Tai Chi: long form vs short form

[morning dew]

59 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

 

Not sure.  His main motivation was simply that Yang style was lopsided and was therefore incomplete, of course it helps with physical development.   Once one of my tai chi brothers went back to the Eastern half of the US to a class given by a 'master' there and mentioned the double style.  The teacher said that if you do 'the other side' that it will make your energy run backwards and you will die.  In response the brother told him he had been doing it for many years, and he appeared to be in fine health.  So the teacher stopped class and drove off in a huff.  We've heard of that type of vehicle, yes?  The Huff?

 

 

 

LOL!  Yeah, interesting on the lopsidedness. I do remember my teacher mentioning that the Wu form was deliberately designed to stretch both sides physically, even though it isn't a double style. I can't remember if he was referring specifically to Bruce Frantzis's take on it (my teacher is an energy arts teacher) or whether he was referring to Wu Tai Chi in general.

 

59 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

 

Not sure.  His main motivation was simply that Yang style was lopsided and was therefore incomplete, of course it helps with physical development.   Once one of my tai chi brothers went back to the Eastern half of the US to a class given by a 'master' there and mentioned the double style.  The teacher said that if you do 'the other side' that it will make your energy run backwards and you will die.  In response the brother told him he had been doing it for many years, and he appeared to be in fine health.  So the teacher stopped class and drove off in a huff.  We've heard of that type of vehicle, yes?  The Huff?

 

 

I think the best reason for learning the long form is that it keeps you learning and getting feedback from the teacher for much longer.  I suppose that plenty of people would learn a quicky short form and then quit learning, supposing that they are then experts, particularly if they learn it from someone who only knows the short form.

 

Someone already beat me to it, but I was going to say, and still am, that for combat you only need to learn a few moves well and practice them a lot ... with a partner.

 

Would you like to expand on the last bit? Which particular moves and why? I did a few years of external martial arts when I was a lot younger, but I seem to remember doing all sorts of moves.  

[morning dew]

23 minutes ago, steve said:

 

Caution - learning postures from a taijiquan routine and practicing them repeatedly, whether fast or slow, prepares you for nothing martially, absolutely nothing. Doing postures from the form in a martial situation is not what taijiquan is about. The form is designed to teach us to integrate the mental and physical dimensions of our experience in movement and cultivates two fundamental skills - power generation and mastery of the circle. Those are the hallmarks of taijiquan skill. As the Chen masters say: train the body [I'll add... and mind], not the tricks! Ultimately we do not rely on postures and specific techniques but energies - folding, plucking, sensing, tearing, leading to void, etc...  Sure, we can always talk about the martial meaning inherent in the postures but that is not really the point, that is an intellectual exercise, especially in the early stages. Once we know how to manipulate the energy, then we can plumb the forms for all sorts of obvious, hidden, and secret techniques. We can find applications in any and all forms of body movement, be it artistic or martial in intent.

 

What the long form does do is gives us additional ways of connecting with the energetic characteristics of more postures and, most importantly, the transitions. It also allows us to continue in that place of mental/physical integration for longer periods of time without interruption. Doing the shorter form multiple times is a little different than doing one continuous form for a much longer time. The short forms emphasize the basics, long forms add variations. All of it training the body/mind to work in an integrated fashion. If you are interested in martial application of taijiquan you need a teacher who knows how to teach you the specific methods of training to develop the circle, footwork, striking, body strengthening and toughening, qin na, shuai jiao, fa jin methods, and how to drill all of this so that you can make it really work. This means dozens (if not hundreds) of drills with partners, use of training equipment, push hands training, and so forth. Taijiquan is only a comprehensive and effective fighting art if it is taught as such, and that is a rare phenomenon. 

 

 

 

All of the training (posture, movement, mental integration, etc...) has health value but those very characteristics that are beneficial to health are training the body/mind to generate integrated power. You can get that from the long or short forms but as described previously, there are some advantages to practicing longer forms. Short forms are best for competition and practitioners who don't have the time, patience, or proclivity to commit to the full routines. 

 

As alluded to by Starjumper above, I would also highly recommend that anyone practicing taijiquan teach themselves to do the form in mirror image, especially if not working on the individual techniques regularly with partner drills, strengthening methods, and so forth. We were never taught the form in mirror image and I once asked my teacher why the form was so unbalanced. His response was, do you mean to tell me that you haven't figured out that you should be practicing both sides?! Fortunately, I'd already been working on that and could demonstrate for him. 

 

Thanks Steve, this is a great response. I think I'm starting to grasp what people are talking about now.

 

With the last bit and the mirror image (see my last comment to Starjumper). I wonder if Wu and Chen are slightly different in design with respect to doing both sides? Or are you getting at something else other than physically stretching/opening up the body by doing the mirror image?

[steve]

52 minutes ago, windwalker said:

 

Do you feel your body is  balanced in this way? is the left and right the same a mirror image. 

 

 

My apologies but I'm not sure I understand the question.

I do think that training physical and energetic movement in a symmetric way helps to balance the body and mind.

In my training that was mostly achieved through pushing and self defense drills with a partner.

If you don't have that, doing the form in a symmetrical fashion is very beneficial, IMO.

Please clarify if that doesn't get at your question.

[windwalker]

3 minutes ago, steve said:

Please clarify if that doesn't get at your question.

 

 

wasn't a question for me, it was for you. 

you've answered it.....not something I would agree with 

but then again its not my training...

 

thanks for the answer

Edited July 4, 2017 by windwalker

[steve]

38 minutes ago, morning dew said:

With the last bit and the mirror image (see my last comment to Starjumper). I wonder if Wu and Chen are slightly different in design with respect to doing both sides? Or are you getting at something else other than physically stretching/opening up the body by doing the mirror image?

 

I think there are a lot of possible explanations for the asymmetry of the form.

Forms are often constructed in such a way as to make the intent less than obvious.

One can develop excellent levels of integration without necessarily doing so in a completely symmetric fashion.

The expectation would have been that practitioners would have ample opportunity to train both sides equally in pushing hands and self defense drills.

 

I think we tend to over emphasize the importance of the form in the West. For many of us, it is all we have to work with. it is there to develop that mind/body/energy integration. It is not the be all, end all of taijiquan training. From a martial perspective, there is so much more.

 

Training symmetrically is good for the body, mind, energetics, martial applications - everything, IMO.

 

[steve]

7 minutes ago, windwalker said:

 

 

wasn't a question for me, it was for you. 

you've answered it.....not something I would agree with 

but then again its not my training...

 

thanks for the answer

 

The truth is that after getting more deeply involved in the partner training, I no longer felt much of a need to work on the form in a completely symmetrical fashion. I do think that would be helpful if one were only working with the form. 

[morning dew]

6 minutes ago, steve said:

 

I think there are a lot of possible explanations for the asymmetry of the form.

Forms are often constructed in such a way as to make the intent less than obvious.

One can develop excellent levels of integration without necessarily doing so in a completely symmetric fashion.

The expectation would have been that practitioners would have ample opportunity to train both sides equally in pushing hands and self defense drills.

 

I think we tend to over emphasize the importance of the form in the West. For many of us, it is all we have to work with. it is there to develop that mind/body/energy integration. It is not the be all, end all of taijiquan training. From a martial perspective, there is so much more.

 

Training symmetrically is good for the body, mind, energetics, martial applications - everything, IMO.

 

Thanks, that's very clear. And yes, I didn't even realise there were martial drills until I started talking to people on here about tai chi.

[Starjumper]

2 hours ago, morning dew said:

Would you like to expand on the last bit? Which particular moves and why? I did a few years of external martial arts when I was a lot younger, but I seem to remember doing all sorts of moves.  

 

I've been a bad boy and didn't try to memorize the movement names so I had to look it up, it is similar to but not the same as what you see on this video, it's called Parting Horse's Mane.  I basically have the one move I like to use to intercept a straight punch.  You can see it in this video from 0:30 to 0:40

 

 

The thing is that we/I use the beginning part of the move but do not get the arm under the armpit to throw them since we don't use pushing, instead you can use that arm for a fast hammer fist to the ribs.  Even better, and what I do, is not get your arm under their arm, instead take a little bigger step and then you are behind them, with your arm going over their shoulder.  Once you are behind them, breathing down their neck, then you can easily run away and you also have a million options (sometimes I exaggerate) to kill them or put them down and there is nothing they can do to stop it.

 

So I only use the beginning part of the move because it's my most comfortable way to keep from getting hit, which is the most important part of tai chi combat.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Starjumper

[morning dew]

Fascinating. It's very interesting to read your approach.

 

Yeah, I have to say, I'm not really a big fan of just knocking people to the ground in the middle of a fight – unless we happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff, I suppose.  

 

 

[Marblehead]

Spoiler

 

 

[Starjumper]

21 hours ago, morning dew said:

Fascinating. It's very interesting to read your approach.

 

Edit: video was replaced with a similar one.

 

I made a video here for you.  I had to delete over 40 minutes of video to get the parts that are like or similar to the beginning of Parting Horses Mane, and it's done at slower than top speed so you can see how we use it.  My fave thing is getting behind the attacker.  In this video we only go up to the point of gaining control and don't show the throw downs or 'finishing' moves, so be aware that a lot of the techniques presented here are not complete.  Just showing how to intercept an attack and gain control.

 

These are a couple of friends who came to visit around a month ago.  Enjoy:

 

 

Edited July 5, 2017 by Starjumper

[morning dew]

26 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

 

I made a video here for you.  I had to delete over 40 minutes of video to get the parts that are like or similar to the beginning of Parting Horses Mane, and it's done at slower than top speed so you can see how we use it.  My fave thing is getting behind the attacker.  In this video we only go up to the point of gaining control and don't show the throw downs or 'finishing' moves, so be aware that a lot of the techniques presented here are not complete.  Just showing how to intercept an attack and gain control.

 

These are a couple of friends who came to visit around a month ago.  Enjoy:

 

 

 

Thanks for putting this together. It's absolutely fascinating to watch. It's interesting how you can have a very basic principle of getting out of the way and the palm guiding the punching arm out of the way, and yet you can build on it with quite a few different responses from there. I'm not sure why, but in some ways this is reminding me of when I used to do Wing Chun a little – especially, points where you stick to or hook his arm with your hand.

Edited July 5, 2017 by morning dew

[Starjumper]

7 hours ago, morning dew said:

 

Thanks for putting this together. It's absolutely fascinating to watch. It's interesting how you can have a very basic principle of getting out of the way and the palm guiding the punching arm out of the way, and yet you can build on it with quite a few different responses from there. I'm not sure why, but in some ways this is reminding me of when I used to do Wing Chun a little – especially, points where you stick to or hook his arm with your hand.

 

I replaced that video with an updated version in order to include the names of the actors but it's the same video.

 

There's a good reason why it looks like it has aspects of Wing Chun in it    I never learned tai chi applications, I only learned Yueng Chuan, named after my chi kung teacher, and it uses the best methods of all the Taoist internal martial arts, but the main sources are Tai Chi and Wing Chun.  It also has some strong elements of Praying Mantis and Bagua.  You could say it has ten thousand techniques.  Mr. Yueng had mastered and practiced so many internal arts that he put them all together and could hardly tell them apart.  Variations of one art end up looking like a sister art, and there is a lot of comonality.

[dwai]

On 7/4/2017 at 5:48 AM, morning dew said:

I'm reaching the end of my Wu short form and was curious as to what the differences are between the long and short forms in any style of Tai Chi. 

 

What's the difference between doing the long form a couple of times in the morning or the short form five or six times, for example. What extra do you gain from the long form? Extra health benefits? More martial arts techniques/applications? Better unblocking of channels? Better development of internal alchemy? Something else I can't think of?  

 

 

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.

 

[dwai]

On 7/4/2017 at 9:11 AM, morning dew said:

 

Thanks. Can I get away with this version or should I aim for the full one?

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Essence-Tai-Chi-Selections-Classics/dp/1590305094/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499175927&sr=8-2&keywords=Waysun+Liao's+Tai+Chi+Classics

Get the Classics book. It is more than well worth it's weight in gold and will reveal different things to you, as you read it in different stages of your tai chi journey (one that never ends btw).

 

[Starjumper]

On 7/4/2017 at 7:34 AM, Earl Grey said:

 

I have to agree absolutely here. One of my other teachers, John Dolic, mentioned how he stopped doing Yang for a couple years to focus on Qigong. He didn't do it at all, and one day, when returning to it, he found his Tai Chi form to have improved immensely. So while Tai Chi (correct practice, teacher, and dedication) alone is enough, the cultivation and movement of qi with a good system of Qigong after will really, really improve your practice immensely. 

 

We agree; this is something I wrote decades ago before I knew much about these things.  The background is like that for a purpose, a warrior should be able to see what's important even through strong background clutter.

 

http://www.tienshan.net/martial.html

[morning dew]

1 hour ago, Starjumper said:

 

I replaced that video with an updated version in order to include the names of the actors but it's the same video.

 

There's a good reason why it looks like it has aspects of Wing Chun in it    I never learned tai chi applications, I only learned Yueng Chuan, named after my chi kung teacher, and it uses the best methods of all the Taoist internal martial arts, but the main sources are Tai Chi and Wing Chun.  It also has some strong elements of Praying Mantis and Bagua.  You could say it has ten thousand techniques.  Mr. Yueng had mastered and practiced so many internal arts that he put them all together and could hardly tell them apart.  Variations of one art end up looking like a sister art, and there is a lot of comonality.

 

Aha! That explains my observation.  

 

That's quite fascinating. I think I'm slowly starting to grasp things from all the conversations I'm having with everyone. I have a much better sense of where you're coming from now, for example.

[morning dew]

1 hour ago, dwai said:

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 is absolutely fascinating. I had to look up daogong and shengong. It's interesting to see these come into play as well in Tai Chi even with simple forms. 

[morning dew]

On 2017-7-4 at 3:16 PM, Earl Grey said:

 

Go for the full one. It's like being given the choice of reading the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy or only reading the first half of volume one, with some quotes from volumes two and three, plus comments. 

 

1 hour ago, dwai said:

Get the Classics book. It is more than well worth it's weight in gold and will reveal different things to you, as you read it in different stages of your tai chi journey (one that never ends btw).

 

 

Thanks for the advice from both of you. I did actually order the full Classics book the other day, so it should be making an appearance sometime this week.  

[CloudHands]

I got a good one... The Yang Tai Chi Curriculum (bim!) :

 

Yang Style Tai Chi Chuan System

According to Yang Cheng-Fu, the curriculum of The Yang Family Tai Chi Chuan's System is composed of : - Solo Forms, - Weapons forms, - Push Hand Exercises and Power Development Exercises. - In the Solo Forms, there are the 85 Movements Solo Form which is divided into small, medium and large frames; the 108 Movements Solo Form; the Long Form also known as Tai Chi Chung Chuan; - the Fast Form; - the 13 Animals Form or 13 Postures, - the 2-Person Sparring Set   In the Push Hand Exercises, there are the Walking; Stationary Step Single and Double Joint Hand; Active Step Single and Double Joint Hand; Open & Close; Great Pulling; Four Corners & Four Directions; Lan Cho Hua (pick up the broken flowers)and Dynamic Push Hands.   In the Weapons Forms, there are the Staff Form; the 13 Spear Techniques Form; the Small Flower Spear Form; the Knife Form; the Sword Form and the Special Weapon Form also known as halbert. In the Power Development Exercises, also known as Qigong, there is the Wu Chi Posture, Tai Chi Chuan Qigong and others.   CF V. Chu

[CloudHands]

I know it not the subject but I'm tired of reading that yang tai chi is a sub-genre or a failed system. There is much to learn, for those who can and want.

 

So, learning a solo fist form, is just the beginning.

[CloudHands]

I think the harder is to keep each day a place for it, everyday. And keep searching, among the ups and downs. Remembering to enjoy each step, even the hard ones, they are a blessing. That's the one you learn the more.

[Miffymog]

7 minutes ago, CloudHands said:

I think the harder is to keep each day a place for it, everyday. And keep searching, among the ups and downs. Remembering to enjoy each step, even the hard ones, they are a blessing. That's the one you learn the more.

 

This is very true. My aim is to keep my practice consistent everyday, which means I have to still be happy to do it even on my least motivated mornings ie with a hang over. So I never push my self too much on any practice.

 

I keep telling my self that that duration of the practice almost always exactly equals how much less sleep I need each night so I'm not actually missing out or sacrificing anything by doing it. This train of thought helps after I've done it, but it can still be difficult getting up early every day to make time for it.

[Taomeow]

On 7/4/2017 at 7:23 AM, Aetherous said:

The truth is that the long form takes a longer amount of time due to having more moves, and the short form takes a shorter amount of time due to having less moves. That's all.

 

The difference is the same as between reading a book vs. reading the blurb on the back cover highlighting its plot.  Or between watching a movie vs. watching a trailer to that movie.

 

As the student of the master whose first teacher created several short forms (including the standardized 24 and the 32 taiji sword form) and was instrumental to taiji having been re-legalized and re-embraced in post-Maoist China and propagated worldwide, I believe I am offering an informed opinion.    

[morning dew]

4 hours ago, CloudHands said:

I know it not the subject but I'm tired of reading that yang tai chi is a sub-genre or a failed system. There is much to learn, for those who can and want.

 

So, learning a solo fist form, is just the beginning.

 

Yeah, that's cool. Share whatever you like on this thread.

 

I shall look forward to reading over the curriculum when I get a chance.