13 Posture Hao Style Taiji [2020-04-06]

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2020-04-06: While doing the long recuperation from open-heart surgery in the early Fall of 2019 that consumed my daily routine for months afterwards, I taught myself a simplified version of the Hao style of taijiquan as one of my ways of staying sane and getting some exercise. As we are now caught up [most of us] in the even-greater insanity of a pandemic, there seems to me to be a lot of relevance in my suggesting that this is also a good time to "keep busy" and get exercising. Both those things can help keep you healthy when the world seems to be falling apart around you.

Hao style is considered a small-frame variation of taijiquan and it puts more value on footwork than some of the others. Because of the relatively small steps and avoidance of low postures it is more suitable to "oldies" like myself but it still has some very interesting aspects to the training. Yes, even martially though that can be hard to believe if you don't have any experience in a good martial style of Taijiquan.

As to it's history... The Hao/Wu-style (Chinese Pinyin: Wǔshì or wǔ/hǎoshì) of its founder, Wu Yu-hsiang (武禹襄, 1813–1880), is a separate family style from the more popular Wu-style (吳氏) as founded by Wu Chien-ch'üan Wu Yu-hsiang was a scholar from a wealthy and influential family who became a senior student of Yang Lu-ch'an who was the founder of the Yang style. His most famous student was his nephew, Li I-yü (李亦畬; 1832–1892), who also authored several important works on t'ai chi ch'uan. Li I-yü taught Hao Wei-chen (郝為真; 1842–1920), who taught Li Xiang-yuan, Li Shengduan, Sun Lutang, and others. Sun Lutang later on created Sun style Tai Chi. Wu/Hao style is one of the six recognized Family styles of Taijiquan in China [Chen, Yang, Wu, Wu/Hao, Sun and Zhaobao].

Getting back to this short form, It's a relatively modern choreography and was designed for beginners. I'd like to be able to say [in time-honoured taiji tradition] that I "learned it in a dream" or was taught by the ghost of the ancient founder of that art; but I used a couple of Youtube clips by an expert in that style, Jimmy K. Wong. [Thanks to him and his video channel on that social media site has some detailed instructional material he has made available for free because of the world situation. youtube.com/user/wuhao108/videos]

Learning from dvds or internet offerings is do-able if you persist and --particularly -- if you have relevant experience in something similar. For example, I understand the Yang style well and have a passable understanding of Wu and Sun styles so this learning curve was a bit easier for me than it would be for someone who has never done taiji and decides to start their training by self-teaching themselves this little solo form.

Keeping that in mind, I also am not fooling myself that Master Wong or any other expert in Hao-Style would find my performance of this solo form to be "high level" [or even acceptable]. Anyway, I spotted a couple of small mistakes in this outing but in general it's not a bad performance as I've only been doing the whole sequence for less than six months.

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