ne's technique is to use your shoulder. It should be. That's where I'm more like combative. Yeah. Because you can use your shoulder bone. Yeah. But for training, you're just gonna bump the chest. So. Okay. Like that. Okay. The chest. So relax your shoulder. Don't do this. Okay. Yeah. Like that. All right. But don't stick it out like this. I'm trying to pull it back. Yeah. Just relax. Come on, David Wong. And in this video, I'm gonna show you the three mistakes in Tai Chi that are very common that people make. So one of the main advantages of learning Tai Chi is for health, for your joints, for your bones, for breathing, for relaxation and meditation. But also, you learn a concept called rooting or sinking. So as you can see in the demonstration, we'll hear how much do you weigh? 220 pounds. 220 pounds? Okay. His muscles. Holy cow. He's as big as my leg. Right? I'm already, I'm only about 150 pounds. Look at my skinny arms. And I'm able to resist and pushing me. And I'm fairly relaxed. Without using a lot of strength, I can resist this push. And how hard were you pushing there? 400%. 900%. He's putting all the strength in there. And I'm just standing there. Not using too much strength. So the key is, don't fight strength with strength. Don't fight force with force. So in Tai Chi, you'll teach you how to use structure. The structure of your skeletal structure, of your bones, of your joints, of your alignment, and also of your mind of what the intention is in order to resist force using just structure. So what are the key things that you need to have structure? Well, there's three mistakes that people make that destroy structure in Tai Chi. And very few people that actually practice Tai Chi actually know and actually experience and know how to do this. So stay tuned and I'm gonna show you those to you. Mistake number three is not being relaxed. So a lot of people are confused about relaxation and about being placid. There's two different things. For example, if I'm being placid, he pushes and that's placid, right? There's nothing there. I'm not saying it's placid, okay? But being relaxed in concept called shong, or shong in Chinese. It's being loose, but relaxed, but still have structure. So he's pushing. He's pushing harder, harder, harder, harder. I'm relaxed, see? My hand's relaxed, but he's pushing harder, harder. I'm still relaxed. See how I'm relaxed my arm is? I'm still able to resist them, okay? So that's the difference between being shong, which means loose and placid. But in English, we use the word relaxation, which is very easy to misinterpret. So number one key, when you practice your tai chi, for example, practice your tai chi, your hands are always relaxed. There's only a tense state and a relaxed state. Now when we go to the gym, most people practice being tense. Use your muscles, tense up to get more power, which is okay, it works. But if you practice being tense on time, practice being tense, then if you're fighting against someone bigger than you, you're at a disadvantage because his force will be stronger than your force. So rather than use force, I use shong. I use relaxation. So when you practice your tai chi, make sure that your hands are not open like this because that's too much tension. Because your hands are not closed like this because that's too much tension. Your hands should always be in the middle. When it's relaxed, it's completely relaxed. Imagine holding an egg in your hand. When you're open, just open them slightly. Just stretch them out a little bit. When they're relaxed, relaxed. When they're open, just open a little. You always wanna feel an energy ball in the palms of your hands. So it's very subtle. For example, when I do this, I'm combining two things. First of all, my hands are lifting up. At the same time, my hands are going from relaxed to slightly open. And then back to relaxed, slightly open. It's a very minor detail, but what that does is it teaches you to, even though you're using tension, see my hands are slightly open, that I'm still in a relaxed state. So I never go from, I never go up to 100%. I go up to maybe 60 to 70% tension. Never go above that. Because once you go above that, then you start to use force. You stay below, let's say, 60% tension, then you're not using force. You're using relaxation. And the key to Tai Chi is to train yourself so that you can still use relaxation at 60%, 50%, 40%, 30%, eventually using no tension at all to be able to resist someone with force. So that's what takes the training. That's what takes the many, many hours and repetition and training during the push hands that we just showed you in the demonstration. Doing that for a lot that you can learn how to use relaxation. Mistake number two in Tai Chi is to not use your Dan Tian or not use your core, the center of gravity, to direct the movements. So there's a very simple movement called followed hands. So I'm using my core to direct my body. So say I'm using just one hand. See how my core is moving in a circle to direct my arm. So the core or the Dan Tian leads the arms. Sun Dai Sao, that's what I say in Chinese. The body leads the hand. So that's number two mistake. Here's how it looks like when you make the mistake. See a difference? My hand is leading my core. So there's very little power or connection when I'm moving my hand. I'm just moving my hand. I'm not even leading it with the core. Now, do you see it doing correctly? So how you can practice is actually put your finger or put your hand, fingers touch your belly button and then feel it move before your hand moves. But now you get the difference, okay? And the difference you can tell. Let's see, I'm just using my hand like this. Just my hand. Okay, pain-wise, how much is that? Yeah, really, yeah. One to 10. About a four. Four, okay. Now I'm using my hip. I mean, using my dan tian. Yeah. How much pain, more pain is there? 20 to about a seven. A seven, right? And I didn't use more power, I just used my waist. And if I use more, I can get it up to 10, right? So that's the key of generating power is to use your dan tian. So let me show you a demonstration in the 24 move tai chi form. How to use the dan tian to guide your hands. So let me show you the wrong way of doing this. Okay, I'm trying very hard to do it the wrong way because I practice so much the proper way. But what I'm doing is I'm leading with my hands and then I move my body. So a very basic fundamental in early tai chi, if you're a beginner, is to learn how to move your hips. Now, when you get advanced tai chi, you actually do the opposite. You learn to move your hands before your hips. It's contradictory, isn't it? Okay, but I'll show you how to do that in the next lesson, or the later lesson. And it goes with the concept that Bruce Lee taught, which is to move your hands before your feet, just like in fencing, you wanna move your hands before your feet. The reason is because when somebody attacks you, I don't have time to move my hip first and do a big tai chi move, right? If somebody attacks me, I have to move my hand first. So what's the difference? See, before you learn tai chi, once you learn tai chi, they move their hands first, but there's no power. And then they practice tai chi, and then they'll learn how to use the hips to get power. But they practice enough tai chi, and now they'll get back to the beginning. They use their hands first, but now it comes with power. How does that happen, okay? So let me show you again. Let's see his attacking, right? I don't have time to move my hips and do a big tai chi move like in a lot of demonstrations, right? I only have time to just move my hand up, right? But there's power there, how that happened, right? I just moved my hand, right? I'm not gonna move my hand and then my body. Go ahead and do it again. I moved my hand and then my body. I didn't move my hip first. Just me moving my hips first. Too slow, right? I have to go one, two. You already hit me, okay? But now I wanna do it so that I move my hand first. Okay, so how does that work? Maybe in a later lesson, I can show you how to do that. Mistake number one that you can make in tai chi is to not sink your tailbone, which means not to open your back. Now I'm gonna show Will, for example, because I'm wearing a jacket, you can't see. So you see, if you take your shirt and tighten it up, the spine has a curve here, right? So most people have that curve naturally. But in tai chi, you actually don't want that curve. In tai chi, you want to get rid of that curve. So you wanna sink down the tailbone, okay? So that you can feel that this is flatter. And ideally, it's actually a C, it's a couple. So what you need to do is sink your tailbone down even more, sucking your gut, and then stretch this out like this, okay? So now I can feel it's lower back, it's straightening up, okay, but it's still not enough. You want it to stick out, you push out over here, push, push, push, push, that's better, okay? So now you can feel that it's more like a C, where I started about before. See how it's like an S, so you don't want that. And you can see a lot of people doing tai chi with a back like this, it's actually very bad for your back and also it makes you disconnected. It disconnects your upper body with your lower body. The key to having a strong core and dan tian is to connect your upper body with your lower body. And this is the main mistake that people make by having the S curve of the spine. And what it does is disconnects your body. So for example, I'm gonna do an S curve. Purpose, my spine is like, my belly's sticking out. I'm trying to, and he pushes on my hand. See, I'll automatically go back. There's no resistance. But now I stick my back out. I drop my hip and make this into a C. And then now he pushes on it. What happened? It's a different. Yeah, you're more rooted. It's rooted. See, what happens when you curve your back is now that energy transfer goes straight through your spine and then into your hips and into the legs, into the knees and into the ground. When you break that connection by curving your spine, now all the energy just goes in your spine. Doesn't go to your legs. So that's why he pushes, right? That energy goes into spine and then I go. So that's the number one mistake that you can make in Tai Chi. So when you practice your Tai Chi, make sure that you always check. Put my hand back behind my back. I see if it's straight, is it a C? You don't want to be like this. So even when you do your moves, think about that. Think that the spine is going to be straight. One exercise you can do is to do very slow squats against the wall. So that's the wall against me. I want to first put my back against the wall and then see if there's any space behind my back. See if I slip my hand behind my back. If there's a space that I can slip my hand behind, then there's too much space. I need to get rid of that space. I want all my spine to be touching the wall. Once I get that, then I can go up and down.  Now after I do that, and I'm good at it, then I can go all the way down, all the way down, keeping my spine straight and touching the wall all the way. And do it slow like this. So that's going to be very hard on your lower back, but it strengthens your lower back. It strengthens your leg. So that's one key in Tai Chi of creating connectedness. So stay tuned, I'm going to show you the bonus mistake that people make. So the bonus mistake that you can make in Tai Chi is doing it too fast. I know everybody says this, you want to do Tai Chi slow, but many people don't understand why you do Tai Chi so slow. Well, today we talked about three mistakes. Number one, relaxation. Number two, using your Dan Tian to lead your hands. And number three, having a proper spine alignment. What do all those things mean? All those things mean connectedness of your whole body, integration of your whole body. If your hand moves, your whole body moves. If your feet move, your whole body moves. Everything's connected. And the reason we do Tai Chi so slow is that we're training that connectedness. And it's impossible to train it doing it fast. That's why we do it slow. If we can do it fast and still get connectedness, then everybody would do Tai Chi fast. But the reason we do it slow is because Tai Chi doing it slow is probably the only way you can train that connectedness in your body by combining all the techniques that we learned. Relaxation, leading with the Dan Tian. And later on, how to use your breath to relax and connect your body to and your mind. So there's many aspects of learning how to connect your whole body and mind as an integrated machine, integrated unit, in order to function totally and holistically. So when it comes in, you sink your chest. So you press here, like I'm pretty solid here, right? Because you're pushing it down to my head. So expand my chest, then you go for the lead, not the tail. So there's actually an expanded chest. So now there's another, not going mechanism that blends. So there's blending. Try to do it, see? So when you're sinking, it sinks down to the bottom. Chin is tucked, chest is in. And then you push hard as well. It's not going anywhere. You expand a bit and you know your balance. No, no, no. Chris, your posture is coming, please. So you contract? Yeah. Easily when we balance it, all right? Yeah. Because when you can try, you feel like, oh, I can push the guy, right? Yeah. You feel like you can push me. Right? You think you got me, right? Yeah. Okay. Don't use this. Yeah. Use, just relax. Like when you push in here, I'm totally relaxed. I'm just using my whole structure and my body. Okay. So this is actually touching my body. Yeah. So you feel like you got me, right? Yeah. Because actually there's more. There's more room. Yeah. All right. All right. So just relax this whole thing.  So it feels like, oh yeah, I got you now. But you feel like now it's on your back leg, right? Yeah. Now you just expand. Yeah. Okay. All right. There's something new. Okay. Right?  So I'm ready, I'm already sucked in. Yeah. And I'm already expanding. Okay. Ideally I want to make sure it's elbow. But then you need to make sure the elbow, cut the elbow. Yeah.  But you try to elbow me a little bit. You do that. Elbow, elbow me. Okay. At least I can control the elbow. Okay. I don't, right? Then if you feel yourself moving this way, right there. You're gonna just gonna change it to here. Yeah. So you need to in, cut the elbow.  Step here and I bump into you with that, right? Yeah. Every step through deeper. So my feet haven't touched the ground yet and I've already made contact. Okay. So now all the momentum is going through you instead of going to the ground. Okay. Okay. You try that. Stand here and you just try to bump into that. So you gotta step really deep through it. So I step with this foot or this one? No, this one. So, like that.  Yeah. So that works too, but that's not the technique. So, So I'm here. You gotta step deeper than that. You wanna take my place. So here's my center. You wanna be there. So my foot basically has to be here. Oh yeah. All right. Yeah. Let's just see how deep you have to go. So. That's better. Okay. D4 is straight? Yeah. Boom. It's almost straight. It's like one straight step. Okay. I'm trying to drop my height down because I feel like that when I get here, my shoulder's here. Yeah, don't use your shoulder. Yeah. And this one technique is to use your shoulder. It should be. That's for a more combata. Yeah. Because you can use your shoulder bone. Yeah. But for training, you're just gonna bump into your chest. So, Okay. Like that. Okay. So relax your shoulder. Don't do this. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like that. All right. But don't stick it out like this. I'm trying to pull it back. Yeah. So just relax. All right. You're not stepping people down. So I feel that when I step in. So you don't want to step then go? Yeah. You have to go. You have to pay before I land. Okay. You see how I go. So before my foot even touches the ground, I'm already there. Yeah. Or the same time. Yeah. So. Yeah. I do that a lot more than, Okay. But you step first, right? So you want to aim for behind the guy. Okay. Another thing is to make a frame. Yeah. Make this round. Yeah. Sink your chest. So this is like one big, one big cup. Yeah. One big cup is gone. So. Okay.  It won't affect the whole thing. Okay. So you make this round. So. Okay. Yeah. So there's two ways. You can sink down. Yeah. Or you can rise up. Or you sink. That's rising up. Okay. Yeah. So you go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Or you can sink down. So it's like. Yeah. All right. You got it. Your pushers. Yeah. Same idea, right? You're pretending I'm not even there. Yeah, all right. So now you just extend this. What's that? You're bringing your whole body into it? Into a push. Yeah. So. Don't push. Just like. Okay, in this video, I'm gonna show you the three mistakes in Tai Chi that are very common. One of the advantages of learning Tai Chi is for health, for your joints, for your bones, for breathing, for relaxation and meditation. But also, you learn a concept called rooting or sinking. So as you can see in the demonstration, we'll hear how much you weigh. 425. 320 pounds. Look at his muscles. Look at his arms. Look at his cow. He's as big as my leg, right? I'm already, I'm only about 150 pounds. Look at my skinny arms. And I'm able to resist them pushing me. And I'm fairly relaxed. Without using a lot of strength, I can resist this push. And how hard were you pushing there? 100%. He's putting all the strength in there. And I'm just standing there, not using too much strength. So the key is don't fight strength with strength. Don't fight force with force. So in Tai Chi, you'll teach you how to use structure, the structure of your skeletal structure, of your bones, of your joints, of your alignment, and also of your mind of what the intention is in order to resist force using just structure. So one of the key things that you need to have structure, well, there's three mistakes that people make that destroy structure in Tai Chi. And very few people that actually practice Tai Chi actually know and actually experience and know how to do this. So stay tuned and I'm gonna show you those to you. Mistake number three is not being relaxed. So a lot of people are confused about relaxation and about being placid. There's two different things. For example, if I'm being placid, he pushes, and that's placid, right? There's nothing there, nothing, it's placid, okay? But being relaxed in a concept called shong, or shong in Chinese, it's being loose by relaxed, but still have structure. So he's pushing, he's pushing harder, harder, harder, harder. I'm relaxed, see? My hand's relaxed, but he's pushing harder, harder. I'm still relaxed. See how I'm relaxed my arm is? I'm still able to resist them, okay? So that's the difference between being shong, which means loose and placid. But in English, we use the word relaxation, which is very easy to misinterpret. So number one key, when you practice your tai chi, for example, practice your tai chi, your hands are always relaxed. There's only a tense state and a relaxed state. Now, when we go to the gym, most people, they practice being tense. Use your muscles, tense up, to get more power, which is okay, it works. But if you practice being tense all the time, practice being tense, then if you're fighting against someone bigger than you, you're at a disadvantage because his force will be stronger than your force. So rather than use force, I use shong, I use relaxation. So when you practice your tai chi, make sure that your hands are not open like this because that's too much tension. Because your hands are not closed like this because that's too much tension. Your hands should always be in the middle. When it's relaxed, it's completely relaxed. Imagine holding an egg in your hand. When you're open, just open them slightly. Just stretch them out a little bit. When they're relaxed, relaxed. When they're open, just open a little. You always wanna feel the energy ball in the palms of your hands. So it's very subtle. For example, when I do this, I'm combining two things. First of all, my hands are lifting up. At the same time, my hands are going from relaxed to slightly open. And then back to relaxed, slightly open. It's a very minor detail, but what that does is it teaches you to, even though you're using tension, see my hands are slightly open, that I'm still in a relaxed state. So I never go from, I never go up to 100%. I go up to maybe 60 to 70% tension. Never go above that. Because once you go above that, then you start to use force. If you stay below, let's say 60% tension, then you're not using force, you're using relaxation. And the key to Tai Chi is to train yourself so that you can still use relaxation at 60%, 50%, 40%, 30%, eventually using no tension at all to be able to resist someone with force. So that's what takes the training. That's what takes the many, many hours of repetition and training during the push hands that we just showed you in the demonstration. Doing that for a lot that you can learn how to use relaxation. Mistake number two in Tai Chi is to not use your dan tian or not use your core, the center of gravity to direct the movements, okay? So there's a very simple movement called followed hands. So I'm using my core to direct my body. This time I'm using just one hand. See how my core is moving in a circle to direct my arm. So the core or the dan tian leads the arms, sun dai sao, that's what I say in Chinese, the body leads the hand. So that's number two mistake. Here's how it looks like when you make the mistake. See a difference? My hand is leading my core. So there's very little power or connection when I'm moving my hand. I'm just moving my hand. I'm not even leading it with the core. Now, do you see it doing correctly? So how you can practice is actually put your finger or put your hand and your fingers touch your belly button and then feel it move before your hand moves. But now you get the difference, okay? And the difference, you can tell. Let's see, I'm just using my hand like this. Just my hand. Okay, pain-wise, how much is that? Good, you got it. Yeah, it's good. Okay, one to 10. About a four. Four, okay? Now I'm using my hip, I mean using my dan tian. Yeah. How much pain, more pain is there? It brings it up to about a seven. A seven, right? And I didn't use more power, I just used my waist. And if I use more, I can get it up to 10, right? So that's the key of generating power is to use your dan tian. So let me show you a demonstration in the 24 move tai chi form. I'll how to use the dan tian to guide your hands. So let me show you the wrong way of doing this, okay? I'm trying very hard to do it the wrong way because I practice so much the proper way. But what I'm doing is I'm leading with my hands and then I move my body. So a very basic fundamental in early tai chi if you're a beginner is to learn how to move your hips. Now when you get advanced tai chi, you actually do the opposite. You learn to move your hands before your hips. It's contradictory, isn't it? Okay, but I'll show you how to do that in the next lesson or in a later lesson. And it goes with the concept that Bruce Lee taught which is to move your hands before your feet. Just like in fencing, you want to move your hands before your feet. The reason is because when somebody attacks you, I don't have time to move my hip first and do a big tai chi move, right? If somebody attacks me, I have to move my hand first. So what's the difference? See, before you learn tai chi and once you learn tai chi, they move their hands first, but there's no power. And then they practice tai chi and then they'll learn how to use the hips to get power. But they practice enough tai chi and now they'll get back to the beginning. They use their hands first, but now it comes with power. How does that happen, okay? So let me show you again. Let's see if it's attacking, right? I don't have time to move my hips and do a big tai chi move like in a lot of demonstrations, right? I only have time to just move my hand up, right? But there's power there, how that happened, right? I just moved my hand, right? I'm not gonna move my hand and then my body. Go ahead and do it again. I moved my hand and then my body. I didn't move my hip first. Just me moving my hips first. Too slow, right? I have to go one, two. You already hit me, okay? But now I wanna do it so that I move my hand first. Okay, so how does that work? Maybe in a later lesson, I can show you how to do that. Mistake number one that you can make in tai chi is to not sink your tailbone, which means not to open your back. Now I'm gonna show Will, for example, because I'm wearing a jacket, you can't see. So you see, if you take your shirt and tighten it up, your spine has a curve here, right? So most people have that curve naturally, but in tai chi, you actually don't want that curve. In tai chi, you want to get rid of that curve. So you wanna sink down the tailbone, okay? So that you can feel that this is flatter. And ideally, it's actually a C, it's a couple. So what you need to do is sink your tailbone down even more.  So now I can feel his lower back is straightening up, okay? But it's still not enough. You want it to stick out, you push out over here, push, push, push, push, that's better, okay? So now you can feel that it's more like a C, whereas starting about before, see how it's like an S. So you don't want that. And you can see a lot of people doing tai chi with a back like this is actually very bad for your back and also it makes you disconnected. It disconnects your upper body with your lower body. The key to having a strong core and dan tian is to connect your upper body with your lower body. And this is the main mistake that people make by having the S curve of the spine. And what it does is disconnects your body. So for example, I'm gonna do an S curve on purpose. My spine is like my belly sticking out. I'm trying to, and he pushes on my hand. See, I'll automatically go back. There's no resistance. But now I stick my back out. I drop my hip and make this into a C. And then now he pushes on it. What happened? It's a different. You're more rooted. It's rooted. See, what happens when you curve your back is now that energy transfer goes straight through your spine and then into your hips and into the legs, into the knees and into the ground. When you break that connection by curving your spine, now all the energy just goes in your spine. It doesn't go to your legs. So that's why he pushes, right? That energy goes to the spine and then I go. So that's the number one mistake that you can make in Tai Chi. So when you practice your Tai Chi, make sure that you always check. Put my hand back behind my back. I see, it's straight. You did a C. You don't wanna be like this. So even when you do your moves, think about that. Think that the spine is gonna be straight. One exercise you can do is to do very slow squats against the wall. So that's what the wall is gonna be. I wanna first put my back against the wall and then see if there's any space behind my back. See if I slip my hand behind my back. If there's a space that I can slip my hand behind, then there's too much space. So I need to get rid of that space. I want all my spine to be touching the wall. Once I get that, then I can go up and down.  Now, after I do that, and I'm good at it, then I can go all the way down, all the way down, keeping my spine straight and touching the wall all the way. And go as slow like this. So that's gonna be very hard on your lower back, but it strengthens your lower back. It strengthens your leg. So that's one key in Tai Chi of creating connectedness. So stay tuned, I'm gonna show you the bonus mistake that people make. So the bonus mistake that you can make in Tai Chi is doing it too fast. I know everybody says this, you wanna do Tai Chi slow, but many people don't understand why you do Tai Chi so slow. Well, today we talked about three mistakes. Number one, relaxation. Number two, using your Dan Tian to lead your hands. Number three, having a proper spine alignment. What do all those things mean? All those things mean connectedness of your whole body, integration of your whole body. If your hand moves, your whole body moves. If your feet move, your whole body moves. Everything's connected. And the reason we do Tai Chi so slow is that we're training that connectedness. And it's impossible to train it doing it fast. That's why we do it slow. If we can do it fast and still get connectedness, then everybody would do Tai Chi fast. But the reason we do it slow is because Tai Chi doing it slow is probably the only way you can train that connectedness in your body by combining all the techniques that we learned. Relaxation, leading with the Dan Tian. And later on, how to use your breath to relax and connect your body to and your mind. So there's many aspects of learning how to connect your whole body and mind as an integrated machine, integrated unit, in order to function totally and holistically. When it comes in, you sink your chest. You press here, like I'm pretty solid here, right? Because you're pushing it down to my chest, expand my chest, and then you go from knee to toe. But there's actually sink your chest and expand your chest. So now there's another, not going mechanism that blends, right? So there's blending, and it's sinking more. Try and do it, see? So when you're sinking, it sinks down to the body. So the chin is tucked, chest is in. And then you push hard as well. It's not going anywhere, right? Make it expand a bit. And you know what you want from us? Yeah. Close your shoulders, please. So you contract? Yeah. Easily when we balance it, all right? Yeah. Because when you can try and you feel like, oh, I can push the guy, right? Yeah. You feel like you can push me, but you think you got me, right? So we don't do anything about that. Okay. Don't use this. Yeah. Use, just relax. Like when you push in here, I'm totally relaxed. I'm just using my whole structure and my body. Yeah, okay. So this is actually touching my body. Yeah. So you feel like you got me, right? Yeah. Because actually there's more. There's more room. Yeah. All right. All right. So just relax this whole thing.  So it feels like, oh yeah, I got you now. But you feel like now it's on your back leg, right? Yeah. Now you just expand. Yeah, okay. All right. It's so new, okay. So let's put that into your cushion. Sucking in and expand. So I'm ready, I'm already sucked in. Yeah. And I'm already expanding. Okay.  But then you need to make sure the elbow, cap the elbow. Yeah. Cap the elbow, so if I go like this, you can just push it up there. Okay. But you try to elbow me like this. You do that. Elbow, elbow me. Okay. At least I can control the elbow. Okay. I do it, right? Then if you feel yourself moving this way, you're right there. You can just change it to here. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you need to in, cap the elbow. Is this sucking in? Is this sucking in? Just sucking in and then expand. I'm David Wong and in this video, I'm gonna show you the three mistakes in Tai Chi that are very common that people make. So one of the main advantages of learning Tai Chi is for health, for your joints, for your bones, for breathing, for relaxation and meditation. But also, you learn a concept called rooting or sinking. So as you can see in the demonstration, we'll hear how much do you weigh? 240 pounds. 320 pounds. Look at his muscles. Look at his arms. Holy cow. He's as big as my leg, right? I'm already, I'm only about 150 pounds. Look at my skinny arms. And I'm able to resist and pushing me. And I'm fairly relaxed. Without using a lot of strength, I can resist this push. And how hard were you pushing there? 200%, he's putting all the strength in there. And I'm just standing there, not using too much strength. So the key is don't fight strength with strength. Don't fight force with force. So in Tai Chi, we'll teach you how to use structure, the structure of your skeletal structure, of your bones, of your joints, of your alignment and also of your mind of what the intention is in order to resist force using just structure. So one of the key things that you need to have structure, well there's three mistakes that people make that destroy structure in Tai Chi. And very few people that actually practice Tai Chi actually know and actually experience and know how to do this. So stay tuned and I'm gonna show you those to you. Mistake number three is not being relaxed. So a lot of people are confused about relaxation and about being placid. There's two different things. For example, if I'm being placid, he pushes and that's placid, right? There's nothing there. I'm not being placid, okay? But be relaxed in concept called shong, or shong in Chinese. It's being loose but relaxed but still have structure. So he's pushing, he's pushing harder, harder, harder. I'm relaxed, see? My hands relaxed when he's pushing, harder, harder. I'm still relaxed. See how I'm relaxed my arms? I'm still able to resist them, okay? So that's the difference between being shong, which means loose and placid. But in English, we use relaxation, which is very easy to misinterpret. So number one key, when you practice your tai chi, for example, practice your tai chi, your hands are always relaxed. There's only a tense state and a relaxed state. Now, when we go to the gym, most people practice being tense. Use your muscles, tense up, to get more power, which is okay, it works. But if you practice being tense all the time, if you practice being tense, like this, then if you're fighting against someone bigger than you, you're at a disadvantage because his force will be stronger than your force. So rather than use force, I use shong. I use relaxation. So when you practice your tai chi, make sure that your hands are not open like this because that's too much tension. Make sure your hands are not closed like this because that's too much tension. Your hands should always be in the middle. When it's relaxed, it's completely relaxed. Imagine holding an egg in your hand. When you're open, just open them slightly. Just stretch them out a little bit. When you're relaxed, relaxed. When you're open, just open a little. You always want to feel an energy ball in the palms of your hands. So it's very subtle. For example, when I do this, I'm combining two things. First of all, my hands are lifting up. At the same time, my hands are going from relaxed to slightly open, and then back to relaxed. Slightly open. It's a very minor detail, but what that does is it teaches you to, even though you're using tension, see my hands are slightly open, that I'm still in a relaxed state. So I never go from, I never go up to 100%. I go up to maybe 60 to 70% tension. Never go above that, because once you go above that, then you start to use force. If you stay below, let's say, 60% tension, then you're not using force, you're using relaxation. And the key to Tai Chi is to train yourself so that you can still use relaxation at 60%, 50%, 40%, 30%, eventually using no tension at all to be able to resist someone with force. So that's what takes the training. That's what takes the many, many hours of repetition and training, doing the push-hands that we just showed you in the demonstration. Doing that for a lot, then you can learn how to use relaxation. Mistake number two in Tai Chi is to not use your Dan Tian, or not use your core, the center of gravity to direct the movements, okay? So there's a very simple movement called bowed hands. So I'm using my core to direct my body. So say I'm using just one hand. See how my core is moving in a circle to direct my arm. So the core or the Dan Tian leads the arms. Sun Dai Sao, that's what I say in Chinese. The body leads the hand. So that's number two, the stick. Here's how it looks like when you make the stick. See a difference? My hand is leading my core. So there's very little power or connection when I'm moving my hand. I'm just moving my hand. I'm not even leading it with the core. Now, do as you're doing correctly. So how you can practice is actually put your finger or put your hand and fingers, touch your belly button and then feel it move before your hand moves. But now you get the difference, okay? And the difference, you can tell. So let's see, I'm just using my hand like this. Just my hand. Okay, pain-wise, how much is that? Good, you got to feel it, yeah. One to 10. About a four. Four, okay? Now I'm using my hit, I mean using my Dan Tian. Yeah. How much pain, more pain is there? It brings it up to about a seven. A seven, right? And I didn't use more power, I just used my waist. And if I use more, I can get it up to 10, right? So that's the key of generating power is to use your Dan Tian. So let me show you a demonstration in the 24 move Tai Chi form of how to use the Dan Tian to guide your hands. So let me show you the wrong way of doing this, okay? I'm trying very hard to do it the wrong way because I practice so much the proper way. But what I'm doing is I'm leading with my hands and then I move my body. So a very basic fundamental in early Tai Chi if you're a beginner is to learn how to move your hips. Now when you get advanced Tai Chi, you actually do the opposite. You learn to move your hands before your hips. It's contradictory, isn't it? Okay. But I'll show you how to do that in the next lesson or in a later lesson. And it goes with the concept that Bruce Lee taught, which is to move your hands before your feet. Just like in fencing, you wanna move your hands before your feet. The reason is because when somebody attacks you, I don't have time to move my hip first and do a big to giant Tai Chi move, right? If somebody attacks me, I have to move my hand first. So what's the difference? See, before you learn Tai Chi and once you learn Tai Chi, they move their hands first, but there's no power. And then they practice Tai Chi and then they'll learn how to use the hips to get power. But they practice enough Tai Chi and now they'll get back to the beginning. They use their hands first, but now it comes with power. How does that happen? Okay. So let me show you again. Let's see if it's attacking, right? I don't have time to move my hips and do a big Tai Chi move, like in a lot of demonstrations, right? I only have time to just move my hand up, right? But there's power there. How that happened, right? I just move my hand, right? I'm not moving my hand and then my body. Go do it again. I move my hand and then my body. I didn't move my hip first. Just me moving my hips first. Too slow, right? I have to go one, two. You already hit me, okay? But now I want to do it so that I move my hand first. Okay, so how does that work? Maybe in a later lesson, I can show you how to do that. Mistake number one that you can make in Tai Chi is to not sink your tailbone, which means not to open your back. Now I'm gonna show Will, for example, because I'm wearing a jacket, you can't see. So you see, if you take your shirt and tighten it up, your spine has a curve here, right? So most people have that curve naturally, but in Tai Chi, you actually don't want that curve. In Tai Chi, you want to get rid of that curve. So you want to sink down the tailbone, okay? So that you can feel that this is flatter. And ideally, it's actually a C, it's a couple. So what you need to do is sink your tailbone down even more, sucking your gut, and then stretch this out like this, okay? So now I can feel his lower back is straightening up, okay? But it's still not enough. You want it to stick out, you push out over here, push, push, push, push, that's better, okay? So now you can feel that it's more like a C where I started about before. See how, see how it's like an S. So you don't want that. And you can see a lot of people doing Tai Chi with a back like this is actually very bad for your back and also it makes you disconnected. You disconnect your upper body with your lower body. The key to having a strong core and Dan Qian is to connect your upper body with your lower body. And this is the main mistake that people make by having the S curve of the spine. And what it does is disconnect your body. So for example, I'm going to do an S curve on purpose. My spine is like, my belly's sticking out. I'm trying to, and he pushes on my hand. See, I'll automatically go back. There's no resistance. But now I stick my back out. I drop my hip and make this into a C. And then now he pushes on it. What happened? It's a different, it's more rooted. It's rooted. See what happens when you curve your back is now that energy transfer goes straight through your spine and then into your hips and into the legs, into the knees, into the ground. When you break that connection by curving your spine, now all the energy just goes in your spine. It doesn't go to your legs. So that's why he pushes, right? That energy goes to the spine and then I go. So that's the number one mistake that you can make in Tai Chi. So when you practice your Tai Chi, make sure that you always check. Put my hand back behind my back. I see, it's straight. You do the C. You don't want to be like this. So even when you do your moves, think about that. Think that the spine is going to be straight. One exercise you can do is to do very slow squats against the wall. So that's the wall against me. I want to first put my back against the wall and then see if there's any space behind my back. See if I slip my hand behind my back. If there's a space that I can slip my hand behind, then there's too much space. So I need to get rid of that space. I want all my spine to be touching the wall. Once I get that, then I can go up and down.  Now, after I do that and I'm good at it, then I can go all the way down, all the way down, keeping my spine straight and touching the wall all the way. And do it slow like this. So that's going to be very hard on your lower back, but it strengthens your lower back. It strengthens your leg. So that's one key in Tai Chi of creating connectedness. So stay tuned, I'm going to show you the bonus mistake that people make. So the bonus mistake that you can make in Tai Chi is doing it too fast. I know everybody says this, you want to do Tai Chi slow, but many people don't understand why you do Tai Chi so slow. Well, today we talked about three mistakes. Number one, relaxation. Number two, using your Dan Tian to lead your hands. And number three, having a proper spine alignment. What do all those things mean? All those things mean connectedness of your whole body. Integration of your whole body. If your hand moves, your whole body moves. If your feet move, your whole body moves. Everything's connected. And the reason we do Tai Chi so slow is that we're training that connectedness. And it's impossible to train it doing it fast. That's why we do it slow. If we can do it fast and still get connectedness, then everybody would do Tai Chi fast. But the reason we do it slow is because Tai Chi doing it slow is probably the only way you can train that connectedness in your body by combining all the techniques that we learned. Relaxation, leading with the Dan Tian. And later on, how to use your breath to relax and connect your body to and your mind. So there's many aspects of learning how to connect your whole body and mind as an integrated machine. Integrated unit in order to function totally and holistically.


So good evening, everyone. Again, my name is Jen Santos with the City of Santa Rosa Parks and we're going to go ahead and get started. I'm wondering if we can go ahead and move to the next slide while we get started and just want to thank you all for attending tonight. I know everyone's got very busy schedule so I really appreciate your attendance tonight. And I wanted to take this time to just welcome you overall and we are here tonight to talk about the master plan for Dutch Floor Park. This is the third in a series of three plan neighborhood meetings where all previous feedback has been received, received has been used to create the new draft draft master plan you're going to see tonight. We'll also to continue to receive feedback tonight from you and for those of you that have friends or relatives neighbors that weren't able to attend tonight we'll also have an online survey available at the parks recon parks website. If you weren't able to attend tonight. And then before we get started I also wanted to take a moment to introduce a few folks that are attending the meeting tonight. And from what I could tell so far sometimes it's hard to tell so if I've missed somebody I apologize but I wanted to let you know we have Carol quant our board of community services chair, as well as Terry Griffin, our vice chair for the board of community services and board of community services members Madonna feather and Cynthia rich. And if I miss somebody I'm sorry. That's who I could see so far. I'd like to introduce Tim Bernhard and Emily and her. You'll see their names up on the screen they are helping behind the scenes, hosting the meeting tonight, and they're going to coordinate all the comments and questions tonight. Assist during the meeting and take notes of course. I also like to introduce Haley Watterson from plural landscapes architecture studio, who is our consultant assisting with the master planning process. And I don't know Haley if you have any introductions to make. Yeah, I'm Haley and I'm here with Mariam Arias with our team as well. Thank you. Thanks Haley. Okay, so before we get started I have a few housekeeping things to go over. So panelists and presenters, please silence your cell phones and keep microphones muted if not speaking. Members of the public joining this meeting will have webcams and microphones muted. If you're joining the meeting and you choose to speak during the public comments portion of the agenda for privacy concerns the host will rename you to caller, and only show the last four digits of your cell phone number. Additionally, the city of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption and will not tolerate hateful speech or actions. Everyone is expected to participate respectfully or if necessary the meeting will end immediately. So I'm going to turn it over to our host, Tim Bernard to explain how to participate with public comments and polling that will be conducted at tonight's meeting. Thanks Jen, there will be an opportunity near the end of the presentation for questions and comments. The host will lower all hands until the public comment item is open. The facilitator will open the floor for questions and answers. Once the facilitator has called for public comment, the facilitator will ask the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak. Those joining by phone may dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on you. If you have raised your hand, the host will unmute your microphone for your comment and then we'll mute you once you are finished speaking a courtesy timer will appear while you're asking your question or making a comment. The facilitator host or co host will respond to each question or comment as it is raised. We will need to raise your hand again if the follow up question is generated based on the response you receive. So the opportunity to ask questions throughout the presentation by clicking the q&a feature in your zoom menu or toolbar and typing in your question. The host will keep an eye on these questions and will answer them in writing as time allows, or will ask the presenters to answer them in intervals throughout the presentation. Any questions not answered in the presentation will be addressed during the question and public comment portion of the presentation. There will be four opportunities to participate in polls throughout the presentation. Poll questions are single or multiple choice. You must answer all questions in order to submit your response. The submit button is at the very bottom of each poll. You may need to scroll to the bottom of your screen to find it. If you are completing the poll on your smartphone, you must answer the first question before you may answer the second question, etc. If you are participating in the meeting via landline, you will need not be able to participate in the poll at this time. However, the poll will be available via the city website until September 9, following the meeting. Please check srcity.org forward slash 2482448 forward slash parts dash projects to complete the survey. Once everyone has completed the poll and has been closed, the results will appear immediately and the facilitator will walk you through the results. Please, Tim, so we're going to get started and I'm going to turn it over to our landscape architects and turn it over to Hailey from plural landscape architecture student to get us started and roll us through. And before we do, I just wanted to let you know that we do have a Q&A period and we have plenty of time for repeat questions as well if you have questions after that. Thanks, Jen. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining us today to talk about Dutch for Neighborhood Park. We'll be going through the presentation. It will start with looking at the schedule. And then we'll look at the community meeting number two, and the online results that resulted from that community meeting. And then we'll share those with you all. And then we'll spend some time, the most of the presentation going through the draft master plan so we've taken a few recall and community meeting number two we had three master plan options and three neighborhood of three community meetings. And we received comments and feedback on those options. And tonight we're presenting a combination, narrowing those options down to one plan. So we'll share those with you. And they're very much informed by the comments we received. In addition, there'll be some moments where we stop and ask a few questions that'll be the zoom polls that Tim was mentioning. And again, there'll be open comment at the end of the presentation. And please use that Q&A. Tim will monitor it for us and we'd love to get as much feedback in common as we can. So we're talking about Dutch floor neighborhood park. The city is divided into these four quadrants separated by the 101 and the 12 freeways. And Dutch floor neighborhood park is within the Northwest Quadrant number one here on the screen, located where that, approximately where that red star is. The goals of this project are really focused around creating a safe and welcoming park and playground. We're starting looking at a master plan for the park which is an overarching plan for the entire park, which could be implemented all at once or over time, and then specifically looking at the playground improvements, wanting to improve the space between the two existing playgrounds, increase accessibility and usability of the park. It's an aging park that will require some upgrades to the paths and to the some of the infrastructure. And an important goal for us too is to enhance the park's beauty. It is an existing park has beautiful mature trees and want to build on that beauty. So we'll be looking to take the two existing playgrounds and create more connectivity between them, moving them closer together because currently they're spread, spread apart quite a bit, which makes families with kids in different age grade age groups makes it a little challenging to observe them. So we can make that a little bit easier by moving them closer together. We have an adult fitness equipment within the park so we'll be looking at upgrading that equipment. And again, just updating the overall park infrastructure, which includes drainage irrigation furniture and some of the planting. So where are we in this whole process this long process we're in this first phase, which we're calling the master planning community engagement. So we've done two community meetings. The last one was in May, and this is the last community meeting before we will after that we will go to the Board of Community Services and the city council. Following those approvals, we would move on to the construction sets starting starting the end of this year moving into next year. Well goes well that would be looking at a construction time somewhere spring of 2022. And as you all know, schedules are always in draft form so this is as much as we know right now. So we'll start with going through the results of the community meeting number two. So we had two sets of data that came from these two different feedback formats one was the community meeting on the 27th of May, and we had around 17 respondents responding to the poll. There may have been a few more at the at the meeting. And then we had an online survey up following that meeting that was up for about three weeks and we had 59 respondents from that online survey. So we'll look at the survey results together. And you'll see throughout the survey on the left will show you the results from the community meeting that was this zoom meeting on in May and then on the right you'll see the results from the online survey. And then the following slide in the series will be a combination of both of this data into one to get the kind of full picture of what we've heard. And we really it's really important to us to to make sure we're engaging with the community surrounding the park, given that this is a neighborhood park. And happy to report that that that seems to be who we're chatting with the community meeting results and the online survey, primarily residents within the Northwest quadrant, and the combined results. So we have around 20% of respondents coming from our Northwest quadrant. We also wanted to know how frequent people visit the park, again to try to gauge, are we talking to the kind of day to day weekly park users. Again, this kind of aligns with the previous data that we saw where we're mostly getting respondents from users that are there daily, which is amazing. And again, the combined results with over 60% of the respondents using the park daily or weekly. We also like to ask how, how people heard about this meeting to help us kind of refine the way that we outreach to communities. And through the community meeting that we had a lot of attendance from the heard about the meeting from the elementary school, which is really great. We have been talking with the elementary school throughout this process. You may remember if you were at the first community meeting, we, and the second one we showed some projects that we did with the school, so there was a school wide outreach project where the students did sketches and drawings and drawings within their classes about about the playground there are kind of visions and ideas for the playground and we've collected that data and unfolded that into some of our playground inspirations. And the online survey results primarily coming from city connection and social media. So this kind of our primary sources of outreach. We also wanted to learn a little bit how, how long, how far away people are from the park. And again this aligns with people being in Northwest West quadrant. But more specifically it really tells us that a lot of the people who have been responding are within a five to 10 minute walking distance so they're blocks away from the park, which is really great. And looking at the combined survey results here with half of our respondents walking to the park. Now we'll jump into the park, the master plan and the playground options that we shared and I'll pull them up again to remind you all what these options were, because abc can get lost so we'll look at that here and in the next slides. So we had three options for the master plan and the community meeting option C was preferred by 50% with option be following behind at 39. The online survey results had a slight preference for option be with option C trailing close behind, which put the combined results. Favouring option C at 45% with option be trailing close behind. And refresh everyone's memory. These are what the three master plan options look like at the last meeting option C was the one with the highest amount of votes. And we kind of pulled out what the main characteristics of option C are and how they differing differentiate themselves from option A and option B. So option C has a smaller, kind of more focused stormwater garden at the entry the corner of white chapel and Exeter. So we had the path and a place to sit within the garden, which is a little bit different from the other two options. There are more adult fitness stations. So in the other two options we had four stations adjacent to the playground and an option C. We had those four and we had additional ones along the path here off of white chapel. In option C we were showing more trees and more shade. And there was no group picnic space in option C. So those are kind of the main elements of option C that differentiated it from a and B. The next question that we asked was which playground option people preferred. And these results were pretty close. We had a scheme called dry creek one called loops and one called the enchanted forest and again I'll show you these in the next couple of slides. And in both the community meeting and the online survey results. The dry creek was slightly ahead of the other two. And the results that put the dry creek at 37% and the enchanted forest and leech trailing close behind that. And so these what these are what the options, a summary of what those options were option a calling the dry creek which is inspired by kind of a nature, natural materials inspired by this kind of creek concept. And that was a more kind of artful sculptural play forward option. And then the lesson was the enchanted forest which was a bit more whimsical, had many trees in the playground and lots of play elements. And so since the voting was all really close between these two. We did start with the dry creek concept as the sort of base but we pulled in some of the other features from loops and enchanted forest to try to pull pull some of these ideas together to more of a hybrid We wanted to also mentioned some of the responses we got from there's a couple of open format. Opportunities to provide comments and then also some things we heard verbally in the last community meeting. So some of those things, and these are the most common topics that we received. So there was a desire for a more defined edge between the elementary school in the park. And so there was a concern about large picnic areas request for no bar picnic areas or barbecue areas. And then a couple of comments around trying to leave the park in a natural feel using the, using native plantings and things like that. There's a number of concerns around suspicious activity at the in the park. And we're going to address that in a couple of slides. We know about maybe a week or two after a community meeting number two that there was a shooting that had happened in the park so what we will address that. And then a couple of several comments about a desire to have sand in the playground. Additionally, we heard about more shade. Some comments about wanting restroom some comments about no restrooms. There was a comment about the traffic and speed along Exeter with vehicles and a suggestion around speed bumps. And we will be directing that comment to great departments within the city. So I'm going to take a closer look at that. There was a request for games like form whole and chess to be located in the park, which we've taken a look at. And then there was some comments about a dog park and disc golf that were made. And again I think those are a little bit constrained in terms of the size of the park that we have to accommodate those uses. And I think we again we've passed on this comment to be placed in the more original scale, we jump park scale locations for tonight. We'll be looking at the draft master plan. And this is it here on the right. We're going to go into it in more detail, but just to hit the high level items that are included in this revised master plan. So we've included that stormwater garden at the entry with the path and a bench. We've included a fence with a gate that would be operated by the school along that edge between the park and elementary school. We've made sure to continue along the lines of this kind of natural feel native plantings and trees. Looked at ways to provide more shade within the park at large incorporated games cornhole chess and table tennis. We've included the additional fitness stations total of seven. We have provided senior options within the park so within the playground but also outside of the playground. And then we're really been thinking about their lines of sight and safety throughout the park. And speaking on speaking about safety we wanted to just take a moment to talk about some of the concerns around the activities. What happened in the park recently. And Jen and 10 feel free to jump in here, but I wanted to just share that they've been in touch with the police department around the incident of the shooting. And had passed along some things that we should be considering things that we can do through this master planning process to help increase safety through the park. And to assure us that they feel that the incident was a targeted incident, and that the safe is generally a safe place. So they passed along these items for us. One of the things is to make sure we have clear lines of sight. So, primarily police officers trolling the adjacent streets. Having the ability for them to kind of see in their patrol car, see up and through the park as they're around moving around the perimeter of the park. So we'll be thinking about that. And then focusing the gathering spaces, like the playground within those clear lines of sight, avoiding placing kind of program around any corners, where the line of sight is a little bit constrained, keeping low shrubs and maintaining them low for that line of sight, providing high branching trees and making sure the trains are pruned. Luckily, because we have this mature park and mature trees a lot of a foliage of the park of the park trees is up high and above that line of sight so we have that going for us. I also recommended posting the park signage very clearly around the park rules within the park, and then also suggested that if any neighbors see any suspicious activity that they could report as a suspicious activity to the non emergency line. And did request that you provide as much specificity that you can around those activities. So now we'll jump into the various parts of the master plan. And we'll start here at the corner of Whitechapel and Exeter, which is the existing low point of the park, and it is one of the main kind of entries to the park. We thought this would be a great place to place a stormwater garden at this entry. So it, it marks kind of a threshold into the park, and also collects the rain water that lands in the park collects it filters it and cleans it before it's released back into the city sewer system. And within that garden. It's a really neat sustainable feature, and there's opportunities for signage around that element as a kind of educational opportunity to learn about how that garden works. And within that garden. We envision the park monument sign. There's a, and this is a piece of that we would love to get feedback on from you today in the meeting. The existing sign is right here. It is a timber and kind of wood plank sign that's painted brown with yellow paint for the park sign. This is kind of original to the park and has some kind of charm to it. And we wanted to know how people feel about this monument sign. This is a big main sign that announces the name of the park. Typically there's one of these in a park size like this. You could look at upgrading, or replacing it with a newer monument sign. Here's an example of the new monument sign that was recently installed a coffee park. It is a steel sign that's laser cut with some concrete pilasters adjacent to it. And it says here and and put up a poll to see how people feel about the existing monument sign versus replacing it. And Haley I'm going to ask our host to remind folks how to participate in the polling. And I know it's a lot of information but just in case we have people joining in we're going to say this every time. So we want to make sure you have the opportunity to participate virtually as this is going along. So, I'll turn it back over to Tim to let everybody know how to participate electronically. Thank you. Poll questions are single or multiple choice. You must answer all questions in order to submit your response. The submit button is at the very bottom of your of each poll. You must. You must scroll to the bottom of the of your screen to find to find this the submit button. If you complete the poll on your smartphone you must answer the first question before you can answer the second question, etc. If you're meeting via landline, you will not be able to participate in the poll at this time, however, you go to the city website and allow the survey there until September 9. Once everyone has completed the poll and has been closed, the results will appear immediately in the facilitator will walk you through the results. So you should see the poll up on your screen now with us on a device. We're asking should the existing Park Monument sign be replaced. And you can answer yes, no, and if you have no preference, that's fine too. And if you're still thinking through it, I'll just kind of remind everyone we're looking at the existing Park Monument sign, which is original to the park. It is a timber and wood plank sign that's painted brown with yellow lettering could keep it, maybe even spruce it up. New paint or make, you know, slight modifications to it, or you can replace it with something new in it might be similar to this coffee park precedent image here on the bottom left. So I'm going to close the poll. Thanks Emily. And the results are in. All right. So we've got 60% of our participants saying yes. It's time to replace the existing monument sign 33% saying no and then seven have no preference. Well, and if you have any pieces of detail to add to your answer, we'd be happy to hear those at the open comment session. The next thing we wanted to highlight in the master plan is the addition of shade canopies over the playground, which will see more detail we're going to zoom into that playground. After we get through the overall park plan. We also are looking at adding more trees for the existing sidewalks that are there, particularly on Exeter it's a quite a long stretch there without any shade so as you can see in that existing image there on the top left. So looking to add some trees to provide shade and comfort along that sidewalk. And again along white chapel as well. And we'll also exploring adding some additional trees within the playground. There are a lot of existing mature trees as we've mentioned. So it's kind of a great thing that we would like to build on. Oh, we'd also like to highlight some of the seating options within the park. We're looking at benches scattered across adjacent to the paths in the park and then picnic tables within the playground. There's options proceeding next to the playground or outside the playground. If you aren't there enjoying the playground and you just want to enjoy the park. There's options for you there too. I think someone made a comment like that in the second community meeting so we wanted to highlight these options. And again another seating opportunity in that stormwater garden will be including seven adult fitness stations. And as we start to narrow in on what that equipment is this is another point we'd love to get your feedback tonight. We've identified seven stations and we wanted to hear what kind of equipment people would prefer. There's options for this equipment these days. There's items that are used for cardio, like bikes, or either kind of moving cardio machines, and then they're straight training strength training machines. And then there's also a question around the ability level that we're providing for so I think there's two zoom questions that are pulling questions that are going to come up around this topic. All right, and sorry to do this to you all again but Tim can you just go ahead and read that again just in case anybody new joined. Poll questions are single or multiple choice. You must answer all questions in order to submit your response. The submit button is at the very end of the each poll may need to scroll to the bottom of the screen to find it. If you're completing the poll on your smartphone you must answer the first question before you can answer the second question etc. If you're participating in the meeting via landline you will not be able to participate in the poll at this time. However, you can take the poll that's available online at SRCity.org. Once everyone has completed the poll and has been closed the results will appear immediately in the facilitator will go through the results. Tim and yet go ahead and start and start voting and I just wanted to add simply that I'll keep an eye on the attendees. And if we don't have any new ones joined that we can skip that link. Okay. Thanks Jen and I think if anybody has any trouble to with the polling they can raise their hand and or put it in the chat and we will help you as best as we can. So the two questions around the exercise equipment. The first one is around what what type of adult exercise equipment should be included. Primarily cardio stations, primarily strength training stations or a mix of both. And then again if you don't have a preference. And when we get to the open session period of this. So who are really focused on on this aspect it would be great to if you have feedback or specific equipment that you'd like to see. It'd be great to to hear that. And then the second question is around the fitness level the skill level for these equipment stations. So the options there, whether it's multi generational equipment. Something for everybody. Or is this a community that is looking for more challenging equipment more challenging kind of fitness opportunities. Or is this a community that would like to see equipment that's more focused around the kind of 65 plus community. And then again if you don't have a preference. I'm going to go ahead and in the poll, because it's been at 12 of 15. This all one more report so I'll leave it up and for a few more seconds. Okay, I'm going to close the poll now and show the results for the first question. We have 8% looking for primarily cardio stations, 23% looking for primarily strength training stations, and then 54% looking for a mix. And then a handful who don't have a preference. Option or sorry question to around skill level, primarily folks looking for multi generational equipment, which would have some of those high ability stations, and then once for the 65 plus community. Thank you all and again. Thank you to all of our specific requests for certain kinds of equipment. So if that's you please talk to us during the open comment session. The next item of the master plan we wanted to highlight is the edge along the bio elementary school. We've been talking with the principal there. And working, working through some ideas about this edge. The next property line is this red dash line that you see here. And so the improvements that we're looking at are within the school's property. We have talked with them about including a low fence with a gate that would provide access from the park. And that gate would be open before school and after school and it would be the gate access would be operated by the school. And that would allow the drop off some pickups that happened through the park to continue to happen. And we're thinking that fence is something you can see through. It's low, it's really meant to provide a physical barrier psychological barrier for that edge of the school. And with that there may be some, some new shrub planting some new shade trees, there can even be some seeding elements and benches tucked in there that face the existing sport courts of the elementary school. So that's the summary of the main features of the overall master plan will now dive into a closer look into the playground. And again, just stopping here to remind ourselves kind of where we were last and and as we start to talk about where we are now, starting from the concept of the dry creek. We use that as the framework to develop the playground, but we pulled in some ideas from the loops option that we liked, like some of the running paths that provide kind of an accessible path around the playground. And then in the chanted forest, we brought in some of those elements, including a few more trees in the playground, and some of the whimsical play elements that people responded well to. So I kind of pulled those all in together to this refined playground. And this first diagram is meant to just kind of orient you to the site. There is. As we mentioned, currently the playground, the playgrounds at the park are have a five to 12 area and a two to five area that are separated by quite some ways. So as part of this project we're pulling the playgrounds together and still providing a kind of physical separation within a concrete path, but they're right next to each other. So there's kind of, you know, lots of fluidity between the two spaces, but but the age groups are defined and the five to 12 is here and the two to five is here. This is the enlarge plan of the playground. And at this master plan phase we really have the bones the kind of framework of the playground, the general layout, and we have a sense of how much equipment and the types of equipment that we will be including. So we picked out the exact play equipment that happens at the at the next phase of development of this plan. So I wanted to just highlight a few things here and then we're going to go into into more detail again over each one of these items but this is kind of an overview of the playground. So this is a we're zooming in now this is Exeter Drive here on the left. So these are four of the exercise stations that are adjacent to the playground. There's three primary entries into the playground, one which is aligned with the path that leads you to by elementary school, one from the southern entrance, and one from the northwest side. The path that wraps around this side, the kind of northeast side of the playground is a couple of feet higher than the playground itself. And in that we've planning on providing this kind of bolder edge that mitigates that gray change and also acts as a frame for the playground to provide kind of a clear boundary of play to help parents keep track of the kids and without having to provide any kind of physical barriers like offense. So we'll within that we're talking in some sand and water play elements in both age group playgrounds. There are these three focus kind of gathering and seating areas of the two on either end are picnic tables. And then the one in the center is the games room, where we have the cornhole chess and ping pong. And then they're divided by this path. And the play equipment is located within these rooms. And then this kind of bluish gray path that winds around the playground is a path that children can chase each other on play tag. And it's part of this dry creek feature. And before we dive in I just want to step back and talk a little bit about where this kind of dry creek inspiration came from Santa Rosa is in the Santa Rosa Creek. It's very important to do a city and its development. Some of the first people that came to live here came here for this kind of really rich basin Santa Santa Rosa sits within, and then the Santa Rosa Creek itself is just blocks from this playground. And that seemed like a great place to kind of pull inspiration from, and to kind of bring awareness to our kind of ecological setting. And so within that we've interpreted that to be this frame that I mentioned before. And along, along this edge on the northeast side is that kind of boulder screwy that kids can climb over. And the playgrounds that have a similar feature, people use it to kind of sit in gather and kind of, you know, enjoy watching from that edge, and kids can kind of climb around it as well. And then the path that moves along the other side of the playground is tucked kind of within the existing trees so we have this kind of dry creek side on the east, and this more kind of shaded path to the creek side on the west. And within that, there are a few kind of focused sand play areas where sand would be enclosed, either through raised elements like this raised sand table, it could be depressed. But we're really looking to kind of contain the sand and then within that some potential water sources that could allow kids to create mud and really start to build when you when you know when they get that sand to be a little bit wet. And so they those might be small hand pumps that release a small amount of water to mix with the sand. And those would be located right right adjacent to those sand areas. So while those areas are sand, the majority of the surfacing of the playground is the fiber fiber mulch surfacing. And then we wanted to just share a range of precedent images for the types of play equipment that we'll be looking to include. And based on our early studies you have a sense of what we think you will have room for. And, again, what we've heard from people are the most important. The post and platform structures that are part of those kind of traditional play elements will be a big part of this playground will be one and then five to 12 and one in the two to five area. So we're looking at structures that feel more natural whether they're in that kind of warm brown colors, maybe limited amounts of rabbinia wood, and otherwise this kind of concrete form would structures. We've heard a lot of interest and enthusiasm for ziplines are really trying to make that happen requires a good amount of space but we're committed to trying to make that happen swings, of course are really important. It's something we heard from first community meeting so we'll have swings for both age groups. We're thinking of very popular play elements. I just wanted to highlight on those posts and platform structures that will be climbing elements and slides. And then for the two to five range folding and some of those play sculptures that brought that kind of whimsical character that people are interested in in the enchanted forest, and then spring riders another kind of low ground play elements for that top range. And then shade canopies over the over the plate structures, which is similar. You may have seen that at Coffee Park, the new playground there. And then highlighting the recalling the games room which is located in the center on this current plan. Oh, we think we can fit some cornhole. Kind of concrete planks there. A couple of chess tables and and a table tennis. Table there. And right now we've located in the playground, but we did want to hear from everyone if that is really the best location for it. There could be some of these elements, particularly the chess tables that get moved outside of the playground, and get placed like along some of the paths. So I think this is our next zoom poll question around preferences for the location of these games. I think we're going to go ahead and skip the same attendees. Thank you. There it is. That's the first question where should the games be located within the park adjacent to the playground, similar to the location that we've shown today. It should be outside of the playground, you know, right off of the park path, for example. Or should we have some within the playground and someone outside of the playground. And then if you don't have a preference on this question and the open comment it would be great. If you think that some should be outside of the playground well some should be inside. It would be great to know which ones. You think are better suited outside versus inside of the playground. Oh, that's our second question look ahead of my head ahead of myself here. So if you do think that some should be outside of the playground, which ones are the most appropriate chess tennis table cornhole. And then the option of that you don't think any should be outside of the playground. It's been about 45 seconds since the last vote so I'm going to go ahead and in the poll and show the results. Thank you. Right, here we are. So for the first question about where the game should be located within the park of no one said that they should be adjacent to the playground. Glad we asked. And 50% said outside of the playground. The park path and 50% said some games adjacent to the playground and some games outside. All right, and then on question to which game should be outside of the playground with 93% saying chess should be outside of the playground 71 table tennis and 57 with cornhole feedback. I'd love to hear more about that in the open comment. And this is our last slide here. That was an overview going to highlights of all the main features of the final draft master plan on the left and then this enlargement of the of the playground concept plan on the right. And we will be looking at the results of the zoom polls that we received tonight. There will be the survey will go up on the city website following this meeting. We'll receive some comments there. And then our plan will be to fold in those comments. Take another pass that we're finding this draft master plan. Before we move on to the board of community services. And with that, I believe we will open it to open response. Oh, sorry. I lied before that, we are going to send you all to our community questions, which are based around your participants are tonight. Important questions. So let's let's hit those. Please. The first one is where in the city do you live. Second one is about how you heard about this meeting. The third is how often you frequent the park. And the fourth is how far do you travel to use the park. And then after this we'll go to open comment. And they give about 10 more seconds and then I will close the poll. All right, thanks everyone. Let's see we've got 85% from the Northwest quadrant. Awesome. How we heard about this meeting city connection. Good job, Tim. How often you frequent the park. This one's pretty even split between daily, weekly, monthly and rarely. And how far do you travel to use the park. 77% within a five to 10 minute walk with a few people within a five to 10 minute drive or 10 to 20 minute drive. Right. Thank you everyone for your participation in the zoom poll. I think now we will open it up to questions and public comments. I'd like to turn it back over to our host just to remind everybody how to participate because it's a little different with commenting. Okay, Jen, I have lowered all hands. Please raise your hand if you wish to speak those joining by phone may dial star nine to raise your hand. The host, Andrew will then call on those who have raised their hands. The host will unmute your microphone for your comment, and then we'll mute you once you are finished speaking, a facilitator host or co host will respond to each question or comment, as it is raised. You will need to raise your hand again if a follow up question is generated by response that you received. I don't see any hands but I'm hopeful that someone wants to raise their hand and ask a question or give us some comments. I'd love love to hear from you. Well and why we're waiting for folks I know we had a question in the Q&A, and about what is the cost of the new sign if there is a new sign and there's a lot of different questions surrounding the signage, the monument sign, saying the new sign. And I just want to let everybody know that it's likely because we're changing the things in this park that we are going to have to update the sign somehow. There are new requirements for a height of lettering and things like that that have to go into new park signage, as well as lighting. So, we're likely to be updating the signage anyway so that's what we're asking. We don't have to do it anyway which style do you prefer, but we'll take a look and see what options we have, but that usually the cost of a new signage is around $25,000 for a new signs it sounds like a lot but there's a lot of engineering going into make sure that the signage is around and the electrical all works etc so both signs cost about the same amount to place whether, whichever one you want to do for different reasons so hopefully that helps explain some of that. But as we get into the construction documents we'll learn a little bit more about what we need to do have a comment from Peg. If you need to enable your speaking permissions. Please unmute your microphone. I will, your hand has been lowered so go ahead and make your comment. Okay, great. Thank you. I'm wondering if the Genevieve Hirsch Memorial bench is going to remain in the park. And I'm also wondering about the boulders. They really look in your pictures like it's a terrible accident waiting to happen for our children wanting to climb and not being the greatest climbers at that age, using using the park so I really like to have the boulders reconsidered. I'm thinking about the insurance that's going to be needed for accident claims. Thank you. I do have a lot of insurance. Yeah, but why have it, why, why use it that way. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. I can clarify that the existing Memorial benches that are in onsite. Labels can be reused on new park benches if we have new park benches or if we're going to reuse some of the ones, they'll be preserved either way. And for the follow up question about the boulders alternative over to Haley. Thanks Peg for that comment. It is something to consider and we can look at that more closely. We have seen, we've done boulders and other playgrounds where there hasn't been an issue yet. It is an opportunity for for children to to climb and and to have a little bit more kind of uneven surfacing. So there's there's benefits to them as well, but we will, we will make sure if we do include them that we're making sure they're surrounded by safety surfacing and, and that there are no pointy sharp edges that they're smooth boulders and things like that. So we will, we will take that and talk about it internally. Thank you. We have two more speakers. First is best followed by deep bearing that I've enabled your speaking permissions. Please go ahead with your comment. Hi, we first of all thank you and this is awesome. And it's so like pro kid, which is awesome. And community, and we live right behind the park, or like kind of not even in some of the questions because we're so close we are the park. So our, our concern is to preserve in this neighborhood and the amount of garbage that we're picking up in this neighborhood. When we add more benches and trees. Are we going to add an environment that's going to bring really close to our back fences, a population that lives here homeless population. And I just want to talk about those realities candidly. Thank you. I'll start and then turn over to Haley if you have any design type. Follow ups but for when we look at our other other parks there are benches and things we can use to avoid folks sleeping or lingering there's different types of benches that we can use rolling into that in our especially in our newer parks. Replacing these things citywide in older parks is difficult but with a new park we have an option for for doing that. And I'm not sure Haley how many more benches there are. I'll turn that back to you in just a minute but and with the trees I think a lot of the trees were on the street or near the street so that we're creating some shade to reduce that heat. The heat effect of heating up the street and heating up our environments or cooling down. It's not really an area where you'd want to hang out, hang out. I don't know Haley if you have something that's, you know, a more understandable answer than that. No, I think I think you hit the, the main points, the benches will likely be the number of benches will likely be similar to the number of benches that are there today. We're proposing you know bridges along the paths like you see today in places that you know people will be traveling like adjacent to the past so that can help doing arm rests on the benches, you know, sometimes a center arm rest can help as well, which makes it just a bit more challenging to lay down on. And then I would guess and maybe you could, you could help and inform us here on this but I would I would guess that any kind of desirable places might be around the edges. And I think, again, just providing those clear lines of sight can help with that, you know, providing, not providing, you know, not designing any places that are desirable to inhabit that are that are kind of dead so I think those are the main strategies in terms of what we can control within the park design. If you have any other kind of thoughts on on that that would be helpful or information if you see that happening there today. We have seen people trying to make up camps behind our fences, the backyard, and especially between the school in the park. Okay, they like that space and we're, I'm worried about the fences being, you know, the fence between the school might make a nice little cozy place for them. I see. Okay, that's helpful. Yeah, we make sure that fences transparent and maybe we just keep grass through there and no shrubs to help with that visibility. Thank you that would be great. The next commenter is deburring. I've enabled your speaking permissions, please unmute your microphone and provide your comment. Hi, good evening. Thanks for having the meeting point my comment seems kind of low key compared to the last one but you know it just seems that having water with the sand sounds just like a kind of a mess waiting to be to happen. You know there's sand there now without water and seems like a cleaner situation. And just a second comment is I'm super thrilled to see the chest and I'd be happy when it fits away from the playground because it just makes more sense. Thanks. Thank you. Are there any other comments or thoughts you want to share. There was one additional comment. No he me, I have enabled your speaking. No he me, I'm being told by zoom that you have an older version of zoom. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to type your question into the Q&A feature. So sorry about that. The next question is from Mike. Mike I've enabled your speaking permissions. Please go ahead and make your comment. I have a question regarding the the fence and the gate between the park and the school. It wasn't clear to me whether whether the fact that the gate would be open before and after school meant through the evening. Or just during the times when when children are coming and going. I understand there is a difference between the park and the school but when I walk through the park I frequently then go ahead and walk through the school as part of a walking route I take and I would like that to remain at least during non school hours if possible. That's what I had. Thanks Mike and we can definitely share that with the principal for the for the school. I think we can share that with the principal. I think we can share that with the principal for the school. I know that during school they'd like to keep it closed but that's really all the important that you know we wanted to make sure that students would be able to get to school before and after but we'll share the comments we have tonight with the school and pass that along as well. As soon as we have anything, anything from the school district about that we can also share that as well. Overall we like the designs that were shown tonight. One thing that we did not see mentioned of was a water fountain or water bottle refill station. Can you talk about that and also how the exercise equipment will be maintained. So thanks for that question and about the water bottle filling station and the water fountain. Because there is fitness equipment equipment there we can absolutely look at putting in a water bottle station there as a way to facilitate folks utilizing that. And the second part of the question was about the maintenance so all the maintenance is being performed at that level by our park by our staff our city staff maintenance staff. So we can combine that and sanitize it, usually once a week, or depending on how often it's being used they'll come in more. Usually our park staff are in our parks at least once a day, so they can come by and take care of anything that needs it. Similar to Bear Park, we have very similar equipment there and now Coffee Park we have a very similar thing at Coffee Park and it's, it's very well maintained. And a lot of that I mean, hopefully Haley can attest to some of this too. A lot of the newer equipment is really designed very well to be in a public setting versus things you might have seen in some of our older parks. The next question comes from Peg. Peg I've been able to your speaking permissions, please unmute and provide your comment. Thank you. I would, I'm wondering if there are there are plans for signage asking dog walk yours, the owners of dogs to have bags and clean up after their dogs. I find that rather objectionable when I'm trying to walk through on the grass. Even though it's brownish. It's still as a softer thing to walk on then the sidewalks always. And the sidewalks aren't always clean either because of the dogs. So I would appreciate looking into that if you haven't already and I'm guessing you have checked on it so thanks. We will definitely have signage about dogs on leash and we can add courtesy signs about pet pickup as well. We have an additional comment Jen from an attendee is is the metal sign upgrade. If it occurs, where does the money come from is it come from the existing budget. Yes, the existing budget we have is going to be used for everything that gets updated in the park. And the only thing we wouldn't do there was something some really unique feature or whatever that couldn't be added because of the budget and we would do that that the monument sign has to be part of the sign as part of our city code, and the fire department requires a specific type of signage so again it's one of those things that the cost is pretty much the same for either sign. So it's all coming out of the budget. Anyone else have other questions or comments, things that you really liked or things you don't feel comfortable with. Beth I see your hand. Giving you permission to speak please unmute your microphone and give your comments. One thing I didn't hear mentioned was about garbage and recycling because currently there are no recycling cans out there. I didn't know if that's part of the plan or not. Yes, that's a that's a good question we were changing there's a new state law requiring us to provide recycling and compost so they'll be traditional trash as well as recycling and compost bins. Usually they come manufacturers make them so they're all very compact and nice tidy area. Another question from the Q amp a will the water feature still be on during the winter. What times a year will it be on it's not in the winter. Usually turn. I'm trying to get trying to remember this from the main step we usually turn them on on April 1 and I think we turn them off sometime in October. I'm not remembering the exact days but we do turn the water off including drinking mountains off in the winter. I don't see any more hands or, and there are no more open questions. Last, last call for questions otherwise we'll move on to our next steps. Okay, things look good let's move along to next steps thank you. All right well we just wanted to thank everybody for participating and let you know that, again if you know somebody that wasn't able to attend tonight or if you weren't for whatever technical reason we're able to do that the community survey is available at the park projects website if you go to our city of Santa Rosa as our city.org forward slash park dash projects you can find it. Google it I'm sure it'll pop right up I do it all the time. Another place where you can type in open ended comments, if you would like to pass that along to anybody that would like to participate in that. And Haley do you have anything to add about the survey coming up. No I just just that it will be the same presentation that you saw here today will be up there as well so if you wanted to look back a little closer at any of the drawings that will be up there. Right and then just a reminder of where we're headed. This is our final community meeting will take the comments that we heard and fold them into the final master plan. And then from there we'll, we'll move on to get it into the details of the construction documents for the park. Again, big thank you here to our host working behind the scenes Tim Bernard is regular day job is not hosting webinars but you can definitely contact him if something comes up and you'd like to ask some questions and want some questions. This is certainly by no means the end of the conversation we would be grateful to hear from you, and you can get in touch with Tim at T Bernard at sr city.org. And our phone number by 433969. And of course our website. It has a lot of information about what not only what's happening for this next survey, and where we're going with this but also all of recorded meetings we've already had to date so if you want to get a little bit more update a little more information. That's there as well. Next slide. And just a big thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you all attending at the Board of Community Services meeting, which would be the next will take everything we hear from the surveys, and everything we've heard tonight, and we find the master plan and we'll be bringing that to the Board of Community Services as an advisory body of the city council, and that date will be posted on our website when that comes up but we're targeting the October meeting, which is on the 27th. Yeah. But that information will be posted on our website just in case for whatever reason it needs to get shifted, but that's the plan to go to the Board of Community Services in October for recommendation. And after that we'll go to city council, probably sometime in December, or early January. So thank you everyone and thanks very much to our facilitator Haley at Floral Landscape Architecture Studio on her staff and of course thanks for all the Board of Community Services members attending really appreciate it and we'll see you in October if not sooner.