Article: Kao - to strike with the body

[Martin2]

Enjoy:

http://taichi-philosophy.blogspot.de...with-body.html

All the best

Martin

[Cataphract]

Hallo Martin, interesting article. Thanks.

For Yang Banhou Kao seems to be a secondary method for regaining the center when something went wrong. (As far as I understand.) What do you think?

[Martin2]

Hey Cataphract,

never heard of that, but sounds interesting.

Do you know more? Is this written down somewhere?

All the best

Martin

[Cataphract]

Yes, in Explaining Taiji Principles by Yang Banhou translated by Paul Brennan §23 "Taiji’s Four Secondary Techniques".

Therefore the purpose of the four secondary techniques is to troubleshoot the mistakes you make in those moments when your technique is performed contrary to the theory.

[-N-]

Is the translation to primary/secondary(with implication of secondary with regard to priority) correct?

Seems more like straight and corner techniques.

[Martin2]

-N- is right here:

The title of § 23 is "The Interpretation of Tai Chi's Four Corners".

But still Yang Banhou sees here the Four Corner Techniques cai, lie zhou and kao as a compensation of flaws e.g. in the Four Straight Techniques peng, lü, ji and an.

So there is a hierarchy between the techniques.

This hierarchy is found often in classical texts, but the explanation, that it is to compensate faults is, as far as I know, quite unique.

I have not leaned it that way, so hard to comment for me.

In the way I was taught, peng, lü, ji, an have more situations, where one can use them - then comes cai, lie, zhou and kao, which are more specialized, e.g. kao and zhou for closer distances.

But one could interpret it like that: If one made a mistake at peng, lü, ji, an and the other can approach nearer, I use zhou and kao to compensate that error.

All the best and thx for the interesting observation

Martin