Tai Chi Journal

My Tai Chi Form (Part III)

(This was originally posted on Friday, March 18, 2005. I have altered the date to group all my "My Tai Chi Form" posts together.)

This post is a continuation of My Tai Chi Form (Part I) and My Tai Chi Form (Part II).

Last night was the next-to-last of our eight weekly Tai Chi classes in the current term at Tai Sophia Institute, located near Columbia, Maryland. Good news: our instructor, Brad, finally came up with DVDs for many of us (but not yet all of us), showing (among other things) himself doing the first of the six sections of Yang Style Long Form as we are being taught it. It will be quite a help to me in trying to visualize exactly how the movements flow together.

Along these lines, Brad says the form we are learning has six sections, of which the first is all that we are studying in this class. He says the second and fifth sections are almost entirely identical, and furthermore that there is a lot of repetition of the movements we are learning in the remaining sectionss. So the beginner learning I'm doing now would seem to be a bigger step up than will be required later, if I want to go on to learn the rest of the form.

The bulk of last night's lesson concerned a segment of the form's first section that was new to me. After the Single Whip Left movement with which I ended Part II comes one called Strum the Lute (or Play the Guitar). Then there's a transitional move (its name is one I don't know) that we haven't really covered yet. Then there is a sequence of movements highlighted by several repetitions of something called Brush Knee, to one side or the other, interspersed with a brief move called (I believe) Crane Takes Flight. It was that sequence which we did over and over last night.

(In what follows, I'm going to adopt the strategy of describing the direction of movement with respect to a clockface. 12 o'clock is the forward direction as the form begins. 3 o'clock is 90° to its right. 9 o'clock is 90° to its left, and so on. Also, the numbers I assign to the various movements and patterns take up where my previous posts left off, at movement 9. Finally, the images I show are from the DVD. The guy doing the Tai Chi is my able instructor, Brad.)

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.







Herewith, more details:

Single Whip Left, Final (facing 9 o'clock)

(9) The Lift Hand movement (this is what The Dao of Taijiquan calls it) proceeds from the end of Single Whip Left. By virtue of doing Single Whip Left (see earlier post), one's body has rotated counterclockwise from facing, earlier, toward 3 o'clock in Front Bow Stance Right (with hands in Push position). Now, at the end of Single Whip Left, one is facing toward 9 o'clock, the left hand has been pushed forward, palm out at shoulder height. The "hooked" right hand is out to the side (aimed toward 12 o'clock) at the same height. The weight is forward on the left leg, with the right leg trailing and the right foot angled toward 10:30 (i.e., at a 45° angle to the left foot's 9 o'clock orientation).

Lift Hand, About to Step Out

Now the torso, head, left hand/arm, and left foot (toe lifted, heel down) rotate clockwise to about 10:30 as the weight comes back briefly over the right leg. The right hand/arm follows the rotating shoulders and points to 1:30.

Then the weight moves forward to an even distribution ... and quickly beyond, to rest entirely on the left leg. The unloaded right leg, toe down, moves toward the planted left foot in preparation for stepping out toward 12 o'clock. Meanwhile the "hooked" right hand has relaxed and been brought fully down beside the right thigh, and the open left hand has been swept at shoulder height to point in the 10:30 direction, drawn in toward the body.

As the right knee comes up to proceed with stepping out toward 12 o'clock, the straight right arm and hand follow it up. Lagging slightly behind, the left arm and hand, elbow well bent, glide down to breastbone height. The right leg reaches forward, heel down, preparing for contact with the ground.

Lift Hand, Final

The right arm, mimicking the right thigh and knee, now reaches outward as the right hand ascends to shoulder height and slightly above. As the right heel finally comes down, the left hand sweeps down to belly height and then starts out in preparation for the next movement.

Until someone tells me otherwise, I'm going to call this particular version of the movement Lift Hand Right, as the general direction of the movement is to the right. There exists a mirror-image version, which I'll call Lift Hand Left.

At the end of this movement, be it noted, the right foot is pointing forward to 12 o'clock, with its heel down on the ground, but with little weight on it yet. The next movement will require the right foot to pivot slightly on its unweighted heel and finally plant pointing toward 11 o'clock.


(10) The next movement is called White Crane Spreads Wings in The Dao of Taijiquan, though I'm not precisely sure what Brad calls it.

From the final Lift Hand position, the head swivels left and the left hand continues sweeping down and then out toward 3 o'clock. The right hand pushes forward/outward. The right foot rotates on its heel so that it points to about 11 o'clock, the right toe starts down, and some of the weight starts shifting forward onto the right foot.

White Crane Spreads Wings, First Phase	White Crane Spreads Wings, Second Phase

Then, in the second phase, as the right foot comes all the way down, the arms/hands "windmill" such that the right arm is extended at hip height, palm down, toward 12 o'clock, and the left hand has been raised to shoulder height. The head swivels a bit to point to 11 o'clock.

In the third phase of White Crane Spreads Wings, the weight shifts wholly onto the right foot, and the left foot is picked up off the ground. Meanwhile, the right hand/arm move fully down beside the hip, en route forward and up. The left hand sweeps to a central position in front of the face. It will continue its sweep in a downward direction.

White Crane Spreads Wings, Third Phase	White Crane Spreads Wings, Fourth Phase

Next, in the fourth phase, the raised left leg and foot are lifted further in preparation for stepping out toward 9 o'clock. At the same time, the hands and arms move into, very briefly, something like a Hold the Chi Ball position with the right hand on the bottom. The head and torso have rotated in the general direction of 9 o'clock.

In the fifth phase, the right hand, on the bottom of the Chi Ball, sweeps up as the left hand, closer in to the body, sweeps down, until they are in the positions shown at right. Meanwhile, the raised left foot moves completely out toward 9 o'clock, and its pointed toe touches the ground. This, a distinctive posture which I've not encountered before, is held for a moment or two, and then the next movement begins.

White Crane Spreads Wings, Final

Notice that at this point the "leading" or forward hand (the right) is opposite to the leading or forward foot (the left). Compare this position to the first illustration above, at the end of Single Whip Left. In that position, the lead hand is the left one, and the lead foot is also the left. The weight is forward on the lead foot, with the lead hand pushing. But at the end of White Crane Spreads Wings, with lead hand and lead foot opposed, the weight is back on the trailing foot, and the lead hand is waving rather than pushing.

Perhaps we should call the former a "strong/doubled lead position," and the latter a "weak/opposed lead position." So one way to grossly oversimplify the Strum the Lute/White Crane Spreads Wings sequence is to say that it is a clever way to transition from a strong/doubled to a weak/opposed lead position. After so doing, the body winds up pointing in the same 9 o'clock direction, even if it temporarily heads in the 12 o'clock direction during Strum the Lute and in the 11 o'clock direction during White Crane Spreads Wings.

(10) Now, after White Crane Spreads Wings, begins the first of the to-be-repeated moves: Brush Knee. (The Dao of Taijiquan calls it Brush Knee and Twist Step, Right.) From the end position of White Crane Spreads Wings, the hands are first brought through a position at mid-torso height as the weight rocks slightly back away from the pointed left toe. Notice that the only way to do this is to lower the right hand as the left is raised. The nearly independent "windmilling" or "cloud-waving" of the two arms that has taken place during the Strum the Lute/White Crane Spreads Wings sequence is now replaced by a more closely synchronized rotation. Perhaps this is why the toe-out-hand-up final position of White Crane Spreads Wings is held briefly before Brush Knee is begun. The right hand had been circling clockwise, from the perspective of the person doing the form. Now, from its held-high position at the very beginning of Brush Knee, it starts circling counterclockwise. At the point of the first-phase illustration below, the right hand has come down to the same height as the left hand, which is en route upward.

Brush Knee, First Phase	Brush Knee, Second Phase

Next, in Brush Knee's second phase above, the right hand continues to move downward as the left hand moves upward and begins to sweep in front of the face. The head and torso in effect follow the direction of its sweep, turning toward 11 o'clock. It is this phase of Brush Knee that really gets the two arms moving in a closer synchrony that is distinct from the quasi-independent movement of the arms in Lift Hand and White Crane Spreads Wings.

All this results in a position typical near the beginning of the Brush Knee Right movement — so named because it will be the right hand that eventually pushes forward — except that usually the forward (left) foot starts out heel-down, not toe-down, as here. This toe-down variation seems to come from how Brad has done White Crane Spreads Wings for the DVD. It is not how we are learning the form in class.

So far, the phases of Brush Knee have been preliminary, but now we gather our forces. In the third phase the head swivels rightward to follow, loose-eyed, the right arm coming up. The left hand's descent continues.

Brush Knee, Third Phase	Brush Knee, Fourth Phase

In the fourth phase of Brush Knee, the right hand and "over the top" and then forward, at eye level. The left hand's descent continues even further, to mid-torso level. Importantly, the unweighted forward foot, the left, is picked up off the ground. We are preparing to come forward in the 9 o'clock direction it is pointing toward.

Phase five of Brush Knee involves putting the front foot down, heel first, and moving weight forward onto it. The right hand continues forward, as the head and torso begin twisting counterclockwise.

Brush Knee, Fifth Phase	Brush Knee, Sixth Phase

Brush knee, phase six, is a logical continuation of the fifth phase in which the weight shifts more onto the front (left) foot and less on the back (right) foot, which is now fully planted on the ground. The right hand continues forward to become the obvious strong or lead hand. The counterclockwise twisting of the head and torso continue, carrying the weak (left) hand and arm with it.

Now we come to the final posture and goal of Brush Knee:

Brush Knee, Final Posture

In it, we see that the right hand and arm have finished their forward push. The weight is fully on the bent-knee forward leg — the left leg, on the opposite side from the strong hand — and the right leg and left hand are temporarily "weak."

Observe that Brush Knee has a lot in common with a baseball pitcher's (in this case, a righthander's) windup and delivery. Phases one through four are the windup, in which the general direction of motion is "away" from "home plate," and the final three phases are the delivery, in which the "pitcher's" motion is at last directed "towards home plate." But there the analogy breaks down; in Brush Knee, there is expressly no "follow through."

Because in this particular version of the movement, it is the right hand that is "pushed" — i.e., it is something like the windup and delivery of a right-handed baseball pitcher — this is the version more accurately called Brush Knee Right. Brush Knee Left is its mirror-image, in which the left hand is "pushed." Brsuh Knee Left will in fact enter the form we are practicing a few movements down the road.

Why is this movement called Brush Knee, though? Well, imagine what it would have looked like if Brad had raised his left knee quite a bit in moving through phases four and five to six. His left hand would have brushed over it! (Brad has demonstrated this in class for us.) In the form as performed for their own enjoyment by experts who have been mastering it for years — not by or for us newbies — moves such as Brush Knee are done in a more pronounced or exaggerated fashion. It is then easier to see why the movement is called what it is called.


(11) The next movement is one I'll call Crane Arms, based on something Brad said and similar names I find on one of my Tai Chi books, Tricia Yu's Tai Chi: Mind and Body. Its sequence of phases is illustrated below:

Crane Arms, First Phase	Crane Arms, Second Phase	Crane Arms, Third Phase

I'm not going to describe these phases in detail, for several reasons. First, the movement as Brad does it on the DVD is quite perfunctory; in class, we are being taught to raise our arms higher and wider and to linger a bit longer on this step. Second, I can find no confirmation of or reference to this movement in books, like The Dao of Taijiquan, which document Yang-Style Long Form. Accordingly, I suspect this is a "pseudo-step" that has been inserted in this version of the Yang form, a bit of choreographic icing on the cake.


(12) The next move is quite a basic one, Strum Lute, also called Playing Guitar.

Strum Lute, First Phase	Strum Lute, Second Phase	Strum Lute, Final Position

As Brad has done it, it began with the final phase of Crane Arms, in which he began stepping out with his left foot — a so-called "empty step," since no weight goes on it. Meanwhile, the arms and hands are moved into a position that looks like holding a lute's (or guitar's) neck with the left hand and strumming the instrument with the right hand.

* * *

The rest of the movements we have learned to date are basically repetitions of the moves I have already described, so I will cover them only briefly:

(13) A repitition of Brush Knee Right. This time, we begin it from the end position of Strum Lute, and the forward foot (the left) has it's heel down, not its toe.

(14) The mirror image of movement 13, Brush Knee Left. (I told you it was coming.) It looks just the same, except that the "windup" and "delivery" are left-handed.

(15) Another repitition of Brush Knee Right.

(16) A repetition of Crane Hands.

(17) Yet another repitition of Brush Knee Right.

(To be continued in My Tai Chi Form (Part IV) ..... .)

posted by eric @ 9:25 AM