Tai Chi for Health Yang Long

After having learned the first sequence of the Yang style long form from another video, I changed all of the postures to look more like the ones Terrence Dunn demonstrates in this video. The moves are very rounded out and circular, and to me appear more artistic, which is what I wanted to achieve. A while back, I met a guy at work from China who practiced the Yang style long form every morning. I showed him a few of my postures and he said that they looked "perfect." Well, he was probably just being courteous, but if someone of his caliber did not immediately notice something was wrong, I guess the tape can't be all that bad. Wonderful demonstrations. I gladly recommend it.

For those who have not take any martial art etc, here is some advise. When you start to learn the form, realize it is going to take A VERY LONG TIME for you to be able to learn the entire form correctly. To start, learn the first 5-8 steps and then turn off the video. Keep practicing until you can do the steps without thinking about them. Go back to the video and do the next 5-8 steps. Then turn off the video and do all the steps you know until you do ALL of them automatically. Keep this up until you learn the whole form. This will take weeks if not months to perfect. It is possible to learn the form in a few days and be automatic in it within a week or two, but you've got to dedicate some serious hours to Tai Chi training.

All in all, a wondeful video that is easy to follow. Just take your time and be patient. Once you learn the form by heart, you can concetrate on the relaxation power of the form and less on remembering the sequence of manuevers. Good Luck!!

You are starting to learn tai chi and are a complete beginer. The first few movements require you to turn 90 degrees away from the TV. You can no longer easily see the tv, you are listening to the audio instruction. You are currently balanced with all your wieght on your right leg as instructed, then the instructor says move your right leg.. which is patently impossible. You have to turn around, get out of position, rewind and then watch again to find out that what he is calling the right leg is actually the left leg. Its easy to notice this when it is a leg that has all your weight on it but much less so when it is an arm movement. Less than 3 movements after the leg incident, it happens with arms. That is as far as I have taken this to date, but as a beginner I realise that it will take a very long time to get through the video if it is littered with this kind of mistake - 2 mistakes in 5 moves is way way too much.

Needless to say I am not impressed with the quality control on the video and even less convinced that if I do manage to get all the way through, the Tai Chi I learn will be what is intended.

Message to all producers of this kind of video - if your video includes complex movements that instructs left from right movement, make sure that left and right are used consistently throughout. Otherwise you annoy your customers and cause them to write nasty reviews about the product.