Looks All Right, But Not Up To Standard, Every Move Is Lost To The Opponent!

Recently, i got the chance to perform my Yang style form in front of my teacher. And he told me, "Well, to people who don't really know taiji, your form looks all right, but it is still not up to my standard. You are giving every move to your opponent." What he actually means is that although my form looks okay to the untrained eye, it is not practical (for fighting purposes). So he told me to demonstrate my form from the start to the first Cross Hands（十字手）and he would start to correct. However, when I was done, he told me that there were too many errors and told me to perform the from the start up to the end of Grasp the Sparrow's Tail (揽雀尾). These are my errors:

1. When I did the starting posture, I tend to lean back a little and I did not sit into my kua（胯）enough.

2. When I lower my hands, I tend to draw my elbows down back towards my body. This is not right as i should keep my hands almost straight and lower it down in that manner so that the qi can flow freely. If you do it in this manner, you can feel as if your hand has sort of expanded(膨胀).

3. When doing the press (挤) My left palm should directly press onto my arm.

There are 1 or 2 other errors but they are hard to describe so i will not add them in here. But luckily, there were no problems with my leg postures and foot work. I was really happy to know that there are no problems with them as i have really spent lots of effort on my footwork!

The first error also got me thinking that actually taiji trains the qi too but as i am sometimes so caught up in having the correct structural alignment and having correct timing for each move that i forget about the qi aspect of taiji. I was thinking that taiji could actually be done as a qigong exercise where the emphasis is on letting the qi flow to every part smoothly and training the yi at the same time. Maybe i would incorporate it into my daily training, performing one sequence with emphasis on qi!