37 posture Wu form developed by master Wang Pei Sheng, a student of master Yang Yu Ting and Wang Mao Zhai
Wang MaoZhai Lineages
In 1953, he finished a great work, the Wu Style Thirty-Seven Posture Form. At that time, he was teaching at the Beijing Industrial College. Some faculty
and students complained to him that the traditional form took too long. At over 40 minutes, many of the busy college faculty and students often did not
have time to finish one repetition of the form. So Master Wang had the idea for a short form.
The first thing he did was to remove all the repetitive movements, so that trimmed down the form to just 37 postures. Then he edited and rearranged these
postures to create a new form. The logic he used was to put some of the simple and easy movements in the beginning of the form, with some complex and
difficult movements in the middle, and finally some quiet and relaxing movements in the end.
He kept experimenting with the new form as he started teaching it to people. He thought it can be make even more efficient, using even fewer postures.
He analyzed the form in detail. Recalling his own learning experience, he realized the traditional approach relied on countless repetitions to finally drill into
the student what the correct feelings should be, teachers really didn't explain much in detail. Using this approach, it is only those who are naturally more
sensitive and intuitive who finally acquired the skills. For many others the skills and concepts remained very difficult to grasp, even after decades of
practice.
So Master Wang took the next step of breaking apart the 37 non-repeating postures in Taiji Quan form into their 178 individual movements. For the first
time in history, for each of these movements, he standardized them: First, he provided detailed and exacting guidelines on just how each movement should
be performed, the direction, angle, and many other aspects. Second, he told people what the correct feeling for each movement should be. Third, he used
the idea of Liu He Ba Fa (six integration and eight basic methods) to explain each movement. Fourth, he explained how to practice shen, ii, and qi in that
movement. And five, he told you how to link all these detailed movements, from internal to external, so that energy is transferred smoothly between each
link.
After many years of modifications and enhancements, he made his new form public. Today, we can safely say, after observing the experiences of all the
people who have practiced this form in the last half century, that this new form is more efficient as a training tool than the traditional long form. Everything is
very clean, straightforward, and easy to understand by comparison. It was an instant success. Years later he was to published book and video of this
form.
More about master Wang Pei Sheng
http://www.ycgf.org/WPS_Eulogy/WPS_Eulogy.html
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...and my comment is telling: "Fan through back" is the Yang label for this form. Wang Pei Sheng labels it as "Flash the Arms" (Posture XIV. Flash the Arms (Unfurl the Fan), p. 86).
AlexLandefeld 1 year ago
Very useful - I was just discussing with my teacher the diff between the Wu Fan Thru Back and the Yang Fan Thru back -- minute differences, but differences nonetheless.
AlexLandefeld 1 year ago
r32faisal has no understanding of internal.
cursk8 3 years ago
that dude just wasted 10 minutes of his life
r32faisal 3 years ago
Did he have his masters consent to shorten the form?
mazorblock 4 years ago