Recently I had a quick discussion with a student on how to learn our Tai Chi.

I told him to look at Appendix B in TaijiKinesis Vol 1 at the following :-

a) Song of Form Play

b) Song of Push Hands

Song of Form Play is a general road map for what we want to achieve in training the form.

This learning is put into practice to realize the Song of Push Hands. In return what is learned in Song of Push Hands is used to further refine the learning goals of Song of Form Play.

For example, 3.1 to 3.4 in Song of Form Play is to help achieve 4.1 to 4.4 in Song of Push Hands.

This of course begs the question of what 3.1 Song of Form Play means exactly in practice. In form training one very important detail stands out to realize this objective – the positioning of the elbows.

In this regard, we avoid doing zhanzhuang because the elbow positioning in zhanzhuang is an obstacle to achieving 3.1 Song of Form Play.

If so, then it will be difficult to put 4.2 Song of Push Hands into practical usage.

This is how we can learn our Tai Chi effectively and efficiently by using the road map that is available to see the trees from the forest.