oragami_itto wrote:I don't do the tree hugging posture anymore. Some folks who's opinion I trust, different ones from completely different backgrounds, have said it causes stiffness.
And funny enough as far as I understand it, that particular posture comes from Yiquan, not traditional taijiquan practice.
oragami_itto wrote:And funny enough as far as I understand it, that particular posture comes from Yiquan, not traditional taijiquan practice.
robert wrote:oragami_itto wrote:And funny enough as far as I understand it, that particular posture comes from Yiquan, not traditional taijiquan practice.
I was taught that you can hold any taiji posture. When I was learning the form the instructors often had us hold a posture as they walked around and corrected the students.
The tree hugging posture I've been taught in Chen taiji is the posture from the end of raise hands (at the beginning of the form) - after lowering the hands rotate the forearms so the palms face each other.
We also hold lou xi - which is close to santi, but both hands are raised up in an enguard posture.
oragami_itto wrote:I think that is rather common both as a means of transmitting corrections and as a practice (holding postures) in and of itself. Particularly, as I mentioned above, as one way to practice the form. It seems qualitatively different to me than holding them in practicing zhan zhuang.
robert wrote:oragami_itto wrote:I think that is rather common both as a means of transmitting corrections and as a practice (holding postures) in and of itself. Particularly, as I mentioned above, as one way to practice the form. It seems qualitatively different to me than holding them in practicing zhan zhuang.
I've been taught that standing is the foundation of taijiquan and you want that quality throughout the form so for me holding a posture isn't any different than zhan zhaung although when I practice standing some postures I hold longer than I would getting forms corrections.
oragami_itto wrote:I agree 100%, I just feel that when I'm doing the "official" standing postures, holding for five minutes or more, it gets deeper and harder than what I would do as part of what I'd call "ding shi", or holding the end postures during the form to better understand and embody the posture.
It could well just be a flaw in my practice, but the quality of the two seems different. Not that one is better than the other but that they have a different sort of flavor and meaning to me. The dedicated standing is like laying the foundation down and the shorter holding is like building walls, etc on top of it, making use of what is cultivated in dedicated standing.
KEND wrote:In I Chuan front 6 postures I learnt you start with hands level with lower Tan Tien and the build up to middle Tan Tien [tree posture] In this fashion the body builds up the palm-abdomen connection, I couldnt understand why in TCC you go straight to the third posture. For the actual tree posture[with a tree] I was taught a ritual of asking tree permission etc-it seemed to work.
Bao wrote:It was probably there in the beginning of Tai Chi and probably even much earlier.
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