+sweeperstore Thanks! Although Tai Chi is Justin's main discipline he has also studied a fair amount of Ba Gua, so it tends to come through in a lot of his movement. You see it a whole lot if you see him fight! Thanks for the great comments!

Thank you so much!

The sword in the left at the beginning can be used both offensively and defensively. Admittedly I would probably never do that in actual combat and this is an instance where the practical application is less practical than it could be. I still teach this portion of the form both at the start and the ending as it is traditional and it serves much the same purpose in the form as bowing, essentially as bookends on either end of the more practical martial movement. As for the left handed question, I teach lots of people left handed, and in fact if someone wants to learn double sword I require them to learn the sword singly with both hands before moving on to double swords. As the the idea that a right handed person will naturally wield a sword left handed, I don't find that to be true, most righties use the sword right handed and vice versa. Thanks for the great comments and question though! Hope you keep watching!

Friend, One generally boxes with left hand and leg forward. This is also how a right-hander stands to throw, use a spear or pitchfork or to shoot a pistol from the Weaver stance. It seems a simplification to fence or use sword or knife with the left side forward. If the left side is forward then it makes sense to hold one's sword in the left hand. I favor a Styers style knife technique so left side and left hand are forward with the knife in the left hand. For reasons that I don't understand, many working class folk like to boast about how hopelessly inept they are with their weak hand as if it were something to be proud of. I make it a point to use knife and sword in my left hand and it is quite natural by now. As a bonus-it seems that in my case at least-any move that I can do 100% with my left hand then I can do a good 85% to 90% Right-Handed-despite NEVER Practicing right handed. A brief question-If one had a traditional ox-tail dao made but also wanted a Western Saber style hand guard-would the guard get in the way of many of the spinning techniques? …..RVM45

Many sword forms originally started with the sword sheathed. The switch from the left to the right hand is the actual drawing of the sword. This is particularly obvious with many of the tai chi jian forms. The pointing and gesturing with the empty hand would have been done holding a scabbard which could be used either as a shield or a back-up weapon.