Sorry I just posted this on the Internal MA forum too. A friend of mine has just begun teaching me Yang style Tai Chi. All I really know is that this form has 24 moves/postures. Just wondered if anyone could recommend any websites where I can read up more on this and in fact Tai Chi as a whole? Thanks, Dred
I'm not a big fan of short forms in any Taiji style so I don't really personally know of any sites that deal with this. If you want info on Taiji generally and Yang Style all you need to do is type "Yang Style 24 short form" into a search engine and you'll get loads of hits. Best of luck with it, Syd
ah... there's book too on fmaa.com yangjwing's website.... specially on 24 style n it's fighting applications... worth buying i'll say -TkdWarrior-
Many thanks guys I'll get reading. Syd if you don't mind me asking why do you not like the short forms? Like I say I don't know anything so no opinion myself but would be interested on your comments...
On my soap box ... Dred, If I answer that question it would open a whole can of worms *L* I could be here for hours typing away furiously explaining the purpose of the original long forms and the watered down (standardized Beijing short forms) short forms we have today. I will however make a brief attempt at getting the point across. 1# Yang Style Taijiquan has several elements at it's core that need to be adhered to in order to get the greatest benefit. When these forms were invented by those great men, they were not just thrown together haphazardly and without purpose, but rather they were meticulously contructed like a sacred puzzle from which the student would unlock and discover the deeper layers as they progressed. 2# Yang Taijiquan is a combat and self defense art first and a healing and meditation art second. While emphasis is placed on both equally, in theory, it should slightly favour the combat aspects if you are learning the living system. Since the forms were constructed to be of a certain length and time (The length of time is proportionate to the level of Qi cultivation and jing training accumulated at you work through the three sections of the form) with the repeating of particular postures throughout the forms. By shortening the original forms themselves you are robbing yourself of the maxiumum benefits derived from the long form training. 3# What are the benefits? The long form is like a sacredly constucted mandala which offers all secrets at once, but only reveals those secrets to the student who has the understanding to recognize them. Taijiquan when practised in long form offers the health benefits of moving meditation and Qigong whilst bathing the meridians in Qi and learning how to attain sung and direct energy. The practice of the long form is also very important for training in jing and opening the joints for combat and martial arts applications. Certain postures as I said before are repeated in the forms as they progress and build up in a logical fashion which creates an accumulative effect and benefit/cultivation for all the special techniques and skills that are necessary in order to become skilled in Yang Style Taijiquan. 4# When you shorten the forms from 108 movements to 24 you are totally removing all the training benefits that were devised by the masters of old and leaving yourself with less than half an art. The shortened forms were largely invented for lazy westerners and people who had no time or patience for the original long forms and are largely not geared towards those aspects of Yang Taijiquan as a complete system. Short form Taijiquan is not a complete Yang Style Taijiquan because it has lost it roots and strayed from the adherence of the inherent training regime that was devised by the Yang's themselves! Short form Taiji is largely the responsibility of Chen Man Ching whose Taijiquan is not Yang Taiji but rather something entirely different altogether. The decision that needs to be made is what are you looking for in Taijiquan? Chen Man Ching was a student of Yang Cheng Fu for about 1 month! He stated openly that he was impatient and couldn't wait to get to the end of his forms and when he went to the U.S he didn't think Americans would have the patience for Long Form traditional Yang Style Taiji so he changed it... irrevocably. The standardisation of Taijiquan into short forms in the modern day is a very sad exploitation of a great art which is being relegated to the level of toothless tiger. If you like your tiger with teeth, then I suggest you find a good school that teaches the full long form Yang Style Taijiquan curriculum with weapons training and two person fighting sets, has a strong emphasis on standing Qigong as well as long form work, does not have it's roots in Chen Man Ching system Taijiquan and has a more direct association with Yang Cheng Fu or another branch of the Yangs themselves. Lineage is not so important but the nature and attitude of the teacher to the art and it's curriculum are! I have outlined the basics here as best I can but to go on would be overkill *L* Best, Syd
Hi Syd, Many thanks for your candid reply. I fully understand the cans of worms that can be opened on these forums (I'm a JKD practitioner) To be honest I'm not sure how much time I am going to be able to put into this training anyway but I am certainly interested enough to help my friend out. Apparently she needs a student in order to become a teacher herself and my progress will be monitored regularly by her instructor. I believe that their school does offer far more than the 24 movements and that she is teaching me this as she understands that I have other training to fit in and also kind of as a taster! I'm hoping to see how this goes and then look further into it at a later date. No offense to any T'ai Chi practitioners out there but it doesn't look as if its everything I want from a Martial Art at the moment but before I discard it totally I would like to try it out. I quite like the fact that you can train in it during a quiet moment or when you are alone i.e. no need to head to a gym... Of course I realize that this does mean that I won't be extracting every benefit form this training at the moment. So we'll see...
hey syd, just wanted to offer some info here... the 24 step wasn't created for the west.. it was created by the government of china to standardize the form... as you know there are so many 'authentic' versions of taiji... the chiense government drafted taiji instructors of all the major styles and had them create a modified form from they're different styles... jou, tsung hwa talks of this in his book 'the dao of taijiquan:way to rejuvenation'... part of the reason that a standard short form was created was that the long form, of all styles, takes about 30 minutes to complete, as opposed to the 3-4 minutes of the 24 steps form (this is the time that is required in the tournaments). since the chinese wanted to propagate taiji in competitions, they deemed the long form too time consuming for tournaments. hope this helps correct me if i'm wrong
What a refreshing statement Even if you only learn one thing from doing it, it will have been worthwhile and I applaud you for spending the time to investigate it. moondog.....something tells me I have read somewhere about the Chinese Gov't minimising forms purely for health reasons (i.e. taking out all of the movements that had any real martial use and leaving just enough to circulate chi etc). Is this what you are talking about?
Moondog, I concur with what you have said but when I discuss the shortened forms of Cheng Man Ching, which were 34 originally, I believe (Today they are allover the place with 77, 88, 108, 34, 24 etc) this was the most well known system in the U.S way back when Taiji was relatively unknown in the West. Cheng Man Ching propogated the 34 in the 60's!- and before that in Taiwan in the 50's. Subsequently and with the help of people like Robert Smith, a great proponent of CMC Taijiquan, many Americans, particularly on the East Coast, have never known much else than CMC Taijiquan and short form Taijiquan. The Standardization of the Chinese has come much, much later and only really began taking effect in the 1980's. We are talking about two different streams of shortening Taiji forms. There is the agenda of the Chinese goverment and then the agenda of shortened forms by individual teachers who came to the west from China who shortened forms because of the fast food mentality of the west, namely that people couldn't be bothered leaning long forms and wanted everything NOW! Teachers soon realized that they lost fewer students when they made the forms shorter and quicker to complete. Subsequently the result of both approaches means we get a Wushu Taijiquan which has no bite! What I said earlier remains true, and yes Cheng Man Ching didn't want to spend 30 mins performing the long forms either. It just so happens that both Cheng Man Ching and the Chinese Govt began a campaign based more on using Taijiquan for general health, public fitness and public demonstration than for maintaining the systems in their true complete form; namely a sophisticated Martial Art that requires years to gain mastery. Arts like Wu Hao style Taijiquan were rejected by the Chinese Gvt because it was so internal and didn't look dynamic and showy enough to warrant keeping. Wu Hao is one of THE true branch styles that hold the Yang Lu Chan lineage of training intact. So in short, Cheng Man Ching did infact create shortned forms for Westerners as did many other Chinese teachers who brought the arts to the west. The Chinese gvt while having a seperate agenda for competition merely mirrored the general attitudes of these modern teachers and deemed it better to just make Taiji easy...which they seemed to think was better...it wasn't and it isn't. Best, Syd
"By shortening the original forms themselves you are robbing yourself of the maxiumum benefits derived from the long form training." Didn't the Yangs shorten and simplify the form of the Chen's?
I'm just going to add that I do not view 30 mins as too long. Something else I've been looking into these past years is yoga and the first series take from 1-2 hours to complete... fine at the weekend but not easy to do as pre-work exercise unless you like get up at the crack of dawn (which I suspect woudl be a very quick ticket back to bachelorhood). 30 mins seems pretty do able by comparison.
haha.. i agree that wushu taijiquan has no bite... i participated at my country's wushu national championships in shan shou... what amazed me was that none of the forms players knew how to apply taiji, or any other martial art for that matter, in combat... umm.. i actually wasn't refering to cheng man ching's taiji but the standard 24, but it is very true that cheng shortened it for westerners... but are you sure that he only spent one month with yang cheng fu? i have wolfe lowenthal's book (he was a student of cheng's for about 10 years), and it states that he spent a few years with cheng fu... any info? shade: the only instance i know of that taiji was altered to emphasize the health benefits was when yang luchan was drafted by the imperial family to teach them taiji.. since the emperor was manchurian and yang was han chinese, he changed his taiji, not wanting to pass on the 'authentic' form... the chinese government shortened the form purely for standardization (meaning that the 24 and 42 step are the only forms that the wushu federation recognizes in tournaments).. i've heard that there are certain chen and wu forms that are also accepted though i can't verify this. i think though, like syd, that the 24 and 42 are almost useless in the martial sense... not totally (they MUST have some merits hehe) hope this helps
30 minutes doesnt seem that long in some respects (like comaring it to that yoga run through - two hours IS a long time for that although it does have many health benefits) although if you were doing it two or three times a day maybe it requires a bit more commitment to keep it up every day. I am yet to find out but am in no hurry to whizz through either learning or applying. Maybe another part of the problem is the actual learning aspect? If someone thinks that doing the form for 30 minutes is a long time, can you imagine what they must think about learning 108 movements as opposed to say just 24? The horror moondog, thanks for the extra info. Gaps are staring to be filled
Dred, 30 mins is once through. You should do your forms 3 times in a row. It is said once for the spirit (Shen), once for the body, bones and muscles and once for Qi circulation and cultivation. That would make about one and a half hours with up to 30 mins standing Qigong before beginning form practice. I agree, this is nothing in the greater scheme of things.
OK so an hour and a half is a bit more of a commitment but understandable that you would need to spend more time at it really... not many things bring about great changes in only 30 mins. Thanks for all the info. It's great to be on a forum where people want to help each other out. Best, Dred
Hey Moondog, umm.. i actually wasn't refering to cheng man ching's taiji but the standard 24, Yes, I know but it's important to see how the two branches of shortened Taiji broke out in both the east and the west because there is a connection in both the result and the agenda. The result being that the Taiji becomes pretty useless. but it is very true that cheng shortened it for westerners... but are you sure that he only spent one month with yang cheng fu? I have some Wolf books also but I think he's stretching an absurdly long bow stating that CMC trained with Yang Cheng Fu for 3 years!!! It is well recorded and documented in other places that it was no more than a month during a very brief period when Yang Cheng Fu was teaching in Shanghai. It is possible that Cheng may have travelled to see Yang Cheng Fu at later times for short periods but from the wider information I have it is made clear that he had about 1 month with Yang and not much more. You see I read stuff allover the place and sometimes I am left scratching my head for which place it came from and what the book was.... I'll dig around but the sources are fairly open knowledge on that one. shade: the only instance i know of that taiji was altered to emphasize the health benefits was when yang luchan was drafted by the imperial family to teach them taiji.. since the emperor was manchurian and yang was han chinese, he changed his taiji, not wanting to pass on the 'authentic' form... This story has been largely refuted nowadays and is seen as Han/Manchu propagandist nonense. It is has been widely researched and discussed in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts by Chinese historical scholars and much discussed that there was no way that Yang Lu Chan could have taught the Imperial Family a watered down frame of his Taijiquan because many of the Imperial Bodyguard and high officials were all experts and highly knowledgable regarding the Martial Arts and they knew what Yang's capabilities were. For Yang to have lied and taught a false art would have been fatal to both him and his wider family. No, Yang embraced the Imperial family and taught along side his sons at court but he actually taught the second Yang frame which was already known and performed within the Yang family. Because most people had not seen this frame before they assumed that the Yangs had swapped a dummy frame in which was largely useless and without applications. The frame that was taught is the commonly known Wu Jian Quan frame that we have today, apart from some slight changes. Wu style is very well known for being a combat effective Taiji style and there is very good reason for this. Wu Jian Quan's father was one of Yang Lu Chans exceptional students who went on to become a famous exponent of Wu Style which is basically Yang Style Taijiquan. The reason for the split was that later when Yang Shou Hou and Yang Cheng Fu were teaching in the Shanghai academy along with Wu Jian Quan, Yang Cheng Fu was teaching a well known high official whose skills were only so, so. The Official expected Yang to lose and give him face during a sparring session and Yang did no such thing. In response to this indignance, the official refused to learn Yang Style Taiji from Cheng Fu anymore and started to take lessons from Wu, instead promoting Wu Style instead of Yang Style which is where we get the so-called split today. Wu Style Taijiquan is the second frame of Yang family Taijiquan that was taught by Yang Lu Chan with a few changes thrown into it. There is also some talk of the long Imperial gowns being the reason for slight changes in the Yang frame and this may be partly true but largely it is now commonly understood and stated by Yang Family members that the Yang Frame taught to the Imperial Court was already within the Yang family at that time. Best, Syd
"Didn't the Yangs shorten and simplify the form of the Chen's? No they didn't..." But the Yang and Chen forms are different, right?
