Long Forms vs Short Forms – What Should You Start to Learn?

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Form, Form practice, Jibengong, Tai Chi form

Should you learn a shorter or a longer Tai Chi form? What is best to start with? Longer forms can be 88, 108 or 120 movements or even longer, depending on how you count the individual movements. Cheng Man Ching’s form is 37 movements long and the modern short Yang or “Beijing form” is merely 24 movements long.  

So what is best to start with? A long Tai Chi form or a shorter one? Some schools have a strict curriculum on how things should be taught and in what order. Some schools only teach one form. To make a statement on this topic might be viewed as dismissing some schools. But I think it’s more about what you want to learn, what kind of focus you have in your practice. But on the other hand, if you ask this question or is interested in my answer, you might not yet know what you should, or even can, focus on.

Whatever you can find is better might be a proper answer. Or maybe it’s just better to find a good teacher regardless what you are taught. However, in my own classes and as a teacher, I have struggled to find a good way to teach Tai Chi. All of my teachers taught in very different ways, and I know yet others who teaches Tai Chi differently. There’s no simple answer to this question.

I’ve tested different ways. The first times I taught a class, I started with the long Yang (Yang Cheng Fu) Tai Chi Form. Years later when I started a new class I tested teaching a short yang form first, and then moved on to teaching the long Sun style Tai Chi form.  I know that many teachers prefer to teach a short form first. For Yang style, it’s either the 24 or 10 movements forms. Then later they go on teaching a long form, so I thought that I should try this myself.

The idea is that the student could find it somewhat rewarding to actually finish something within the first six few months instead of spending two or three years learning one single form. But I wasn’t satisfied with this method. Not at all. I found it repetitive and a waste of time. If you want to teach a form, start with the long form first. This is my own recommendation.

But the issue is not if a form should be short or long. Length has nothing to do with the qualities learned in Tai Chi Chuan. Over the years, I haven’t been very satisfied over the way I taught and not how I structured a curriculum. But it hasn’t much to do with what form to teach or when. The main idea to focus on as a teacher should not be about teaching your students to remember movements. It should be about body method. How to teach body method and body movement, is the really tricky part.

In later years, even though I hardly teach nowadays, I have stopped teaching forms, longer and shorter. Maybe when a student has gained some level of understanding of body movement I might teach one. My own method focuses on Jibengong, or foundation exercises, as well as single movements and short drills. And then there are plenty of partner work as applications and push hands.

So to answer about what is best to start with, a longer or shorter form? I guess that my point is that it doesn’t matter very much. It’s your own understanding of how to move and how to understand basic principles that matter. You see, a Tai Chi shenfa, or  Tai Chi body method, isn’t something that comes naturally by learning movements. You need a teacher that can teach you body movement, and teach you how you practice a certain quality of body movement. Building up a body method, or shenfa, takes a whole lot of time. Focusing on the right things and not wasting time on superficial things is important. Form is not superficial, that is not what I mean. Form practice is important and helps you to deepen your understanding. But in my own opinion you need that basic understanding first and you need to practice in a way so that you build up your body method in a certain way.

Another thing about form practice, and Tai Chi in general, is that I don’t always agree with how principles are usually taught and understood. I do believe that rules are mostly taught too dogmatic in Tai Chi, too strict, and often the teacher misses the point about what is important or not. Forms often becomes very strict and the students learns rules, and to prohibit the body from “wrong” type of movement, instead of nurturing a type of body that has freedom, and with freedom of movement.

With my own methods, focusing on what I do and teaching my Tai Chi body method, I can focus my exercises on body awareness and teach a student how to feel and understand what the body wants. I want the practitioner understand a certain precision of movement, but at the some time nurture freedom of movement, spontaneity and creativity. This is what I consider the “correct” way to teach and learn Tai Chi, regardless if a practitioner trains through stances, drills or forms. Mindless repetition of movements is the very last thing I would want my students to spend their time on.

Why There’s No Continuous Movement Without Engagement From The Core

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Body awareness, Form, Form practice, Tai Chi form, Whole body movement

Would it seem contradictory if I told you that Chen stylists are often better than Yang stylists on keeping an unbroken continous movement while performing their form? It probably would if you think about the suddenly outbursts of fast movements and stop-and-go actions in Chen forms. Shouldn’t Yang or Wu stylists be better when as many of them claim that the essence of Tai Chi is continuous unbroken movement, just as the classics state? Why then do I see so many practitioners and even long-time teachers stop or sometimes even stop and then speed-up in a transition from one posture to another? In my own view, as long as you don’t deal with dingshi, the form should be seemless, with no end or beginning of a posture shown visibly. Yet, I will stand firm in my statement that Chen stylists are often better on this.

Why? Because Yang stylists are sometimes not very good at initiating movement from the feet and from the core. Where I personally believe that Chen style has an advantage, is about initiating movement from the core, through Dantian practice and silk reeling exercises in the very beginning of their Tai Chi study. Often when you see that Yang and Wu stylists stop and go, this is a clue that tells us that there is no internal movement. The hand stops because the body doesn’t move. While Chen stylists keep their body moving through continuous coiling and rotating core action, many people from other styles move to a posture, stops and move again because they don’t keep the core active the same way. I would suggest that you, regardless style pay more attention on continuous internal movement than just do a transition from here to there. When performing your form, movement should not stop in the feet or legs, and the spine should keep on moving, coiling, rotating through waist and continuous open/close movement, coordinated directly with the feet and hands.

If you do like this, your form will gain spirit and an organic feeling of whole body movement. The whole body needs to come alive. Yet I see people who seem to be trapped in their bodies. Sometimes they move as big solid chunks where movement seems to be stuck, sometimes parts of their bodies never moves. And all of this keep being habits through the years without changing. Tai Chi Chuan should release your body, not trap it. Freedom of movement begins from awareness and movement on the inside.

Suggested related post on internal awareness

The precision of movement: Another note on Tai Chi form practice and relaxation

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Form practice, precision, Relaxation, Softness

I’ve written a lot on softness, on why I believe in relaxation and how strength comes  from softness and not by using hardness. Mostly, I don’t write separate posts on this subject, though there are one or two separate posts, as this one: Strength from Softness – Softness from Strength.

One important point I would like to add to all of this about relaxation is why it’s important to practice with complete relaxation, being as soft as possible without compromising the structure and angles of the “shapes” or the individual movements.

Shouldn’t you try to hold your muscles at least a little “al dente”? You know, having a rubber kind of feeling or something similar? No.

No? Why no? Well, imagine that you are playing pool games, billiards or bowling or painting with Chinese ink technique, or doing any other kind of movements in sports, handicrafts or anything that demands a kind of very, very precise movement. Just like you aim for that ball with the cue, you need to cut off any other muscle, and muscular movement, that disturb or prevent the precision of your aim and movement.  This kind of precision of movement is exactly what you practice every time and all of the time in Tai Chi Chuan. You always practice to do only exactly what a certain movement demands from your body.

So, if you lift up your hands, you should relax everything to the extreme so that the body support only the movement and the structure behind the shape of the movement. The more you relax, the more you will let go of unnecessary effort and only use the muscles that do the movement. Moving is enough, don’t to anything else that is necessary. Even if you move with your whole body, using whole body movement  and whole body coordination, only move exactly what is necessary of that movement.

This is the same for push hands and applications. Don’t use effort, don’t use strength, don’t add anything else for structure, have a feeling of “al dente” or anything else. Just move and relax. Why? Because when you throw, punch or do anything, you want to use your body as efficient as possible. You don’t want to fragment your energy, using muscles for anything else than for exactly what you want to do. If you can find the same precision as some movements in different sports and handicraft demands in whatever you do, your punches will be stronger regardless what punch or punching technique you use. Your throws will be stronger and you will preserve your energy to continue on fighting. Practicing this skill of precision of movement and preserving energy begins in your form practice. No even before, even as you just stand, relax and breath. If you can completely relax your body while moving, without interfering posture or movement, you have already come a long way.

Of course, you need to remember this when you practice against resistant partners and opponents as well. When it come to this, especially challenges and competitive events, people tend to lack in faith in their relaxation and this means that they will abandon their best skills. So always when you practice against someone else, pay special attention on always relaxing as much as possible and only use exactly what in your body that is necessary for any kind of application or technique you perform. Don’t add structure, strength, “peng” or anything else. The refined movement and your body’s ability to change will give you any structure or “peng” you need. Your body knows what to do, if you only listen to it and keep relaxed.

Learning what and how – Do you evaluate what you really learn from your Tai Chi practice?

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Form practice, Health, Learning, meditation, Tai Chi Practice

If you study tai chi, you learn tai chi, right? Is it that simple? Really? Sometimes it’s necessary to make things more complicated than necessary. This can make you think and help you to re-evaluate your own motifs for practicing, or make you better aware about them.

There are a whole lot of different variations of T’ai Chi out there and people have different reasons for starting to practice the art. You really must have a very strong idea about what you want to achieve and why. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to practice the art without really studying, without really learning.

First, let us return to some basic statements so we can agree about what Tai Chi is before going on with the discussion on what we actually practice when we study tai chi. First, tai chi as an art has the potential of three main fields.
These are: Studying the art
1) as a martial art/ for self defense
2) for health
3) as meditation

These are the three pillars of tai chi. I would rather say that these are not three different potential. Tai chi is the same and is one art that has the potential for three different main fields of studying. It’s one art and we don’t need to study the art very differently to study any of these areas.

Also, tai chi is an art of movement and stillness. It’s an art of the body. It’s about movement, but also about stillness. We practice slow movements, fast movements. We practice different ways of standing in postures. Some schools also believe that you should practice sitting meditation, but there are only a few schools that incorporated this way of practicing. Sitting mediation is not a prerequisite for the meditation of tai chi practice. For health practice, you don’t need to add anything outside as qigong sets. And for self defense and combat, tai chi is a complex and complete art. There’s no need to add any methods from other styles or combine tai chi with anything else.

So Tai Chi is a complete art. Yet, how we practice and what we achieve varies. Many practitioners and teachers believe that practicing the movements of the form is enough. We all practice tai chi form slowly, focused. Still there’s a difference between doing the movements and really doing them. Many practitioners just do the movements over and over again, regarding the physical movement and performance of them to be the way of development. Doing the same thing, over and over again, day out day in is this the way to develop? From health perspective, physically and mentally, together with the meditative aspects will still be good practice. But the question is, don’t you want something more? Don’t you want to explore what Tai Chi can give you? And how do you know if you are good at what you do if you don’t evaluate what you do? So many people let their teacher do the thinking for them, or don’t let anyone think at all because they practice themselves what they have learned and think that the movements of a form is all that is needed to practice. This assumption is true in some ways if you only are concerned with keeping your health as you grow older.

But as you get older, not only as you get old, but for every year, you will continue to learn and grow as a human. You will re-evaluate a lot of things in your life, get better, learn more. Don’t you want your Tai Chi to grow and develop together with you?

And above all of those three pillars, health, meditation and self-defense/martial art, there is actually something else. There is self-discovery. Without self-discovery, there is no Tai Chi and none of the three pillars. By learning more about yourself, you discover more about your Tai Chi. The more you learn about about your tai Chi, the more you learn more about yourself. But your Tai Chi is always only as good as you know yourself.

How often should I practice my Tai Chi and for how long? (And some other stuff like a few points about “warming up the system”)

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Form, Form practice, Tai Chi

So how much should a Tai Chi practitioner practice Tai Chi and for how long? Sometimes I read books from people as Yang Jwing-Ming who has very special demands on very slow speed of form practice as well as tons of jibengong exercises, (basic practice) advice on sitting meditation (about two hours a day recommended by the mentioned teacher) and has a whole lot of different Qigong sets with different demands. So I wonder if he and similar teachers practice about 36 hours every day. At least, they can’t get any food, because they never eat one or two hours after training. But then I think about that they still have time to write a whole lot of books and make videos. So their demands can’t be so serious after all.

Others says that 20 minutes a day is quite enough. They speak about form practice of course, as there was nothing else in Tai Chi worth practicing. Sun Lutang, the creator of the Sun Family Internal Arts, proposed 20 minutes of standing meditation in wuji stance before practicing form. So there goes the twenty minutes that the common “Yang short form” teachers speak about, just on preparation. Jibengong, other stance practice, stretching and  similar is not included.

So how much should you practice your Tai Chi and for how long? First, I must ask you: Why the heck do you ask me? I am not your teacher. And besides that, everyone has different goals with their practice. What do you want to accomplish and why do you practice Tai Chi? If you can’t answer those questions, how could you know how much you should practice? If you know the answers to these questions, just practice enough so you can see that you develop in the speed that you want to develop. Easy answer, huh?

But then, are there no general rules or any minimum amount of amount of time for practice? No, of course there are not. Again, it depends on what style you practice, what exercises you are working on for the moment, your own level and it depends on what you want to accomplish, i.e. your personal goals. You need to come to your own understanding about what is enough, what is too much or what is too little.

But I can tell you something about practice, like this: When I practice form, I need at least 20 minutes to “get into the flow”. After twenty minutes, and often it takes the double amount of that time for my system to warm up properly, I get my “motor” running. AND first after that time, the real practice and the real progress begin. I will move, breath and focus in a completely different way after that time of warming up. This is my own personal experience. But of course, sometimes I might focus on drills and jibengong, and stance training instead of form practice. Then it’s another way to deal with the whole thinng, another way to warm up the system, a shorter or a longer time. And also there’s another way of dealing with my own body after this time of warming up the system. “You need to pump up the qi”(ch’i) as a Qi non-believer so wisely said.

This might be the very reason for practicing long forms instead of short forms or drills. And I agree with this. Drills has it’s own place, but there is really something very special about longer forms that other kind of martial arts practice can not give you. So from my own experience, I have become a real fan of long forms practice. It can be both very demanding and very rewarding.

Then after “getting warm”, how much do I practice? Hopefully one or two hours, at least. But mostly, I won’t have the time to practice as much as I would like to. I am a busy man. But there’s another component to the deal than the time you do practical exercises. You are not actually limited to the time you do physical practice. If you practice regularly, practice is a way to tune and refine your system. It’s a way to develop your nervous system and muscle memory. Practicing Tai Chi, if you do it regularly, 20 minuets a day or 2 hours a day, a progress of development that goes on 24/7. If you are very passionate about the art, and do a lot of thinking and reading about the art, the overall development will go faster and reach deeper. This is my conviction anyway. I haven’t read things like this in other places, but  I know something about learning. And I speak from my own experience.

No, I have never heard anyone speaking about practicing time the way that I do in this article, or have read anything similar. You can throw everything I said into your mental bin if you like, but still, I hope that you will think more about thus subjekt in terms about how you develop yourself into your tai chi, or how you personalize your practice to suite your own goals and your own personality. This is actually a more “Chinese thinking” than giving general advice about time and amount of practice. A Chinese doctor creates an individualized cure for every patient. The way to handle a decease, how to cure it, is different for every situation. I look at Tai Chi as a “good decease”. You must be like a good doctor and treat yourself according to your own prerequisites. Don’t listen to other “doctors” as different teachers. The only way to develop in Tai Chi is to find the right road by yourself. Maybe easier said than done, but the art of Tai Chi really demands responsibility from the person practicing it. You can’t really hide away from your own responsibilities if you want to develop and progress for real.