Thanks for commenting, JessinAmerica.

Here’s a Qi article by Mr. Scott Phillips that got me cackling… Sandwich vs Sausage.

And it’s a good point: legs are yang, arms yin on the vertical axis. As we explore Taiji in a deeper sense, simplistic divisions go away (or should).

You bet the elbows, shoulders, etc will be/feel yin or yang relative to themselves and to other joints.

It’s all in flux.

There’s no way to really pin it down. Like in the video… relative to itself, a yin wrist holds yang energy. Each joint and every idea does too.

(Still, this is so abstract… veering quite far from the intention of the article, I suppose.)

Thanks

The idea that it contains secret teachings is a little misleading sadly the author took great liberties with the title of the book.

There are oral instructions that define the meaning of the 10 items you share, sort of like a set of measures and rules. I like your interpretation too, so I won’t bother with exposition about these measures and rules.

Here is where it gets better, some groups actually do the split move and call it Kao! They are ignorant to the fact the very transmission they practice has Kao removed, and then they apply a list of published names of the moves to the form, but here is a little secret: the actual published names of the form vary from the transmitted names of the form! Kao is the best example of this, but not the only one, for example, there is no single whip right before fist under elbow, however there is in the published list. However originally there is a move with a different name altogether right there in the form, something like push left look right, I forget the name actually, but the move is a good one and often totally missing from peoples forms, because it is not in the published list, it is only in the transmission of the school!

There are other differences too, ones I will not mention for now.
But I find it very interesting that there are a considerable number of differences from the transmissions that are authentic and the ones that originate with written publication. One thing to keep in mind is that this is not accidental. The Yang family had a history of reserving information for sworn students only, thus the books written by Chen Wei-Ming do not contain what his transmissions do in his school.

For some reason most western taiji schools do the published version of the form, and not the one that goes back to the teachings in person! There are also some differences in regard to what jin, or power is used with the postures! The jin found in the direct transmissions is incomparable to the more common ones that now predominate. You must cross hands with them to note this, but that is worth doing anyway.

It is funny, but tucking the backbone is one of the few things that pretty much all Taiji or taiji based schools have in common, and yet it is one of the most commonly broken principals and not just in new students!