hi Charles. That's a fair assumption on your part from what I wrote, but no my teacher can switch from light to heavy or from agile to unmovable.charles wrote:willie wrote:In my opinion if the master does not have a very heavy feel to his applications then find a new master immediately.
My experience has been that Taijiquan is like a coin, with two sides. One side involves being hard, heavy, immovable. The other side involves being imperceptibly soft, light and "not there" when someone pushes or attacks. The most skilled of those that I've met are able to instantaneously switch between the two at will.
I'd suggest that if you have a teacher who can only be hard, heavy and immovable, to learn what you can from that teacher and then move on to someone who can teach the other side of the coin. Depending, of course, upon what kinds of skill you are interested in developing.
Years ago, I used to speak of using what I was taught originally, it's more like ghost hands. I believe that It's sort of what Windwalker is describing.
What I have found after meeting my primary teacher that it is easy to acquire a very light touch and it is very difficult to acquire the heavy hands that are necessary to have high-level taijiquan. What actually occurs when ghost hands meet these heavy hands of fang song is that the heavy hands will cut right through the ghost hands and Destroy them like nothing.