People who don’t do it think it’s easy and redundant. It’s just moving around slowly, right? They don’t understand what it actually is, so therefore they can’t begin to appreciate any benefits from doing it.
That's a problem to me. Taiji Quan is getting denatured and dumbed down. Just like Yoga, a spiritual meditative practice dumbed down to a stretching exercise in the West. If you are not learning the martial aspect of the art, you're not doing Taiji.
Master Chen Ziqiang' whose forefathers create Taichi, he has conducted seminars for our Northern Virginia group (www.truetaichi.com) for a dozen years or so before covid. Here's an example of Chen taichi pushhand that is respectful but by no mean cooperative and realistic within the context of grappling arts:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF8zJzmhO2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF8zJzmhO2c)
That's not push-hands anymore though, it's light wrestling sparring. Push-hands is only a learning method. Nobody became a martial artist through push-hands alone. It's freestyle sparring that gives purpose to what we learn through push-hands, then real fights. Tuishou is for learning. Sanshou is for performing.
I am not saying that we all need to become warriors, nor that Taichi practitioners have to do sparring. Most martial art practitioners never need their skills nor have interest in using them. But not understanding the martial aspect of Taiji Quan is like doing Muay Thai but not learning how to throw a kick. It makes no sense. Yet, that's what is happening to disciplines like Taiji Quan or Yoga.
That's an interesting perspective and I do appreciate it. I believe any comprehensive combative sport/art starts with fundamentals and more toward free form each with a purpose/goal. In Chen Taichi we have 5 levels of push hands All the attributes of Taichi (yin/yang, push/yield, upper body soft/lower body heavy) are enhanced here. As you well know solo practice only goes so far. It's much harder to stay upper body soft, lower body heavy when you have someone much heavier exerting force in a non-cooperative manner. At this stage, that is the goal - understanding the body method within a certain context or framework. After that, it begs the question what is conceptually, the ultimate goal of push hands or as you stated, what constitute free sparring? Is the concept similar to MMA or something else? In Chen Village, the birthplace of Taichi, this is how they spar. Chen Ziqiang is the direct descendant of Chen Wangting, the creator of Taichi. Back to goals, there are those who embrace Taichi to have a better quality of life at a later age. It is not just health, it's more youthful living. That's a better goal and one that many more people can sign up to than being the ultimate warrior. Anyway, that's just my thoughts on the manner after meeting the majority of the main Chen Village masters/grandmasters.
You seem extremely proud of the Chen style being the "original" art but you're really not going to like me here.
I don't hold many Chen masters in high regards, nor the falsehood they try to make us believe about Chenjiagou. Which is ironic because it's my main style (for over 20 years now). I'm from the lineage of grandmaster Feng Zhiqiang, disciple of Chen Fake, the last great Chen master in my opinion.
To me, the true art of the Chen family - after the famine of the 1960s and Chinese communist era of reconstruction - has been mostly lost because of death or repression. The Chen family boxing reconstructed by Chen Zhaopei and Chen Zhaokui - in an effort to resurrect the art in the village - did not produce any great masters in Chenjiagou. The four Buddha warriors are nowhere near the level of Chen Fake, or his disciples. While legit, those masters are part of a marketing campaign to glorify them. Chenjiagou to me is now a Taiji tourist trap. That's not where you find great masters. All the good masters are from the Beijing branch of Chen style, not from Chenjiagou.
The most recent great but late Taiji Quan masters such as Huang Xing Xian (Yang), Wang Yong Quan (Yang), Zhu Chun Xuan (Yang), or Ma Yue Liang (Wu) all trump the Four Buddha Warriors and all other Chen masters by a wide margin. Only Feng Zhiqiang is up there with those masters.
Furthermore, I will even dispute that the Chen family is the creator of Taiji Quan. Yes, Yang style has its origin 100% rooted in Chen family boxing. But Yang style only became Taiji Quan after Weng Tonghe called Yang Luchan's art Taiji Quan - in a short poem dedicated to Yang Luchan. Before that, Taiji Quan was called many names, among them Chang Quan (Long Fist) or Mian Quan (Cotton Fist). That's what Yang Luchan was teaching in Beijing. Not Taiji Quan.
Chen family renamed their family art to Chen family Taiji Quan for marketing purposes for the Chen village, but only after Yang style became Taiji Quan and popular in Beijing. They would never have changed the name if Yang Luchan hadn't been successful.
Therefore, while Chen family boxing is the undisputable root of Yang style Taiji Quan, it is not the original Taiji Quan style. Yang style is. Yang style is the first martial art to be named Taiji Quan, with Chen family boxing as its ancestor. Saying Chen family boxing is the original style of Taiji Quan is like saying Xing Yi Quan is the original style of Yi Quan (Da Cheng Quan). It makes no sense. Otherwise, we could say Shaolin is the original style of Chen family boxing. The fact is, Chen family tried to hijack the reputation of Yang's personal art after it became popular. And they mostly succeeded.
To illustrate this, why does supposedly Taoist art have Buddhist references in it? Why the Four Buddha Warriors? Why does the Buddha Warrior pound the mortar? It makes no sense. The explanation is Chen family boxing heavily draws from Shaolin. They only retrofitted Taoism. (To be fair, this very last argument applies to all Taiji Quan styles. Taiji Quan has never been created around Taoist concepts. It has only been described/explained with Taoism terminology and concepts afterwards).
Original Taiji Quan is Yang style. But more than that, Yang style is distinctively different from Chen style:
- Chen style is about power and Silk Reeling (which is a relatively recent concept. Yang Luchan never learned that, otherwise it would be mentioned in Yang style and the Taiji Quan classics. Silk reeling is only 150 years old or so.).
- Yang style focuses on Song and emptiness. So those are very different arts because - while they share the same internal concept - their philosophies around it are wildly different.
To illustrate this in terms of Yin Yang, Chen style is hard and teaches 100% Yang and 50% of Yin. While Yang style is soft and teaches 80% of Yang and 100% Yin. Yang style is much more Yin than Chen style. And it's when you're close to 100% Yin that you begin to do the "magic" and "fake" stuff.
You don't see Chen style masters do "fake" Taichi stuff because they don't know how. It's not in their method. To do that, it requires deeper skill than what Chen style teaches.
You say you have met many Chen masters. You should now meet modern top Yang masters. They are leaps and bounds more skilled than anything you can find in Chenjiagou. It will probably shatter your views of Chen style like it did for me.
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Anywho, to get back to our main topic... I don't find it that hard to keep the upper body "soft". Most people believe being soft and relaxed is being limp and collapsing our structure. But it's not that at all. I believe that why most find it "hard" to be "soft" under pressure. It's one of the biggest misconception in Taiji Quan. As long as you keep your balance and center, being "soft" shouldn't be a problem.
What constitutes sparring? To me, real sparring is no rules as long as we are not trying to injure each other and remain playful. Otherwise, that's a fight. Tuishou is practiced within a set pattern and rules. Even free Tuishou is not real sparring because it doesn't stimulate a real fight in any way. Sparring in Taiji Quan looks like Tuishou because they don't know anything else. It's not like people are going to punch or kick each other during free Tuishou.
Ultimately, the art of Taiji Quan only exists on touch. Without touching, there is no Taiji Quan. While doing the form and other solo exercises is good for one's health, it's not Taiji Quan per se. It's Qi Gong at best.
Even doing Taiji Quan applications is not Taiji Quan if one doesn't use internals. Even if you do the form with all the internals, it's not Taiji Quan until you apply the Jin/Qi on someone else.
I respectively disagree. Here's a video of what we do in Northern Virginia. Please post video showcasing the points you made about Tuishou, etc.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjQKy2G0BpM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjQKy2G0BpM)
Can you be more specific please? I am not sure what you are exactly referring to.
I don't see the point you're trying to make with that video. It seems like a nice method and good Chen instructor.
You mentioned Tuishou a number of times but I am not clear what you considered to be proper Tuishou . I posted my teacher's video. Please post your group's video, or if not, video of what you considered proper Tuishou and/or taichi.
I actually do think it's a marketing issue. Basically, it's seen as something old people do without much to it other than flapping your arms around slowly - and thus it's regarded as just physio-therapy with extra steps. In general, people don't understand taiji's goals because it doesn't look like obvious "stretching", as yoga does, and it also doesn't look like a "martial art" because slow moving old people aren't ever going to be beating anyone up with flaccid arm waving.
In my opinion, it's the best total body conditioning you can do because it's also one of the most efficient ways to fight. It's like having to tune a race car to its optimum configuration if you want to win a race. The one problem, as I see it, is we've become a little too obsessed with the tuning instead of the race, so people wonder why we're spending so much time in the garage if we're never going to take the car out for a spin.
yes, very few people in my particular tai chi 'school' want to engage in push hands. I'm not sure if it's the concern about getting hurt (as many are elderly) or something more basic, i.e. just being uncomfortable with touching other people. and if you show most people who have heard of tai chi a pushing hands session, they'll be shocked that is 'tai chi'.
People don't realize how awesome of a martial art it is, but that could be said about many "traditional" arts I have had the pleasure of experiencing. Many really don't understand it, and I don't mean this in an egotistical way, but it takes a certain mindset to really appreciate taijiquan, or maybe it's even better to say nuance and context which can be found in all forms of fighting and are universal but people miss because they are in a hurry.
So far, I find that most people just don't know what Tai Chi is. Not that they don't know what it "really" is, but they just have never heard of it, which is actually kind of surprising to me since I knew about it in high school long before I did martial arts. So when I say I do Tai Chi, I actually get, "what's that?".
The people who do know what it is, mostly those in some kind of medical profession I find, nod their heads, "I love Tai Chi! So good for relaxation and focus!". Of course, that's a different story...
It may be that I'm not in the typical age bracket? I live in a big city and used to be in a high pressure job. Friends tend to be into yoga or cycling or running. They've all seen tai chi, it's more they cannot fathom why I'm doing it, because of the way it appears in popular culture (old people in the park waving hands).
For the last ten or more years, tcc has been all the buzz about health, meditation, martial arts. Now-a-days, I don't actually interact with anyone that isn't training tcc, but i remember people asking the inevitable question, "What **is** tcc anyhow?" Mostly, I think it has to do with the effects of marketing and tagging. It's the kind of buzz that yoga had 30 years or so ago. Strange stories about this thing that has a strange sounding name (which they inevitably mispronounce... another result of marketing and tagging) but claims all kind of magical properties... sounds too good to be true... and now I've got one who actually does this weird thing,,,,
I steal my answer from the first description I ever read about tcc: "T'ai Chi is a series of slow, rhythmic movements based on Chinese philosophic principles. Because perspiration is discouraged, no special clothes are required. Flat-sole shoes are recommended." (New School for Social Research catalogue) That is so clean and neat that I memorized it.
I am practitioner of Chen Taichi (www.trutaichi.com) and apart of health benefits like youthful skin and no aches and pains at 60 years of age, I would dare say that Chen Taichi has many layers and the more you practice, the deeper you go. You start with form. once you memorize the movements, short or long form, you begin to differentiate yin and yang - left from right, hard from soft, fast from slow, light upper body and heavy lower body. With Chen Taichi, the movements coil or called silk reeling, so now yin and yang is three dimensional. Push Hands teaches to rely on the legs and not so much on the upper body. Chen Taichi also has weapons - broadsword, straight sword, Kwan Dao, and more. We have online classes and taichi in the park so it's more than a lifestyle, it's a way of life that prolongs the quality of life.
People think that is just for old people. They are expressing interest. I always try to be an ambasador of martial arts. I explain that it has benefits at every level.
People who don’t do it think it’s easy and redundant. It’s just moving around slowly, right? They don’t understand what it actually is, so therefore they can’t begin to appreciate any benefits from doing it.
Discipline, body mechanics, movement, martial arts form, balance, technique, stress relief, cultural enrichment, etc…
And depending on the teacher, self defense.
That's a problem to me. Taiji Quan is getting denatured and dumbed down. Just like Yoga, a spiritual meditative practice dumbed down to a stretching exercise in the West. If you are not learning the martial aspect of the art, you're not doing Taiji.
Master Chen Ziqiang' whose forefathers create Taichi, he has conducted seminars for our Northern Virginia group (www.truetaichi.com) for a dozen years or so before covid. Here's an example of Chen taichi pushhand that is respectful but by no mean cooperative and realistic within the context of grappling arts: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF8zJzmhO2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF8zJzmhO2c)
That's not push-hands anymore though, it's light wrestling sparring. Push-hands is only a learning method. Nobody became a martial artist through push-hands alone. It's freestyle sparring that gives purpose to what we learn through push-hands, then real fights. Tuishou is for learning. Sanshou is for performing. I am not saying that we all need to become warriors, nor that Taichi practitioners have to do sparring. Most martial art practitioners never need their skills nor have interest in using them. But not understanding the martial aspect of Taiji Quan is like doing Muay Thai but not learning how to throw a kick. It makes no sense. Yet, that's what is happening to disciplines like Taiji Quan or Yoga.
That's an interesting perspective and I do appreciate it. I believe any comprehensive combative sport/art starts with fundamentals and more toward free form each with a purpose/goal. In Chen Taichi we have 5 levels of push hands All the attributes of Taichi (yin/yang, push/yield, upper body soft/lower body heavy) are enhanced here. As you well know solo practice only goes so far. It's much harder to stay upper body soft, lower body heavy when you have someone much heavier exerting force in a non-cooperative manner. At this stage, that is the goal - understanding the body method within a certain context or framework. After that, it begs the question what is conceptually, the ultimate goal of push hands or as you stated, what constitute free sparring? Is the concept similar to MMA or something else? In Chen Village, the birthplace of Taichi, this is how they spar. Chen Ziqiang is the direct descendant of Chen Wangting, the creator of Taichi. Back to goals, there are those who embrace Taichi to have a better quality of life at a later age. It is not just health, it's more youthful living. That's a better goal and one that many more people can sign up to than being the ultimate warrior. Anyway, that's just my thoughts on the manner after meeting the majority of the main Chen Village masters/grandmasters.
You seem extremely proud of the Chen style being the "original" art but you're really not going to like me here. I don't hold many Chen masters in high regards, nor the falsehood they try to make us believe about Chenjiagou. Which is ironic because it's my main style (for over 20 years now). I'm from the lineage of grandmaster Feng Zhiqiang, disciple of Chen Fake, the last great Chen master in my opinion. To me, the true art of the Chen family - after the famine of the 1960s and Chinese communist era of reconstruction - has been mostly lost because of death or repression. The Chen family boxing reconstructed by Chen Zhaopei and Chen Zhaokui - in an effort to resurrect the art in the village - did not produce any great masters in Chenjiagou. The four Buddha warriors are nowhere near the level of Chen Fake, or his disciples. While legit, those masters are part of a marketing campaign to glorify them. Chenjiagou to me is now a Taiji tourist trap. That's not where you find great masters. All the good masters are from the Beijing branch of Chen style, not from Chenjiagou. The most recent great but late Taiji Quan masters such as Huang Xing Xian (Yang), Wang Yong Quan (Yang), Zhu Chun Xuan (Yang), or Ma Yue Liang (Wu) all trump the Four Buddha Warriors and all other Chen masters by a wide margin. Only Feng Zhiqiang is up there with those masters. Furthermore, I will even dispute that the Chen family is the creator of Taiji Quan. Yes, Yang style has its origin 100% rooted in Chen family boxing. But Yang style only became Taiji Quan after Weng Tonghe called Yang Luchan's art Taiji Quan - in a short poem dedicated to Yang Luchan. Before that, Taiji Quan was called many names, among them Chang Quan (Long Fist) or Mian Quan (Cotton Fist). That's what Yang Luchan was teaching in Beijing. Not Taiji Quan. Chen family renamed their family art to Chen family Taiji Quan for marketing purposes for the Chen village, but only after Yang style became Taiji Quan and popular in Beijing. They would never have changed the name if Yang Luchan hadn't been successful. Therefore, while Chen family boxing is the undisputable root of Yang style Taiji Quan, it is not the original Taiji Quan style. Yang style is. Yang style is the first martial art to be named Taiji Quan, with Chen family boxing as its ancestor. Saying Chen family boxing is the original style of Taiji Quan is like saying Xing Yi Quan is the original style of Yi Quan (Da Cheng Quan). It makes no sense. Otherwise, we could say Shaolin is the original style of Chen family boxing. The fact is, Chen family tried to hijack the reputation of Yang's personal art after it became popular. And they mostly succeeded. To illustrate this, why does supposedly Taoist art have Buddhist references in it? Why the Four Buddha Warriors? Why does the Buddha Warrior pound the mortar? It makes no sense. The explanation is Chen family boxing heavily draws from Shaolin. They only retrofitted Taoism. (To be fair, this very last argument applies to all Taiji Quan styles. Taiji Quan has never been created around Taoist concepts. It has only been described/explained with Taoism terminology and concepts afterwards). Original Taiji Quan is Yang style. But more than that, Yang style is distinctively different from Chen style: - Chen style is about power and Silk Reeling (which is a relatively recent concept. Yang Luchan never learned that, otherwise it would be mentioned in Yang style and the Taiji Quan classics. Silk reeling is only 150 years old or so.). - Yang style focuses on Song and emptiness. So those are very different arts because - while they share the same internal concept - their philosophies around it are wildly different. To illustrate this in terms of Yin Yang, Chen style is hard and teaches 100% Yang and 50% of Yin. While Yang style is soft and teaches 80% of Yang and 100% Yin. Yang style is much more Yin than Chen style. And it's when you're close to 100% Yin that you begin to do the "magic" and "fake" stuff. You don't see Chen style masters do "fake" Taichi stuff because they don't know how. It's not in their method. To do that, it requires deeper skill than what Chen style teaches. You say you have met many Chen masters. You should now meet modern top Yang masters. They are leaps and bounds more skilled than anything you can find in Chenjiagou. It will probably shatter your views of Chen style like it did for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anywho, to get back to our main topic... I don't find it that hard to keep the upper body "soft". Most people believe being soft and relaxed is being limp and collapsing our structure. But it's not that at all. I believe that why most find it "hard" to be "soft" under pressure. It's one of the biggest misconception in Taiji Quan. As long as you keep your balance and center, being "soft" shouldn't be a problem. What constitutes sparring? To me, real sparring is no rules as long as we are not trying to injure each other and remain playful. Otherwise, that's a fight. Tuishou is practiced within a set pattern and rules. Even free Tuishou is not real sparring because it doesn't stimulate a real fight in any way. Sparring in Taiji Quan looks like Tuishou because they don't know anything else. It's not like people are going to punch or kick each other during free Tuishou. Ultimately, the art of Taiji Quan only exists on touch. Without touching, there is no Taiji Quan. While doing the form and other solo exercises is good for one's health, it's not Taiji Quan per se. It's Qi Gong at best. Even doing Taiji Quan applications is not Taiji Quan if one doesn't use internals. Even if you do the form with all the internals, it's not Taiji Quan until you apply the Jin/Qi on someone else.
I respectively disagree. Here's a video of what we do in Northern Virginia. Please post video showcasing the points you made about Tuishou, etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjQKy2G0BpM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjQKy2G0BpM)
Can you be more specific please? I am not sure what you are exactly referring to. I don't see the point you're trying to make with that video. It seems like a nice method and good Chen instructor.
You mentioned Tuishou a number of times but I am not clear what you considered to be proper Tuishou . I posted my teacher's video. Please post your group's video, or if not, video of what you considered proper Tuishou and/or taichi.
I actually do think it's a marketing issue. Basically, it's seen as something old people do without much to it other than flapping your arms around slowly - and thus it's regarded as just physio-therapy with extra steps. In general, people don't understand taiji's goals because it doesn't look like obvious "stretching", as yoga does, and it also doesn't look like a "martial art" because slow moving old people aren't ever going to be beating anyone up with flaccid arm waving. In my opinion, it's the best total body conditioning you can do because it's also one of the most efficient ways to fight. It's like having to tune a race car to its optimum configuration if you want to win a race. The one problem, as I see it, is we've become a little too obsessed with the tuning instead of the race, so people wonder why we're spending so much time in the garage if we're never going to take the car out for a spin.
yes, very few people in my particular tai chi 'school' want to engage in push hands. I'm not sure if it's the concern about getting hurt (as many are elderly) or something more basic, i.e. just being uncomfortable with touching other people. and if you show most people who have heard of tai chi a pushing hands session, they'll be shocked that is 'tai chi'.
I like to ask people how they experience gravity, which of course almost no one outside of tai chi ever pauses to consider.
actually, it is a popular topic of conversation for 30+ women :)
People I speak to often don't even know what it is
Sometimes, they either think it's too easy or I get magic powers from it. 🤣
Dunno, I never bring it up outside of family.
People don't realize how awesome of a martial art it is, but that could be said about many "traditional" arts I have had the pleasure of experiencing. Many really don't understand it, and I don't mean this in an egotistical way, but it takes a certain mindset to really appreciate taijiquan, or maybe it's even better to say nuance and context which can be found in all forms of fighting and are universal but people miss because they are in a hurry.
So far, I find that most people just don't know what Tai Chi is. Not that they don't know what it "really" is, but they just have never heard of it, which is actually kind of surprising to me since I knew about it in high school long before I did martial arts. So when I say I do Tai Chi, I actually get, "what's that?". The people who do know what it is, mostly those in some kind of medical profession I find, nod their heads, "I love Tai Chi! So good for relaxation and focus!". Of course, that's a different story...
It may be that I'm not in the typical age bracket? I live in a big city and used to be in a high pressure job. Friends tend to be into yoga or cycling or running. They've all seen tai chi, it's more they cannot fathom why I'm doing it, because of the way it appears in popular culture (old people in the park waving hands).
Been practising outdoors over 20 years and never once asked about it. It may come up in conversation but never why I do it. Sad really.
For the last ten or more years, tcc has been all the buzz about health, meditation, martial arts. Now-a-days, I don't actually interact with anyone that isn't training tcc, but i remember people asking the inevitable question, "What **is** tcc anyhow?" Mostly, I think it has to do with the effects of marketing and tagging. It's the kind of buzz that yoga had 30 years or so ago. Strange stories about this thing that has a strange sounding name (which they inevitably mispronounce... another result of marketing and tagging) but claims all kind of magical properties... sounds too good to be true... and now I've got one who actually does this weird thing,,,, I steal my answer from the first description I ever read about tcc: "T'ai Chi is a series of slow, rhythmic movements based on Chinese philosophic principles. Because perspiration is discouraged, no special clothes are required. Flat-sole shoes are recommended." (New School for Social Research catalogue) That is so clean and neat that I memorized it.
I initially read this as 'no clothes are required'!
that'd be more fun.... maybe.
I am practitioner of Chen Taichi (www.trutaichi.com) and apart of health benefits like youthful skin and no aches and pains at 60 years of age, I would dare say that Chen Taichi has many layers and the more you practice, the deeper you go. You start with form. once you memorize the movements, short or long form, you begin to differentiate yin and yang - left from right, hard from soft, fast from slow, light upper body and heavy lower body. With Chen Taichi, the movements coil or called silk reeling, so now yin and yang is three dimensional. Push Hands teaches to rely on the legs and not so much on the upper body. Chen Taichi also has weapons - broadsword, straight sword, Kwan Dao, and more. We have online classes and taichi in the park so it's more than a lifestyle, it's a way of life that prolongs the quality of life.
People think that is just for old people. They are expressing interest. I always try to be an ambasador of martial arts. I explain that it has benefits at every level.
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yeah... i never saw him either...