Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

Greetings, Paul Brennan has posted his most recent translation, a substantial essay by Xiang Kairan on his taijiquan experience that was first published in a journal in 1929, then later in Wu Zhiqing's fascinating 1940 book, 太極正宗 (Orthodox Taiji). I've valued that book for many years, and especially...

Greetings GVI, I would recommend Tom Bisio's book, A Tooth from the Tiger's Mouth: How to Treat Your Injuries with Powerful Healing Secrets of the Great Chinese Warrior. Tom is a long time practitioner of Ba Gua, Xingyi, and Taijiquan. He also ran a clinic for many years specializing in treating spo...

Greetings, While perusing some old notes I have on the essence of Taijiquan, I came across this statement, "The form is like that of a falcon about to seize a rabbit, and the spirit, shen, is like that of a cat about to catch a mouse. ". Where and who originated this statement I do not kn...

Greetings Frank, Some say that the Sanshou duida form was put together by Chen Yanlin, so I'm not sure it was Yang Chengfu's creation. Here's a link to Chen Yanlin's description of the routine, in Chinese and in English, translated by Paul Brennan: https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2011/07/11...

Hi ChiDragon, I'm in part influenced by Yang Chengfu's words in understanding the taijiquan context for "sinking qi to the dantian." In another old thread I observed: I’m fairly certain, though, that qi does not mean breath here. The sinking of the qi to the dantian definitely affects the ...

Greetings ChiDragon, While I agree with some of your thinking here, I also think it's important that taijiquan practitioners understand that qi 氣 does not necessarily always mean "breath," and should be careful not to view it exclusively as breath or breathing. In a thread in the forum bac...

Greetings Bob, I think Su Dongpo was contrasting rudimentary learning with mastery. Learning the rudiments of an art is of course prerequisite to mastery of the whole. So the painter learns how to hold the brush, how to position the body, the shoulder, the wrist. The martial artist learns footwork, ...

Here's a nice video of an eagle snatching salmon from just below the surface of the water. It's a different bird/prey scenario, but it's evocative of the timing required. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq8NRDDssMw

--Louis

Greetings Frank, The interesting thing is that a particularly skillful moment can feel like serendipity, but that doesn't mean that it is a case of serendipity. It doesn't "just happen." Su makes that point explicitly when he says that when things don't come together well, "it is the ...

Greetings, It's gotten very quiet in this forum! Here's something that I worked on yesterday. Years back when I translated some of the core taijiquan classics, I was pondering the statement in one of the texts, “One’s form is like a falcon seizing a rabbit” [形如搏兔之鶻]. In my investigation, I happened ...

Greetings Matt, I think that section (especially pages 39-42) in Fu Zhongwen's book on jindian 勁點 (energy points), yunjin 運勁 (moving jin), and jinlu 勁路 (jin paths) is one of the best features of the book. I think it's a succinct, intuitive way of understanding and expressing optimal body mechanics, ...

Greetings T, Sounds like you're in a good place with your practice. It's amazing how after years of practice one can continue to discover levels of meaning in the form. Just yesterday I was keying in on a favorite saying of Yang Zhenji while doing my form, "the movement of the hands should be a...

Have you seen this page of photos from Chip Ellis' site? http://www.chipellis.com/Pictures/Spear-Set/spear_set.htm And here's the source from which the photos come: Paul Brennan's online translation of Yang Chengfu's first book, written by Dong Yingjie: https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2011/...

Have you compared it to Brennan's on-line translation? Or is this a different work by Xu Yusheng?

https://brennantranslation.wordpress.co ... u-yusheng/


--Louis

Greetings, Years ago for my own interest I translated Ch. 13, Section 12 from Zheng Manqing’s Thirteen Chapters . This is the section expanding on “using four ounces to deflect a thousand pounds.” I’ve since had discussions with other taijiquan enthusiasts about some of the words and phrases in that...