During the past two years I have been developing a Taiji Cane program for Qi Elements Taijiquan curriculum. We have been teaching Taiji Saber for a while, but our saber lacked foundation. I have to admit to a serious prejudice when it comes to turning martial arts into modern dance, which is the outcome when bare-hand or weapons are taught without martial foundation. Of course, some people may say that learning the martial foundation of saber or sword is not a productive direction for kung fu (time and effort) in the modern age. After all, in some places carrying a sword or saber is illegal whereas carrying a firearm is not. But you can carry a cane legally everywhere. So kung fu applied to Taiji cane is very practical.

If anyone has developed fundamental training for Taiji cane, I have yet to find it. I took the techniques of Taiji saber and sword from Master Yang and other sources and employed them in Taiji cane. The vast majority of weapon and supplemental hand techniques of Taiji saber and easily applicable to cane. Even some of the sword techniques like dian and beng (flick down and flick up) can be used with cane.

We demonstrated our Taiji Cane at World Tai Chi Qigong Day last week, and it attracted a lot of interest. The demonstration of le zha (rollback and poke) evoked several gasps from the audience. Yes, it is nasty.  Our simple level one beginner cane form is on our You-Tube channel qielements1 as are our techniques from level one and level two. I am still working on creating a more complex form incorporating all of the level one and two techniques as well as a cane vs cane matching set (you know, for when we are all in the old-folks home jockeying for place in the dinner line).  Go to Qi Elements’ You-Tube Channel