u/2numbers2words

since it’s the weekend, I thought it would be interesting to get several different takes on this topic. It took me three months of walking the circle before I began to even see the general principal of bagua. So maybe 10 or possibly 5 points people could look at to distinguish between the real thing and a skillful facsimile? Number one I think is continuous motion. The second one would be which part of the body initiates movement.

What do you guys think?

what happens when you have no traction and you punch? I asked this personally to William C Chen and he says the punch doesn’t work on ice.

I did kung fu before tai chi and learned how to punch even while falling down, but the technique is very different.

so… Has anyone figured out how to do the tai chi punch wall on really slippery ice?

(crampons don’t count because that would imply you are holding an ice axe)
((I know this is going on too long, but I had some students who were serious hockey players so this came up and we actually tried some striking on ice))

I didn’t think this would generate so many comments. Physics is good. Most of my internal arts instructors as well as fellow students all knew a Hamiltonian from a Lagrangian.

well, I like the rhyming thing for the title egregious as it may be.

TLDR please let me know if this demonstration is something you like doing or have tried.

One of the ways I like to demonstrate the health properties of Taiji is by smacking a tree with my palm for a few minutes while explaining a topic. It looks pretty easy until someone else tries it and then they can't do it unless they have a proper background.
well, they can do it once and then they say that it's very very painful. Very bad for your shoulder and neck and everything else. Unless of course you are doing the form correctly.

i'm just using a version of brush knee and making palm contact. I'm guessing a lot of people here can do this and maybe it's a good way of helping the public understand that we are doing a real thing. Also, it makes a really loud sound and takes off the bark so there's a circus/theatrical aspect also it's a good way of testing if you have a connection from your foot to your palm.

anyway, this is my random thought of the day and also this demonstration has gotten me a lot of students of college age who would otherwise have no interest in tai chi.

松胯 (sōng kuà) is the first thing you do in the forms I have learned and it's what I teach. I'm not good with tonal languages so I just call it " sung kwa".

So for whoever is reading, is this is the first thing that you do when you begin is sung your kwa or is it something else?

there's another post today just about the term sung so I thought this compound term would be interesting.

One day when I was taking a class with William C Chen in New York I was squatting and stretching out my spine. He came over to me and squatted down next to me and then from that position quietly announced to the class that not only is this important but that you really shouldn't begin to practice of tai chi until you can squat comfortably. We both had our feet flat and our spines pretty vertical.

I had never heard this before so I was curious what others here have been taught or experienced. In my experience any problems have actually been helped with proper squatting.