The future of Tai Chi
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- A look at what Tai Chi could, and should look like.
You can find more info about the Yangjia Michuan Taijiquan style at Hiddentaichi.com, where I also have online courses available. I have a newsletter, with a FREE set of exercises! click here: www.subscribep...
Like your information very interesting. Definitely would like to learn more about Tai Chi. Will be following from afar.
Agree with the issue of teachers being able to pass down only what they were taught and the subsequent diluting of the Yangjia Michuan tradition. The specific matter of Qi - how to gather, how to store, how to transmit - is more often than not largely ignored (or at least remains unexamined). This is where the practitioners who practice tai chi for health reasons often outperform those focused on the martial arts aspect. Jahnke's "The Healing Promise of Qi" was my introduction to Qi - and I had been practicing Yagjia Michan Taijiquan for several years by the time I read it.
That's exactly the kind of information that should be more widespread. Ultimately it would be nice to have a reading list: the core books every Tai Chi practitioner needs to have read to consider themselves informed. And from there a loose curriculum for teachers.
This reminds me of a lot of the work we in the HEMA community have been doing. There is no living lineage of how to fight with a European longsword, but we have written manuals from the medieval and renaissance periods. So there is a lot of reading, testing, rereading, revising.
In the end of the day it all comes down to the assumption that the authors of these books knew what they were talking about, and if we can’t get their techniques to work, it’s probably because we are doing them wrong and are misunderstanding the text.
I feel i should talk to you guys so the real aspects of this martial yoga doesn't get lost to time.. ive been fortunate in the past 27 years of study..
Totally agree. The desire to discover more of the martial side of taiji is why I started studying the Yangjia Michuan tradition in the first place.
same here! when I saw it I knew it had something special.
I've seen street guys and bouncers use it most effectively today. It's a soft style that requires a thuggish mentality and it's difficult to marry the two. There's a very gentle vaneer that's trapped modern Tai chi in what I believe to be originally a vicious and grizzly methodology of combat tamed down due to the Chinese cultural revolution. The hard thuggish mentality is what's absent from modern Tai Chi, a skill originally honed in back alleys is now practiced in parks.
honing it against other serious fighters is I believe the best way to fix or revive it. Take it back to the contexts it was created in.
It needs it name put into perspective, the 8 gate thunder fist 👊... that's it's highest level of achievement...
You need to study the aspects of tai chi jin gong. Thats the art. Plus the secret drill
You guys need to go steal the American Kenpo Formula
So fast you only hear the thunder
OK, but teching is not about declassing sourcess available, jut things what were omitted, or intentionally left out, and proper methodology as well. . Best regards. Paul,69,
We're on a journey here...find what is missing, then rebuilding and plugging in holes.
Dont forget that tai chi is the fastest gong fu... and that most powerful
There is no such thing as "the fastest", "the most powerful" or (my god , what's stupidity) "the deadliest". There are just different ways to power, speed and result.
Personally, I don't think Tai Chi can be truly understood or practised with the mind or any form of interllectual understanding. Somehow, the practice of Tai Chi has to take the practitioner through a transformative process. This process will often take a lifetime and even then might only reach a specific level for each person.
As one TH-camr says, Tai Chi is a broad church. So, why should be able to embrace then many different practices, interpretations, styles, lineages etc. If some choose to focus more on health rather than martial application, then presumably that's what is more important to them, and vice versa of course.
Not everyone wants to go deep into the many different aspects of this profound art, although a few will. Many may be perfectly satisfied, despite the opinions of others, in what they choose to give to Tai Chi and what Tai Chi gives to them.
In many ways, the Chinese Government has endeavoured to commercialise Tai Chi and control its influence culturally and politically. We need to guard against doing the same, albeit with very different intentions. Tai Chi will continue to flow and transform itself, no matter what we do. This will probably be for good and for bad, but that's the Ying and Yang I guess. We can choose to go with the flow or try and resist or change it.
The real Tai Chi lies within, but how to access it will continue to be puzzling and very hard, long and continuous work.
I have no problem with people who do Tai Chi for health, and are not interested at all in the fighting potential. I do take issue though with some decisions about what to study that are based on ignorance. And that's the problem. We often don't know what we don't know. For example, to me knowing the applications is crucial because then the mind can guide the Qi correctly. But if someone finds the martial side distasteful, they can replace the imagery with something else. But they need to know the FUNCTION of the applications (Yi guiding Qi) in order to replace them correctly. For example, an imagery that never gets your intent past the fingers would be incorrect.
I agree that Tai Chi is a lifelong journey of discovery, that's why I love it and have been doing it for over 30 years. But I wish that I had been exposed or taught some of these basic principles 25 years ago. And some of these principles are BASIC, and should be known by all. The fact that they are not is my issue. I am not advocating that we ll become fighters, just that we all have access to the core principles and ideas that Tai Chi is based on.
…there are various teaching models one can use to impart the knowledge of Nei Gong, Qigong and Internal Martial Arts. The challenge is to find and use the correct ones when educating students regardless of their aspirations and intentions. Peace