Sometimes, when I say “I teach Taiji,” embarrassment haunts me. Other-times, reluctance fills me because I know the common misconceptions grating my sense of the Supreme, Ultimate Fist Form. Oftentimes, I disrupt some common misconceptions about Tai Chi Chuan.
Some are ridiculous, some are silly; all of them radiate from a lack of martial training. Martial training is a requirement in Tai Chi Chuan. Do it. Fighting and combat skills set the spiritual stage, the mental mood, and the physical atmosphere for proper confidence, clarity, and calm. Martial training tunes the body, mind, and spirit. Most misconceptions manifest in popular culture (and in pseudo-Tai Chi Schools) because instructors teach wrongly, poorly, incompetently, or deceptively. Get the truth. Don’t believe me. Read it, test it, know it.
- It’s That-Yoga-Like-Thing. No way, not even close. This misconception spreads because people lack in-depth, sophisticated methods and materials for learning and understanding Tai Chi. Instructors at Colleges and Community Programs often lack deep experience in Tai Chi, though they believe they can teach it. Tai Chi teachers seek health benefits (they were told Tai Chi has health benefits), and they often include, in their curriculum, Yoga Breathing, Yoga Meditation, and Yoga Poses to supplement their lack of Tai Chi knowledge and skill. If they do this, get away. They might be bored; they certainly don’t know enough T’ai Chi to teach it.
- T’ai Chi is for old people. Well, it is, but not exclusively. The geriatric reputation acquired by my favorite, intense, lively martial art is not deserving of this most Supreme, Ultimate, Death-Point-Striking Martial Art. My guess: pathetic or impotent Tai Chi teachers created this reputation. Damn fools really. How?…Why?…wonders I, guessing again:
- greed — Tai Chi teachers got hungry for a new market of old, wealthy clients.
- weakness: folks recovering broken hips use Tai Chi then teach low-grade Tai Chi
- impotence. Yeah: maybe that.
- trickery — it’s an easy path to Guru-Master-Sifu wherein one can spout Taoist rhetoric and acquire students who leap and hop when gently pushed. Add green money and big red banners: strike it rich!
- It helps sick people. Sure it does, but not because they practice T’ai Chi Chuan: they’re moving around — that’s enough! Breathing and moving helps all bodies; that doesn’t mean they know authentic T’ai Chi. Better, more appropriate movements exist to eliminate sickness, recover from injury, heal trauma, and develop fitness. Simple things, like large arm circles, squatting, even push-ups, work better at recovering basic physical fitness. Do those: then come play Real Taiji.
- T’ai-Chi is slow. This belligerent misconception drives negative health consequences into long-term practitioners. The indulgent marketing of Easy Tai Chi suggests something like You Can Remain Fat and Soft and Lazy with Tai Chi! Yes — we do Taiji slowly. Sure, it deepens our internal experience and manifests Key. Practice it slowly to reduce residual stress and tension, to smooth each joint’s motion and function, and to promote deep, long breathing. But too much slow equals too much Yin. Too Yin, too soft, too lazy — growing too Yin also means that your fantasies about your fighting prowess begin unfolding new and colorful visions of immense strength derived from supreme, ultimate laziness. Seek balance. Taiji is balanced Yin for Yang. Learn Fa-Jing shakes. Try Small San Sau.
- Tai Chi is Spicy Tea. That’s Chai Tea. Chai Tea flows like Tai Chi, and they’re both liquid. Tai Chi’s hot like Chai Tea; they both steam. Chai Tea and Tai Chi get inside, warming the body and healing the organs. Oh, and, T’ai Chi Chuan, with potent martial applications and plentiful fighting drills and powerful combat forms: it’s spicy! Maybe they are the same.
Sunil Samant
August 6th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Hi Steven,
I read your article with great interest. You have pin-pointed these misconceptions in simpler form. Every single word is true. I am sure you will find many more such mis-conceptions where there is lack of awareness and other methods of alternate therapy are practised. Keep writing…
Warm regards,
Sunil
Josh Young
August 8th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I think another misconception could be added. It is that practicing a tai chi form and practicing tai chi chuan are the same. Tai chi chuan is the system that the forms are from, but the forms do not constitute a system. Many people believe they are practicing tai chi chuan when they are only practicing a form or even a form and push hands, students of any comprehensive system will understand why this isn’t true. Often people say they are practicing tai chi and don’t even know a form and do various qigong or yoga forms.
Some misconceptions about tai chi might be linked to people not understanding there is more to real tai chi chuan than a form or two and push hands. A real system has forms and push hands, but forms and push hands don’t make a real system. Real systems also have teaching methods, like the WTBA they don’t merely ask that someone be able to reproduce some movements and play pushhands. I understand why the term Tai Chi can be embarrassing, the art is still quite esoteric and unknown despite it’s name recognition.
Josh Young
August 9th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I take it there is the belief that the slow long form makes one fat. Yang Shao-hou, Yang Chien-Hou and Yang Cheng-Fu all had very similar body types, they were all large stocky men who got larger in age, some of us might call them fat.
This is interesting because Erle learned the Old Luchan form from a man who learned it from Yang Shao-hou. While Cheng-fu’s taichi is well known to de different from that of his father and brother, his body was not so different.
Cheng-fu taught many people forms, and push hands, but that is not taijiquan. He only passed his family system to 4 people, the system is a complete martial art, it contains much more than push hands and the long form. Included in his system is instruction on how to instruct, if a person teaches taijiquan they should teach a system, not just a form. Cheng-fu commented that the form was not taught in his system, rather the 13 postures are. In this way the form was the last thing taught, by teaching the postures one at a time they could be learned correctly, when a person learned them all in sequence they reach a point where they cease being a student and start being someone who practices taijiquan. In the old school the form was for practioners, otherwise it would need revision over and over until it was correct. Cheng-fu mentioned that it is easy to teach a movement but hard to correct a habit. In the Yang family school by teaching one posture at a time no revision of the form needs to take place, thus there is no advanced, intermediate or beginning level in the traditional long form.
In Cheng-fu’s time people wanted the form up front, so he gave it to them, and made some changes as well to make it easier to learn up front. He did not advocate this however and mentions in his works that the form is based on the art, not the otherway around. Dozens of people or more learned a long form and push hands from Cheng-fu, Chen Wei ming was among them, none of these people learned t’aijiquan, when they practice a form they practice a form not taijichuan.
It is wise to note that the form is a tool for teaching the art of the 13 postures. It is the postures that are key, many people who learned the forms from Cheng-fu did not learn the postures. They do not understand how the art is not based upon a form but the other way around. The form consists of technique, but T’aiji is an art of energies from which techniques are made. With 8 energies able to be combines with each other (8*8=64), and the 5 movements (the 8 energies and 5 movements are the 13 postures) then with only 3 hand weapons the 13 postures gives rise to over 300 movements, if one includes other hand weapons (most systems have around 8), left and right versions, the 8 directions, the three modes of application, without combining them(locks, points, blunt force) and then includes the two intentions of application (debilitating and non-debilitating) then the art of the 13 postures gives rise in application to over 200,000 application combinations. (8*8*8*8*2*3*2) This is teh nature of taijiquan, taichi is the mother of endless things, taijiquan is the fighting system that is the mother or source of endless application.
Those who do not know the 13 postures, like many Chen Man Ching schools, do not know taijiquan. Taiji is not a form or even a collection of them. It is said to contain no applications or techniques, but gives rise to no end of applciations or techniques. This is the art I mentioned as esoteric and unknown.
Many people assume that when they do a form they are doing tai chi, if this were true there would be more than a million masters of the art alive today. No amount of form practice will teach one the martial system of the 13 postures, push hands with it is not enough. Like Mr. Smith has said there must be martial practice, among other things, to allow one to learn the 13 postures. Mastering a form is something of the new school of taiji, in the old school the form was mastered one single step at a time. Old method schools are almost non-existant.
I am very interested in evidence that a form makes one fat or thin. I went to a demo in the successor linneage of the Yangs and no students were fat, or lazy. They were all thin with very strong legs, torso’s and arms. Cheng-fu’s size related to his genes, just like his large father and brother. Nobody who is out of shape can do the slow long form that Chen Wei-ming recieved from Cheng-fu as part of his system. Real taiji (like WTBA) teaches a teaching method to those who are to become it’s future instructors. Learning, even mastering a form does not mean one had learned how to teach it.
Anyway this is what i would like to share about the misconceptions.
Josh Young
August 9th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I made a mistake I said that Chen-wei ming was among those who learned only a form and push hands, that is not true. I mean Cheng Man Ching, Chen Wei Ming was Cheng-fu’s senior student, he was with him the longest and was named as the successor by Cheng-fu. While Chen wei-mings training to more than a decade, Cheng man-chings spent less than a year with Cheng-fu and did not recieve instructions on how to teach or countless other aspects of taiji.
Chris | Martial Development
August 9th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Health and fitness are not the same thing, are they?
Steven Smith
August 9th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I make some distinctions between health and fitness.
Health for me is more internal and passive; having healthy organs and blood and mental patterns is important. Fitness suggests something more active and external. Doing push-ups or running or swimming competently suggests fitness, to me.
Also, I suppose, fitness is more apparent visually: rippling musculature and toned legs. Health is a more subtle vibrancy: a glow, a bouyant posture.
I like them both.
Michael Joyce
August 11th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Good post. I believe this is something that most of us instructors struggle with. However, we can’t keep pointing the blame. There is always going to be misunderstanding and misinterpretations… because the art IS soo much like life. Magazines and brochures make Taijiquan sound soo enticing and relaxing, but what they come to realize is that there is “some” work involved in it. We, as instructors, must simply keep on teaching and keep on learning and steer our students in the right directions. Because there is only steering, there is no teaching. One ultimately learns when one realizes for him/herself. Keep to the present and we’ll make it just fine. Worry about the past,…worry about the future and we’ve created chaos. I’ve just started to introduce more and more subtle buddhist teachings into my lessons. I’ve found that when you repeat, repeat, repeat to your students to be mindful of this… this moment… this movement… things flow the way they should flow. Eventually, their mind and body learns without you having to remind them. And THAT is progress.
Steven
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Good points. I don’t mean to blame shift; I want responsibility. So I expose my disdain and embarrassment. I tell the truth (that Tai Chi Chuan must be martial first) to clear up overt misunderstandings.
I found Taiji martial, right away; quite by luck and circumstance, I was able to start working with Erle Montaigue in 1993. He had power and fluidity I had not seen in years of martial training. I championed at my karate school for years and enjoyed the movement of the Masters, but this was different.
Through and after massage/bodywork training, I sought after Tai Chi people to train with, and every one lacked Tai Chi Chuan. Sure they could move slow, some were graceful too, but come-on - that’s not all there is to Tai Chi! Some use the excuse that they do Tai Chi not Tai Chi Chuan. That’s like making soup without a pot. You can do it I suppose, but it’s ridiculous.
The more closely I examine violence, the more I can offer kindness and compassion to the surliest of folk. And more examining turns the warrior spirit inside-out: one must act ruthless to heal and, deep-down, be kind, compassionate, and caring enough to fight.
Robin Anderson
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Nice post - I look forward to reading more. I haven’t gotten the chai tea / tai chi mix-up yet from anyone, but that gave me a good laugh. Thanks.
Steven Smith
October 8th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Robin,
Thanks for the laughs. I hoped to ease up a bit at the end.