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Y. K. Chen
TAI-CHI CH'UAN Paperback. 184 pp. Wildside Press. 2003 ISBN: 9780809531202 reviewed by Patrick Killough for alibris Only, I think, in fictional martial arts feature films like CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, do people learn tai chi ch'uan simply by reading a book with illustrations and/or text. Normally, you pick a teacher. He belongs to one of four or five major "schools" of tai chi and that is what he teaches you. My teacher is of the YANG Family School. So is Y. K. Chen and that is what his splendid little book teaches -- all 108 moves or postures of the YANG long form. Chen's illustrations and texts track with my teacher at least 95%. That makes it easy for me to use the book to flesh out my face-to-face lessons. That compatibility is not something the beginner dare take for granted. For instance, I have two beautiful YANG family "T'ai Chi for Health" DVDs by Terence Dunn. Dunn's performances are pleasing to watch but pair up with the way my teacher presents materials no more than 75% at best. Put it this way: if both Chen and Dunn were Christians teaching their forms of Christianity, then Chen might be Catholic and Dunn Protestant. The differences may not ultimately be crucial in the eyes of God but neither are they helpful to novices like me at this early stage. How
do I use Y. K.
Chen?
As a reference work. Every one of the 108 moves has a name given in both Chinese and English. Thus in my last class I learned moves 78 and 79, "Snake Creeps Down" and "Golden Cock Stands on One Leg (Right)." Next week will come Move 80 "Golden Cock Stands on One Leg (Left)." Move 80 is so much like move 79 and Chen's illustration and words are so clear that I have already begun practicing it. Move 81 "Step Back and Repulse Monkey (Right and Left) begins repetition of an earlier sequence I have already learned. By looking ever ahead, I, a physically clumsy, slow learner, can lessen the time it takes me to learn the elements, which are, let me emphasize, merely the very basic ABCs of tai chi. A minor not unrelated point: my teacher expects me to pay him each month. Why not, therefore, quicken the pace with the help of Y. K. Chen and save a few dollars? Chen's text, in addition to the details of the 108 moves, is rich and instructive in other dimensions. Tai Chi is explained as the underpinning of more advanced and aggressive taoist martial arts. There are discussions of posture, balance, centrality of the waist, the circles contained in all tai chi movements and the contributions of tai chi to health. There are also speculations on tai chi in relation to physiology, dynamics, psychology and moral life. The elements and 108 movements of WANG family tai chi are learned in class, as it were, all alone, in one-on-one imitation of the teacher. Your teacher need never lay a hand on you. At a later stage, however, you practice with a partner what is called "Joint Hand Operations With Fixed Steps." I now watch my more advanced classmates do this. In a couple more weeks, I will begin to improve my 108 postures through a leisurely systematic classroom review called "corrections." After that I will join others in doing the original 108 movements in reverse, more properly as mirror images of the first time around (if left foot was forward the first go around, then in the mirror image, the right foot will be forward, etc.) My teacher will then lead me and others through joint hand operations and eventually into weapons. My teacher does not tell us the number of the movement as we learn it and only rarely, with a smile, refers to its Chinese name. I, however, like to know where I am. And knowing the names and numbers of moves in a sequence helps my aging brain remember "what comes next." Will this learning through class and through Chen's book eventually get me to the point where I can be a bit player lost in the crowd of a Jackie Chan martial arts movie? I wouldn't say no. Meanwhile Y. K. Chen's little paperback book helps me work with my teacher to improve balance and form and to understand better what I am being taught. -OOO- http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?binding=&mtype=&keyword =+y.k.+chen%3A+tai-chi+ch%27uan&hs.x=8&hs.y=9&hs=Submit ==-=-=-=-=--=- for amazon Title of this review: After "Snake Creeps Down" Comes "Golden Cock Stands on One Leg", March 29, 2009 Reviewer's rating of Y. K. Chen's TAI-CHI CH'UAN * * * * FOUR STARS If your tai chi teacher follows the classic Yang Family 108 movements Long Form, there is a good chance that Y. K. Chen's TAI-CHI CH'UAN can help you. I am 73 years old, no athlete, and my memory is not what it was when I was 15. My mind is analytical and I like to know the names of the tai chi movements. In my last lesson my teacher introduced Chen's movements 78 and 79, "Snake Creeps Down" and "Golden Cock Stands on One Leg" (right leg). Chen devotes 1/2 page of text and 1/4 page of drawn illustration (featuring presumably himself) to each of these moves. To give you a feel for his words, "Snake Creeps Down" ends "Sit
down on your right foot as low as you can, and lower your left hand
below your left knee, and stretch it forward beyond the toes of your
left foot. The right foot stands still. The left leg is straightened (Fig.
62)."
These words and illustrations do no more than confirm what my teacher demonstrated in a bit more detail. But they give meat and drink to my analytical powers, imagination and memory. My teacher is constantly after me to slow down, spread my feet wider, to suspend my head from an imaginary string, to hold my torso perpendicular to the floor and such like. To me at least, however, my biggest problem in tai chi is that I am an old geezer and sometimes have trouble remembering "what comes next" when I am practicing alone at home. Since Chen and my teacher are in sync on what comes next, as on everything else, Chen provides a good refresher/reminder. His texts are dense and require close reading, but almost always are a big help to me. Beyond the 108 postures, Chen's booklet provides insights into the Taoist principles behind tai chi -- an art which is the introductory basis or skeleton for all the more advanced Chinese martial arts. Y. K. Chen emphasizes the waist, balance, softness, fluidity, calm and correct posture. Chen analyzes all tai chi movements in terms of circles. Hands, feet, tongue on roof of mouth, alertness, yielding while an imagined opponent attacks, attacking when he yields: it is all there. Towards the end Chen moves beyond solo practice of the movements into working with a live partner: first, Joint Hand Operations and then Ta Lu. All this lays a systematic foundation for later training with weapons. Need Jackie Chan worry about a new rival? Not in my case! I do tai chi for fun, for balance and for good health. My hat is off my balding head to both my teacher and to Y. K. Chen. -OOO- Your Tags: tai chi, snake creeps down, golden cock stands on one leg, yang family, long form http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809531208/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_img =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- for epinions Title of this review: Tai Chi Panda Speaks. by aohcapablanca, Mar 29 '09 DISCLAIMER: I am close to bumbling through to completion my first "cutting through the underbrush" round of learning the most elementary ABCs of tai chi. In a few weeks I will next be slowly led by my teacher through a systematic review called "corrections." It is hard to imagine a slower, clumsier or less athletic learner than I am. This review is, therefore, only for people merely thinking of beginning tai chi or for novice practitioners at even lower levels of proficiency than I am -- if such there be. I enjoy tai chi, am pleased that it improves my balance and clears my mind and am happy to share what little I have learned with others. But please do not REPEAT NOT mistake me for an expert. END DISCLAIMER. In the Chinese martial arts film CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, the criminal Jade Fox, a gifted, athletic woman, had once begged a master to teach her his craft of Wudang martial arts. He beds her willingly enough but will not allow any woman to learn his secret skills. So Jade Fox steals his closely guarded secret play book. She, however, is illiterate and left to her own devices can do more than look at and imitate the master's illustrations. But by design Jade Fox lives with (by becoming her nanny) a young girl of the nobility. Woman persuades girl to read aloud the purloined martial arts writings to her. Together, in great secrecy, the two make themselves first class fighters. But the older woman learns almost entirely from the book's illustrations. For her very young protegee soon grasps that she has more raw talent than her nanny and therefore holds back some of the text's vital written instructions while secretly mastering all of them herself. This story from CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON is relevant to Y. K. Chen's famous little training manual, TAI-CHI CH'UAN: ITS EFFECTS & PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS. The film's counter-intuitive thesis is that you can teach yourself tai chi and other martial arts entirely from a book. But the film also shows that such a trainee will never become as good as someone who has trained hand to hand and face to face with a master. Most of us ordinary Americans take hands on classes taught by experts. Perhaps the slower among us also cajole a more advanced, kind-hearted classmate to give us extra lessons on the side. Finally, we may also look for a book or video tape that covers the same ground in the same sequences as our class. To some extent this is a matter of temperament or preferred learning style. This latter may or may not fit hand in glove with the instructor's preferred style of teaching tai chi. I have now enjoyed a year of weekly tai chi lessons (interrupted by considerable travel). Nicknamed by my classmates Tai Chi Panda, I am a clumsy septuagenarian with memory not what it was 60 years ago. I have owned Y. K. Chen's TAI-CHI CH'UAN for several months but only recently begun to use his book seriously. I now read it faithfully to supplement my weekly lessons and to improve my daily practice. Slow, meditative Taoist tai chi, the humble skeleton or basis for other more advanced martial arts, is taught within varying traditions of four or five different "schools." Within his own general tradition, each tai chi master or instructor may also have little individual nuances or quirks or ways of learning to which he or she is likely to insist his learners pay uncommonly close attention. I am being taught what is styled Yang Family tai chi. It has 108 "long form" solo movements. In his TAI-CHI CH'UAN, Y. K. Chen presents all 108 in both words and line drawings and then goes beyond the ABCs to introductory Joint Hand Operations and Ta Lu. This taste of working with a partner will prepare readers, at a later date, for still more advanced training with weapons. Weapons are, however, not taught in this book. Despite the fictional thesis that it is feasible to learn martial arts entirely by reading, as suggested by the film CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, I implore you not to pick up Y. K. Chen's tract and expect to come out a couple of years later a master of the basic 108 Yang Family movements and form. On the other hand, it is possible and desirable, I suggest, that leafing through Chen's text might inspire you to enrol in a hands on, face to face local class in tai chi, though that is not precisely the book's stated aim. Nor is the book an exhaustive, systematic encyclopedia or history. It is simply a little "how to" reference book. Chen, I imagine, may have written it at the request of those of his students who crave more analysis than classroom imitation alone provides them. CAUTION: Since there are several schools of this slow movement martial art called tai chi ch'uan, odds are prima facie against whatever course you find offered at your local YMCA or fitness center being identical with or even close to the Yang Family Long Form covered by Y. K. Chen. In that case, Chen's book will lose most of its potential usefulness to you. My advice is: do things your teacher's way. Do not fear to query him or her as to what school of Tai Chi is being taught. Ask for recommended books and DVDS. But do not be surprised if he declines your request, insisting that you learn simply by watching and listening to him, just as he once did with his own masters. My instructor and Chen are 100% in sync regarding philosophy and perhaps 95% identical in the moves. By contrast, Terence Dunn's very elegant DVDs (long form and short form) on Wang Family T'ai Chi for Health are notably different from what I learn in class. Dunn presents some different sequences in the movements, for example. His elongated leg movements also strike me as exaggerated. They are, nonetheless, beautiful to watch. But no one in my class would go to Terence Dunn to if he needs to refresh his or her memory of "what comes next" in the 108 positions. With Y. K. Chen I am never unsure of "what comes next" in my weekly class or daily practice. How did I come to tai chi? My first U. S. Foreign Sevice tour was in Hong Kong 1964 - 66. My new bride and I, on our separate ways to work, witnessed hundreds of Chinese men, women, boy and girls, practicing tai chi in parks every morning. And she accepted our consul general's wife's invitation to join a tai chi class. Five years ago, now retired, I was personally introduced hands-on to tai chi in an Elderhostel near Kerrville, Texas (see http://www.elderhostel.org for the general background of elderhostels). During that week's "talent night," a Korean American participant demonstrated her skills of 40 years standing. She did some long form or other of tai chi from beginning to end in the traditional twenty minutes. What tai chi "school" our elderhostel instructor or our classmate demonstrated (or even if they were of the same school) I do not remember, assuming they bothered to tell me. But my interest was now piqued. When, therefore, I read over a year ago that tai chi was being offered by Black Mountain, NC Parks and Recreation Deparment only a mile and a half from my home, I simply showed up one Thursday afternoon and took the plunge. I have lived the past five years in a retirement community (see http://www.highlandfarms.com). When other residents see me bumbling through my moves (e. g. warming up before thrice weekly aerobic and stretching exercise classes), they are complimentary, a pleasant surprise, considering that so many have studied tai chi themselves. To myself I come across as simply an overweight, lazy, real life tai chi version of the martial arts-besotted KUNG FU PANDA of the martial arts feature film. But to charitable neighbors, I am the poor man's Jackie Chan. Bless 'em all! YOUR GREAT DECISION: Is tai chi for you? Very likely it is. And for more reasons than one. All forms of dancing are good preparation. Tai chi is slow moving, graceful, non-contact and safe (there is some risk in all martial arts, one very good reason to learn tai chi under personal supervision). Some day you just might grow too old or arthritic for tennis, badminton, bowling, golf, dancing or even croquet. So why not learn tai chi right now -- and learn it right and safely? Some day tai chi may be the only physical exercise you will still be able to do. And isn't doing tai chi a healthier and more attractive prospect than sitting on a couch watching TV basketball or sighing in your wheel chair pining for bygone glory as a swivel-hipped halfback or scratch golfer? Ponder, I humbly request, the well intentioned words of this tai chi panda. -OOO- Pros: Clear illustrations of 108 postures. Good essays on philosophy and psychology behind tai chi. Cons: A dense written text demanding close, slow reading. Needed: more white space between sentences. The Bottom Line: Think about joining a tai chi class. If your intstructor teaches Yang School Long Form, Y. K. Chen might become a good friend. Otherwise look for DVDs and other writers. Overall Product Rating: * * * * Above Average Recommended: Yes http://www.epinions.com/specs/Tai_Chi_Ch_Uan_by_Y_K_Che ==-=-=-=-=--=- |