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

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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 Crooked Pearls. I won’t touch on this for now.

The 5 Bows Part 2

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In Yang-22 the technique that introduces us to the topic of the 5 Bows is Single Whip.

In Single Whip specifically at the conclusion of the technique we learn how to stretch each of the 5 Bows out so that it is optimized for an arrow to load onto them and be instantly released.

Fajing in Yang-22 is not a strong push. Instead, it is like an arrow that penetrates its target so quickly that it barely moves the target back a step.

Is this something unique to Tai Chi? Honestly, I don’t think so. Anyone who understands force generation would know this. Anyone.

The first time I heard about this is from one of my Wing Chun teacher, the late Jim Fung. I forgot the occasion but I think it was probably during an open house.

He had already done a stunning fajing demo earlier using his 1-inch punch. Then as he was mingling with visitors and students he got to talking about the 1-inch power again and this time I got volunteered to try his 1-inch palm strike which he said was more powerful than his 1-inch punch.

I couldn’t agree more after taking a flying trip to the pillar behind me. Despite a phonebook on my chest to absorb the blow I could feel his palm print on my chest 5 minutes later.

That was probably when he said that if he were to really strike a person, that person wouldn’t go flying backwards. If anything, the person would just drop on the spot.

So this was the very first time I heard about how an injurious penetrating strike should be like. Many years later, I had another Wing Chun teacher from an old style who used a fist formation called Arrow Fist that when it struck me felt like a nail had hit me without moving me much.

So if you want to acquire penetrating force, pay attention to the practice of the 5 Bows and the other related topics.

The 5 Bows

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The 2/4 Dots, the 3 Passes, the 3 Chi Rings and the 5 Bows are all related topics in the learning of Yang-22.

They are integral to the storing and release of energy by converting kinetic energy to potential energy which is then released back as kinetic energy as part of the process of power generation.

In this sense, you can say that the entire 22-form is an exercise in how to use movement to manipulate energy and apply it for various purposes such as neutralizing and issuing force.

The 3 Chi Rings Part 3

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The 3 Chi Rings particularly the Shoulder Chi Ring plays an important role in the force generation process.

There are different ways to use intent generated force in Yang-22. The majority of these force models rely on the use of the body’s 5 Bows to compress, store and release the force.

In Yang-22 each arm is a bow by itself. However, both arms can also be likened to a gigantic bow. The gigantic bow uses the Open-Close track to bring in the opponent’s strength in the manner of loading an arrow.

Once the arrow is loaded you can then release the arrow. You can think of it as the use of opening and closing in an instant to huajing and fajing. The actual opening and closing process is more complicated than what I am describing here for outsiders to get an idea of what we do.

To be able to generate a strong force that can power a strike that causes internal injury you would need to develop a strong bow that can send your force out like a lighting strike. You will know if your strike is spot on when you tap your target and instead of flying off he just drops in pain on the spot.

If you are not aware of this part of the training, here’s a hint – pay attention to the technique of Play Pipa. This technique uses the Open-Close track and Shoulder Chi Ring to generate the internal force. As you get used to it, you will find that you can use all the Chi Rings for the power generation.

The 3 Chi Rings Part 2

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Where exactly do you place your arms in space when you execute a technique?

In Wing Chun we keep the elbows closer to the body since its a close quarters combat system. However, in Pok Khek Kuen we keep our elbows away from the body since we abide by the principle of an inch longer gives us greater power.

In Yang-22 we use the Shoulder Chi Ring to inform us where to pose our arms for the technique. The Waist Chi Ring is used to anchor and connect the elbows to our waist while the Kua Chi Ring helps us to keep the lower body in coordination with the upper body.

When we move the arms inwards and then outwards we use the Shoulder Chi Ring together with the Open-Close track defined by the Mountain Character to guide the movement of the arms.

The training for the Open-Close track in tandem with the use of the Mountain Character is covered in Part 3 of the Neigong training set. If you are into fajing pay attention to this training because it is integral to the force generation process.