Different styles of Tai Chi have different ways to start beginners off on their learning journey. It does not matter what the teaching method is as long as you are able to grasp the principles after a period of practice.

Every person’s journey is different even within the same school teaching the same method to every student. This is because we are all different people with different learning attitude and aptitude, based on our life background, intelligence and physical traits.

Thus, what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. The only thing to do is not to give up, but to keep practicing, keep asking questions, keep investigating avenues to improve.

When I met my teacher from the GM Wei Shuren lineage, he didn’t try to recruit me as a student. He didn’t give me the usual talk about learning and spreading the art far and wide. Instead, he did a demo of Opening Posture. I watched it closely and there was something there that I could not put my finger on.

Backtrack a bit here. This was not the first time I saw the Opening Posture from GM Wei lineage. I had already learned it from my Wing Chun senior who later went on to learn from GM Wei himself.

However, what I just saw my teacher performed had the same movements but an intangible, unique feel to it. I wanted to learn more but nope, that was not the time for it as my teacher had to leave for another appointment.

Instead, my teacher said to just learn the Opening Posture there and then, practice it for 3 months and come to see him, if I still wanted to learn the art after that.

Three months later I made the journey, and that was the start of my learning of this unique approach to Yang style Tai Chi.

Looking back I would say that whilst my senior had the movements down, he lacked the feel, the expression of bringing forth the internal such that what is in the mind, the imagination, is coming alive. By comparison, watching my teacher was like watching a good mime act out a scene using his movements such that the principles are becoming real even though they are not, except through feel when you touch his hands.

The movement that particularly stood out was this part where he inserted the Small Chi Spheres into his body, let them go to his back, then the spheres came back into his hands before he went on to the next movement. It was as if he really had two spheres in his hands and something more, that intangible something, kinda like a fullness that in the next moment became emptiness, then back to fullness, that captivated me.

To be continued…..