Essence of Yang Style

[mawali]

It is my opinion that the limited movement/stepping in modern Yang is due not to some standardization but rather the simple fact that most of it came from Yang Cheng Fu as he was over 6 feet tall and 290 lbs. How many 290 pounders have you seen that like to move a lot, or need to for that matter?

Agreed while saying that not all of Yang Chengfu's students had the same instruction. It appears and it is documented that while younger, Yang Chengfu taught some of the family's system but as he got older his frame (form and body) changed to the extent that perhaps he had less need of 'shenfa' (his presence was enough) and at least some jibengong!
Some of the older Yang Chengfu forms (while he was younger or when some of his uncles were around), the older students played the form with stepping reminiscent of Sun style, Wu style and even Chen style frame.

Chengfu's standardization appeared to only used bow step and variation of it exclusively as opposed to lively step of Sun (Wu/Hao) or Chenstepping!
For every student who studied with Chengfu, no one student or set of student play the form the same way. I have noticed that the later student follow the 'standardized' format in the sense that everyone does it the same way! Variation is minimal.

[Baxian]

Baxian,

I'm glad you liked the article and thanks for the response. To which version of the two person set are you referring? To be honest I am not well informed on this set. Every time I have tried to research it I have found poor history and inconsistent versions (everyone's version is different). To be blunt - none that I have seen hold up to my understanding of how Tai Chi really functions with proper use of range, "real" strikes, etc. Not to say there are none out there but I personally haven't seen one.

If you have a version you can point me to I'd be happy to take a look at it. I have also found some interesting discoveries in the Traditional Long Form that point to that set as actually being a two person set. It may well be true only on runs in one direction, and starts anew when it changes direction, but I'll let you know as I delve deeper into the set and it's applications.

Best

I am afraid I am not much help there...I probably would not know a "good" version if I saw it. I have only seen a few versions of the set and all of them were very different. It seemed to me that the sets were mostly striking and kicking with a lock or two included. When I read your post I then guessed that the difference in emphasis might be balance to the throwing you observed in the long form. Just an attempt at a guess.

thanks for answering

Baxian