Gord, thanks for your newfound civility, it is impressive.
I won't ever stop sharing my view, or what I was taught. Erle has taiji in his system, but did name his system after himself and did not formally call it taijiquan. He was taught taiji and did teach elements of it, no doubt there.
I have video of myself doing taijiquan form work, maybe you will see it sometime. You know my lineage, it is a non issue.
My point in this thread is that Erles system mixes martial arts materials and is highly effective. It is not orthodox, but is well known and stated by Erle to be unique to him. Erle did write in an early version of Power Taiji that he studied with Chen Han Ling, as he spells it, who did create the form that the WTBA calls "old yang". There are some distinctions between the CPL version and the version Erle taught, but Erle did openly admit he changed things so as to be able to tell when someone was using his material. Later versions of his books do not bear any resemblance to his early hand bound editions, sadly. Any student of Erles would do well to try to obtain copies of his early works, which are very insightful and contain utterly different teachings, claims, teachers and dates than his later works do. I assume he had good reasons for the changes he made.
More to the point of is thread of course is that his system is an excellent example of a mixed system containing diverse elements drawn from several martial art sources. While not orthodox, it illustrates that mixing is not in and of itself bad in the martial sense.
Consider that his applications are not orthodox, but were developed by him with the help of two prominent acupuncture specialists, he openly shares this information. In another sense this is also a good example of mixing elements, he took various teachings and with the help of others combined them into his system. He illustrates that someone can do this well, that developing new takes on old methods by combining elements of different disciplines and systems is not wrong or bad at all.
A great many of his students also have backgrounds in external arts and mixed his teachings with their own, again successfully.
The Chens created their system by mixing teachings together, Yang Luchan likewise did so, one might even go so far as to say that such mixing is historically traditional in many ways and not at all adverse. However such practices do result in new disciplines that often have little resemblance to their ancestral styles and forms. Sun Lutang is also a good example of this and his student CWM continued to practice Bagua his whole life, despite leaving Sun to become a student of Cheng-fu, again another example of someone practicing two disciplines, though his teachings say not to mix the forms or amalgamate them, but to practice them separately. However in terms of applications it is taught that or should not restrict self in terms of this, that one can mix applications of Bagua and taiji together quite well.
Many formal teachers of Yang Style express that yang taiji contains the same elements as found in Bagua and Xingyiquan and they are called sisters of eachother. From the inside perspective this makes a great deal of sense.
I do use taiji to remove milk and water plants! To climb stairs, to pick things up from the ground etc. it informs my movements constantly.