My 24 step taiji

Here's me doing the yang form. This was from January of '07. Looking at it now, I feel like I rushed some things and there are certains I think I do better now. There are always improvements in development even with the simplest things in taiji. It is key to keep practicing single moves and understanding the mechanics of them better. I wanted to post another example of the 24, but I couldn't find anything that I liked that much that was similar to the way we do.

24 simplified yang

How many moves are there in the tao?

Watching this, there were only one or two movements that looked unfamiliar to me,
which makes me feel like I must be near the end of the tao.

You said you felt like parts of it were rushed. Is it ever appropriate to vary the speed of Taiji forms, or should they generally maintain the slower pace usually associated with them?

It seems like the Chen style has some faster portions, which is why I'm curious.

Dave wrote:How many moves are there in the tao?

Watching this, there were only one or two movements that looked unfamiliar to me,
which makes me feel like I must be near the end of the tao.

You said you felt like parts of it were rushed. Is it ever appropriate to vary the speed of Taiji forms, or should they generally maintain the slower pace usually associated with them?

It seems like the Chen style has some faster portions, which is why I'm curious.

Good questions. There are 15 (I think) different tao for the 24 step as we teach it. You have one move left to learn I believe. There are a few things that are in the form that aren't part of the tao.

It is appropriate and even advisable at times to vary the speed of the forms. I believe I showed you before that there is the long way to perform it and the short way as far as the breathing goes. We will work on this more as you become more familiar and it will become more relevant as you do qigong training. The 24 form in particular is generally performed at a slow steady pace regardless of whether you are using the longer or shorter breathing method. In this video I use the shorter breathing and it is a pretty fast pace for this style. After practicing this for a long time and really getting the feel and connection in the form, I do like to perform it with some more acceleration at times. The more you understand and can apply the mechanics properly the more you can vary you solo practice based on your understanding of the body method. For now though, I suggest to do your form quite slow 99% of the time. As for the Chen style, there is much more variation with fast and slow and hard and soft visible in the forms. Apparently the older roots of the Yang style (supposedly derived from chen) are more like this, but Yang Cheng Fu, who popularized yang taiji, made the form entirely soft and slow for the public. There is great value and alot to be learned from this type of practice, but I really like to train more aggressive stuff as well.

Oh yeah, and as far as my comment about rushing moves, I just felt like there were certain motions I didn't quite complete the way I would like to. I could potentially do the whole form faster without rushing any individual moves if you get my meaning. Right off the bat, I feel like I should've let everything sink just a bit more on the opening. I think my cloud hands is better and more natural now. There is a palpable feeling to transitions from yin to yang that shouldn't be rushed and sometimes I am ahead of myself in this regard. This feeling becomes more natural and focused over time and ideally should be present even if perfoming a technique at full speed. It really takes a lot of slow practice to build up to this though.

I just noticed it said "simplified" 24 step. What is it a simplification of?

Dave wrote:I just noticed it said "simplified" 24 step. What is it a simplification of?

The original Yang form or the Long Form has more and a greater variety of moves. Our version of this is 88 steps, some do 108 and there are other variations. 24 step isn't technically traditional yang family taiji. It was developed by the government in the 50's I beilieve. It is a very good form either way.

What are the names of the last two moves in the Yang Taiji tao?

I have the rest written down for when I practice, but I never got the last two.

Dave wrote:What are the names of the last two moves in the Yang Taiji tao?

I have the rest written down for when I practice, but I never got the last two.

"flashing the palms" also known as "fan through back" and "hammer fist reverse punch" which I've seen called by colorful names but has always been called as such to me.

This is every move in the tao in order. I only do one or two of each as a reference for the order and transitions. I would recommend doing each move at least 5 times or much more depending on your practice time. It's dark and you can't see my feet so you won't learn much from this, but if you have learned it and forget the order or transitions here it is.