wei) and to devel­op clear ways of teach­ing it.

Workshop Topic

The theme of his work­shop will there­fore be the nat­u­ral­ness in the inter­ac­tion of Tui Shou.
Sim­ple Tui Shou exer­cis­es give us guid­ance on how focus­ing less on fol­low­ing pat­terns and more on live­ly adap­ta­tion. We prac­tise above all sen­si­tive con­tact (lis­ten­ing Tīng Jìng 听勁), the flow of move­ment and the inter­play of inner sink­ing and floating.

The ques­tion, ‘What does it take to prac­tise coop­er­a­tive­ly and joy­ful­ly with each oth­er?’ will also be addressed in this workshop.

A large pool of intro­duc­to­ry and in-depth exer­cis­es offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence cer­tain aspects of Tui Shou prac­tice in iso­la­tion and then rein­te­grate them into the cos­mos of Tui Shou. Indi­vid­ual ques­tions aris­ing from the train­ing sit­u­a­tion can thus be imme­di­ate­ly con­sid­ered and practised. 

The course of the work­shop is devel­oped togeth­er with the par­tic­i­pants. It does not mat­ter whether you have a lot of Tui Shou expe­ri­ence or less.

Link

• www.daozentrum.berlin

 Tomasz (Thomas) Nowakowski

Biography

Tomasz (Thomas) Nowakowski

Tomasz (Thomas) Nowakows­ki liv­ing in Lon­don, visu­al and mar­tial artist. He has stud­ied dif­fer­ent mar­tial arts since 1966 and has been teach­ing T’ai Chi Ch’uan and Qi Gong since 1982. Dur­ing the last 30 years, Thomas has taught Tai Chi Chuan and Qi Gong in many coun­tries: Aus­tria, Czech Repub­lic, France, Ger­many, Italy, Poland, Slo­va­kia, Tai­wan and the Unit­ed King­dom. He has led work­shops at his own school as well as for dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies, and cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. Thomas was a judge at the Open Nation­al Cham­pi­onship of Tai­wan in 2004. He is a co-founder of The Cen­tre of Taoist Arts Gold­en Hill (Zlaty Kopec) in Prague, the Inter­na­tion­al Push Hands Meet­ing in Prague and founder of Tai Chi Art Cen­tre Lon­don. In 1990 he met his cur­rent teacher Dr Ming Wong C.Y. and stud­ied his fam­i­ly style Tai Chi, Tai Ki Kung San Fung and some tech­niques and the­o­ries of Chi­nese med­i­cine. Thomas is the author of “Shapes of Bal­ance” sys­tem (struc­tured devel­op­ment of perception).

Workshop Topic

“When you under­stand a tech­nique, you know a tech­nique. When you under­stand a con­cept, you know a thou­sand techniques.”
Under­stand­ing a con­cept is the core of my Shapes of Bal­ance teach­ing system.

The top­ic of my work­shop will be prac­ti­cal research of a con­cept of Chang San Feng 13th Fun­da­men­tal Forms Tai Chi in indi­vid­ual forms and their appli­ca­tions with part­ners in Tuishou (Push­ing Hands). Based on the com­par­i­son exam­ples from San Feng and Yang styles. We will be work­ing with tim­ing, coor­di­na­tion, the bal­ance of struc­ture and aware­ness of move­ments in action with partners.

Links

• Cen­tre of Taoist Arts Gold­en Hill (home page)
• Tai Ki Kung