Fragmented form
Barry was telling us a story about the woman who always cut the end of the
ham and somebody asked her why she did it. She said, "Well I don't know, my
mother always did it that way." And they asked her mother and she said, "I don't
know, my mother always did it." And they asked grandma, and she said, "Well, I
did it because otherwise it wouldn't fit into my biggest pot."
(Chungliang Al Huang)
Way of moving
Collecting forms is very common in tai chi.
Sadly it means that many instructors are a jack of all trades and master of
none.
Form is supposed to encourage a certain style/way of moving. It trains movement
patterns.
This does not happen when you mix styles together by training many different
forms.
If you are training multiple forms, a unique style of moving is not going to
emerge.
Yang students should move in a Yang way. Not a Chen or Sun way.
Ideally, your eventual movement will be a synthesis of you and the style you are
training.
Missing moves
There are a number of transitions in the Yang Cheng Fu form that are botched by
practitioners.
Two obvious ones:
Repulse monkey - slant flying
Inspect horses month - right heel kick - punch to groin
These tend to look really awful when you see people perform them. They look like
something is missing.
Well, it is.
Many people miss out the transition movements and the resultant form is clunky.
Not martial.
Stylised
The form has been stylised. Sometimes, over-stylised. This is where the problem
resides.
Consider the whip of single whip...
Is that 'pinching salt' hand position internal? Feel the tension in your hand.
Consider 'hold ball'...
This is a training method that some schools use to help beginners learn certain
postures.
Sadly, it promotes elbow-lifting, and many beginners actually think that holding
the ball is the correct posture.
Our school does not use this teaching tool.
Disconnected
A common error in many forms is that one hand is emphasised, whilst the other
hand is simply ornamental. Trimming.
This is ridiculous.
There are no aesthetic moves in tai chi. Every gesture has martial content.
Every tai chi movement - whether in the form or in self defence - involves both
hands moving as one.
Remember: it is the entire body that moves. If one part moves, all parts move.
All movement is initiated and controlled by the centre.
Connections and associations
If you just train one form, you begin to see connections and associations
throughout the sequence.
There are less than forty truly unique/distinct postures. Everything else is a
variation on a theme.
Patterns emerge in the form. Possibilities. Options. Choices. Strategies.
Rhythms.
This level of awareness is only possible when your mind is unpolluted by other
concerns, by other forms or systems.
Our students are encouraged to get to know their form really well.
They must apply every posture in multiple ways, deliver jing, incorporate
neigong and take the skills of the form into freeform self defence.
Page created 5 August 1999