What's your Tai Chi (short) form like?

[morning dew]

This is a thread for people who want to have a look at different styles of (short form) Tai Chi that everyone is currently practising.

 

Below is a video that is about the nearest to what I'm doing right now, (Energy Arts/BKF) Wu Tai Chi short form, from an advanced student.

 

If anyone fancies sharing videos of their fellow students, teachers (or even of themselves), I'd be quite interested to see what everyone's up to, and maybe even discuss the similarities and differences between the different styles.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2017 by morning dew

[Seatle185]

Hey, i think i posted a video a while back of my teachers old master but it wasnt that good of quality.. here is a video of another guy who studied wu style in shanghai and its very similar to ours.

 

 

 

[dwai]

 

[Seatle185]

Thanks for sharing dwai. I always like your posts

[flowing hands]

On ‎05‎/‎07‎/‎2017 at 11:10 PM, morning dew said:

This is a thread for people who want to have a look at different styles of (short form) Tai Chi that everyone is currently practising.

 

Below is a video that is about the nearest to what I'm doing right now, (Energy Arts/BKF) Wu Tai Chi short form, from an advanced student.

 

If anyone fancies sharing videos of their fellow students, teachers (or even of themselves), I'd be quite interested to see what everyone's up to, and maybe even discuss the similarities and differences between the different styles.

 

 

 

I'm sorry morning dew, this is awful! The very reason why Tai Ji has been relegated to the waving of the arms around brigade in the martial art world. At the very beginning Tai Ji, 'Grand Ultimate', starts off with the move that is called 'imitating the beginnings of Heaven and Earth'. (It was based on the natural forces and movements of animals; these are its roots). It is a means of powering up the body through breath and movement that is connected to the lower Dan Tien and its corresponding area in the lower back. The movement of 'opening up the gates of Heaven and Earth' are then important. Here we see no such understanding and the legs and arms do not move in accordance with how they should. The rest is so wooden and artificial that the natural flow of force and energy which Tai Ji is all about, is totally lost to forced woodenness. Still this is not alone, perhaps I should try and bring back Tai Ji to its roots and install the Dao once more into what is actually a very powerful art, full of varying speed, proper head posture and leg gate aligned with the technique etc etc.

When an art is taught in its original form one can see that it is totally martial. When it has been dragged down to this and broken up and lost its roots, it is a pitiful sight. Trouble is no one is really doing any different, so all one thinks is this is how it should be.

[morning dew]

On 2017-7-8 at 11:17 PM, Seatle185 said:

Hey, i think i posted a video a while back of my teachers old master but it wasnt that good of quality.. here is a video of another guy who studied wu style in shanghai and its very similar to ours.

 

 

 

 

This is a nice video. It's very interesting to watch it now that I've got the basic shape of our form. I can see it's a couple of minutes longer than my one, and the order is a bit different here and there. Also, some moves seem to get repeated more as well, I think. I'll have to go over this again during the week.

 

Also, there seems to be more 'deepness'/sinking/pronouncement in some of the movements, I think. I especially like the 'flying diagonals' we talked about before. Is there a technical term for these and do they serve some kind of purpose?  We don't have any of those in our short form.

[morning dew]

On 2017-7-9 at 5:17 PM, dwai said:

 

 

Thanks for sharing this. I shall look forward to watching it during the week at some point. 

[morning dew]

47 minutes ago, flowing hands said:

 

I'm sorry morning dew, this is awful! The very reason why Tai Ji has been relegated to the waving of the arms around brigade in the martial art world. At the very beginning Tai Ji, 'Grand Ultimate', starts off with the move that is called 'imitating the beginnings of Heaven and Earth'. (It was based on the natural forces and movements of animals; these are its roots). It is a means of powering up the body through breath and movement that is connected to the lower Dan Tien and its corresponding area in the lower back. The movement of 'opening up the gates of Heaven and Earth' are then important. Here we see no such understanding and the legs and arms do not move in accordance with how they should. The rest is so wooden and artificial that the natural flow of force and energy which Tai Ji is all about, is totally lost to forced woodenness. Still this is not alone, perhaps I should try and bring back Tai Ji to its roots and install the Dao once more into what is actually a very powerful art, full of varying speed, proper head posture and leg gate aligned with the technique etc etc.

When an art is taught in its original form one can see that it is totally martial. When it has been dragged down to this and broken up and lost its roots, it is a pitiful sight. Trouble is no one is really doing any different, so all one thinks is this is how it should be.

 

No need to apologise  I'm here to learn and I'm not locked into any one particular system or school. Right now, what I'm doing is helping me healthwise on a physical level, but I may well move onto something else later on when I'm not getting anything more out of it.

 

It's interesting to read what you're saying, but it would be helpful if you could post a video of something you think is more 'authentic' tai chi. I think it would be helpful for all of us (well, it would be for me anyway  ) so we could have a compare and contrast, and be able to have a bit more of a discussion about it.

Edited July 10, 2017 by morning dew

[flowing hands]

Yes I tried to get an old Dvd to run and then I was going to upload it of myself doing the Monkey Gods Tai Ji form about 25 years ago, but it won't work any more. I no longer know the form, I have forgotten it. All I would say is that if one has understanding of the Dao, of the forces and movements of animals, one can see that it is not just about deep relaxation, not about slow movement, not just about yin, because this would be out of balance. It is about knowing the body, about force and energy which can be yin or yang, and the five elements, about breath, of tension and speed and slowness and relaxation. If you have ever had a real fight, it takes a lot of stamina, strength, and technique, combined with speed of reflexes and good conditioning of parts of the body. Tai Ji is just another style of martial art and requires all these skills to be learnt and practiced. The trouble is that it has lost its roots and even the most authentic teachers practice it like a style of yin qigong, which has lost its potency. For some people Tai Ji is actually bad for them, for they require more yang training, if they are practicing for Tai Ji for their health only.

[morning dew]

27 minutes ago, flowing hands said:

Yes I tried to get an old Dvd to run and then I was going to upload it of myself doing the Monkey Gods Tai Ji form about 25 years ago, but it won't work any more. I no longer know the form, I have forgotten it. All I would say is that if one has understanding of the Dao, of the forces and movements of animals, one can see that it is not just about deep relaxation, not about slow movement, not just about yin, because this would be out of balance. It is about knowing the body, about force and energy which can be yin or yang, and the five elements, about breath, of tension and speed and slowness and relaxation. If you have ever had a real fight, it takes a lot of stamina, strength, and technique, combined with speed of reflexes and good conditioning of parts of the body. Tai Ji is just another style of martial art and requires all these skills to be learnt and practiced. The trouble is that it has lost its roots and even the most authentic teachers practice it like a style of yin qigong, which has lost its potency. For some people Tai Ji is actually bad for them, for they require more yang training, if they are practicing for Tai Ji for their health only.

 

No worries, thanks for having a go at sorting a video out.  

 

That's very interesting reading the rest of the paragraph. Have you had a look at Dwai's video on this thread? I can see a difference between his and the one I posted. Dwai seems to be a bit more in line with what you're talking about?

Edited July 12, 2017 by morning dew

[morning dew]

On 2017-7-9 at 5:17 PM, dwai said:

 

 

Yes, this is quite fascinating, although I'm not quite sure what it all meant.   Do you not do a big form?

 

The fajing and cleansing stuff was fascinating when you were breathing out hard. Is that training to bring chi into your strikes? It looked very powerful.

Edited July 12, 2017 by morning dew

[dwai]

13 minutes ago, morning dew said:

 

Yes, this is quite fascinating, although I'm not quite sure what it all meant.   Do you not do a big form?

 

The fajing and cleansing stuff was fascinating when you were breathing out hard. Is that training to bring chi into your strikes? It looked very powerful.

Long forms are nothing but a sequence of these single forms put together. I do practice long forms but usually at the end of my practice. The idea is to be able to continue the full-body integrated feeling and flow of energy from form to form, including through the transitions between forms.

 

The cleansing develops short power and cold power. It also cleans the channels as the jin will quickly go out and return back to the body.

[morning dew]

3 minutes ago, dwai said:

Long forms are nothing but a sequence of these single forms put together. I do practice long forms but usually at the end of my practice. The idea is to be able to continue the full-body integrated feeling and flow of energy from form to form, including through the transitions between forms.

 

The cleansing develops short power and cold power. It also cleans the channels as the jin will quickly go out and return back to the body.

 

Ah, I see, thanks.  

 

That's fascinating. Seatle185 said to me you follow Waysun Liao's school? I'm reading his T'ai Chi classics at the moment. It's quite interesting (what I can understand of it  ). I've never really come across anything like that before related to tai chi.

[dwai]

1 hour ago, morning dew said:

 

Ah, I see, thanks.  

 

That's fascinating. Seatle185 said to me you follow Waysun Liao's school? I'm reading his T'ai Chi classics at the moment. It's quite interesting (what I can understand of it  ). I've never really come across anything like that before related to tai chi.

Yes I've been practicing Temple style for about 15 years now, tai chi in general for about 17 yrs. Temple style is a complete Daoist system...not just Taijiquan.

[morning dew]

10 hours ago, dwai said:

Yes I've been practicing Temple style for about 15 years now, tai chi in general for about 17 yrs. Temple style is a complete Daoist system...not just Taijiquan.

 

Yeah, I was guessing you'd been doing Temple for around 15 to 20 years: your practice looked very solid, IMO.

 

Ah yes, I just looked back to my old thread at one of your comments:
 

Quote

 

In Temple-style tai chi, we do mainly single form practice. Upward downward, over and over. Inward outward, over and over. Raised hand stance, taiji stance, ward off, roll back, press, push and so on. Each form is drilled over and over, on both sides. 

 

This acts as qigong, neigong, daogong and shengong. And also is used to implement martially. For that we practice the energies and flow, timing, structure, body-placement etc in push hands, and then eventually in free-form push hands and finally in sparring.

 

This is, imho, the best way to learn tai chi. The idea is to understand the physiological as well as energetic mechanics of each form (so when we do the forms, we are feeling everything as a well integrated whole). Then we start tying a combination of these forms together into a short form (like grasp sparrow's tail) or even the long form (our long form looks a lot like CMC's long form). 

 

With the long form, the idea is that we can take the integrated feeling of single forms and continue it from one form to another, in a single continuous flow of energy. The long form too, we do in both left and right side.

 

 

This all makes a lot more sense now that I've seen your video.  

  

[Starjumper]

OK, I made a video yesterday.  I was motivated to do this after seeing the horrendous tai chi performance by Gary Lyman.   I was going to post it there but then that thread disappeared and I was thinking, there must be some place where we can put some tai chi short form demos =)

 

Keep in mind I haven't done Yang style in a million years and did this mainly to check myself for errors that have crept in over the decades without a teacher.  I can see I made a few mistakes, like the 'press' is too high and the birds beak isn't tight enough, in the second round I forgot to step forward on the first brush knee and push.  The rest of what may look like doing it wrong are instead doing it the Thcoung Ta Tchen way, where you get to see where the power comes from, something that is more hidden in the normal Yang style.   This is the Yang style of Grandmaster Tchoung Ta Tchen, his last variation of it before he passed away.  It is a double form but I only did the half which is facing towards the camera.  This form also has some Chen flavor added which you may notice.  It's done twice, the second time is faster and slinkier with more Chen flavor, and it shows some kicking variations which are 'hidden' in section one, there are other places for a kick which I didn't do.  You can hear some horses in the distance a couple of times.

 

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Starjumper

[Miffymog]

 

 

46 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

OK, I made a video yesterday.  I was motivated to do this after seeing the horrendous tai chi performance by the immortal master shyster Gary Lyman.  I was going to post it there but then that thread disappeared and I was thinking, there must be some place where we can put some tai chi short form demos =)

 

Keep in mind I haven't done Yang style in a million years and did this mainly to check myself for errors that have crept in over the decades without a teacher.  I can see I made a few mistakes, like the 'press' is too high and the birds beak isn't tight enough, in the second round I forgot to step forward on the first brush knee and push.  The rest of what may look like doing it wrong are instead doing it the Thcoung Ta Tchen way, where you get to see where the power comes from, something that is more hidden in the normal Yang style.   This is the Yang style of Grandmaster Tchoung Ta Tchen, his last variation of it before he passed away.  It is a double form but I only did the half which is facing towards the camera.  This form also has some Chen flavor added which you may notice.  It's done twice, the second time is faster and slinkier with more Chen flavor, and it shows some kicking variations which are 'hidden' in section one, there are other places for a kick which I didn't do.  You can hear some horses in the distance a couple of times.

 

 

 

Great stuff - I was completely hypnotised by the movement of your hands

 

[morning dew]

Nice to see you joining in on the fun here, Starjumper!  

 

Yes, I thought the hand/arm movement was quite good as well on some of the strikes – very fluid and powerful, IMO. I was also pleased to see I could actually recognise some moves: needle to sea bottom, brush hands.

 

Yang/Chen looks much bigger/wider than Wu and more martial. Also, there don't appear to be any kicks in short form Wu.

 

 

[Starjumper]

23 hours ago, morning dew said:

Yang/Chen looks much bigger/wider than Wu and more martial. Also, there don't appear to be any kicks in short form Wu.

 

I looked at some of those Wu videos and it's true there doesn't seem to be a lot of focus an self defense, it seems more like chi kung.  I see that they do 'raise hands', 'playing the guitar' which is supposed to be an elbow break , but it's done in a way with no power to break an elbow, there are some punches, and that part is obvious, and there are other moves that could have a martial application but it looks more like a good moving meditation practice.  Also the repetition makes it more like chi kung.  I'll take the time to watch at least some of Dwai's video and see what kind of feeling I get from that.

 

Concerning Yang style, I think a more authentic way is to move in a flowing manner.  When I go on Utube to look for tai chi videos I usually look at Chen style so I decided to watch a few videos of Yang style to see what's out there.  I'll share some here to point out some things.  The quality of Yang style videos is pretty good on the average but Yang tai chi almost always looks a bit stiff and robot like to me.  I had to look at quite a few videos to find this worst case scenario, which has little flowing, this one also lacks power and the internal connections are not so evident, I guess on one level it is technically correct, but it just doesn't have any art ... or spirit:

 

 

This next one is a great example of flowing, the internal connections are excellent, and you can see that there is some potential power in the movements.  It could still have those qualities without being so low.  This is what I call adding Chen style flavor back into Yang style, although that could also manifest in some different ways too.  

 

 

I made a video of my Chen style and I'll upload that tonight, it takes a looong time to upload a five minute video from here.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Starjumper
spelling

[Starjumper]

Ok Morning Dew,  here's the Chen video I made yesterday afternoon.  This form is kind of short because my teacher, Madam Gao Fu passed away after only teaching me less than half of the whole form.  I think it has all you really need to 'get it'.   Gao Fu was the sweetest little old grandma type that you could ever hope to meet, but even at 88 she had a wicked fajin in her punch, the kind that would make lots of little old ladies shatter into pieces.   Gao Fu was student of Feng Zhiqiang, and was an official National living Treasure of China.  She said that her master wrote a book but that she never read it because she was always learning from him in person.  Later when she moved to Seattle she read the book and she told us that she had been doing it all wrong all these years and this time she was going to teach it right!  Unfortunately she got less than half way through the form with the 'right' way.  You might need to watch this twice because the first time the cats may be too distracting.    Warning -  this does not look like most videos of Chen style that you will find because I like to show some of the variations that have more combat energy ... or something.  So ya, doing it wrong again  =)

 

The cats names are Tiger and Squeeky!

 

 

Edited July 15, 2017 by Starjumper

[morning dew]

 

12 hours ago, Starjumper said:

 

I looked at some of those Wu videos and it's true there doesn't seem to be a lot of focus an self defense, it seems more like chi kung.  I see that they do 'raise hands', 'playing the guitar' which is supposed to be an elbow break , but it's done in a way with no power to break an elbow, there are some punches, and that part is obvious, and there are other moves that could have a martial application but it looks more like a good moving meditation practice.  Also the repetition makes it more like chi kung.  I'll take the time to watch at least some of Dwai's video and see what kind of feeling I get from that.

 

 

Yeah, I've been told 'play the guitar' is an arm break and also that there are lots of other martial arts moves in it. BKF's version, however, is focused on the health aspects, as far as I'm aware, which is the main reason I'm doing it. Later on, if I'm able, I may well explore something else for fighting. 

 

Yeah, if you get a chance to browse some of Dwai's video, I think you'll find it quite interesting and very different to the Wu ones.

 

Quote

 

Concerning Yang style, I think a more authentic way is to move in a flowing manner.  When I go on Utube to look for tai chi videos I usually look at Chen style so I decided to watch a few videos of Yang style to see what's out there.  I'll share some here to point out some things.  The quality of Yang style videos is pretty good on the average but Yang tai chi almost always looks a bit stiff and robot like to me.  I had to look at quite a few videos to find this worst case scenario, which has little flowing, this one also lacks power and the internal connections are not so evident, I guess on one level it is technically correct, but it just doesn't have an art:

 

 

This next one is a great example of flowing, the internal connections are excellent, and you can see that there is some potential power in the movements.  It could still have those qualities without being so low.  This is what I call adding Chen style flavor back into Yang style, although that could also manifest in some different ways too.

 

 

Yeah, even I can tell that with the first video she seems to be quite lifeless/limp. Also, she probably moves as I do at the moment: in an un-unified way. Her body doesn't seem to be moving as one all the time.

As for the second video, she's quite outstanding, IMO, very graceful (and with power/life).  

Edited July 15, 2017 by morning dew

[Starjumper]

40 minutes ago, morning dew said:

Yeah, I've been told 'play the guitar' is an arm break and also that there are lots of other martial arts moves in it. BKF's version, however, is focused on the health aspects, as far as I'm aware, which is the main reason I'm doing it. Later on, if I'm able, I may well explore something else for fighting.

 

The more I see and learn about that guy's chi kung the more I see he's presenting a glaring case of extremely wimpy chi kung.  I have a student here who told me what he was learning from him and it was absolutely dismal!  Either he actually knows little or he's hiding what he knows.   You can do MUCH better by learning some real tai chi, like Yang or Chen style, from just about any accomplished teacher.  As a chi kung system what I see in the first video is pointless and lifeless.  Pointless because although it is an ok moving meditation there is almost no focus on moving energy in any way that is of benefit to health and zero benefit for cultivating chi power, other than the fact that it is a moving meditation, which has some health benefit of it's own.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Starjumper

[Miffymog]

 

12 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

 

The more I see and learn about that guy's chi kung the more I see he's presenting a glaring case of extremely wimpy chi kung.  I have a student here who told me what he was learning from him and it was absolutely dismal!  Either he actually knows little or he's hiding iwhat he knows.   You can do MUCH better by learning some real tai chi, like Yang or Chen style, from just about any accomplished teacher.  As a chi kung system what I see in the first video is pointless and lifeless.  Pointless because although it is an ok moving meditation there is almost no focus on moving energy in any way that is of benefit to health and zero benefit for cultivating chi power, other than the fact that it is a moving meditation, which has some health benefit of it's own.

 

 

Having read some of his books, I can see where you are coming from. It is possibly due to him just trying to make the techniques as palatable and as easy to access for westerners as possible. Doing some kind of form is better than doing nothing ...

 

 

[Starjumper]

The main benefit I see from that form is that when the palms of the hands face downwards it helps to get rid of sick energy, that is all, and there is some movement.  A much more effective way to accomplish the same thing is simply repeating the closing movement of most tai chi forms ... and chi kung forms too.  The thing is that if you don't have much sick energy to dispose of then you would be like throwing away good energy.  Same thing with his sitting meditations, hands facing downward resting on legs or lap is good for relaxing or getting rid of sick energy, but those are the wimpiest and lowest energy versions of that kind of sitting meditation posture.

 

The thing is that while he needs to do a lot of that for his own health, maybe you don't need that.

 

Real tai chi has a focus on the intent of each movement, in other words how the movement would be used to hit someone.  When you have intent then you can move in a more 'correct' fashion because you understand the purpose of the movement, which is bette than waving arms.  When you move in the correct fashion, with intent, then that is much more effective for health than waving arms around without intent.

 

You can do a lot better just by doing Mr. Lin's 'Moving Yin and Yang'  which is, believe it or not, a variation of Cloud Hands.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Starjumper
remove redundant statement.

[doc benway]

I'd like to offer some opposing viewpoints to balance the discussion.

 

Wu style taijiquan has a history of being esteemed for martial efficacy. I made the point in another thread that, unlike in other martial arts, taijiquan form practice is not simply practicing postures that are martially effective. It is about cultivating coordination and integration of body, mind, and energy in order to generate whole body power whether sensing or issuing. Whether the martial intent of the postures is explicitly obvious is irrelevant, neigong and qigong combined with body movement is the cultivation. The overtly martial practice takes an entirely different form - solo drills, partner drills, body toughening, strength training, and so forth. 

 

I think the Wu videos posted are excellent. The first one maybe a little stiff. Both very powerful and integrated. 

I learned about Wu to judge international taijiquan forms and tui shou competition and know some masterful and powerful Wu stylists. Beware of underestimating a style by its form, you may simply not understand it. I learned that lesson in pushing competition.

 

Here's an old Wu military video:

 

 

 

 

Bruce Frantzis has a large and dedicated following for good reason. He's a powerful and dedicated practitioner with excellent lineage. No teacher can please everyone and each of us needs something different out of our schools and styles and teachers. No one benefits from speaking poorly of others.

 

I don't study Wu and I've never trained with Bruce but I know quality when I see it.