Re: Something else on the Ball ....Plus

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: : Louis, : : if the concept or phrasing of holding ball is relatively new, this adds another area for pondering: What about the Taiji Ball training. : : I have seen some people use a ball (often out of wood) for training continuity and position for Tuisho. Do these two have anything to do with each other? : : I will say that in the newer routines such as 24, 48, 42, and even 88 posture Taijiquan, the holding ball posture is used heavily as a transition. For Traditional Yang, the holding ball is not exactly like a ball (as you mentioned YZD pointing out). For Sun style, the holding ball is a vertical version and gives birth to the signature Kai Her (open close) of that style. Chen does not use the rigid idea of hold ball nor does Wu to my knowledge. Of course I may be thinking of the actual physical movement of standing in Ding Bu with one palm over the other as if holding a ball while you are referencing something else. : : So, if I am referring to the same thing that you are, the pros of it for me is to get the sense of fullness, balance, natural curving and such in movements. If this is how it is approached, it is valuable but it does have a point where you have to be natural and for get about the ball. The cons come in if you adhere to the concept too rigidly and forget flow and natural movement. : : : Greetings, : : : I’ve been thinking about what is commonly referred to in taijiquan as the “ball-holding position”. At a taijiquan and sword seminar I attended last July, Master Yang Zhenduo remarked that this is not really a traditional concept in taijiquan, but a modern development. He pointed to some problems in the ball-holding idea, asking “How big is this ball? What kind of ball is it? What are you doing with this ball?” He further illustrated that in many of the close-up positions, the palms of the hands do not in fact face one another as though holding a ball, and that trying to model one’s posture too rigidly on the notion of holding a ball will result in a distorted form. : : : I’m curious to know when and how the ball-holding imagery was introduced into the teaching of taijiquan. I don’t recall it being used in Yang Chengfu’s _Taijiquan ti yong quan shu_ (Complete book of the essence and applications of taijiquan), but I have seen usage: “as though supporting a ball”, or “as though embracing a sphere” in Chinese books by Fu Zhongwen, Gu Liuxin, Wu Zhiqing, and others. One can only speculate about how this came about. Possibly, with the introduction of taijiquan and other martial arts into the broader stream of physical education activities and sports in China in the twenties, the ball was introduced as a useful and congenial teaching image. (In like manner, I speculated some time back about the appropriation of “play” (da) from sports as a verb for engaging in taijiquan training.) But one also wonders if the “ball” is in fact a reference to something else. Jou Tsung-Hwa liked to point out that the taijitu, the yin/yang symbol, in fact refers conceptually to something three-dimensional, spherical, not a flat disk. This may in fact be what inspired the ball-holding usage. : : : I would like to know what other practitioners think about this. Is this ball-holding imagery useful in practice or in teaching of taijiquan? My own feeling is that it’s useful to imagine that there is “something” there, but that one must must be aware of the limitations of the ball imagery as pointed out by Master Yang Zhenduo. : : : Comments encouraged. : : : --Louis

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