# What is Tai Chi?



## thefearofme (Jul 21, 2010)

I have been curios about Tai Chi for a long time. What is Tai Chi? Is it a form of meditation? Is it a Self Defense art? Most MMA Forums I read always talk bad about Tai Chi, and most of are talking BS.


----------



## Tez3 (Jul 21, 2010)

thefearofme said:


> I have been curios about Tai Chi for a long time. What is Tai Chi? Is it a form of meditation? Is it a Self Defense art? Most MMA Forums I read always talk bad about Tai Chi, and most of are talking BS.


 
Tbh I've never seen Tai Chi mentioned on an MMA forum, no reason for it to come up, though I know one MMA fighter who is a Tai Chi practicioner.


----------



## Xue Sheng (Jul 21, 2010)

Most Taijiquan today is moving meditation, however go back to Yang Luchan (1799-1872) and he taught Taijiquan to the Manchu Imperial Guards. And it was still very much a martial art when it was being taught by Chén F&#257;k&#275; (1887-1957) and as far as Chen style goes the 19th generation still teaches it as a martial art.

As for Yang it was still as martial art by the time it got to Yang Chengfu's oldest son Yang Shouzhong (1911 - 1986) and all of the other serious students of Yang Chengfu like my sifu's sifu Tung Ying Chieh (1898-1961). Also it was still a martial art with all of the serious students of Tung Ying Chieh. Tung Ying Chieh's oldest son Tung Fu Ling opened a Taiji school in Thailand and had to fight a lot of people, and win, to keep his school there and he did keep his school there. My sifu also taught there for a bit as well.

However after this it goes downhill fast,

It was a martial art and there are still a rare few of us that are trained by a sifu who has complete knowledge of the art and has the ability to train it as such.

However I agree with Chen Xiaowang, 19th generation Chen family and a talaentled martial artist, because there are so few who train taiji today that know or train the martial arts side of it as compared to those that know nothing of the origin and martial arts side of it, taiji as a martial art is dead.

Taiji as I train it has kicks, punches, Qinna, fast forms and weapons form and practiced applications of the forms. However this is not the norm.

As for MMA forums, I don't much care about them. Many who post there are couch MMAist not real MMAists and the few true MMAist I have had the pleasure of meeting are rather interested in just about anything that will help them win, Taiji and Qigong included.

One Taiji person I knew went to train MMA and he and the rest of the class thought it was wonderful. He learned how to improve his root and relax more and the MMA guys had never come up against someone with a strong root who stayed relaxed so they had to learn how to defeat that. It was all good form what I was told. 

Taijiquan


----------



## East Winds (Jul 21, 2010)

I agree with Xue Sheng. "Real" Taijiquan is a martial art and is trained as such. Anything else is calisthenics, dance or new age mumbo jumbo (and that includes Taoist Tai Chi, the subject of another thread here). I might disagree with Xue in as much as that other senior students of Yang Cheng Fu were also very competent martial artists and this aspect was not confined to the Tung/Dong lineage.

Very best wishes


----------



## dosk3n (Jul 22, 2010)

I know my friend wanted to start doing Tai Chi here where I live but there is no where that does the Martial Art. The only people we have found are those that have been trained on a 6 week course.


----------



## thefearofme (Jul 22, 2010)

May I use Tai Chi and Wing Chun together?


----------



## dosk3n (Jul 22, 2010)

Ive heard if you find a good Tai Chi teacher and not just meditation Tai Chi then it can compliment Wing Chun quite well with its deflections and ability not to use more energy than needed.

However Ive not tried this so I cant say this is very accurate but I would have imagined them to go quite well.


----------



## mograph (Jul 22, 2010)

thefearofme said:


> May I use Tai Chi and Wing Chun together?


I agree. According to what I've read about Wing Chun, its principles seem to harmonize with martial taijiquan. They're not identical, but they should complement and harmonize with each other. 

But I don't know Wing Chun, so try the Wing Chun forum here.


----------



## Xue Sheng (Jul 22, 2010)

East Winds said:


> I might disagree with Xue in as much as that other senior students of Yang Cheng Fu were also very competent martial artists and this aspect was not confined to the Tung/Dong lineage.


 
Nothing to disagree with.

I was talking about Yang&#8217;s other senior students when I posted



Xue Sheng said:


> and all of the other serious students of Yang Chengfu


 
I just did not list them by name since off the top of my head I can only give you about 3

Tung Ying Chieh (1898-1961)
Fu Zhongwen (1903&#8211;1994)
Yang Shouzhong (1911 - 1986)

The rest I would have to look up, but I did list Yang Shouzhong in my previous post. 

However there are, IMO, some that claimed to be senior students (or students for that matter) that were not considered as such by Yang Chengfu 

As for who is serious after that I am most familiar with the Tung Ying Chieh line, however I know there are serious students still around form Fu Zhongwen and Yang Shouzhong. However it appears that some (not all) form the Yang Shouzhong line have taken things in a rather strange direction


----------



## Bob Klein (Jul 24, 2010)

In the New York area, William C. C. Chen carries on the fighting Tai-chi-Chuan tradition.  I studied with him in the 1960's and 1970's.  He is now around 78 years old and still teaching fighting. The tradition of fighting in competitions is being carried on by his son, Max and daughter, Tiffany.  While Grandmaster Chen certainly teaches a lot about health and exercise, his whole soul seems to be into the fighting aspect of Tai-chi.


----------



## fyn5000 (Jul 24, 2010)

Yes, William C.C. Chen teaches Taijiquan as a martial art.  He demonstrated closed fist and open palm strikes on my shoulder at a workshop in Seattle in 2004.  Both strikes were fast, packed considerable power, and sent me wheeling about.  And that was when he was in his early seventies.  I was impressed ...

Fyn


----------



## Xue Sheng (Jul 25, 2010)

Bob Klein said:


> In the New York area, William C. C. Chen carries on the fighting Tai-chi-Chuan tradition. I studied with him in the 1960's and 1970's. He is now around 78 years old and still teaching fighting. The tradition of fighting in competitions is being carried on by his son, Max and daughter, Tiffany. While Grandmaster Chen certainly teaches a lot about health and exercise, his whole soul seems to be into the fighting aspect of Tai-chi.


 


fyn5000 said:


> Yes, William C.C. Chen teaches Taijiquan as a martial art. He demonstrated closed fist and open palm strikes on my shoulder at a workshop in Seattle in 2004. Both strikes were fast, packed considerable power, and sent me wheeling about. And that was when he was in his early seventies. I was impressed ...
> 
> Fyn


 
Nothing against William CC Chen, I have been to his semnars as well and he is an impressive fighter (and apparenly he was an impressive fighter in Taiwan before he started training with Chen Manching) and he has trained both his kids Max and Tiffany but they do not use Taiji in the ring, they are using Sanshou.


----------



## RollingWave (Sep 7, 2010)

http://sports.cntv.cn/20100511/104361.shtml 

This is a on TV competition in China this year, second year they did this, of Chen style competition. The link is the finals but if you look around that site you can probably find the earlier rounds. 

rule is basically no head attack and you score points for knocking guys off the ring or on the ground, competition is a bit uneven in this one, as you have one guy that's really head and shoulder above everyone else (though everyone else also include a guy who is also pretty good at sanda and cross train in a lot of different things.)

still, its a very good competition in giving you a general idea of real applications of Taichi .

In essence, Tachi as a combat style generally focuses on taking down other people via off balance moves, though generally it focuses on smaller moves when doing throws (compare to judo or BJJ anyway). and like a lot of other CMA it focuses a lot on tight closeup moves like shoulder and elbow moves.

Most CMA were originally designed to deal with potential armed robberies, either by monks defending their temples or in many more cases by armed convoy guards that was pretty common in the Ming / Qing dynasty (called Biao shi). which is why that almost all of them have a strong focus on weapons, and also why most of their unarmed combat application is probably designed for situation where they would have problem using weapons. (such as really close quoter with a lot of people )


----------



## yak sao (Sep 7, 2010)

I train both wing tsun and tai chi. My primary art is Wing tsun but my si-fu is also a practicioner of Tai chi and he thought it would be good for me to train both.
I train the traditional Yang long form and a little push hands.
While WT is still my main focus, I have found that the tai chi has helped my training in numerous ways. I am more fluid, my movements are more relaxed. I am better rooted. And my whole body is more springy.

I don't devote the time to it like I should, because, quite frankly, I find WT more interesting, and lack of time is a factor as well, but it is a definite plus.


----------

