Yes it’s DIFFICULT

Difficult but here’s a Square & Round Form Intro. 

You are absolutely right. Learning Tai Chi sequences as an adult can feel like learning a complex dance in slow motion while also trying to solve a puzzle with your feet. Unlike "gym" workouts, Tai Chi relies on proprioception—your brain’s ability to know where your limbs are in space without looking at them. 

Here is why it is uniquely challenging and some science-backed strategies to make the memory "stick."

At first, the most difficult aspect of learning Classical Tai Chi is learning to remain still while moving, or more broadly, the mental and physical challenge of developing internal discipline

(moving from the core) rather than relying on external force. 

This difficulty arises because it requires breaking long-held habits of using shoulder and arm muscles and instead engaging deep abdominal and back muscles to drive movement. 

Key Difficulties for Beginners in This System:

• Remaining Still (Stillness in Motion):As noted in Master Hwa's training method, the square form trains the yin/yang principle where movement in one part of the body requires stillness in others. Teaching a student to stay "still" is often harder than instructing them to move.
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• Shifting to Internal Power: Beginners mistakenly try to use external, muscular power (legs and arms) like in other martial arts, which Hwa notes makes them weaker and slower.
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• Understanding the "Square Form":
• Beginners must first master the slow,, precise movements of the "square form" as a blueprint, which acts as a foundational training method to teach internal discipline before progressing to the "round form".
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• Mental Focus: It requires immense mental effort to re-engage a long-neglected nervous system in the torso (core). 
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The ultimate goal, which is difficult to master, is to integrate the limbs with the core so that internal energy circulates continuously throughout the body during form playing.

The Correct Body Structure of Classical Tai Chi

I recall my early days of study, particularly those in which I had teachers who were long on enthusiasm and short on experience...some with only 1 year more than me.  In retrospect I recall them telling me to "sitback, sitback, sitback..." with no accompanying instructions on HOW to sitback correctly or WHY I was doing it wrong.  Obviously, I was doing it incorrectly, I thought, otherwise why would they keep repeating "sitback, sitback, sitback..." in a stacatto fashion?  Master Stephen Hwa addresses "sitback position", HOW, WHY, WHEN,  "forward position" and more in a 12 minute segment taken from a 2011 workshop.  The segment is more appropriately named "The correct body structure of Classical Tai Chi". You can go to the Youtube video of the segment by clicking on this link:

THE CORRECT BODY STRUCTURE OF CLASSICAL TAI CHI

Master Stephen Hwa: 

I went to Shanghai and a relative of mine told me his Uncle is a big guy in Yang Style Tai Chi in Shanghai.  He is also a Catholic Bishop  there and so they use the church to practice Yang Style Tai Chi. They are like this.  And then when they are older, in their “60’s”, the whole group, everyone has bone spurs in their lower back. Because the compression, the stress on the lower back caused bone spurs. You know this stress sometimes causes bone spurs, right? That unusual stress on the joints causes bone spurs. Every one of them has bone spurs in the lower back.

Student:  Master Hwa, you talk about the sensations occurring in the back, do you talk about the sensations occurring in the front as well?

Master Hwa: Some, but mostly in the back. Also, remember when he spoke?  He just raised an excellent point.  Remember, we said, going forward, all the weight has to be on the front foot? Now, the whole back is not entirely relaxed because there is a stretch in the lower back, down to the heel, try to maintain the touch of the heel on the ground.  Now, do you feel that stretch? Now you don’t have weight on it, but you should feel that stretch. You work to maintain the heel touch the ground. So the leg is kind of straight, not with bent knee.  Not with bent knee.  So you want to maintain some force on the leg to maintain the stretch. Not bending the knee.

Student: Do you sense that stretch continually when you are transferring weight back?

Master Hwa: Yes, when you are pulling back, there is more in the front now. When you are pulling back, and again using your abdomen.  Pulling your body back like this, again pulling with your back foot. There is more sensation comes more in the front. The sensation comes more in the front.  This sitting position actually is a very awkward position. But again, when we do push hands, when we do the push hands, you will realize this is such a very important position. One of the most important positions, but it is a very awkward position. A lot of people do not know how to do that correctly, a so called sitting motion.

Okay, any other questions on this segment?

Student: Can I ask you a question about sitting back?  When you are sitting back are you tucking the buttocks and sitting at the same time?

Master Hwa: Yes, tucking and sitting back at the same time.  When you are sitting back, it depends how you do it.  You can sit deeper and deeper, the deeper you can sit the better.  With the sitting back, you still should be able to turn your body.  Because that is the purpose of your sitting back.  You sit back, you turn and the guy falls.

Student: Master Hwa, when you are sitting back are you shortening the length of the abdomen?

Master Hwa: Not too much.  If your shoulder is too much (hunched over), your turning is limited, you cannot turn very well. You still need that length of body, so you can turn.  When I sit back, it is not just sitting back, I have to turn, to redirect. If you are too (hunched over) it is harder to turn. If you keep your body stretched (lengthened) then you can turn better.

Student: It is a pelvic tilt?

Master Hwa: Yes, the crease is not abdominal, it is creased in the pelvis.

Student: The farther you are down, the more your back stretches up?

Master Hwa: Yes, right, you find your back is kind of pulled up.  Certainly, if your step is big, your sitback is naturally quite low, OK? Now, we don’t teach the large frame.  The large frame, the step is big and it does teach you how to sit low. Now if you don’t sit low correctly, you are not sitting, your body weight is more toward the front. When you sit back correctly, the thighs have to be even (parallel).  Now my body is facing forward, if I am not sitting back, my body is facing to an angle.  On such an angle, I have a strong side and a weak side.  So when I sit with thighs parallel, my teacher checked it.  The reason he says this is “you are facing the opponent squarely and not crooked”.  If you face an angle, then you face opponent at an angle, so he is using the “thigh” guage.  Most other martial arts are facing the opponent really at an angle with the body.  We are facing the opponent squarely and you will be able to redirect the opponent to either direction. If I face him at an angle, I can redirect to one side only but cannot redirect to the other very well. So you are giving a signal to an opponent that you have a strong side. So if you do push hands with “outside” practitioners.  So how can you handle him to take advantage of his weak side.  Then not falling into his trap of succumbing to being pulled by his strong side.

Student:  When I sit back like this should my thigh feel tight?

Master Hwa:  Yes, really tight

Student: When I sit back this leg muscle is very tight. I have a weak right knee so I notice this.

Master Hwa:  Then you need to take a smaller step. If one has knee problems you always keep your step small.

Student: Could you address the importance of tucking the chin?

Master Hwa: Right, when your chin is not tucked, and people push you hard enough, you head may snap back.  If your head snaps back like this you are very weak. We constantly stretch our head up using the neck muscle to support the head rather than using the cervical vertebrae part of the spine to support the weight of the head.  In doing so, you also develop the neck muscle.  The neck muscle is important in preventing whiplash.  When you sit back you have to feel the tuck of the chin, the stretch of neck muscle and that is why you feel the back is pulled up.

It is impossible to "turn" the hips

A letter from a "Wu Style practitioner":

"I have two of Master Hwa's DVDs and I find his concepts fascinating. I am a practitioner of Wu Style TCC (disciple of the Wu Family). However, we have been taught that all of the movements are generated by the "hips" first, not the "waist". I still do not understand why Master Hwa thinks that the hips should remain less mobile than the waist. The hips are the fulcrum of the body and connect the upper with the lower."

I have never understood how people can say things like "all of the movements are generated by the hips first, not the waist", "turn your hips", "push him harder so that he can turn his hips", etc.  I heard those refrains for years in studying large frame Wu Style and years before I started Classical (Wu Style) Tai Chi. The hips are a large and complex joint of the body and like any joint are necessary for movement.  They are necessary for movement but not sufficient in and of themselves to power or “generate” movement however.  In other words they do not move in and of themselves but move as a result  of action  initiated by other parts of the body.  Stating that they are "the fulcrum of the body and connect the upper with the lower" still is not a sufficient explanation of what powers or “generates” their movement.  A crowbar is a lever that can be used by itself or with  a fulcrum that is properly positioned but without a source of power “generation” it is just a metal bar and the fulcrum sits unused.

 Another thing I do not understand is how people are so blase' to  the idea that  "turn your hip" violates the Classical  rule "hand follows the foot, elbow follows the knee" and how this is perpetuated through generations.  The worst picture is turning the hip with the back foot stationary and pointing 90 degrees.  This  drags the practitioners energy backward. One only has to look at a golfer's stance where the legs stand at right angles to the direction of the golf stroke.  Tiger Woods perhaps is a sad example, didn't he most recently have knee surgery?  Look at his much admired stance, didn't the damage come at the knees?  There is tremendous torque and twist at a golfer's knees as in Tai Chi when the rules are broken. 

This classical  rule about "hand follows the foot..." is obvious in the Tai Chi form but since lots of practitioners give the form such short shrift perhaps this rule does not occur to them when they do applications or free style fighting.  I would also surmise they do not care that they cannot incorporate internal discipline into their fighting either, much less their form. On the other hand, perhaps they simply do not know or never took the time to learn the rule.  When is this rule applied? It is to be applied when the act of turning the hip would violate the rule pure and simple will create a "torque" or "powerful twist" in the knees and ankles.  One can see a grimly humorous aspect to this, where the opponent simply waits for you  to injure yourself, what work do they have to do at that point?  See how health and martial should correlate here?  There is much more power when the rule is followed however.  Also, we can just turn at the waist without turning the hip. I fail to see where there is more power from turning the hip with feet in a static position.  I fail to see how this will not eventually end up hurting the practitioner, even though they crow, " I got him down to the floor", your knees and ankles will pay the price.

The generation of movement for our hips comes either from our legs or from our waist and not from the hips themselves.  The generation of hip movement from the waist also comes with its own set of problems as does the movement of the hips from the legs.   See the attached video for examples of what happens when practitioners turn the waist and the hips at the same time.  In large frame Tai Chi the movement of the legs to turn the hip is called "folding the hip or kua".  A leg pushing the body either forward or backward makes one hip rotate into itself and the other rotate out of itself...hence the inguinal "fold' so coveted by large frame practitioners. As far as "Power" is concerned, one will reduce or drain off power when turning the "hip first" (which as we said is really an oxymoron and impossible because it does not generate its own movement).  

Keep the hip still , turn the waist and then try another experiment where you turn the hip "first" (impossible but you can turn the waist to turn the hip) and you can readily see the difference in the "generation" of power.  What exactly is the mechanism that is used to move in and of itself when one is urged to  "turn your hip"?  There is no such self perpetuating mechanism in the hips wherein one can "generate movement". Your hips "permit", "allow", "tolerate", "provide for" movement, but they do not "generate" movement.  

In Large frame it is true the hips can be rotated forcefully once the legs push the body and they reach the apex of a weight shift. As we have stated previously, however it is also true that power is drained off once the rotation is completed. Classical (wu style) Tai chi uses a compact frame which does this by pulling. In contrast to pushing, all pulling moves are internal and stay energized.  Energy is not lost but constantly recirculated and not dependent on legs for power. In talking about "fulcrums" it is of prime importance as to how one locates or places a working fulcrum. As you can see in the video the turning of hips lowers the yin/yang junction (fulcrum) to area of knees.  One can readily see several practitioners of what I call "external" style Tai Chi, turning their bodies at the hips, lowering the junction to the area of the knees in the mistaken impression that "generating movement by the hips first and not the waist" can be used to "turn the body".

My teacher Stephen Hwa said this about the "fulcrum" (yin-yang junction): "The most important instruction on Internal Discipline passed down from Wu Chien Chuan to my teacher Young Wabu is that":  "Every movement in Tai Chi Form has to have two complementary parts of the body, a moving part (called Yang) and a stationary part (called Yin).  When the yin-yang junction is located in the torso of the body, it is an internal move.  When it is outside the torso, it is an external move".

I include Youtube links to  2 videos below that were excerpted from a  seminar at Rochester World Tai Chi Day.  In the videos, Master Hwa explains it all by demonstrating and then teaching a group of students.  He uses what is called a "Turning" move with internal discipline to demonstrate.

What is a Yin-Yang Junction?

How to find Yin-Yang Junction, how to do turning, what is internal energy?

The video emphasizes the danger of not following the "rule" and "turning the hips".  One can see several practitioners who could really hurt themselves eventually.  Certainly when one is young, you can bounce back from this but as one gets older the danger of incorrect practice only intensifies. Normally, one would expect that it would only be people not trained in Classical Tai Chi who would turn at the hip and carry the torso with it, while the legs have a twisting motion.  However, he recognizes several people who participated in a last years seminar in which he demonstrated this very thing. In fact, I was filming the seminar and I recognized them as well.  In one case, the practitioner is turning his hips so much the legs are not only twisting...they are dancing, with the feet moving all over the floor.  You can see this almost immediately and it is so very obvious.