For a good look at first "round form" then "square form" with lots of explanation please click on the link above "Correct yourself video". Then for great instruction which includes intensive "Square Form" teaching please go to the link "Teachable" for you" right below:
It is true that Tai Chi teachers have faced increased sizes of classes ever since Wu Chien Chuan started teaching groups of people on the mainland of China. Before this one might say students who received private instruction were the norm but also very fortunate. When Wu moved to Hong Kong because of war, however, he once again had a private and hard-working student in Young Wabu. Stephen Hwa reports Yang Wabu told him "the teaching went on night and day". This was done at Young's home in Hong Kong where Wu was an honored guest. This is a far cry from having to learn in a very large class where a student was subject to minimal observation and correction.
It goes without saying that difficulty comes with teaching large groups. This is not an unusual occurrence in the history of the world, and certainly, the old Masters of Tai Chi were not the only ones that ever faced the problem. What some might call big problems due to group size really are simply problems intrinsic to teaching any group. I recall my own teacher saying this to me when I expressed my own concerns on the matter. Additionally, he told me that any teacher makes this choice to teach and thus it becomes "the life that one has chosen". In other words, those Masters made their own decision to teach large groups and deal with the attendant problems.
It was and has never been simply a matter of calling out the movements of the form to expect a student to respond appropriately. Nor has it ever been a simple matter to tweak the form and have those same expectations. One cannot even expect students to follow along with others in the class in the same time frame. A teacher wishing to make corrections has to quite often deal with the incorrect direction that the student's body is facing.
Even in this day and age, one can indeed understand the need for a form where such problems can be addressed. To this day we have the representation of this form in what the Wu family now calls its "108 movement standard form". I learned the "standard form" (square form) in the very early 1980s and I learned it by videotape. I subsequently traveled to the Academy in Toronto weekly for years to show what I had learned and was told by the Master himself "your form is very smooth, I am impressed". He also stated that I was the first person he encountered that had learned the form from the video and that he had hundreds of people worldwide that had purchased the video. It was almost immediate after this that he stated I should start coming on Friday evenings to the advanced student classes. The later disciple classes I attended elicited the comment from Wu "the door to these classes is closed"
Here I was in group classes once again albeit at the disciple level and one would think the form correction would be more comprehensive. I received "personal" correction from the Master via a "video" of my form and at certain spots, I heard that I was doing something wrong. Quite honestly,I thought he was upset and later in the tape one can hear the camera operator giggling almost gleefully over his statements at my "mistakes". Although, to his credit, I hear the same operator saying "well he has improved". Was the "improvement" the result of the classroom "pauses", "adjustments", the "codification" and "explicit stating of movement"? Hardly! It was a result of my own hard work, on my own with no input over years until the "video". What is one to make of this? Am I to thank the 108 standard forms or my teacher?
Enter the small frame, compact "Square" sometimes called the "Joint" form as taught to Young Wabu by Wu Chien Chuan. This is anathema to those folks who do larger frame styles be it Wu, Yang or Chen, etc. I am constantly amazed they don't seem to notice the very small size of the steps and ponder over what the mechanics have to be for that size. Let's go further and say "pondering" to the point where one realizes the body movement has to also be small and hence come from "inside" also called "internal from the core". With this in mind, how does one "self-correct"? I will say with no reservation and with much admiration that self-correction can be found in the "Square Form" as taught by Wu Chien Chuan to Young Wabu to Stephen Hwa and then to me, a very fortunate student. It has all the "pauses" in its movement that enable any student to find time to correct themselves. It is referred to as "robotic" by the large frame stylists and I would say, "the more robotic the better" for it is in those movements that one finds ultimate capability for correction.
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