Online course on round and square forms

So excited to be working on my newest Small Circle Classical #TaiChi online courses teaching the 108 long form! This course will teach small form in a way that speeds up the learning process. Since it's online, you can use a variety of internet-connected devices to learn.

Meanwhile, here is a link to my first online course. The info here will help you with the upcoming one.http://www.classicaltaichi.com/healthandstrength.htm

What martial art is the most dangerous?

Notice I did not say the worlds' deadliest, the most deadly, the most dangerous and when we put those modifiers in most would think of how they can really hurt someone else.  But what if you hurt yourself when doing your martial art?  As Master Stephen Hwa once said paraphrased: "...all the opponent has to do is wait till you hurt yourself, then they can step in and do the job..."



What martial art is the most dangerous?

We hear from a 1988 article in which a sports medicine physician breaks down common injuries by style.  No surprise but Tai Chi is much healthier than other martial arts. Of course, you also have to do Tai Chi correctly to not hurt yourself.  Classical Tai Chi is the most admirable in this regard since it relies on moving from the core, "internal discipline" which does not involve the use of shoulders and other joints in detrimental movements.

Martial art shoulder injury at age 74 doing Tai Chi?

I cringe as I write this as one reads of a 74-year-old Tai Chi practitioner who has shoulder arthritis.  He also does Wing Chun and punches concrete walls in his practice.  Well, what more need be said about learning "internal discipline" in Tai Chi, Tai Chi has to be good for health as well as martial arts, and it does not involve punching concrete walls.

Pitfalls of external movement

I include some injury statistics here from NIH: The new online course "Martial Origins of Tai Chi" (Classical Tai Chi at Teachable.com)

discusses how virulent "pitfalls of external" the injuries in external martial arts are. Participants Ike Schultz and yours truly both studied Karate, Tae Kwon Do to Black Belt level and saw first hand how external movement in Kata, sparring exercises, etc. would cause injury because of "snapping" movements and "stopping" or it is called "pulling" the punch or kick whereas Classical Tai Chi moves slowly but teaches to punch or kick "all the way through" with no gaps, stops or snaps in the energy. The NIH reports on how many injuries in martial arts like Karate as well as their most likely commonality:
"The hand/wrist was the most common area injured (53%), followed by the shoulder/upper arm (27%) and the forearm/elbow (19%). Joint sprains/muscle strains were the most frequent injuries reported overall (47%), followed by abrasions/bruises (26%). ... Injuries may result in chronic upper extremity symptoms."

New Online Video Courses to complement "Face to Face" teaching

We will be continuing our discussions at the Blog but in the meantime, enjoy our older posts and:  

Come to our face to face classes once or twice a week at rock bottom prices. The Spring sale means our 1st month of studio-class (face to face) is packaged along with Master Hwa's 1st online video instruction course in Internal Discipline. Both are included in one initial payment for the first month when you enroll online. The first online video course payment is set at $27 and subsequent online courses at that same amount. Along with that, the face to face classes are only $25 per month. One might well think they are getting both for the low price of $52 per month. You will have videos from which to learn and reference with the added bonus of an experienced teacher to monitor and/or critique your progress in person.

Please go to http://www.classicaltaichiofbuffalo.com/live_classes to enroll in Master Hwa's class and register for ours.

Online Video Course is up and running

Classical Tai Chi Online Video Course...NEW

A Classical Wu-Style Tai Chi Video Class to Improve Wellness

CLASSICAL-TAI-CHI.TEACHABLE.COM

I'd like to say that everyone I have taught over the years including advanced students and teachers, needs to remember to look down a couple of times and check which direction their feet are pointing in, each time they practice. In moves where the feet are supposed to be parallel, a toe even slightly out here, a toe out there and I recall images in my mind of each student I've taught being reminded consistently to point their feet in the forward direction. The phrase "...feet are parallel..." is more than just talking about it. Now here are some of Master Hwa's practice reminders from the Classical Tai Chi Forum that mesh with his recent videos on keeping the knees and back healthy:

"I wish to reemphasize some of the points in the video to help you visualize and think about key elements of practice.
BODY POSITIONS:
In the instructional video one has to be concerned with many aspects of the position of the body. Two of primary importance are the (Master Hwa has changed this to "stretch the tailbone down" in his videos) tuck in and the knee over toe Tuck in or bringing the pelvis forward and up is easy to forget when you are thinking about all the other aspects of practicing tai chi. Yet it is of utmost importance. If done correctly then the practice of tai chi will alleviate lower back problems. If not done, then the movement can exacerbate lower back problems.

Knee over toe eventually can harm or injure the knee. Your step size can more or less determine whether your knee will go over the toe. The step size in the video with the front foot heel even with the back foot toe should normally avoid the problem of unconsciously bending the knee over the toe.
If you have a knee problem to start with,, you should try to use an even smaller step size. Keep the front foot heel just behind the back foot toe until your knee feels more comfortable. With such small step size you can till learn the form movements and develop the Internal Discipline."

Square Form Written Instruction

https://www.classicaltaichi.com/PDF/squareform.pdf

Master Hwas Square Form Instructions analyzed and excerpted here by Sifu Jim Roach.Students do these wrong and miss the martial intent and ultimate application of the movement: The "hand has to end up in line with the curve of the elbow" as in photo 3, otherwise, it is out of position to have intent on the fingertips thus able to strike upward to the throat. These 4 photos represent movements at the end of Posture 2 and the beginning of posture 3 of the square form. I see students get the position of the elbow wrong in the 3rd photo. They do not draw in the elbow by keeping it down but allowing it to rise to a right angle, sometimes to the level of the shoulder. 
One key is the right palm becomes centered, behind left palm but IT IS ALSO IN LINE WITH THE CURVE OF THE LEFT ELBOW, then after the shift of the body forward into posture 3, we can talk about "the right elbow pull slightly down and out, causing the right hand to slide slightly to the right"

Integrating mind and body

 

The simple movement of rotating the thumbs toward the body will cause the palms to face the rear.  However, unless it is trained not to move, the chest will hollow as well. To the casual observer, nothing is happening here. This is where the integration of body and mind can consciously occur. Humans are complex beings, however, and so we need training and practice in integrating mind and body. This is where "ting jin" comes in and sensing of one's own movement before learning to sense the partners. Here's where I find a fascinating example of how the mind and body are not intrinsically integrated for even a simple movement. It also shows how to achieve integration in both simple and complex movement.

The words "...when one part moves everything moves..." found as glaring error in the Tai Chi Classics is not integration of mind and body. For how do you take a lack of consciousness in movement, lack of yin/yang delineation and turn it into a Tai Chi principle? So you see it is a natural fact that if you move one part of the body, your body will always move another part extraneously unless your mind consciously intervenes.

An overwhelming majority of people I meet are learning Tai Chi for something other than serious understanding of martial arts. This is a good discussion on martial arts, ballet, dance, walking dogs and more from a student Barbara R :"I found Master Hwa's discussion of YI (martial intent) and cold hands and dancers' problems in taking up tai chi interesting because of my own experience. When I used to do ballet, the palm side of my hands and fingers would get very warm and flushed and so would my teacher's. As she was older and had high blood pressure and none of the other students seemed bothered by "hot hands," it really kind of worried me a little. When I started doing tai chi and found out warmth and flush and tingling in the hands could all be signs of chi flowing correctly ( Very true- Master Hwa), I was relieved in retrospect, but disappointed, because I didn't have any of those experiences playing the form. I thought maybe it was because of so much keyboarding in the years between—enough to cause some carpal tunnel syndrome problems.

Then, in the last few months, I began to have some color and tingling while practicing and hoped it was some healing effect taking place, although I still have to use wrist braces now and then and curtail my activities a little. Master Hwa's piece offers another explanation. When I first started doing tai chi, I had no idea what most of the motions were for. Since then, I've learned a good bit more about applications and now often play the form to an audience of imaginary opponents "walking the circle" around me like ba gua players. (That is the way to practice- Master Hwa) This is actually much nearer the way I used to practice ballet--with the intent of expressing to an audience, real or imaginary, whatever character or emotion the dance I was doing was supposed to represent.

The "yi" in ballet--mind intent if not martial intent--seems to come in with the desire to project ( “To Project” is the key- Master Hwa); so maybe it is learning about the martial applications that's making my tai chi playing better for me, whether it looks better or not. Actually, I've gotten so I rather like catching a glimpse of myself in the "on guard" position (lute hands, or long arm and short arm, or even grasping the bird's tail), whereas I used to feel ridiculous doing it, particularly in exercises like "walking in the presence of the enemy." I think that women in the west even today often have a problem in perceiving fighting skills as being "artistic" enough to be appropriate for them because of the way they are often depicted in our culture and because of a tendency in the culture itself to label "art" as being more of a woman's thing than a man's and "defending" as being a masculine prerogative. That attitude may make it more difficult for women who are attracted to tai chi because of its graceful movements to see that there is any martial aspect to it. I can't think of any fighting skill in western culture that has anything like the same cachet of art and beauty about it except mayb swordsmanship--as it has come down in fencing………………

Maybe one of the reasons I was drawn to Wu style was Wu Ying Hua and Wu Yan Hsia, although I'm not sure I knew about them until I got into it, just as I didn't know about Master Young's daughter until I found your website.The only difference any of this makes is that it can create a kind of little barrier that you've got to get over in your own mind. Punches still feel quite alien to me, although a "one inch" punch is certainly an improvement over a haymaker. I think the biggest help is to find something in the martial essence of tai chi that you can relate to and use it as a bridge to the rest. For me, maybe one of the best is something I read recently about peng ( I think you mean ting jin, which means listening to opponent’s jin(power). I will talk about this laterMaster Hwa) or which mean as an attitude that permeates tai chi and almost incorporates the "audible force" rather than as any specific action. I certainly ought to be able to relate to that, after spending so much time walking herding breed dogs off leash and having to "listen" to their muscle tension and for anything about to come our way so as to be able to "ward off" their attacks on cars and cats before they start. That may sound bizarre, but just as you mentioned applying the principles of tai chi to everyday life, I think you have to find your point of entry to a martial arts mindset,if it seems alien to you, wherever you can."

Master Hwa’s reply:
I enjoy reading your piece very much, many good insights!.....

Concerning integration of internal discipline into Round Form

Concerning the integration of Internal Discipline into Form Play. This cloudhands exercise just done on the heels is a great precursor to eventual integration of internal discipline with round form cloudhands... IF and WHEN there is good quality of round form. Students may be making good progress in the class but need to keep in mind there is a qualitative minimum before we worry about quantities. If we have good quality in our form and it is the standard, then moving often with internal discipline is within reach. This is why it is so important to do internal movements, quarter body, upper body turn, etc. separate from form practice, LITERALLY ANY CHANCE YOU HAVE ANYTIME. Too often I see students attempting in vain to do internal in the form when they are constantly corrected for making mistakes like "wrong direction", "incorrect position of hands", "bad timing of movements".  I understand this day and age is impatient for results but find a teacher that can  thoroughly immerse you in the principles and explain those same principles behind all of this in Classical Tai Chi.  Please keep all of these principles in mind and catch yourself when you try to force internal on a movement that is wrong in so many other ways.

What is "small circle" Tai Chi, what is "internal"?

http://youtube.com Besides my own personal study in the 70's, 80's and 90's for a considerable time at numerous locations, particularly Youtube. I did a search of all of myriad sources, websites, videos, images, articles for actual instruction on true "small circle" Tai Chi and I do not find "small circle" Tai Chi being taught. Although I saw the words "small circle" used quite frequently, a critical examination (with an accompanying comparison to Classical Tai Chi) of the body structure, foot positioning, size of footsteps, (in many cases "extraneous") movement of the extremities, and lack of "internal movement" from the core of the body, demarcation/delineation of yin and yang, positioning of yin/yang pairs, etc. revealed to me that there is no "small circle" Tai Chi being taught. This picture gives a good comparison of what is "small circle".

 In the truest sense, saying one's Tai Chi is "small circle" is like saying their Tai Chi is "internal". Recently, a new student said "...internal is what my teacher is teaching in a particular Style short form.." yet I asked the student to show me their "internal" and they said"...well, that is what my teacher said he was teaching...". I think "caveat emptor" is particularly germane to what we discuss along with "all that glitters is not gold". wherein the attractive "external appearance" of something is not a reliable indication of its true nature.