Which weapons are part of the original Yang family tai chi?
The traditional Yang style actually doesn’t have many weapons. In the main they are divided into two groups: long and short handled weapons. The short weapons are the 67-move sword and 13-move sabre. Now the long weapons. We used to include the long spear (or Yang style 13-move spear), but later for safety reasons removed the spear head so that it became a long staff. The techniques for the staff remain the same as the original spear form. Later the long staff practice turned mainly into a way of training to emit energy (fa1 jing4). This is usually referred to as dou3 gan1 or ‘shivering staff’.
