Tai chi Sword: Taijijian 太极剑
The Tai Chi solo sword form is the first step in learning to fight with a sword. If you have read my series on the Sword of Li Jinglin, you will be familiar with the process. After acquiring a basic competence in taijiquan…
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When and Where?
One of my favorite Chinese Tai Chi friends has recently returned to Austin, and I have begun practicing with her again. Wonderful! She speaks no English. No problem! I speak Taijiese. Taijiese is not conversational Chinese, which I do not know. It is…
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New Books!
A couple of new books have just come out–one by me and the other by a good friend. From Tao to Complexity, by Laurent Carrer, is about “The Merging of Ancient Practices and Scientific Discovery.” Laurent Carrer is a writer, translator, and long-time…
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Grandmaster Aiping Cheng
A new website, aipingcheng.com, documents the lifetime achievements of a great Tai Chi Grandmaster. It’s a wonderful resource with videos and photographs spanning decades of elite wushu and tai chi. Master Aiping learned from an early age from some of the most illustrious…
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Yang-style 28-step Tai Chi Fan
This relatively new Tai Chi fan form, created in 2014, is elegant and short. It has many intricate and enjoyable movements, but no physically challenging moves, so it is appropriate for people of all abilities. It’s not very difficult to learn, so it…
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More Wu-style Tai Chi
In my last post, on the Wu 45, I didn’t include the list of movements. Here it is. 吴式太极拳45式竞赛套路 (Wu-style Tai Chi 45-step competition routine) [PDF] The Wu 45 is the competition form, so it’s pretty demanding. For beginners, a very short routine—just…
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Wu-Style Tai Chi (3)
The modern competition form in Wu-style is the Wu 45. Like other competition routines, it incorporates the opening of the traditional form, plus many of the most important moves of the old form, but it is more left/right balanced and contains no repetition.…
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Pleasantries
[An addition to the Taijiese section of TaiChiNotebook.com] While I haven’t attempted to learn conversational Chinese, a little bit is helpful in the context of Tai Chi practice. This short section is especially tailored for the situation (in which I have found myself…
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New Format
TaiChiNotebook is almost ten years old! I posted the first blog entry—on 32-sword—in July 2014. I was at the beginning of my journey, studying traditional Yang and Chen style Tai Chi at a local school. I was just discovering the modern forms, starting…
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Traditional Wu-style Long Form
[See my previous post introducing Wu-style Tai Chi] Each of the major styles of Tai Chi has a traditional long form, and all of the long forms follow the same deep logic. The Wu-style long form tracks the Yang 108 quite closely, so…
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Yangtze River
Before I left for China in 2017, I tried to tell my Chinese friends where I’d be going. This was, as always, a challenge, since I speak almost no conversational Chinese (only Taijiese!) and only a few of them speak any English at…
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Wu-Style Tai Chi
I started learning Wu-style Tai Chi a few years ago, but it wasn’t until this year that I really started to feel I was getting the hang of it. I love it! The Wu name comes from 吴全佑 Wú Quán yòu (1834–1902), who…
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Yang/Chen Side-by-Side (3)
Continuing the Yang and Chen style comparison project (scroll down for the first and second posts in this series), the third video starts with the second set of Cloud Hands and finishes with 收势 Shōu Shì (Closing Form). Again, I am an old…
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Yang/Chen Side-by-Side (2)
Continuing the Yang and Chen style comparison project (see the first post in this series), the second video starts with the Single Whip before the first Cloud Hands and finishes with the Single Whip after Fair Lady Works the Shuttle. This segment was…
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Yang/Chen Side-by-Side (1)
I’ve just completed a study comparing the Yang and Chen styles of Tai Chi. The two styles look and feel quite distinct, but the one (Yang) is derived from the other (Chen) and retains much of its essential content. In an earlier post…
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