On Tai Chi
Tai Chi Chuan is the most popular of the so called internal martial arts. Although legends say that it was created many centuries ago, most evidence suggests that under such a name it appeared not earlier than the 19th century (but of course there had to exist similar precursory systems before).
Tai Chi Chuan or Supreme Ultimate Fist is the primeval unity, which is born from formless Wuji, and gives birth to yin and yang. The name Tai Chi Chuan means that this martial art is based on concepts of unity of contradictions – yin and yang supplementing each other.
Tai Chi Chuan forms, which should help develop combat skills, at the same time can be classified as Kigong exercises. Thanks to the principle of “Mind is Leading Ki, Ki is Leading Body Movement”, which means that in practice each, even most subtle movement is following some mental image – intention, and is not done mechanically or automatically, Tai Chi Chuan master can use his body with incredible precision.
Presently for most people Tai Chi Chuan seems to be just a kind of exercise for health. But it is still practiced as a martial art too. The most popular styles are Yang, Chen, Wu, Wu Hoa, and Sun. Lately some other similar systems, earlier known by other names, but now called Tai Chi Chuan (to use marketing potential of this name) are becoming known.
To most people Chen style Tai Chi Chuan, with forms in which slow and fast movements are mixed, more than other Tai Chi Chuan styles looks like a martial art. The most popular Yang style, where whole form in most cases is done slowly, is also practiced by many people as a martial art, but it evolved into many variants which are practiced only as health cultivating exercises.
This is really interesting that many Tai Chi Chuan practitioners are discovering that they can achieve more health benefits while learning from those instructors who teach complete systems, than from those who do only the health variant. This is probably a result of the fact that to be able to teach Tai Chi Chuan as a martial art competently, you need to learn all of its aspects very well. So in such cases the quality of teaching will be higher, even if some student wants to learn it only for health and not for self-defense. And in the case of many instructors who are teaching Tai Chi for health, their knowledge of the system is too limited, which causes lower quality of teaching. In too many cases teaching only for health is just a convenient excuse for those who don’t really know much.
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