Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

Indeed, the issue of "longevity" is often a question for students. It has been explained to me that the conception is that we all have different fates, different destinies, and that T'ai Chi is designed to maintain a high level of function for as long as possible during the lifespans that ...

There are going to be demonstration events involving the Chinese martial arts at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, leading to their inclusion as medal events in following years. Whether "Wushu Taijiquan" or traditional Taijiquan is involved is being negotiated with the Chinese govt. as we spea...

Greetings Psalchemist, It shouldn't be very different at all from the Yang style, in my opinion (others' mileage may vary). Wu Ch'uan yu (Quanyou) learned from Yang Lu-ch'an and his son Yang Pan-hou. Wu Chien-ch'uan (Jianquan) trained with and taught in the same school as Yang Shao-hou and Yang Ch'e...

The proper answer to the question of how one can generate compact, small-circle ji is with years and years of practice. Here is a brief citation from Sifu Eddie's Great uncle, the late Wu Kung-tsao (or Wu Gongzao, 1902-1983), on the mechanical aspects of Wu style ji (Wade-Giles "chi3."): &...

Greetings All, I have been enjoying editing the T'ai Chi articles at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_Chi_Chuan As well, I have been working on other more or less related articles in the Wikipedia, and it is actually entertaining for a pedant such as myself... The Yang family section of the article...

Superb! Many thanks, Jerry...

Greetings All, As an (I hope) interesting aside, I've seen Ji performed well in forms and pushing hands much as in the photos above; also fingertips to wrist, palm to palm, and even without the other hand at all! I've been told that if the other hand isn't available, one still has to open both sides...

Greetings Louis, Ah yes, you are correct, I'd never thought of that. My teachers did go into the subsequent detail of 10 times a day for 1, 095 days and all of that, but who knows how much has been embellished by 100 years or storytelling? It does remind me of the old syndrome, of "Let's tell t...

The "more later" was the bit about what students were taken through at first when they started young. Younger students, esp. younger military students such as Sifu Eddie's great-great Grandfather, were taken through a daily routine that was almost brutally intense. The tradition in the Wu ...

The captions say: Tu 11 "Lu Er" Tu 12 "Lu San" Tu 13 "Ji Yi" Tu 14 "Ji Er" Tu is a map, diagram or representation, a photo in this case. Yi, Er, San are One, Two, Three in English. Lu (4th tone) is often translated as "Roll Back." Ji (3rd tone) is of...

Ah yes, I'm not surprised. Those things are taught and trained a lot more in the Asian schools. Westerners tend to come to T'ai Chi when they are relatively >ahem< advanced in years, you could say. Sifu Eddie has taught the complete wrestling program to a few of his people in Canada who started youn...

Audi & Wushuer, Yes indeed, the Wu (&#21555) family emphasis on wrestling stems from their Manchu heritage. The Manchu (as with related Central Asian peoples such as the Mongolians, Türks and the Japanese) are big on wrestling, to the point that they see it as a defining aspect of their cult...

Such discussions are useful in training, but after the fact. You, your training partner and any witnesses can identify what techniques happened when after something actually works, but that is hard to do (as you say) ahead of time. A good T'ai chi application is spontaneous, and predicated by what i...

Greetings, Louis is quite correct, I wasn't saying that the Tocharians were Celts by any means, just that they spoke an early "pre-satem" Indo-European dialect that had a lot in common with what we may call "Proto-Celtic" (also pre-satem). At the Neolithic stage of the initial To...

Louis and Psalchemist, Interestingly, there is archaeological and linguistic evidence for a group of people who settled in the far west of modern China thousands of years ago who were related, at least culturally, to the Celts. They spoke dialects of a language called Tocharian which shows strong af...