As a Taijiquan or Qi Gong student, you most likely heard your teacher say: place your hands over your Dantian. And then you place your hands over your belly, but you probably wonder: where is Dantian located? Where is it exactly? Continue reading
Author Archives: Angelika Fritz
What is Pushing Hands or Tui Shou: quotes & thoughts
Honestly, Push Hands is a big mystery to me. I cannot put my finger on it, but I know I am still not sure what is Pushing Hands (or 推手 Tui Shou, the Chinese name).
Even though I continuously visit Tai Chi Push Hand workshops and classes and try to figure out, what is Pushing Hands. But there are still missing pieces. Continue reading
The 10 essential Yang style Tai Chi principles in Chinese & translated
What I like about Tai Chi Chuan (Taijiquan) is that even when we practice different forms and squabble over how to do them correctly, the underlying principles are the same for everyone. The 10 Tai Chi principles are the very basic principles. And they are the same for EVERYONE practicing Yang style Tai Chi.
These Yang style Tai Chi principles where transmitted orally from Yang Chengfu (楊澄甫; 1883-1936) to his student Chen Weiming (陈微明; 1881-1958). And luckily, Chen Weiming wrote down the principles and they where then published in the book “T’ai-chi ch’üan shu” (The art of T’ai-chi ch’üan; 太 極 拳 術) in 1925.
Continue readingYang style Tai Chi 108 form (long form) in Chinese, English & German (incl. PDF)
One of the most-known forms is probably the Yang style Tai Chi 108 form. And to make it confusing for us pracitioners, it has many names: Tai Chi 108 form, 105 form, 103 form, 85 form, 150 form 94 form, 88 form or just: Tai Chi long form.
The number actually depends on how you count the different moves. My current teacher counts the Yin-Yang-phases and says that there are 169 phases! So I guess one could call the long Yang form the 169 form, if he wanted to. Or if you count repeated movemens just once (e.g. “repulse monkey”), you end up with a lower movement count.
Continue readingDebunking a Taijiquan myth: do you need to be patient to learn Taijiquan?
A common misperception among people who do not practice Taijiquan is that you need to be patient to learn Taijiquan. I started learning Taijiquan more than a decade ago and I really enjoy it. And I have to admit that I am definitely NOT PATIENT AT ALL! Continue reading