I have a Taiji confession to make. I do not like the Long Solo Form. This is the basis for everything we do, and it’s the first thing I was taught by my teacher fifteen years ago. I hated it then and resisted it with all my might. I questioned my teacher every step of the way, and I dragged my feet in practicing at home. As in, I didn’t. Practice at home, I mean. It’s the reason I slowly added a second class a week and then a third. I reasoned that if I wasn’t going to practice at home, then I better go to more classes.
The Long Solo Form is the Master Liang form. He was very much into dancing and made everything fit a piece of music. Everything was even counts and the movements reflected that belief. The form hurt my knees and my back terribly. I had to do extensive work to undo both (though, to be fair, I already carried a lot of body pain before Taiji. The Long Form just exacerbated it).
I cursed Taiji. I got my teacher to say ‘Fuck Taiji’ as a way of emphasizing with my disgruntled frame of mind. I had forgotten all about this until my private lesson today. In the backyard in 68 degree weather, by the way. It ‘felt like’ 103 two days ago. Madness! Anyway, we were working on the new Long Form and chatting about how much I hated the old one when I first started Taiji. She said she was working with a new student who was very skeptical about the benefits of Taiji. My teacher said she understood and mentioned she once had a student (me) who was exceedingly skeptical about Taiji, so much so, I drove her to say ‘Fuck Taiji’ about something or the other. I joked, “Did your hand explode? No? Then Taiji can’t be that bad.” That was something else I had said in jest–that I felt like Taiji would make my hand explode.
I have apologized to my teacher for being the biggest pain in her ass about Taiji. She shrugged it off because as she said, she trusted Taiji. She knew it was beneficial, and she trusted that I would realize it at some point. Now, I can’t imagine my life without it, honestly. Yes, it’s mostly the weapons, but I realize that the Long Form is important.
One reason I stopped practicing it is because right before the pandemic, my teacher’s teacher started to drastically change it. Or rather, he started teaching the Medium Form, which is very different. And tweaking the Long Form. I don’t remember how many years ago it was, but I was trying to teach myself the left side of the Long Form.