Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

Ah, but we don't fall the way Jiujitsu people fall. It is very important to learn to fall without getting the slightest bit hurt. We soften with pushing hands, ch'i kung and gradual increases of tumbling time so that (eventually) there is virtually no impact upon hitting the ground, instead, we work...

Greetings. The Wu Chien-ch'uan (Wu Jianquan) style of T'ai Chi emphasises throws, footsweeps, takedowns, tumbling, groundfighting, jumps to catch attacks, etc. in addition to more conventional sparring. Our first set of throws include (in the order they are introduced): White Crane Spreads Wings Rep...

Well, I looked at my Chinese copy and Louis is correct. The characters from our form 11, which I assume to be "deflect, parry, punch" are present in the applicable sentence, not the characters from form 19.
Curiouser and curiouser!

Greetings Audi, I think I know what you mean about Rollback Elbow and tangling up in Freestyle. There is even a distinct version of Push Hands we do that is called "Roll Elbow Pushing Hands" Which may or may not be unique to our school. Rolling or Plucking the opponent's elbow joint, espec...

"One of my surprises about Zhou was its use beyond "strikes." ... Another surprise was that these movements were my initial introduction into techniques that were truly capable of causing harm in even fairly gentle push hands practice." That corresponds to my experience, as well....

Even within Wu style, there are degrees of inclination. Seeing the Shanghai pictures brings that to mind. Also, we teach that k'ao can be accomplished without leaning into it, probably 50% of the time it is used in freestyle, IME. One thing that I've been told is that the emphasis on leaning is for ...

Thanks, Louis!

I can switch back and forth between GB and unicode (for Wikipedia, the other site I like to visit) fairly easily...

Sorry about the unicode trouble some may have with the above post. My browser isn't reading it properly, I hope that isn't true for everyone.

Greetings Audi & Co., A propos our other conversation on the likely translation of "Do not lean or incline" I hope it will be interesting for evryone to post what my teacher's great-uncle, the late Wu Kung-tsao, wrote on the subject of k'ao chin. As you know, Wu style is famous for its...

Greetings. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I was inspired to look it up in Wang last night. The statement is in the same sentence that decribes the polarity between the energy at the top of the head and breathing through the tan t'ien. Practically then, "Don't be partial or biased" could r...

It can be confusing, and the language differences don't help. I do enjoy reading Louis' and others' translations of the various Chinese terms here. It has helped me a great deal with some of the idiom associated with training. A typical example, I don't remember if it comes from Chang San-feng or Wa...

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about how the Ch'en style does things to say if it is similar to our style or not. There is a coiling twisting energy in our forms and applications that is associated with the Lieh power generation, but I can't say for sure it is the same thing. Also, there is a &q...

This brings us to an interesting developmental aspect of the differentiation between the main "styles" of t'ai chi. 100-150 years ago when Wu Yu-hsiang and Li I-yu were codifying their manuals I don't believe there was as much of an idea of different styles of the art, so whatever they wer...

Hi everyone. There are two distinct lineages from Wu Yu-hsiang (three counting Sun Lu-t'ang, I suppose). One through Li I-yu's family descendants and the other through Hao Wei-chen's, and I'm sure they are quite noticeably different after 130 years. I like the brothers/cousins distinction mentioned ...

Where to start? Eddie Wu is my sifu, and I have first hand information on the Wu family ranking system. Wu Ch'uan-yu (Quanyuo) is considered the founder of the style. He was the senior disciple of Yang Pan-hou, but learned his t'ai chi originally from Yang Lu-ch'an. In 1870 he was given permission b...