Jan 2013
Essense of a Small Frame Taiji Chuan
15/01/13 15:47 Filed in: eBook on Taiji Chuan
What is the meaning of 'small frame' in the Taiji Chuan?
Very often you hear about a small frame version of Taiji Chuan but rarely do you see one or have it clarified. Part of this is due to many practitioners in our modern day and age practicing sets of taiji which are meant to strengthen leg muscles and expand the joints through big movements. These large movements are meant to train a person in feeling the shifting weight from one leg to the other. Hence, we often see an emphasis on shiftings of 60/40 and 70/30 in sets of Taiji Chuan. This is an essential part of the practice in most Taiji Chuan sets within the main schools but as has been noted by many masters of the past, one must practice the art in a small framework to be able to use the art as a boxer.
There is more to this concept than meets the eye. One compresses and expands as a natural part of practice in all the major schools of Taiji Chuan but there are ways to incorporate small frame qualities in every form of taiji chuan and engage in those practices within a set. The major thing to understand when practicing small frame within a set is to realize that the upper part of the body's movements do not have to differ from a deep or mid level stance most often seen as the standard approaches to the practice. The upper body movements do allow for and encourage expansion of the joints and muscles and can be practiced exactly as they are practiced in a large frame set. While many sets emphasize high, low, and mid-level leg stances as standard to an approach to the practice, small frame is best understood as a developmental and practical process that engages an opponent within a limited space and distance. Various push hands practices help a person to gain a feel for the spacing between two people but that does not always lead to a useful understanding of how to use the various stances as practical applications in the art.
Many masters have been noted for saying when people asked them to teach applications … just practice and let the body take care of itself. Or they have handed out a few useful applications to give a student a sense of how to use the Taiji Chuan. Some masters have been accused of hiding the uses of applications from their students for fear their students will harm of hurt someone in a confrontation. There is a certain amount of truth in this concern teachers have in the art. I do know a master of Shaolin in Taiwan who had to close his school and stop teaching publicly as a result of one of his students engaging in a fight and seriously injuring his opponents.
We have all been amazed by what the body does in moments of surprise or, heaven forbid, confrontations and what the body, at such moments, teaches us makes us aware that the body seems to have a life of its own. When you don't have time to think, the body acts. This is an interesting aspect of the art in and of itself but it is not something you can practice.
This gets us to the main aspect of what small frame practice in a set format consists of and how it is useful in a Taiji Chuan practitioners development. It has been said that one cannot develop to the highest levels in the art without making his or her movements smaller and there is a practical truth to this idea. You and your opponent are close together, about arm length or closer, and you have a small space separating the two of you that is useful. This is your upper body application space. When two people are involved in push hands or combat, it consist of a 45 degree angle from you abdomen to your opponents face and a 45 degree angle out from your center to either side of your opponent's center. This defines your defense and strike regions in the upper body. Things change as people move around but the space does not when applied to two people in an upright position engaging in all of the activities of action. You must study the circle and square … the spiral of in and out. Your ability to compress inward and/or yield ground and deflect an opponent's strike or push is closing. Actively advancing on an opponent will involve the same space and may engage closing or opening. If you test this with an opponent you will get the idea.
This leads to the use of the waist and shifts. You will notice that there is not a lot of separation between two people and small shifts and small circles are used when in contact to open and close, advance and retreat, and defend and/or strike. This requires that a person study small shifts. You can only understand small shifts if you practice this. 55% weight on the front and back leg in a shift is your core center of action and a true beginning point for transitions. It is here that the waist is employed in defense or offense. This means you need to first define what this shift means by feel and then, letting nature take it's course, engage in this space without having to think about it. Guang Ping concentrates on a shift to the middle or 50/50 … rather than 60/40 or 70/30 as a training method. This approach of seeking the middle between the legs is a concentrated study of small shifts. 55% weight on back or front leg is the working area within a small frame approach to use the movements. To understand this by feel … experiment with a push movement by positioning yourself at 50/50, sink down a bit, place the hip direction at 45 degrees from the front and back, place your back foot at a 45 degree angle from the front direction, place your front foot straight forward, place you 2 arms out so that they rest horizontally even in front (this will require that your shoulders are horizontally even … you may feel a slight pulling sensation on your right side due to an extension of the waist), round the back leg, relax and shift slightly between one leg and the other. Feel the shifts transference in palms of your hands. This is an indicator of the core transition point in your movement. This is one of the aspects of Guang Ping Yang Taiji Chuan that many have wondered about … assuming this approach to the art is a violation of the prohibition of the 'double weighted stance' concept in Taiji Chuan. Nothing could be further from the truth. By seeking 50/50 pressure between the legs as an end point or the beginning of a transition point in your movement, you are really finding the transition points, strike points and shift points where small shifts in small spaces are possible. This has been handed down by Yang Pan Hou as an aspect of Taiji Chuan that is an inherent part of the study.
We now come to the legs. This is the core of a small frame practice. The stance is higher than a middle stance and the legs are not as far apart. This allows for little or no drag on the front leg as you move to the back in a yielding movement. The knees are drawn toward each other in transitions so that the groin is protected in movements. Compression and expansion are required in every movement. The practice of this is best felt when done by drawing the lead leg backward or the back leg forward and compressing one toward the other during shifting or before stepping through from one leg to another. One releases this compression. It is not a stopping of movement or even observable by someone else but a sticking quality that last for a split second before release. It is a training method which leads to a fuller expansion of peng ching and will be felt as a buoyancy in the body. It cannot be seen. It is an action that will allow for the reversal of Yin and Yang in the body in a substantial way and does not necessarily require heavy muscle activity as is required by mid and deep stances. It will engage tendons just as actively as large separations in the legs and require that the waist be truly employed in movement. You are not pushing off a back leg for example when stepping through but pulling the back leg forward instead. You are not just stepping out with the front leg but drawing heal or bubbling well on the forward part of the foot inward first, just as a cat does before it leaps on its prey.
This practice is both for those who wish to obtain higher levels in the art and I have found is the best way to teach older people the true art of Taiji Chuan. Higher stances are better for older people. Older people do not need to develop in the same manner as young people do … young people need to start with the mid levels first … progress to deepening their stances and then, after a suitable number of years advance to small frame practice. Herein, we have only been looking at the mechanical aspects of body movements. We can best appreciate the degree of difficulty that involves this practice by becoming more aware and by listening through feel. This involves 'mind body' and that bit of writing should be saved for another day.
all the best
Very often you hear about a small frame version of Taiji Chuan but rarely do you see one or have it clarified. Part of this is due to many practitioners in our modern day and age practicing sets of taiji which are meant to strengthen leg muscles and expand the joints through big movements. These large movements are meant to train a person in feeling the shifting weight from one leg to the other. Hence, we often see an emphasis on shiftings of 60/40 and 70/30 in sets of Taiji Chuan. This is an essential part of the practice in most Taiji Chuan sets within the main schools but as has been noted by many masters of the past, one must practice the art in a small framework to be able to use the art as a boxer.
There is more to this concept than meets the eye. One compresses and expands as a natural part of practice in all the major schools of Taiji Chuan but there are ways to incorporate small frame qualities in every form of taiji chuan and engage in those practices within a set. The major thing to understand when practicing small frame within a set is to realize that the upper part of the body's movements do not have to differ from a deep or mid level stance most often seen as the standard approaches to the practice. The upper body movements do allow for and encourage expansion of the joints and muscles and can be practiced exactly as they are practiced in a large frame set. While many sets emphasize high, low, and mid-level leg stances as standard to an approach to the practice, small frame is best understood as a developmental and practical process that engages an opponent within a limited space and distance. Various push hands practices help a person to gain a feel for the spacing between two people but that does not always lead to a useful understanding of how to use the various stances as practical applications in the art.
Many masters have been noted for saying when people asked them to teach applications … just practice and let the body take care of itself. Or they have handed out a few useful applications to give a student a sense of how to use the Taiji Chuan. Some masters have been accused of hiding the uses of applications from their students for fear their students will harm of hurt someone in a confrontation. There is a certain amount of truth in this concern teachers have in the art. I do know a master of Shaolin in Taiwan who had to close his school and stop teaching publicly as a result of one of his students engaging in a fight and seriously injuring his opponents.
We have all been amazed by what the body does in moments of surprise or, heaven forbid, confrontations and what the body, at such moments, teaches us makes us aware that the body seems to have a life of its own. When you don't have time to think, the body acts. This is an interesting aspect of the art in and of itself but it is not something you can practice.
This gets us to the main aspect of what small frame practice in a set format consists of and how it is useful in a Taiji Chuan practitioners development. It has been said that one cannot develop to the highest levels in the art without making his or her movements smaller and there is a practical truth to this idea. You and your opponent are close together, about arm length or closer, and you have a small space separating the two of you that is useful. This is your upper body application space. When two people are involved in push hands or combat, it consist of a 45 degree angle from you abdomen to your opponents face and a 45 degree angle out from your center to either side of your opponent's center. This defines your defense and strike regions in the upper body. Things change as people move around but the space does not when applied to two people in an upright position engaging in all of the activities of action. You must study the circle and square … the spiral of in and out. Your ability to compress inward and/or yield ground and deflect an opponent's strike or push is closing. Actively advancing on an opponent will involve the same space and may engage closing or opening. If you test this with an opponent you will get the idea.
This leads to the use of the waist and shifts. You will notice that there is not a lot of separation between two people and small shifts and small circles are used when in contact to open and close, advance and retreat, and defend and/or strike. This requires that a person study small shifts. You can only understand small shifts if you practice this. 55% weight on the front and back leg in a shift is your core center of action and a true beginning point for transitions. It is here that the waist is employed in defense or offense. This means you need to first define what this shift means by feel and then, letting nature take it's course, engage in this space without having to think about it. Guang Ping concentrates on a shift to the middle or 50/50 … rather than 60/40 or 70/30 as a training method. This approach of seeking the middle between the legs is a concentrated study of small shifts. 55% weight on back or front leg is the working area within a small frame approach to use the movements. To understand this by feel … experiment with a push movement by positioning yourself at 50/50, sink down a bit, place the hip direction at 45 degrees from the front and back, place your back foot at a 45 degree angle from the front direction, place your front foot straight forward, place you 2 arms out so that they rest horizontally even in front (this will require that your shoulders are horizontally even … you may feel a slight pulling sensation on your right side due to an extension of the waist), round the back leg, relax and shift slightly between one leg and the other. Feel the shifts transference in palms of your hands. This is an indicator of the core transition point in your movement. This is one of the aspects of Guang Ping Yang Taiji Chuan that many have wondered about … assuming this approach to the art is a violation of the prohibition of the 'double weighted stance' concept in Taiji Chuan. Nothing could be further from the truth. By seeking 50/50 pressure between the legs as an end point or the beginning of a transition point in your movement, you are really finding the transition points, strike points and shift points where small shifts in small spaces are possible. This has been handed down by Yang Pan Hou as an aspect of Taiji Chuan that is an inherent part of the study.
We now come to the legs. This is the core of a small frame practice. The stance is higher than a middle stance and the legs are not as far apart. This allows for little or no drag on the front leg as you move to the back in a yielding movement. The knees are drawn toward each other in transitions so that the groin is protected in movements. Compression and expansion are required in every movement. The practice of this is best felt when done by drawing the lead leg backward or the back leg forward and compressing one toward the other during shifting or before stepping through from one leg to another. One releases this compression. It is not a stopping of movement or even observable by someone else but a sticking quality that last for a split second before release. It is a training method which leads to a fuller expansion of peng ching and will be felt as a buoyancy in the body. It cannot be seen. It is an action that will allow for the reversal of Yin and Yang in the body in a substantial way and does not necessarily require heavy muscle activity as is required by mid and deep stances. It will engage tendons just as actively as large separations in the legs and require that the waist be truly employed in movement. You are not pushing off a back leg for example when stepping through but pulling the back leg forward instead. You are not just stepping out with the front leg but drawing heal or bubbling well on the forward part of the foot inward first, just as a cat does before it leaps on its prey.
This practice is both for those who wish to obtain higher levels in the art and I have found is the best way to teach older people the true art of Taiji Chuan. Higher stances are better for older people. Older people do not need to develop in the same manner as young people do … young people need to start with the mid levels first … progress to deepening their stances and then, after a suitable number of years advance to small frame practice. Herein, we have only been looking at the mechanical aspects of body movements. We can best appreciate the degree of difficulty that involves this practice by becoming more aware and by listening through feel. This involves 'mind body' and that bit of writing should be saved for another day.
all the best