Dr. Paul Lam

[Pranaman]

What do you guys think of Paul Lam's 24 forms for a first learned Taijiquan series?

[doc benway]

I think it's as good a starting point as any to get your feet wet, provided you're learning from a teacher and not a book or video.

[Pranaman]

i've gotten in contact with a teacher and should start learning from him within the month...... would learning from a video be a complete waste of time?

[Pietro]

i've gotten in contact with a teacher and should start learning from him within the month...... would learning from a video be a complete waste of time?

pretty much:

When you are speaking about tai ji you are speaking of at least 3 things.

One is the sequence of movements,

the second is all the internal information that goes with the sequence, that you would not be able to grasp from a video,

and third the more internal stuff which you just cannot know what a person is doing.

 

Now if you already have got 2 and 3 from a previous form, you can get something from a video.

If you are learning the form, and you need to remember some details, it might also be useful.

 

But for the rest? Mah.

[bronzebow]

I agree that using video/dvd is good when you already have instruction from a teacher, but it would be very difficult IMO to learn the internal aspects from a video. Chen Zhonghua is good IMO at teaching some internal aspects from a dvd but I'd still highly recommend having personal instruction.