The First Form
The First Form (in Mandarin Chinese is called “Yi Lu”) is comprised of various movements to develop strength, balance, coordination, and understanding of basic Taiji principles.
The First Form teaches essential taiji skill known as “Silk Reeling Strength” or “Chan Si Jing”, a spiral force that begins in the feet and moves through the structure of the body. The First Form is essential to understand Chen Taiji as a practical fighting art and serves as an excellent training regime for people who mainly wish to practice Taijiquan as a health exercise.
The First Form is characterized by a softer quality than the Second Form Cannon Fist.The choreography of Yilu trains the mechanics of Chen Taiji. All internal styles are characterized by the same principles of structure: upright, rooted, open, relaxed, expansive. These principles are implemented in physical practice.
The Yilu, specific to the way we train, adheres to the rules established within the Hong Junsheng tradition of Chen style Taiji. These rules include: maintaining 45 degree angles of movement and posture; counterweighting; proscriptions against double-heavy postures and movement (this refers to overweighting the upper and lower body on one side, causing unstable body positions); proscriptions against tossing (shifting the body weight from one side of the body to the other in order to advance or retreat).
Yilu teaches the body-mechanic “tracks” needed to understand the physical application of Taiji principles. Practitioners first learn the choreography and over time will come incorporate in the movements the practical application of the Eight Energies, knowing how and when to apply them.
The accumulation of skill gained by refining the choreography and techniques together with the proper energetic conditions will ultimately result in sophisticated martial skills that operates according to kinesthetic principles that appear to not conform to common understandings of body movement and martial arts.
These internal skills yield a balanced skill based in the Civil and Martial qualities so often referred to in classical texts. Advanced skills (Martial) give rise to confidence and the desire to seek tranquility and harmony (Civil).
This mindset gives rise to an ethical foundation (Civil) that tempers and controls the application or use of martial skill and precluded the development of an aggressive mindset that can misuse martial skills. Martial skills are for the betterment of humanity and not for oppression or self-aggrandizement.
Peng is the primary force that serves as the foundation of taiji practice. But peng energy can only be used or employed by being manifest through material physicality or, in other words, through the various postures that comprise a taiji form. An analogy might be made with electricity which cannot produce light without a light bulb.
The names of the various techniques describe various postural shapes the serve the function
Positions of the First Form
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