Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

GVI... Your explanation of "relaxed" is simply the best, most on point description of both the method and it's execution that I have ever read. This is exactly what I keep trying to teach my students. I'm going to steal this from you... I mean "Borrow"... No, I was right the firs...

That's something I had not really considered before. At the Wu school we trained the form in both directions as a matter of course. In fact we once trained doing so as a group, one half doing the form in mirror image while the other half did so normally. It looked great on stage and we did it at qui...

Sadly I have had to take a brief hiatus from teaching Tai Chi Chuan. A lot of things came together that lead to that, none of which are particularly germane to this topic, but by taking that time off I was lead to a pretty big "Aha moment" that I experienced this past weekend when I finall...

Are these the same Midichlorians that Anakin had so much of? Because that would be really cool! I want a bright blue light saber! And those Jedi robes, they're just AWESOME! And mind control! That's the BOMB! (waves hands with a mysterious looking gesture) "These are not the droid's you're look...

All you can do is smile and move on.
Unfortunately there's not a "Tai Chi Chuan" police force to keep this kind of thing from going on.

Not just "the muscles" need to be relaxed to achieve Sung. Sung must also include relaxed tendons, ligaments, and fascia on the physical side. However if you cannot also relax the mind then even properly relaxing the body is not enough. Even after you are able to fully and properly relax b...

Frank, There are more "forms" than there are stars in the sky, or so it seems at times. Why so many "forms" have been invented is a bit of a mystery to me since one "form" done with differing intent should be sufficient for just about anyone but... To each their own and...

DPasek, That space is beneficial to all the joints and is entirely necessary for the correct usage of both Yin and Yang. Without it, none of the rest of the art works. So, yeah, kind of important. I like to demonstrate this with a simple exercise: Ask your student to grab your wrists as tightly as t...

Yes, I've heard many versions of that quote. Most often though was,"Shut up and fight already". Problem with the ranking? No. The problem was with me. Unlike you, I did not come from a Yang style background so I didn't have years of experience with it to fall back on. I learned Wu Chien Ch...

MLS, I feel your pain. It is never easy to be "judged" by someone who you do not consider to be capable of performing the judgement. Having come from another TCC school and having been an instructor there for a number of years with plenty of "hands on" training in every aspect of...

Dpasek, I really like your article. I'm going to share it with my students. This is good stuff, thanks for sharing. You are spot on with the "space between the joints", not too many people seem to understand this even if they've read about it before. All that is missing is an explanation o...

As for the ranking system... I am on record as not being its biggest fan, ever since it was first put in place in fact. Back then, the only parts of the tests were theory and form. Much like you, but at that time, I saw that as being a bit lacking because I came from a long standing school that taug...

"what are you doing to make your Tai chi combat ready?" Let's look at this from another perspective... I would be willing to bet good, American money that there were at least two dozen MMA guys who lost a match today. Go online, use any search engine and type in "MMA losses" and ...

Fchai, The motto of our school is "It's All About Balance", so I like your intro to your post. And you are absolutely correct, the key to answering the original question really is "It's All About Balance". However while that's an easy thing to say it's not really an easy thing to...

Ilovecheerios, I would recommend working in person with a qualified, experienced TCC instructor on the best way to achieve your fitness goals without interfering with your TCC progress. This is one of those "I can show you but there's no way to tell you" situations that requires working di...