Seeing your practice objectively

Round Form & Square Form

Jim D: Master Hwa, I appreciated your encouragement regarding my training regimen. Some questions and experiences I have are as follows:
1) Your insight "l...sometimes what we think is real is only an illusion..." concerned me at first because I am not able to see myself objectively, and I do not know what your experience is subjectively. How does one know that we are continuing to maintain/attain the correct form when we do not have the benefit of a watchful eye of a Master?
Master Hwa's reply: I use two approaches:
The external approach: From time to time, take a video of Form playing and reviewing and critique the video. If one understands what is required, this method can reveal certain deficiencies in the movements. From your comments below, you have already considering doing this.

The internal approach: Develop one's internal eye; see the movements from inside. This is to develop a keen sense of feeling of your body and remember what you should feel when you do a movement correctly. The beauty of this method is that, since there are many duplicate or nearly identical movements, if you know one of them, you can apply to the others also. In fact, when you start on the journey of learning tai chi, you have to develop better sense of feeling with your movements in the first place. Otherwise, you will not be able to learn the subtle internal movements. Furthermore, when you have mastered the Form, the sense of feeling of the circulating internal energy and the feeling of stretching and coiling in the body constitute the flowing of qi in the body. Sense of feeling is the heart of Tai Chi Form practice. Notable examples are: the feeling of stretching down the tailbone; the feeling of stretching in the back and energizing in the tan tien when you keep the elbow-in, instead of the spread chicken-wing style. Again, from your question, you are already mindful of this.