Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

I'm trying to say that using 'reference points' to get everything lined up, while useful and unavoidable for a beginner, may be detrimental at this stage of the game for most of us here - non beginners - and that imagining, visualizing where you want to go, thinking peng and watching your leg shoot ...

It's like when you learn to write. You are given paper with an extra line in the middle and you learn to line up the tops of some lower case letters with this extra line. But eventually we need to put aside these crutches if we are going to write smoothly and fluently. In the beginning of learning t...

用意不用力 ....若不用力而 用意，意之所至，气即至焉，...

from 10 essentials, number 6.

[This message has been edited by JerryKarin (edited November 02, 2009).]

Well, certainly as you are learning the form there is a place for making this line up with that and so on (and I think this is largely what you mean by 'reference') but after you have practiced moves thousands of times you should have a physical feeling of when it's right and the next step is to let...

In Hand Strums Lute, the arms play the same roles they would play in left ward off: left wards off and right pulls down. As in ward off, left is primary and full, right is secondary and empty. There are some other possible applications but typically the left arm is still primary. In regard to the po...

A couple more notes about speed. The notion of practicing all movements at uniform speed is very late stratum Yang style taijiquan, basically going back no further than Yang Chengfu. It is a suggestion for practice more than a rule and is disregarded in application. Yang Zhenduo specifically mention...

Let me add that I think the use of some benchmark such as I suggested for speed should be temporary while learning the form or for teaching. We should not be checking every five seconds to see if speed is uniform. Once you have got into a regular way of practicing the speed is automatic. And if you ...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Audi: <B> .... I think I do this to some extant and it would seem to be reasonable, but then in a move such as White Crane Spreads Wings...

Another way to look at speed is to take the same amount of time, roughly, to get to the end of a weight shift, such as reaching the end of a bow step.

In the case of circling, this is highly variable. In the beginning go for fullest extension and make the circles as big as possible. Gradually later they can become smaller.

I would suggest that you look for a 'primary' arm in each move. This would be the one that attacks or receives. The speed of this arm should stay fairly uniform. However, it is not totally uniform because different moves require covering more or less distance. Still I think that provides a general g...

I think the bag is useful for getting your structure right for landing punches and kicks (ie if your structure is wrong, the bag stays there and you push yourself backward, etc) and possibly for fajin exercises. As has been said, it is not much use for what we generally think of as core taiji, which...

Hey Audi, I don't think 'paragraph' is a good translation for 段 duan4. The etymology of paragraph and virtually all its usage in English have to do with visual markings on a written page to denote a section, hence the 'graph' part of the word. True, duan4 is also used in mandarin for paragraphs, but...

Someone wrote to me asking if I knew of taiji instructors near Victorville, CA, which is not too far from San Bernardino, I think. Anyone have suggestions?

I don't know what 'rowing the boat' and 'cat walk' are. My guess is they are terms used to describe continuous practice of moves like brush knee and repel monkey.