Tai Chi Journal

My Tai Chi Form (Part II)

(This was originally posted on Friday, March 11, 2005. I have altered the date to group all my "My Tai Chi Form" posts together.)

Herein I extend what I began in My Tai Chi Form (Part I). My intention is to continue documenting the initial moves of the Yang-Style Long Tai Chi Form we are learning in class. When I left off, I was up to movement/position 4, the Double Ward Off Right, in which the weight is positioned mostly on the forward (right) foot, with the right knee bent and the trailing (left) leg somewhat straighter. The hands are raised, palms outward, with the right hand up at shoulder level and the left hand behind it at chest level.

To the right is a movie viewer. Click on its control strip's Play icon to play the entire section from the DVD which this post describes. Or, click on the movie image itself to play the movie independently in QuickTime Player.







Now, fuller descriptions of each movement:

(5) Following Double Ward Off Right, and without much of a pause, we move into the position called Roll Back Right. In Chinese, it's lu. It's shown as illustration sequence 4 on p. 67 in DOT (The Dao of Taijuquan). It's also shown as "Roll Back (Right)", steps 32-35 in SBS (Step-by-Step Tai Chi), pp. 111-112. In TCC (The Complete Book of Tai Chi Chuan), it's illustration 7d on p. 78.

Roll Back Right transfers your weight from your forward (right) foot to your back (left) foot, without the feet moving at all.

If you enter Roll Back Right from the Single Ward Off position — which in this particular case you don't, as you are in Double Ward Off, with both hands held high — your lower (left) hand would be down at hip level, and you would have to arc it up, palm outward, in front of your chest. As it is, it's already there.

The front (right) hand has its back facing forward (I need to check this in the form we are actually learning in class) and so you must make a tiny arc with it such that it flips palm-frontward. The fingers, which were not spread before, are now spread casually apart.

All these perhaps minor arm and hand movements take place as the body's weight begins to transfer back to the back (left) foot. Then come some truly major arm/hand movements, as both hands sweep down to hip level. The formerly forward (i.e., right) hand ends up a bit lower than the hindmost (left) hand.

(6) Then, the position called Press Right (in Chinese, qi, pronounced "CHEE") is what Roll Back Right inevitably leads to. Press Right is detailed in SBS as steps 37 and 38 on p. 112; in DOT as illustration sequence 5 on p. 67; and in TCC as illustrations 7e and 7f on p. 78.

The Press position (to either side) is just like the Ward Off position to the same side ... except for what the hands do.

As the body's weight slides back forward to rest mostly on the forward (in this case, right) foot, the hands move from hip level up to chest level. The "dominant" or "leading" hand, shall we call it, is here the right one (since this is Press Right). Accordingly, it is in front of the left hand — which I call the "recessive" or "trailing" hand. Its palm is toward the face.

But the palm of the trailing hand is facing outward. The fingers of both hands are spread. And the two hands cross at the heels or wrists, making Press a visually distinctive position. The combined hands are, in fact, being pressed forward in a way that would bode ill for any hypothetical attacker at one's dominant diagonal.

But the Press in Yang-Style Tai Chi is immediately softened by folding the trailing hand, palm now downward, forward and over the wrist of the leading hand, as the overall position morphs into ...

(7) ... Push Right. This is a movement/position illustrated in SBS as steps 37-41 on pp. 112-113. Illustration sequence 6 on p. 67 of DOT shows it. Illustrations 7g and 7h on p. 78 of TCC show it, too. In Chinese, Push (to either side) is called an, pronounced "ON."

In Push Right, the weight moves from the forward (right) foot back onto to the rear (left) foot. The right foot's front comes up as the heel stays down (check this). The knees remain bent, with the rear (left) knee bent more than the front (right) knee. Then the weight transfer is reversed, with the weight coming back over the front (right) knee again. It is bent, while the knee of the rear (left) leg is pretty much straight.

As all this is happening, the hands uncross at shoulder level, with the fingers spread and pointed forward and with the palms down. Next, the hands arc back and down to waist level, with the elbows bending to accomodate. Finally, as the weight comes forward again, the hands come forward and up, fingers spread, palms out. This last motion constitutes the "push."

The combination Ward Off Left (peng), Ward Off Right (also peng), Roll Back (lu), Press (qi), and Push (an) is a standard one (though it can also be done in mirror image). It's called Grasp Sparrow's Tail.

(8) Next comes Single Whip Left, which SBS has as steps 42-52 on pp. 114-117. DOT's similar version is illustrated as sequence 7 on p. 67. The Single Whip Left shown in TCC is not quite the same, but there's a version of this pattern illustrated in drawings 9a, 9b, and 9c on p. 79. (I'd better admit up front that I'm not terribly clear on exactly how or how well the class version matches any of these.)

As shown in SBS, Single Whip Left has a dozen steps. From the final Push Right position, with weight and hands skewed to the right, the object is to pivot everything radically and rapidly to the left side. Then there is a rightward recoil, followed by a step back toward the left.

The DOT version looks roughly the same, perhaps with minor differences. From Push Right, the hands and arms are swung leftward through a broad shoulder-height arc as the torso pivots in the same direction. Meanwhile, the bent-knees weight also shifts briefly mostly onto the left foot.

The hands now reach nearly as far left as they can go, and the recoil begins. As the weight starts shifting back over onto the right foot, the left hand does continue moving just a bit more leftward. But the right hand does something interesting: it makes a "hook" with all fingertips meeting the end of the thumb and pointing downward, with the wrist maximally limp.

That "hook hand" (the right) is swept up and over toward the right as the body's weight comes fully over the right foot. The "hook" ends up at the height of the shoulder, or just above it, with the right elbow straight and the right arm sticking fully out to the right side of the body.

Now the left foot, which is currently not bearing any weight, is picked up, swung drastically leftward, and planted down again. Meanwhile, the left hand and arm are swung rightward in front of the jaw and, as the head and torso pivot around to the left — the head going further around than the torso — the body's weight now shifts forward. I.e., it goes in the direction the head now faces, which is 180° counterclockwise from the way it faced at the beginning of Single Whip Left!

As the weight goes over the left foot, the left knee bends, and the unburdened right leg straightens. This forward thrust of the lower body is accompanied by moving the left hand forward in the same direction, palm out, such that it could, if extended even further, be pushed into the face of a hypothetical opponent.

During all this pivoting and thrusting, the right hand, once "hooked" and in position, doesn't move! It winds up being carried behind. That is, the "hooked" hand is pointed in the direction opposite to that in which the head is now pointing. (And, no, I have no idea how this "hooking" of the off hand "helps" from a martial arts perspective.)

posted by eric @ 9:25 PM