Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

Steve: I can only mention the Yang style as taught by Yang Jwing Ming, which is the older, Yang Ban Hou sword form. The sequence is in 54 movements, virtually identical in terms of the names and their order to the Yang Cheng Fu sword form as I have seen it practised by Yang Zhenduo and Yang Jun on a...

Audi: I'm afraid I know really nothing about the Wu style, but from a Yang point of view it would seem both his hands are very high and the left finger tips also are almost in line with the top of his head and not just the right wrist; and I don't think it's just the camera angle. Presumably there i...

Bob: very sorry to hear about the accident. If any consolation, I actually seem to have sustained slightly worse injuries from falling over outside a pub on Thursday night, but I can't blame that on anyone else but myself and having one too many beers! (cut hand and something wrong with my lower rig...

Bertva: In his foreward to 'T'ai Chi Ch'uan and I Ching' (first published in 1972), Da Liu says about himself in the Foreward: 'I began my studies in 1928 in Kiang-su in East China under the famous Sun Lu-tang, a master who founded the Sun School of T'ai Chi Ch'uan. Later, I travelled to the Southwe...

Bob, thanks for trying anyway. Sorry to hear about the scanner. Actually, my printer 'hit the big one' a few months ago and I've only just got round to getting a new one. When I opened up the old one to try and find what had caused it to pack up, I found some dead leaves inside!!! I have no idea how...

Thanks, Michael. The pictures are very clear and show the quite marked differences between the styles. Interestingly, the Yang style Tanbien posture shown has the hooked hand about parallel with the top of the right ear, as in the late photo of Yang Cheng Fu, although the model for the line drawing ...

Thanks, Jin, for sharing this with us - it must have taken a lot of guts - a good martial virtue to have. I'm afraid I don't know though what the answer is to banging your head on the pipe and suffering headaches afterwards. I wouldn't begin to know how to cure that, but you could try Embryonic brea...

Thanks, Danny for this exhaustive research which I think presents the position most fairly. I'm sure I read somewhere that CMC claimed to have been a student of YCF for 10 years and that has been disputed by some scholars. In a sense, your research vindicates both positions, in that it would certain...

Bob: I've now researched as far as I am able on the web for images of Sun and Wu performing Tanbien. There are a number of images around of them in other postures but not in Tanbien - at least, not on the web (as far as I am able to discover, that is ...). I agree though that it would be illuminatin...

Bradeos, I can see the points your are making here, particularly in the use of the pommel. Certainly, in the version of Yang Style sword I have learned, the pommel is used with the sword in the left hand to block the opponent's right forearm and then circle back and round again to attack his throat/...

Bradeos: the pictures you refer to on Wikipedia show the same early one of YCF to which I referred and also a very well known one of YCF from what I would refer to as the middle period, earlier than the late one I have referred to above. Interestingly, as you put it, YCF's right hand has risen sligh...

Western fencing early on developed hand guards on swords to protect the sword fingers and more importantly, the wrist of the sword hand, to protect the fencer against strikes that could disable the sword hand. These included of course, baloon guards that virtually enveloped the entire hand and they ...

Bob: I agree with what you are saying about the general principles being more important than the exact positions. On the other hand, I still regard it as important in a case like my own (after all, I haven't even been practising T'ai Chi for ten years yet ..), to be as accurate as possible without v...

Serena:
Thanks once again for your encouragement. Kind regards, Simon.

Audi: Please accept my apologies for not replying earlier to your latest message. I've been a bit busy with this and that this week and have only had time to respond on the Tanbien thread that I initiated. However, I have read your message very carefully and once again I am very grateful to you for ...