What is Yang-22?

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Yang-22 is dedicated to the informal sharing of my practice of the Yang style Tai Chi Chuan 22-form that was created by Grandmaster Wei Shuren.

I started my learning of the 22-form in 1997. It is the one form that I have spent the longest time practicing.

I still keep up the practice to this day, though not spending as much time as I would like. There are so many things to learn from this one form. Just to discover its contents as listed in Grandmaster Wei’s Book 2 & 3 on this particular Yang style will surely take a long, long time.

The 22-form is one form that is never boring to practice. Practicing the form is like reading a well written book and discovering something more about it each time I read it again.

I won’t try to offer instructions on how to practice the 22-form as this would be quite the challenge to do so in a blog. However, if you already practice the 22-form and your progress has slowed down then perhaps the information here would be of use to get you out of the rut.

That’s it for now. It is time for me to go and practice.

GENERAL

Old Six Routines

PRACTICE

PRINCIPLES

2/4 Dots

Simplifying 2/4 Dots

The Mental 2/4 Dots

2/4 Dots & The Rolling Ball

The 3 Passes

The 3 Passes & 2/4 Dots

Heaven, Earth, Man

The 3 Chi Rings

The 3 Chi Rings Part 2

The 3 Chi Rings Part 3

The 5 Bows

The 5 Bows Part 2

The 5 Bows Part 3

Ancient Bell Body

Ancient Bell Body Part 2

Ancient Bell Body Part 3

Chest Cross

Elongated Wrist

Elongated Wrist 2

Small Chi Sphere

Carrying a Scepter

9 Bend Pearls

9 Bend Pearls

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The 9 Bend Pearls is a principle that is taught after one is able to perform the other principles that come before it.

In particular, the practitioner must have achieved the requirements of Song, San, Tong, Kong. These four keys are taught on the first day so one must assiduously cultivate them over the years until a breakthrough is achieved.

At this stage you will then have a physical understanding of what Song, San, Tong, Kong actually mean and feel like when practicing the 22-form. The next step would be to slowly transfer this skill to the practice of push hands.

When Song, San, Tong, Kong is activated together with whole body expansion (like a balloon that is being filled with air) that’s when you add in the 9 Bend Pearls.

To train the 9 Bend Pearls you imagine this energy line moving through your body from the ground up right to your wrist. As you can well imagine there are nine points to channel the energy through, namely from the ground up through the ankle, the knee, the crotch, waist, centre pearl, source strength point, shoulder, elbow and wrist, then out into the target.

In practice you activate the 9 Bend Pearls right at the end of a technique. When you do so you can feel the entire body filling up with energy, expanding out, and using the Small Chi Sphere you can issue the force out (one example of fajing) and into the opponent’s body.

At the end of the power generation you relax and grasp back the Small Chi Sphere. You perform this internally so someone looking at you will not be able to see you doing fajing and then loosening the body after that.

In the beginning you might train to move the ankle pearl first, and then the knee pearl and so on until the wrist pearl. However, this is not correct.

You actually activate all nine pearls at the same time. You do this by activating the process from the centre pearl (that’s the 5th pearl). Think of it as a water hose being filled out quickly with water, which will cause the limp hose to do a whip-like motion in response to being filled out with water.

When you activate the 9 Bend Pearls the energy line running through your body will act in a similar manner. If you place your palm on your training partner’s body he will feel as if you are a balloon inflating very rapidly.

Carrying a Scepter

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In Yang-22 our hand holds a Small Chi Sphere. To add to the difficulty of practice, we also must cradle a Chinese scepter (aka ruyi) in our arm.

Seventh century scroll showing
Emperor Xuan of Chen holding a scepter

We learn to carry the scepter in the 2nd technique of the 22-form, Wild Horse Parts Mane. Even though this is the only technique where this principle is taught, we carry over this practice to the other techniques as well.

Carrying a scepter is important because it helps us to keep our arm stable, sink the elbow properly to the Waist Chi Ring and balance the rooting down of the arm with a counter upward force.

Elongated Wrist 2

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Place a long hose on the ground. The hose is curled.

Next, connect the long hose to a tap. Now turn on the tap a little. The water comes out through the hose which is still curled.

If you turn on the tap to the maximum, the water will surge out strongly, straightening the hose. This is basically what the training of the Elongated Wrist does. It turns on the energy from your body out through the wrist, onwards to the hand and towards the target area.

Sometimes people ask me how does one do a palm strike with a straightened wrist. You can’t. When you strike with an open palm, your wrist will naturally bend. But the energy is still flowing through the wrist.

This is why a palm strike may look like a light slap but the struck opponent seems to be hit by a disproportionate larger force. Without the Elongated Wrist training a light slap is just a light slap.

Train the Elongated Wrist until you feel as if you no longer have a wrist. Then keep training until even if you bend your wrist the energy flow is still there.

Small Chi Sphere

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In Yang-22 we use three hand shapes namely the open palm, fist and hook.

What the three hand shapes have in common is the Small Chi Sphere. This is an imaginary nebulous sphere conjured by our intent.

At the most basic level, we use the Small Chi Sphere to help form the shape of the open palm, fist and hook. For example, when our hand is opened up, it is as if we are holding an imaginary sphere i.e. the Small Chi Sphere.

Similarly, when our hand is forming a fist we are squeezing a much smaller sized Small Chi Sphere between the curled up fingers. As for the hook, it is as if our fingers are pinching a marble sized Small Chi Sphere.

The size of the Small Chi Sphere depends on the hand formation. When you change from open palm to fist or open palm to hook, and vice versa, the Small Chi Sphere will expand or contract depending on which hand formation you are changing to.

For example, if you are changing from open palm to fist then the Small Chi Sphere will contract to a smaller size. Your open palm accordingly follows the contracting Small Chi Sphere by curling your fingers to become a fist.

Practiced this way, we have a balance of physical (external) and non-physical (internal). However, our definition is not internal as within our body but internal as in our mind. The use of intent allows our body to interact with what is outside our body. Thus, our internal is unlike the typical definition of internal.

Elongated Wrist

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On the surface, the Elongated Wrist resembles the well known Fair Maiden’s Hand of the Cheng Man Ching Tai Chi style.

However, our Elongated Wrist has a lot more within its practice than the Fair Maiden’s Hand. I had learned the Cheng Man Ching style more than a decade before I started with Yang-22. I do not remember my teacher ever teaching anything more to the Fair Maiden’s Hand.

On the other hand, there’s a ton of stuff within the Yang-22 usage of the hand. They all begin with the Elongated Wrist.

The principle behind the Elonaged Wrist calls for us to stretch open the wrist joint. Yup, to elongate the wrist is not just a matter of relaxing the wrist and posing with a straight, loosened wrist. Instead, we have to stretch the wrist to straighten it.

On top of straightening the wrist, we also need to straighten the hand and stretch out the fingers. As if this is not complicated enough, we are required to add on the use of intent to imagine that we are grasping a Small Chi Sphere.

This is only the beginning. There are a few more things to this Small Chi Sphere which for the moment we will not go into.

The Elongated Wrist sounds pretty simple to practice, right?

If you do a survey of the videos that are out there on the internet of fellow practitioners of Yang-22, you will notice that it is the rare practitioner who is able to keep a proper Elongated Wrist throughout their performance of the entire form.

Coming from the Dong style variant of Yang Tai Chi I too had a problem adhering to the Elongated Wrist principle. It took me a long time to nail it down.

The Elongated Wrist is one of the key components in the process of fajing. If you want to nail the Yang-22 method of fajing, then you really need to master this principle.

Chest Cross

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The Chest Cross is another principle that is unique to Yang-22.

This principle calls for you to imagine that there is a cross on your chest. This Chest Cross is a tool that you use to mentally adjust your balance.

The Chest Cross is used at the conclusion of each technique. When you complete a technique you physically stop all movements. After the cessation of outer movements, you mentally use the Chest Cross to fine tune your balance.

You do this fine tuning by imagining that there is a wall in front of you. On this wall there is a corresponding cross. Your Chest Cross then “talks” to this Wall Cross.

You first imagine the horizontal line of the Wall Cross as expanding sideways both ways. As the Wall Cross does this, your Chest Cross follows suit to do the same. Likewise, for the vertical line of the Wall Cross.

As you imagine your Chest Cross mirroring the action of the Wall Cross, you will feel your body’s balance adjusting on the inside. At the conclusion of both crosses talking, you should feel balanced.

For example, if you do the technique of White Crane Spreads Wings without the Chest Cross you will find that your body typically leans on the right side. The use of the Chest Cross will allow you to rebalance your body to eliminate this lean.

Ancient Bell Body Part 3

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In Part 2 I mentioned the second part of the vertical line configuration as part of the alignment of the vertical line that is also known as the Bell Clapper Line.

This configuration of the vertical line has an interesting skill attached to it. Basically, in order to allow the stone to descend you have to open up a shaft so that the stone can pass through.

If you practice this shaft opening until it feels real, you would have acquired the ability to neutralize a resisting strength by letting it come into you, direct it to the ground, and finally using the strength to rebound off the ground, and returning it to the opponent.

You can choose how fast and how much strength you want to allow to enter by applying the 3 Rollbacks.

If you want to hasten the speed of returning the strength back to the opponent you can use the Mountain Character path that I first mentioned here. Within the process of opening and closing you can make neutralizing and issuing appear to be instantaneous.

Ancient Bell Body Part 2

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The vertical line running from the top of your head to your tailbone enables you to turn easily provided the vertical line is configured properly.

In the Commencement Movement the first part of the vertical line configuration is at the neck. In Grandmaster Wei Shuren’s book on the 22-form it is said that we should touch the back of our neck to the collar.

When you do this your chin will come closer to your neck as if tucking the chin in. As this occurs you will find that the back of your neck moving to the collar (assuming you are wearing something with a collar).

The second part of the vertical line configuration begins as soon as the neck configuration ends. This is when you open up your chest by imagining that there is a stone sitting on top of your chest.

The weight of the stone causes your chest to open up like two doors separating, allowing the stone to descend to your tailbone.

As the stone descends it will pass by your lower back. This is where you fill out your lower back, thus aligning the third part of the vertical line.

A quick way to check if you are doing this properly is by placing your back against a wall to check if there is a gap between your lower back and the wall. If there is then you are committing the error of protruding the buttocks.

Ancient Bell Body

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The 2/4 Dots, 3 Passes, 3 Chi Rings and 5 Bows are put into practice through the Ancient Bell Body.

In Yang-22 we use the analogy of the body as akin to an ancient Chinese bell. The Ancient Bell Body is actualized through the use of the intent to flesh out what is not real into something that can be felt but not seen.

Your mind dictates the command to create the Ancient Bell Body and your mind sees it being created. However, it is what you feel as the Ancient Bell Body is being created that informs you if you are doing it correctly. This is the most important reason for spending some time to practice and refine the Commencement Movement.

The 5 Bows Part 3

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In The 5 Bows Part 2 I mentioned that the Single Whip is the technique where we first learn about the 5 Bows.

However, the 5 Bows is found in many of the rest of the 21 techniques as well. After you have practiced the 5 Bows in Single Whip many times and understand it, you should gradually learn to implement the 5 Bows in these other techniques as well.

In order to optimize the force generated you should learn to open up your body so that it emulates a highly strung bow.

A highly strung bow allows you to transfer the potential energy into the arrow i.e. the target, allowing you to either send your partner flying off quickly or receive your force into his body resulting in internal injury.

Which brings us to another topic related to the 5 Bows which is the 9 Bend Pearls. I won’t touch on this for now.