Form as a vessel

[Dvivid]

Great new article by John Loupos

http://ymaa.com/articles/form-as-a-vess ... ple-part-1

“Many spokes share the wheel’s hub;
Yet it is the center hole that makes the wheel useful.
If you form clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
And what is not there is what becomes useful.
Therefore, benefit comes from emptiness;
Usefulness from what is not there. ”
—Tao Te Ching (Chapter 11)

[Josh Young]

I found it a stimulating read. It doesn't mention however that traditional teaching originally had the forms learned one move at a time, and each move was practiced until it was learned properly.

The form was not imitated and repeated incorrectly over and over in the idea of improving, rather it was learned correctly and with a precision that is unheard of today.

In recently meeting a man trained traditionally by some of the Chen family, I became aware of the difference in the standards that are employed relating to forms, in the east and the west, so to speak. Today we have this whole group approach thing to form learning, which really changes the way things are learned and taught. The man
i met was required to do stance training to build his body properly, for one year, to be fit enough to be able to perform the form, and he said that he wished he had done more, that a year was not enough. He also spoke of another form that while being very skilled, he was not yet skilled enough to perform, so he was not taught it. Imagine this, you want to learn a form, but skill level it requires is above your own, and so you are not taught the form, but are taught another that meets your physical ability, in this way the modern forms of Yang style are heavily modified and reduced, this is part if the code that is mentioned, you see by reducing an advanced move to a simple version the truth becomes hidden in a type of physical shorthand.

But the essential tenet, that the taiji forms have encoded principals is 100% correct, they also have encoded applications and other stuff. Make your own forms too, just include the principals, skills and methods that you want to work on, encode and hide whatever you wish. But then if you don't know that you can, and do, then you probably shouldn't