Reflex, I suppose, sounds on or off. But it’s not so: even the knee pounding at the Doc’s office has range of intensity. The harder the hammer pops the knee tendon, the more the leg jolts upward. Likewise, the hotter the stove, the quicker the reflexive pull-away.

Sensivity guides the use of the reflex: reflexes start the energy of action, while sensitivity offers direction and guidance to the trajectories of motion. The person who gets burned moves toward cold water, and, though not reflexive, the decision to follow the reflex is an extension that power.

Health for me is more internal and passive; having healthy organs and blood and mental patterns is important. Fitness suggests something more active and external. Doing push-ups or running or swimming competently suggests fitness, to me.

Also, I suppose, fitness is more apparent visually: rippling musculature and toned legs. Health is a more subtle vibrancy: a glow, a bouyant posture.

I like them both.

This is interesting because Erle learned the Old Luchan form from a man who learned it from Yang Shao-hou. While Cheng-fu’s taichi is well known to de different from that of his father and brother, his body was not so different.

Cheng-fu taught many people forms, and push hands, but that is not taijiquan. He only passed his family system to 4 people, the system is a complete martial art, it contains much more than push hands and the long form. Included in his system is instruction on how to instruct, if a person teaches taijiquan they should teach a system, not just a form. Cheng-fu commented that the form was not taught in his system, rather the 13 postures are. In this way the form was the last thing taught, by teaching the postures one at a time they could be learned correctly, when a person learned them all in sequence they reach a point where they cease being a student and start being someone who practices taijiquan. In the old school the form was for practioners, otherwise it would need revision over and over until it was correct. Cheng-fu mentioned that it is easy to teach a movement but hard to correct a habit. In the Yang family school by teaching one posture at a time no revision of the form needs to take place, thus there is no advanced, intermediate or beginning level in the traditional long form.

In Cheng-fu’s time people wanted the form up front, so he gave it to them, and made some changes as well to make it easier to learn up front. He did not advocate this however and mentions in his works that the form is based on the art, not the otherway around. Dozens of people or more learned a long form and push hands from Cheng-fu, Chen Wei ming was among them, none of these people learned t’aijiquan, when they practice a form they practice a form not taijichuan.

It is wise to note that the form is a tool for teaching the art of the 13 postures. It is the postures that are key, many people who learned the forms from Cheng-fu did not learn the postures. They do not understand how the art is not based upon a form but the other way around. The form consists of technique, but T’aiji is an art of energies from which techniques are made. With 8 energies able to be combines with each other (8*8=64), and the 5 movements (the 8 energies and 5 movements are the 13 postures) then with only 3 hand weapons the 13 postures gives rise to over 300 movements, if one includes other hand weapons (most systems have around 8), left and right versions, the 8 directions, the three modes of application, without combining them(locks, points, blunt force) and then includes the two intentions of application (debilitating and non-debilitating) then the art of the 13 postures gives rise in application to over 200,000 application combinations. (8*8*8*8*2*3*2) This is teh nature of taijiquan, taichi is the mother of endless things, taijiquan is the fighting system that is the mother or source of endless application.

Those who do not know the 13 postures, like many Chen Man Ching schools, do not know taijiquan. Taiji is not a form or even a collection of them. It is said to contain no applications or techniques, but gives rise to no end of applciations or techniques. This is the art I mentioned as esoteric and unknown.

Many people assume that when they do a form they are doing tai chi, if this were true there would be more than a million masters of the art alive today. No amount of form practice will teach one the martial system of the 13 postures, push hands with it is not enough. Like Mr. Smith has said there must be martial practice, among other things, to allow one to learn the 13 postures. Mastering a form is something of the new school of taiji, in the old school the form was mastered one single step at a time. Old method schools are almost non-existant.

I am very interested in evidence that a form makes one fat or thin. I went to a demo in the successor linneage of the Yangs and no students were fat, or lazy. They were all thin with very strong legs, torso’s and arms. Cheng-fu’s size related to his genes, just like his large father and brother. Nobody who is out of shape can do the slow long form that Chen Wei-ming recieved from Cheng-fu as part of his system. Real taiji (like WTBA) teaches a teaching method to those who are to become it’s future instructors. Learning, even mastering a form does not mean one had learned how to teach it.

Anyway this is what i would like to share about the misconceptions.