TPT Yang Is My Middle Name

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Sometimes I think that Yang must be my middle name.

At the age of 12 I initially started learning Wu style Tai Chi cause there were a bunch of old folks practicing in my primary school field in the evening and I thought why not start my learning of Kung Fu here.

Yes, imagine little ole me standing in the center surrounded by old folks, trying to copy what they are doing. They were basically doing exercise Tai Chi though I saw the lady instructor do push hands once.

Soon primary school was over and I transferred to another school for secondary classes. One day during physical education time, I saw a teacher took a brick from a stack of bricks that were placed against a wall.

He casually sat down on the ground, held half the brick over the drain, and chopped it in half with his hand. Then he went down to the field and taught Shaolin to some people around his age. Later I found out that he was from the famous Shaolin school of Reverend Sek Koh Sum.

I asked him about learning whatever it was he taught but he told me to go look for the school which was in another state. I must have made an impression on him because the next year he told that was starting a Tai Chi class and I could join in.

In the meantime, I had found out that this teacher, Master Hui, was teaching Chinese language in my secondary school. He once asked me to go to his Chinese language class and in front of the other students he talked to me about Kung Fu and even asked me to punch him in the gut. Now those kids from the Chinese stream knew me. Just great.

So I went and join his Tai Chi class. He was teaching a few other school teachers. Fortunately the teacher’s whose home he was teaching at had a son who joined in so I was not alone with the adults. We learned the Cheng Man Ching style, the 37 form, a 2nd part of the form and even a practical usage form. I also learned my first pole form here, a Shaolin long pole form.

However, there weren’t much push hands practice cause the adults loved to move a bit, then chit chat. But make no mistake, Master Hui, does have the skill when he does show it. Should I tell the story of that time he showed me the Iron Crotch skill where he literally hung a few bricks from down there? I think not since its not Tai Chi.

My next learning of the Yang style came years later when I had gone overseas to study and came home. My senior had asked me to look around for a teacher of Tai Chi Ruler. By luck I found the teacher whose photo had appeared in a Hong Kong published book on this little known style.

Master Leong taught Tai Chi Ruler early in the morning in a car park in the local park. He also taught the 18 Qigong exercises that was the rage then. When I found out that his teacher, Grandmaster Nip Chee Fei, had learned from Yang Chengfu and came from Hong Kong to spread Tai Chi I asked him to teach the Yang style.

Master Leong could do the Yang form, however, he said that the really good stuff from GM NIp was this set of techniques they called Tai Chi San Sau. Yes, this was the name but it was not really all Tai Chi. The Tai Chi San Sau was really a set of techniques from different styles that GM Nip had compiled for his own personal use when he had to catch rebels. This Tai Chi San Sau was also known as Pok Khek Kuen. There is even an article in Black Belt magazine about it.

Around this time I got to know an old timer who practiced the Cheng style Tai Chi. He introduced me to his son, Richard, who had lived with Chu Kin Hung and even tutored his son. Richard had learned the Yang style of Yang Sau Chung from Chu Kin Hung.

Training with Richard was mainly focused on doing Zhan Zhuang before moving on to the form. Push hands was minimal. So though I had learned Tai Chi for years I knew little about its usage.

Later I moved to the Lion City for work and I met Mr Loh who was the proprietor of a martial arts bookshop. Mr Loh was actually a Tai Chi master. However, when I asked him to recommend a teacher to me he recommended me to check out one school and another teacher.

The school did not exactly impressed me so I checked out the teacher. This teacher turned out to be a legal beagle who had a law practice in the central business district. I met Master Yap in the afternoon at his office after his court session. As luck would have it, his senior Master Dong Zengchen was in town so I got to meet him the next night. Master Dong’s grandmaster was a disciple of Yang Chengfu and founded their own variant of the Yang style.

A year after meeting Master Yap I signed up for 1-to-1 private lessons and learned from him beside a swimming pool in Tanglin. Later he moved his teaching to the void deck in his condominium in Cairnhill. The condominium was later sold off, demolished and rebuilt.

Master Yap’s philosophy was to get me doing push hands from day one. He did teach the form because there was something important to learn there that could be used in push hands. Master Yap did not teach a fixed method of push hands until later. His initial approach was for me to attack him any way I like, using any technique I know.

This teaching method may appear to be a free for all, however, it was really for me to observe how he neutralized my attacks. When I had reached a sufficient level of familiarity then he would attack back. Thinking back it was like finding order within chaos, learning to adapt on the go.

Much later my Wing Chun senior, Victor, introduced me to the Yang style of Grandmaster Wei Shuren. I still have that letter where he gushed about it. Then the first book on the 108 form by Grandmaster Wang Yongquan came out. Much later, I heard of the second book on the 22 form.

Thanks to the 2nd book I got to know my teacher, Master L, who flew in to meet his friend and passed me the book. He showed me how to do the opening movement and told me to practice it for 3 months, then come and look for him if I was still interested to learn.

Since learning the 22-form I made it a point to visit and revisit the principles, going through the techniques and refining them. I never forgot Master L’s advice to never throw away the good stuff and to keep practicing until all the principles are there in each technique.

Up till now the form that I had spent the most time practicing is the 22 form. Practicing the form can still throw up surprises, minor things here and there.

With a background that revolved around the Yang style sometimes I feel that truly, surely that Yang is my middle name.

TPT Getting It

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Sometimes we learn Tai Chi a lifetime and never get it.

However, sometimes when we don’t expect it an insight suddenly appears and then we get it.

Mastering Tai Chi relies on getting a series of insights that reveal to us the nature of what we are working on.

We can’t force insights. They can come during practice or when we are doing something else. When it comes, it comes. Let it be. Just keep practicing.

Climbing to the top of the mountain requires us to keep moving. In Tai Chi it is the same. We have to keep practicing.

Don’t practice once in a blue moon. Instead, make it a point to practice daily. This should be your objective. The rest will fall into place once your practice has reached maturity.

TPT Fishing Tackle

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In learning Tai Chi go for any method or style that works for you.

Mix and match if you have to. Don’t let loyalty to a school, style or lineage stop you from learning what works for you.

As they say in fishing it’s not the fishing tackle that matters but whether you can catch fishes that matter.

TPT Elongated Wrist

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You have a length of water hose that is connected to a tap.

You dangle 10 inches of the end of the hose over a wall. You use a clamp to hold the hose down on the wall. The end of the hose is hanging down.

You turn on the tap to let the water out and observe the effect of the flow of water on the end of the hose.

If you turn on the tap a bit then the small amount of water flowing out will barely affect the dangling hose.

Keep on turning the tap and observe how much water needs to be flowing to make the hose want to straighten. Probably quite a lot of water needs to be flowing, practically gushing out, to cause the hose to want to straighten.

I use this analogy to explain the principle behind the Elongated Wrist which is a good principle to learn first to understand what our Yang style Tai Chi is about.

At first glance, the Elongated Wrist just looks like keeping the hand-wrist straight. However, the principle behind the Elongated Wrist is to minimize the amount of tension at the wrist that prevents us from letting our energetic force out from the ground, through the body, and via the arm to exit through the wrist to the hand.

To be continued……

TPT What the Pine Tree is About

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The Pine Tree is Right There can be about many things. I have so many ideas on what it can be about. I started with the idea of writing about Tai Chi, Wing Chun, Ngok Gar and others.

However, if the focus is too diverse it can end up being a distraction. So for now, at least for the time being, TPT will be just about Yang style Tai Chi, in particular the learning and practice of the 22-form from the Yang style Tai Chi lineage of Grandmaster Wei Shuren.

The posts will appear in no particular order. However, there is an order to them and this can be seen in how they are grouped and ordered by checking the Index page here.

TPT Learning the Tai Chi Form Successfully

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In this section I will share with you my experience on what it means to learn the Tai Chi 22-form of Grandmaster Wei Shuren successfully.

Learning the form is more than just copying how your teacher moves. However, it is true that imitating what we see is how we begin the learning. We can be told what the principles are, what we are supposed to be doing. However, at this early stage we are still in the state of monkey see, monkey do.

In learning the 22-form we are told that intention must come first. This means you do not perform a movement without first knowing what you are supposed to be doing. Think of your mind as the director and your body as the actor. The director tells the actor what to do and the actor carries out the instruction accordingly.

For example, when we change from a fist to an open palm it is not just a matter of opening up and spreading the fingers to form an open palm. Our mind, the director, must initiate the movement by feeding the instruction to the actor, the hand.

In this scenario, our fist is holding a compressed Small Chi Sphere between the hollow formed by the curled fingers and the palm. Our mind will silently inform (you can also say it out loud if it helps) the hand that the compressed Small Chi Sphere will now expand. As it does so, our fingers will spread out accordingly with its size and expansion timing, until the Small Chi Sphere is fully formed and our finger tips are grasping it gently.

Thus, your physical movements must match the timing of your intent. In the beginning you will find that your physical movement is taking off ahead of your visualization. With some practice, you will nail the timing.

Each technique in the 22-form teaches some principles. You have to learn each and every principle properly within each of the technique. You have to learn until when you perform each of the 22-form you have the principles within your techniques.

There are many principles so being able to have every principle in each technique is a daunting task. This is why it takes a lot of practice, stretched out over the years, to train your body to be able to be able to do the principles automatically.

This is what the traditional saying of “first in the mind, later in the body” means. You first tell your body what to do. With enough training the body will just do it without further prompting. This last part is important if you want to be able to fajing during push hands whereby you have a but a split second to do so.

Because of this the principles must have already come together in the background, ready whenever you are to discharge the power and force. At this stage of your practice, the principles are no longer intellectual sentences you need to know, but a living thing that by feeling you know they are there.

In conclusion, learning the 22-form successfully means you can perform the principles effortlessly, with the right timing and feeling. As you go on, learning the 22-form successfully can also mean :-

i) Your ability to use the techniques in push hands practice
ii) Your ability to use the various fajing models of the 22-form

For the purpose of TPT, we will just narrow the focus to learning of the form successfully to mean to learn until we can perform all the principles properly.

TPT Introduction

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I recently read a book on Zen wisdom entitled “Zen Wisdom for the Anxious: Simple Advice from a Zen Buddhist Monk“. One of the chapters was on the saying :-

松樹千年翠　
不入時人意

Google translated it as :-

Pine trees are evergreen for a thousand years
Out of step with the times

However, the book provided a more accurate translation as :-

The evergreen of the pine tree goes unnoticed.

The author, Shinsuke Hosokawa, a Zen head priest, compared a person’s knowledge and experience gained over a lifetime with the evergreen color of the pine tree which was not created in a day.

The author exhorted the reader to pass on one’s knowledge generously to the next generation.

The author also urged the younger generation not to wait to be taught but to seek the knowledge and absorb it.

The author ended the chapter with this sentence :-

The pine tree is right there.

Following this exhortation I will write what I know here.

Mushin
2026 Year of the Fire Horse

The Role of the Three Chi Rings

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The Three Chi Rings is a unique visualization tool of Grandmaster Wei Shuren’s Yang style Tai Chi. The Beginning Posture is where we are introduced to how to use mental visualization to map the Chi Rings.

It is important to note that imagining the Chi Rings being created is not enough. You have to feel them even as they are being created. There are reasons why we need to be able to feel.

What you think can affect the way your body moves. So if your visualization is correct, you will feel something. This something is related to the principles of our Yang style Tai Chi. This feeling helps to inform you if your doing the Chi Rings correctly.

If you are, and you practice them consistently, refining your feeling internally, then somewhere along the line something will click and you will realize the connection between the Three Chi Rings, the Five Bows, Opening-Closing, the Nine Crooked Pearls and fajing. You have then gained a valuable insight.

The Importance of the Small Chi Sphere in Yang Style Tai Chi

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The practice of Small Chi Sphere is related to the practice of the Elongated Wrist. In actual learning, we may not learn in this order. Instead, we typically learn other main principles such as the Three Chi Rings, Lowering the Elbows, Buns Under the Armpits, etc before we come to the Small Chi Sphere.

I touched on it here because the Small Chi Sphere principle is an extension of the Elongated Wrist principle. The easiest way to learn the Small Chi Sphere and make it a habit is by learning to do it when your hand is in open palm formation.

This is simplifying and dumbing down the actual process of learning to use the Small Chi Sphere but if the objective is to pick up the understanding earlier, well I suppose it is a necessary evil.

You learn about the Small Chi Sphere by learning to hold it between your fingers when you have an open palm formation. All five of your finger tips gently grasped and adhere to the Small Chi Sphere. You need to use your imagination to do it.

If you are lacking in the visualization department, get an actual small, ideally light ball, and have a feel of what it is like to grasp it. This is a quick way to get the feeling. There are limitations to learning this way but if its gets the learning moving along then why not.

Whether your palm is facing down, facing up or facing forward, always have the Small Chi Sphere grasped between your fingers. Never lose it unless the learning steps call for it to be momentarily out of your hands.

When you can grasp the Small Chi Sphere, then you can learn to manipulate it. A very simple basic manipulation occurs in the Beginning Posture where you are holding the Small Chi Sphere with your palm down, then release the sphere to fly through the air into the distance, then as you turn your palm up the sphere flies back into your hand in a quick instant (the action is performed by hold hands, eaching holding its own sphere).

Right before this action, there is an action of how each of the two spheres is formed, rolled up the body, inserted through your body, then brought back out before releasing and retrieving the sphere.

And after this, you again insert the spheres into your body, bring them out, place them on the level surface of the river (it can also be the sea or a swimming pool, but let’s make it a river) and press the spheres into the water, right up to the Kua Ring of the Three Chi Rings.

By now, you can see how easily complicated the learning has become and we are still in the Beginning Posture movement. I just described it to give you an idea of what our learning of GM Wei Shuren’s Tai Chi is like.

Along the way, you can learn to manipulate the Small Chi Sphere by rotating it, depressing it, dashing it, and even disintegrating it on cue from an external pulsing dot. Yeah, man, some of the things we do sounds just like science fiction when we describe it.

There are so many more things to talk about when it comes to the Small Chi Sphere. I think I will give my hands a rest from the typing and your mind a rest.