About style
There are 3 traditional Tai Chi frames.
Large frame.
Middle frame.
Small frame.
Altogether there are four. Some students practice a sort of Jumbo frame.
If they like it, why not.
Old Yang style, small frame Tai Chi Chuan at his highest level.
Grand master Erle Montaigue
He seems to be doing nothing at all, to be doing by doing nothing.
At the first level (large frame) Tai Chi promotes good health.
At the intermediate level Tai Chi is very effective for self defence.
At the highest level (small frame) it leads to spiritual fulfillment.
Tai Chi promotes good health, effective self defence and spiritual fulfillment.
Old Yang style-Yang Lu Chan
Small frame Tai Chi Chuan
Martial Tai Chi Chuan:
with the quick, sudden force of compact Small Frame Tai Chi Chuan.
Tai Chi family stories may have been part of China's national patrimonium.
It's of no interest which of the 3 frames came first,
in Taoism "large" entails "small" as "small" entails "large".
As far as I think these are all just external definitions.
Large, middle and small frame traditions have similar training methods
and are training the same Tai Chi principles.
Style is no substitute for substance
Some students only think about Tai Chi in terms of perfect postures. That's frustrating business, but that's not the core
business of Tai Chi Chuan.
Each Tai Chi posture is only a finishing shape. A finishing shape is nothing more than a finishing shape, but there is
always a lot of information on the way there. Tai Chi is not the 'perfect finishing shape', Tai Chi is the process on the
way.
Most people tend to think of perfection as a state, but perfection isn't a state, it's change, it's a process, a constant
flux. If you strive to shape and form the perfect Tai Chi posture, you strive to shape reality into what it isn't. You
see the natural flow of change as a de-information, as a frustrating loss of form rather than as a natural change. You
rather solidify the river of change into an immutable state of perfection and freeze it in time and space than to flow with
it. A process of perfection has no dead ends. It's just a way, it's open ended, you go of one moment of (in)-perfection
to another and on to another. In that sense you are always succeeding since you are always doing your best.
The process of perfection is like bathing in truth, and sometimes we don't like washing in truth because it gets us to clean.
Most people like washing in fantasy, most people solidify the river of change and freeze it in time and space.
Yang style, large frame postures.
Going of one moment of (in)perfection to another and on to another.
A process of perfection has no end.
"The Old Yang (Yang Lu Chan) is true Tai Chi Chuan".
Is the Old Yang Style true or false? Yess! That's a good question.
Every proposition is true or false.
No proposition is both true and false.
The proposition "snow is white" is true if and only snow is white.
I mean:
Style is no substitute for substance.
Middle frame Tai Chi Chuan.
Old Yang style, Yang Lu Chan.
I talk about own experiences: there is a world of difference between
Chinese and Japanese martial arts.
Japanese martial arts take feudal martial codes in to daily life.
Chinese martial arts take life as it is in to martial codes.
Once up in a time in a Japanese Garden.
If the Real Stuff begins to sicken
and decay,
it used an enforced ceremony
Xing yi, Bagua Zhang, Tai Chi Chuan
are the three internal Chinese martial arts:
Most (post)modern short styles of Tai Chi Chuan trace their development
to one of the five traditional Tai Chi styles:
Chen, Yang, Wu/Hao, Wu, and Sun style.
All reasons for a style judgment are practitioner orientated.
Martial applications; no panic.
Keep your cool, don 't lose your tai chi style.
A Tai Chi Style is the way in which the Tai Chi tradition is said, done, expressed or performed in postures
with beautiful names as
'Grasp Sparrows Tail, Stork Spreads Wings, Carry Tiger and returns to Mountain, Repulse Monkey...'
The removal of martial explanations for Tai Chi postures has necessitated new visual imagery.
An example would be "Serve the Pizza".
She could kill a pizza without touching it;
If you really like it why not.
Large frame Tai Chi Chuan.
There are many Tai Chi styles.
A Tai Chi style, whatever is an expression of an inner energy flow.
Yang style.
Yang Lu Chan - Yang Cheng Fu
large frame.
Big, fast, open and yang movements in de large frame are nice to see.
Nice to do.
But
each evening the sun shows the beauty of her own disaster.
Small frame Tai Chi Chuan
After years
As you become more competent you no longer need that large frame
because you have internalised(yin) your own energy flow.
That's what we call "small frame Tai Chi Chuan".
Small frame Tai Chi Chuan offers you a mirror.
It feels like coming home knowing your own little place between heaven and earth.
Knowing yourself.
It makes you humble.
Sometimes.
"Knowing your right place between heaven and earth."
That's the Taoistic definition of the word:
"Lifestyle".
Tai Chi Classics: about style.