Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

To understand the bow stance is to learn the basis of the Tai Chi walk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYrUqlwE6n8

Please pay very close attention to the 45 degree turn of the foot. It is very important in lifting up the body for balancing when standing on one leg.

I watched the video and what I noticed that I wasn't conscious of was the action of the waist and hips.

I say I wasn't conscious of it because I couldn't have told you before what my waist was doing - whether it was right or wrong.

For the past few days I've been paying closer attention to the position and movement of the waist and I was more deeply conscious of why it's so important in tai chi. I think, before, I was using my core muscles to turn, twist and transition - I can't say with certainty, though, because I wasn't that conscious of it.

Thanks for the video!

gvi

I agree. Learn the tai chi walk!

It is a very under appreciated training. My first Chinese teacher made us do walking forward , backward, and sideways every class as part of 'basics" or Jibengong. after that then we added hands like Part horse man, brush, knee, repulse monkey and cloud hands.

Later we added holding postures and sections of the classical forms. Example:
hold single whip, then do cloud hands, hold single whip at the end.
or
hold pipa for a significant amount of time, then do brush knees, then hold pipa again.

we had about a dozen lines of these using different repetitive postures.