u/Extend-and-Expand

Reading Chen Yanlin's Yang's hand form manual, this caught my eye: 

>When you are beginning to work with the set, your surroundings should be spacious, for if the environment is confiningly small, it will be difficult to do the set continuously without interruption, the postures will easily develop flaws, and you will become unable to do them correctly. But once your practice has taken you to a depth of skill, the size of the environment will not matter, and even the space of four square tiles will be enough to practice on. 

The idea of performing the long form in a compact space appeals to me. I think I’m not alone when I say I can’t always find an open space to practice. I decided to look into it. 

The Yang Family board has a good thread about it: 

>Q: Is there any general consensus on how to do traditional forms in cramped spaces? Should you delete postures? Add postures? Shorten your steps?

>A: Ben Lo teaches what Cheng Man-Ch'ing called "the ox-stall form". Mr. Lo points out that, whenever a foot is unweighted to step forward, you can step backward just as well. I have used this principle in motel rooms to go through the entire Cheng Man-Ch'ing form and it works well. Just step back, whenever you would step forward. I have used this with the sword and saber forms as well. 

So, I mucked about until I found this by one of Lo’s students:

>How can we practice Taiji in a very limited floor space? . . . When I pressed Ben with this question about doing the entire continuous form in a limited area, he surprisingly showed me that the entire Cheng Taiji set can be performed in just four square feet of space! I can't describe each adjustment here, but actually it was very intuitive, just stepping back or moving in place where you would have gone forward. . . . So, no excuses for non-practice! 

Encouraged, I kept digging and found this video of Victor Fu showing how he steps his 24 form in a small space. This gave me an idea of what I was trying to do.

Using this ox-stall footwork I found I could perform the entire Yang long form in a pretty tight space. I'll be able to refine it by smoothing some transitions here and there, but–overall–it was a success.

Do any of you practice the Ox Stall Method? Any advice? Or do you have other tips and tricks for compacting a long form’s footprint you might care to share?

edit: I just ordered a book by Jessie Tsao called Compact Tai Chi, which I guess uses a circle method and not the ox-stall stepping. I don’t think it’s based on circle walking à la bagua; it looks to be more about stepping out to compass or clock points. He has some Youtube videos about compact taiji, but I didn't see one where he just goes over the basic footwork. 

edit 2: I used Yang Jun's footwork for all the Cloud Hands.

About a year ago, I posted the news that Paul Brennan is translating Chen Xin's manual. Since that post, he's translated two more sections.

CHEN XIN – SECTION TWO | Brennan Translation

CHEN XIN – SECTION THREE | Brennan Translation

Great stuff here with Chen Xin's awesome illustrations: useful to any student of taijiquan.

To just pluck a paragraph at random:

>Your shoulder joints should open up. They might be difficult to open in the beginning, but you must not try to force them to do so before you have even developed any skill. They will open in their own time. You might think that they are open, but they have not yet actually opened. You have to work hard for a long time in order to activate their natural capacity to open, and then their actual opening will be correctly perceived. Once the shoulder joints have opened, the actions of the arms moving back and forth, bending and extending, will be like wind blowing over trees, setting back the work of Nature, such a liveliness that there will be no sluggishness inhibiting you at all. The shoulders are the key. This critical juncture for liveliness to get through into the arms has to be understood.

What a gem.

Chatting with u/XiMing_SanRen, I learned he’s an inheritor of Tian Jinlong’s taijiquan method, Three Sways Three Swings (三摇三摆 sānyáosānbǎi). 

Cool, huh?

I asked him if I might write a post about this to see if anyone else here wants to learn more. He said it's no problem and seemed delighted someone was curious about the system.

Researching this post was a real challenge for me: my Mandarin is rudimentary at best and I had to rely on a lot of machine translations just to get the gist of things. It's likely that my post is less than accurate and I apologize for any errors. 

Needless to say, I’m hoping we might encourage u/XiMing_SanRen to help introduce Three Sways Three Swings to an international audience here on reddit and maybe show us what the system’s really about. 

From the little I understand, swing (bǎi 摆) is to swing in a fixed arc like a pendulum, and sway (yáo 摇) is softer and multidirectional and undulating. Swinging seems more about issuing, while swaying seems to be more about yielding and changing. I'm not sure.

As I understand it, Dr. Tian pulled deep-rooted motions from the traditional family styles and distilled them into a simpler system with an eye to push hands and free-fighting (san shou). It seems to be about translating real taijiquan skill into combat sport. 

And from what I can tell--and I might be getting hyperbolic here--Tian Jinlong might be doing for taijiquan what Wang Xiangzhai did for xingyiquan, boiling an art down to its essence.

So, compared to the traditional styles many of us here practice, Tian’s taijiquan looks to have much less form practice and no archaic weapons, but lots of solo and partner work.

Three Sways Three Swings seems more like the brand; the full system is called Three Tiers Nine Levels.

Here's a video of Tian Jinlong showing some skill.

Here’s one of a student demonstrating core movements. 

Here’s an article outlining the system.

http://www.sanyaosanbai.com/tj/

If you search for Tian Jinlong online, you’ll find some videos of him demonstrating push hands and how he likes to reach and apply. Someone posted about him before on r/taijiquan, but I couldn’t find the post: I think it was this hour-plus lecture with demos.

edit: This post is to see if there's interest out there. Me? I'm always up for some education.

edit: fixed link.

I think swinging is part of most Chinese martial arts, including taijiquan. We certainly see it in styles like Long Fist (chángquán),  tōngbèiquán, and Spring Leg (tántuǐ). 

If you search YouTube, you will find dozens of videos teaching basic arm swinging (bǎi bì), the so-called layman’s qigong. 

In the Yang family style I like to practice, we work a lot with the idea of swing and rotate (or swing and twist). We have lots of different methods for swinging the arms, legs, torso, and hips–and, of course, to integrate all that into taiji movement. 

But I recently discovered how the western physical therapy method of arm swinging is similar to what we do in CMA. 

Here’s a video of a physical therapist demonstrating Codman's pendulum exercises. (I don’t know if this is the best example out there, but it helps illustrate what I’m on about.)

Obviously, this is not the same as taijiquan. People in recovery will sometimes do the Codman’s pendulum exercises with light weights, for example. In taijiquan, we swing with intention and spiraling, that's how you get "heavy hands"–but the core idea seems to be the same.   

Here’s Zhao Youbin showing a swinging technique from Yang style’s basic training. (This whole video is great, btw.)

In the beginning, the aim is to get your upper arms–their glenohumeral joints–to move freely. 

In my opinion, you also have to learn how to let the joint’s socket “absorb” the joint’s ball. (In kettle bell training, they talk about it like a turtle pulling its head into its shell.) If you suck in the shoulder joints too much, they become too stiff; if you don’t do it all, they become unstable. The Goldilocks zone is sōng.

I’m not posting this because I just discovered arm swinging and need to preach its value, or because I think people here are unfamiliar with the practice. It’s basic stuff. But I like to focus on basic stuff. 

I’m just trying to articulate some initial thoughts about it, so I can better explain its value to beginners, and introduce them to its safe practice. A lot of people here are experienced practitioners and teachers, and I hope they will share their knowledge and understanding about this basic but essential practice.  

Because whatever arm-swinging really is, it's not mindlessly flinging your arms about. That much is sure.

Maybe you have lordosis of the lower spine (that’s when it curves inward)? Maybe that keeps you from moving as freely as you like? Maybe you hear people talking about how they swing their tailbone, but you don’t have that kind of control?

Maybe you don’t have nice, flowing hips, that free-moving kua?

I get it. I struggled with my hips and shoulders and spine for years.

Rotating the shoulders is relatively easy. But the hips? Not so much.

I know it’s not traditional training, but Pilates rotational disks helped me a lot. Here’s the brand I use. They're pretty good. I have to lubricate their "lazy susan" hardware now and again. And I imagine you can find cheaper ones if you look around.

You can position them to work any basic stance. You can twist and hold, or wiggle around. I use four so I can easily change stances. Sometimes I use one to isolate.

I used to just use a barre bar (or a door frame) and twist one leg. This is much better, because you can twist both at once and play with your twisting.

We all put a lot of work into our training. And sometimes we need a little boost.