I was visiting some friends the other day and was asked if I wanted to go to a Tai-Chi class. “Of course” I said, that would be great. And it was.
I hadn’t been in a group setting in years so this was going to be interesting. It turned out to be a delightful group of mostly senior Chinese ladies. It also turned out to be Yang style. I practice the unified Beijing style, which has some postures from Yang, so I wasn’t completely lost. The good thing was that I could follow along and could easily make corrections when needed.
After a lengthy warmup of tai-chi walking and some simple Qigong, we did the 24 form. This was reasonably close to the Beijing 24. From there we launched directly into the 88 form which while not having any movements that were completely unfamiliar; it was very foreign, and was a real challenge to keep up. Fortunately the instructor was exceptionally good and as long as I could see her I was mostly okay. When I couldn’t see her I had to rely on following other students; some who were much better than their classmates. I was close to my friend and she is pretty good so that was a big help. I was actually quite surprised at the very wide variety in (for want of a better word) capability in the group.
We had a good long break where we got water and chatted and then when we reconvened we finished the session with the 48 movement form. This again was a bit closer to my style, although not without some differences as well.
I have to admit that it made me feel kinda nice when several of the ladies came over to me and complimented me on my form. After class had ended, my friend introduced me to some of the senior members and we had a delightful conversation.
Over the coming days I reflected on the differences between this class and its pure Yang style and the group I learned with and its Beijing style. My old group was also mostly Chinese, but had more caucasians as well. Our old instructor rarely did tai-chi with the group, preferring to observe the students and with his indomitable memory make individual corrections to select students after the set was done. He was also a Kung Fu man and had competitive Wushu in his background, so all our Tai-Chi was done to music. As far as the actual forms go, ours tends to have lower postures, and in our set of 48 the movements are much smaller and closer to the body. Our classes were held in a dimly lit dingy old wrestling gym on a very thick and huge carpet, which made balance a real challenge. This class I just took had silky smooth polished hardwood floors and windows looking out over a beautiful vista of trees and mountains.
One form is not better or worse than the other… just different.