Sun style TJQ question.

[Andy_S]

Kreese:

Why stop at mystical choreography? My portfolio of services currently includes:
Dictators - overthrown
Revolutions - quelled
Bulls - wrestled
Bars - quaffed dry
Virgins - educated
Sheep - shagged

But once you have a group in Taiwan (minimum: 200 peeps) call over "mystical Master A." and I will do the business. Conditions:
US$1000 per person, per weekend seminar (I take 90 percet, you take 10 percent, but I will pay venue costs), my meals and hotels paid for, I am addressed by all as "Master A." and I get to spend some "private initiation" time with attrative chicks of my choosing. Deal?

Ron:

Interesting quote. I would pretty much agree with that, as regards to most non-Chen Taiji I see these days, it just seems too undemanding and too soft to be able to teach someone with no martial experience to be martially effective, but I suspect these styles originally (and in some cases, still do) include some more demanding techniques to construct the gongfu frame. As a Chen and Yang man yourself, what is your take on the Yang out there these days?

Any Sun-Taiji peeps:

There is an opinion (which somewhat corroborates what Ron said above) that without learning Sun's HsingI and Bagua, you would never really get the Taiji. True or false?

[Harvey]

Well Andy as my teach also does some Sun style with us I think it would be a very relative argument about his taiji. As there are four poeple who do the Sunjia and two play cingyi as well the only thing that is truly apparent is it takes a little longer to "get" parts of the form without xingyi or bagua in your diet. Certain sections of the form now make a little more sense since I've started doing some Bagua with Andrea Falk. Now that being said it has helped me advance in my form training but the other ones who solely do Yang taiji haven't clicked on some things as easily as I have.
But and here's a big but, they have Yang shanfa issues (as have I) and I don't know how it would be for someone starting from scratch. I find the simplified form we do fascinating and always very challanging as not only is it a very nice crisp form but there is no adaptation needed for application, the form is the apps, the apps are the form.
As for the question about learning it quickly, I just don't know. How long does it take to teach the 24? Two maybe three months for the outside then work on the innards. Maybe it's true for the Sun short forms as well but IMHO what makes Sun's taiji so good is the level of head-whackery he's stuck in there and that takes a lot of learning.

[Doc Stier]

....as regards to most non-Chen Taiji I see these days, it just seems too undemanding and too soft to be able to teach someone with no martial experience to be martially effective, but I suspect these styles originally (and in some cases, still do) include some more demanding techniques to construct the gongfu frame.

There is an opinion....that without learning Sun's HsingI and Bagua, you would never really get the Taiji. True or false?

The earliest surviving versions of the Old Yang Style Large Frame Long Imperial 108 Forms Set were clearly based on the older Chen Style Sets, as witnessed by the comparatively close approximation of form postures, their sequential arrangement, and their names within the Old Yang Style Set, as well as the obviously borrowed manner of performance and stylistic interpretation of same. This gives the Old Yang Style TCC a much different look and feel in comparison to the Yang Cheng-Fu Style TCC promoted by the Yang Family Masters today.

The Old Yang Style uses longer and lower stances, greater circularity appearing in the transitional movements between postures for a far greater variety of defensive techniques, the obvious inclusion of spiral energy, the clear expression of fa-jing when performing striking and kicking postures, and so forth. These factors would bring many contemporary Yang Style TCC practitioners to their knees for lack of the athletic and martial attributes needed to perform the Old Yang Style Set correctly, IMO. Most modern Yang stylists usually judge the Old Style Form Sets to be "too martial" in flavor, and "not soft enough" in expression!

Regarding Sun Style TCC, please remember that Master Sun already had several decades of practice experience, and a high level of expertise, with both Pa-Kua Chuan and Hsing-Yi Chuan prior to learning the Wu/Hao Style Tai-Chi Chuan, and then subsequently combining aspects of all three arts to create his Sun Style Tai-Chi Chuan. As a result, Sun Style TCC represents the culmination of a lifetime of study, training, research, and application for Master Sun, not a starting point for beginners, and was never intended to be a novice level form set, IMO. Without tracing Sun's personal steps through separate stages of martial development in each of the core styles he combined, it is unlikely that the full potential of Sun Style TCC can ever truly be fathomed, much less duplicated.

Doc Stier

[C.J.Wang]

My Bagua teacher learned Sun Taiji in Taiwan from Zhao Xi-Min, who stuided under Zheng Huai-Xian (Sun's student) in Sichuan before studying Gao style bagua three decades ago. He often talks about how his Bagua practice over the years has deepened his understanding of Sun style Taiji tremendously.

[Ron Panunto]

Ron:

Interesting quote. I would pretty much agree with that, as regards to most non-Chen Taiji I see these days, it just seems too undemanding and too soft to be able to teach someone with no martial experience to be martially effective, but I suspect these styles originally (and in some cases, still do) include some more demanding techniques to construct the gongfu frame. As a Chen and Yang man yourself, what is your take on the Yang out there these days?

My opinion is that Yang Chenfu deleted most of the essence of taiji gongfu for his non-indoor students, and that is mostly what has been handed down through the Yang system. Most (not all) Yang teachers teach only either a long and/or short form and some fixed step push hands. Instruction usually doesn't go beyond that.

[qiphlow]

The Old Yang Style uses longer and lower stances, greater circularity appearing in the transitional movements between postures for a far greater variety of defensive techniques, the obvious inclusion of spiral energy, the clear expression of fa-jing when performing striking and kicking postures, and so forth. These factors would bring many contemporary Yang Style TCC practitioners to their knees for lack of the athletic and martial attributes needed to perform the Old Yang Style Set correctly, IMO. Most modern Yang stylists usually judge the Old Style Form Sets to be "too martial" in flavor, and "not soft enough" in expression!



Doc Stier

hi doc,
can you point me to some good representations of the old yang style? it sounds, from your description, like something i'd be interested in.
--jeff

[Michael]

Qiflow, do you like live music? South by Southwest? Gorgeous women and cold beer? John Wang eating your brains? Sound like it's time for a road trip to Austin, Texas. Better do it now before the reconquista is complete.

[Doc Stier]

Hey, Jeff:

Michael just pointed you in the right direction, man. Come on down to Austin!

I teach a two hour class every Saturday morning from 10AM-Noon in downtown Austin at Sailor's Grave Ink on 6th St. and Neches St. You could get your fill of Old Yang Style TCC, as well as Sun Style Pa-Kua Chuan and Shansi Hsing-Yi Chuan. And you'd be right in the heart of the action Michael describes on 6th St. when the class is over.

We're always looking for some fresh meat....umm...sorry, new practice partners for the class. It's a lot of fun, and some guys actually even learn how to do this stuff.

Doc

[qiphlow]

Hey, Jeff:

Michael just pointed you in the right direction, man. Come on down to Austin!

I teach a two hour class every Saturday morning from 10AM-Noon in downtown Austin at Sailor's Grave Ink on 6th St. and Neches St. You could get your fill of Old Yang Style TCC, as well as Sun Style Pa-Kua Chuan and Shansi Hsing-Yi Chuan. And you'd be right in the heart of the action Michael describes on 6th St. when the class is over.

We're always looking for some fresh meat....umm...sorry, new practice partners for the class. It's a lot of fun, and some guys actually even learn how to do this stuff.

Doc

thanks for the kind offer, doc. but i was actually hoping for something a bit more local to san francisco!
austin is a bit of a hike from sf, and i doubt my wife and girls would be willing to relocate.
but i will promise to look you up if i happen to find myself in austin. and you have an open invitation to come play with the bay area eF crew if you're ever out this way.

[Bao]

From what I have seen of modern teachers in real life and on Youtube, the solo form versions are often taught as if they were qigong or slightly-speeded up versions of Yang-style. Good traditional Sun-style isn't particularly "smooth" or "rounded" or "relaxed but then again finding a teacher who understands the pre-requisite body mechanics of any style is never easy -- in China or in North America.

I think it is very interesting to look at the original photos of Sun Lutang performing his form. His positions are stretched and looks very dynamic, sometimes quite opposite to what his daughter taught, or at least what she usually showed in public.

I think the influence of BG and XY concerning the Sun form is highly overrated and misunderstood. As I have said before: most things associated with XY in Sun tjq comes directly from Hao - including the follow-up step and the san ti (both the stance and the liuhe coordination). What Sun Lutang did was merely focusing on aspect that he was familiar with, and which he knew, from his own experience, to be most practical in a martial perspective. He did not add xy or bg aspects to his taiji, or at least added very few. - Sun TJ is still taijiquan and not a mixture as a "taijiquan-baguaquan-xingyiquan-called taijiquan". Sun Lutang never complicated things, or even mixed things together very much. He simplified his arts, concentrating them around practical and useful methods.

With that said, to understand Sun Taijiquan, it is only necessary to practice Sun Taiji, not the other arts. Sun taijiquan is a complete art, not a half. The only problem is that there are very few teachers who treat Sun Taijiquan as a complete art.

And in response to the original question: yes, Taijiquan is very hard to learn, regardless style. Understanding how to use softness to attain strength and learn to trust in realaxation takes real courage and years of re-learning what you have been taught from you were a child about how to use and treat yourself and your body. Learning external movements are easy, but changing your your way you look on yourself and the world around you, is not something everybody manage to do.

[Ron Panunto]

I think the influence of BG and XY concerning the Sun form is highly overrated and misunderstood. As I have said before: most things associated with XY in Sun tjq comes directly from Hao - including the follow-up step and the san ti (both the stance and the liuhe coordination).

I agree Bao. I also fail to see any significant XY or Bagua in Sun's taiji. To me it's just modified Hao.

[Andy_S]

Doc:

Can you point out any decent online examples of Old Yang Style Large Frame?

Cheers.

[GrahamB]

Doc:

Can you point out any decent online examples of Old Yang Style Large Frame?

Cheers.

The real 'old Yang' form would have to be Yang LuChan's form. However, since there are no pictures, no video and no writings (beyond, descriptions such as, and I paraphrase, "Yang Cheng-Fu took out all the difficult bits") I'd say it's impossible to know for sure which is the true "old Yang". If you adopt the attitude that "my teacher told me this is the old yang and he didn't tell lies", then that means that all the other "old yang" forms out there are all lies, except your own. How likely is that? So many teachers all telling lies? I don't think so.

If you search on YouTube you find a dozens of the things!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KZWfmQZuNLs
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vgtsr_KomDs
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt9kHnvcowU
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7yKxOBmrke0
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7yKxOBmrke0
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mLw7ip_jSTg

Basically, any version of the form passed on from a teacher that bypassed the Yang Cheng-Fu line gets called "old Yang". And some are obviously just made up to cash in on the $$$s. It's a case of buyer beware. Did pre-Cheng-Fu teachers actually have a standard "form" they taught? Or did they just teach different people different things depending on what they needed/body type? The only reason to standardise the form is to teach large groups of people, and that only happened in the Yang Cheng-Fu era when Cheng-Fu, Wu Jian Quan and Yang Sao Hou were teaching publicly for the first time.

Here is me doing the end of our "old Yang" form. From my research I've concluded this comes from Yang Jian Hou via the famous Ku Yu Chang, however it looks completely different than other lines that state they come from Yang Jian Hou (of course!). I think a lot of this is just because forms do change over time. I bet everyone here who teaches has students whose form looks slightly different to their own. Take one of those slight differences, add in another generation of students and it can start to look very different to the "original".*

Our "old yang":

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=klnDyBm1Oyk

Our lineage:

http://www.bath-taichi.co.uk/page3/page3.html

Edit: There is, of course, a strong argument to suggest that the real "old yang" is simply Chen style. However, did Chen style circa 1850 look like what we call Chen style today? Who knows. My own speculation would be that given the large number of practitioners and years both styles have passed through to get to where we are today I don't think Chen style development stood still, like a living fossil, either. My guess would be (and it's just speculation on my part) that Yang Lu Chan's form and Chen Chang Xin's form were pretty much the same, since then they have both been on their own evolutionary journeys - Yang's towards evening out the form, slowing down and softening (removing fa jin). Chen's towards more spiral movements and the stylistic look we see today.

* I can even see this happening with our form - there are videos of it available on YouTube from The San Ti Association in Argentina, and also Wing Lam in San Francisco - both come from Ku Yu Chang, and it's obviously the same as our form. However if I compare them to our form, stylistic differences are already very apparent between these three versions of the form - add in a few more generations of practitioners and I think they'll be very different to each other.

[GrahamB]

I think the influence of BG and XY concerning the Sun form is highly overrated and misunderstood. As I have said before: most things associated with XY in Sun tjq comes directly from Hao - including the follow-up step and the san ti (both the stance and the liuhe coordination).

I agree Bao. I also fail to see any significant XY or Bagua in Sun's taiji. To me it's just modified Hao.

Me either. Here's some clips:

Wu/Hou style:



Sun Style by Sun Jiayun:



The incredible similarity has even caused one commentator of the Wu/Hou clip to say "That's not Wu/Hou, that's Sun style"!

I do see a XingYi influence in the Sun Tai Chi though - more like a flavour than anything huge - the her punch at 0.54 looks very like Beng Quan from XingYi, and is a bit different to the normal Tai Chi way of doing it. YMMV!

[kreese]

It was supposed to by my cult, not yours...*takes GI Joes and goes home, sniffling*

Doc Stier - do you teach TCM by apprenticeship the way you learned from your teacher?