You've probably heard about tai chi It's in the newspapers,
on TV, on the internet and printed within the books stocked on the shelves of
your local bookstore. Early in the morning, in the Chinese ethnic neighborhoods
of large cities, you can see people moving en masse, waving their bodies about,
slowly, synchronously and in a medtitative fashion.
Search the
internet and you'll be flooded with information about recent medical studies
extolling the near-miraculous healing benefits of tai chi for both the elderly
and the young. "OK," you conclude, "it's part of Chinese
medicine and is an amazing healing art." But wait! A few more clicks into
your internet search tell you that tai chi chuan (more correctly written as
"taijiquan") is a powerful martial art. You find
that YouTube.com is rife with its martial applications, pre-sparring "push
hands" training, and weapons forms - including several beautiful sword
forms. So which is true? Is it a martial arts practice or a holistic health
practice? This answer is: Both.
At its heart, it is a martial arts discipline. It's also one
heck of a powerful healing practice to those who give it a chance. At first
blush this makes no sense to the novice. After all, how can martial arts like
karate or MMA training also offer healing to the elderly, injured or
chronically ill? Well, it's because tai chi's traditional principles are far
different than those of karate, MMA or other popular martial arts. Sadly
though, the majority of tai chi taught today very watered down. So yes, health
benefits can be realized even from watered versions, but those benefits
represent only the tip of the iceberg of the much deeper healing aspects that
could truly be gained by the practitioner. And if a teacher does not thoroughly
understand how its traditional principles correct one's health, he can never
help his students understand how it can be used a martial art.
The flip side to this, however, is that so many people in our
modern society refuse to give it a fair chance. So even if a teacher reveals
its traditional principles, students who prioritize excuse-making over
scheduling in time for practice will never be able to execute any of its
martial arts applications - or if they try, they'll do it in a way that is not
from tai chi principles and can lead to serious self-injury. This is why many
of the old Chinese tai chi masters were very picky about who they would teach
and how deeply they would teach them. They believed it was a waste and insult
to the art to cast pearls of wisdom before those who were unable to value it.
Those who stuck with tai chi practice in the old days of
China (in which living was very hard) seemed to heal better and age slower than
their brethren. The old-style intensive mental training also cultivated its
practitioners' minds and emotions into peace and unwavering grounded-ness.
People observed this phenomenon, and so the art became most popular for its
health-bestowing benefits instead of its martial applications.
China, its birthplace, also outlawed the public practice and
teaching of it as a martial art (and all combative practices) during the
Cultural Revolution. Since then, China has loosened its restrictions and tai
chi has once again been recognized as the martial arts discipline that was its
origin.
If you are lucky enough to find a teacher or school that
teaches traditional tai chi, your teacher will immediately help you to
understand how the principles can be used both for healing and martial arts.
It's just a matter of how you focus those principles when you train them. For
example, one of the basic "energies" you learn in traditional tai chi
is "peng jin." While covering how to peng jin is far beyond the scope
of this article, suffice it to say that peng jin teaches you how to harness the
earth's gravitational force in a way that allows your skeleton, muscles,
organs, nervous system and acupuncture meridians to be aligned in the most
energy efficient way possible. It allows you to express a tremendous amount of
force in a strike while allowing you to vector an opponent's force out of your
body and into the ground.
It also gives you a tremendous state of physical and energetic balance. Mental comprehension of this seemingly illusive tai chi principle is easy once a good teacher explains it to you, but it requires a dedicated mind and practice to get your body to understand how to call up the "feel" of it at will (this is by way of "sense memory").
But remember how I mentioned that practicing just the tai chi
principle of peng jin aligns your skeleton, nervous system and meridians in the
most effective and energy efficient way possible? Well, that is precisely why
it can also lead to a superior state of health. For example, when you feel
stress, parts of your body harbor tension.
This leads to fatigue or agitated emotions and then further
tension and energy imbalance occurs, which in turn attracts more stress. Just
putting the tai chi principle of peng jin into play prevents this useless
stress and "pulls" the tension out of you and delivers it to the
ground. But no one - unless they practice traditional tai chi or its related
arts - has even heard of this strange principle. You cannot use what you are
not aware of. This is just a basic example on how its rare principles can be used
both martially as well as for superior health results.
Traditional tai chi teachers will first help to condition the
physical, mental and spiritual health of the students before involving them in
martial arts applications. To not do so is considered a breach of
responsibility. After all, if a student has a busted knee, shoulder pains or an
agitated mind, what good will it do to risk their condition in martial
applications if they are not conditioned enough to manifest the tai chi
principles correctly? For if they focused on working the principles, their body
and mind could become solid as a rock and as flexible as a pine tree's boughs.
Then, it would be easy for them to take the same principles and re-focus them
to martial arts usage - which require more speed and intensity. The martial
applications would then be done with correct principle and no further pain or
injury would result. In fact, the body would be repeatedly exposed to
principles that would continue to condition it instead of tearing it up.
Yes, tai chi chuan is a remarkable art. That's why so many of
the few traditional tai chi chuan practitioners are surprised that not more
people are taking it up. In today's "fast food" and "instant
fix" society, beginners are at fault for not giving their practice a real
chance to manifest results. Sticking with it vs. giving up too soon separates
the winners from the losers (not meant in the derogatory sense of the word,
just fact). That will determine those who gain tremendous strides in their
well-being (or martial skill) vs. those who will surrender to the seductive
pull of impatience or inertia.
Keep in mind too, that even if you want to learn how to
develop tai chi combat skills, you should first focus on using the its
principles to optimize your physical and psychological stamina. And this may
take some time. But think of the logic here. What are you most likely to face
in your everyday life - an enemy instigating a hand-to-hand fight with you? Or,
the everyday enemies of: stress, pollution, depression, anger, aging and the
wear-and-tear of life? Just to test the logic of this for yourself, you'll see
that if you research the backgrounds of traditionally trained tai chi teachers,
almost all of them were originally referred to practice it to address a health
issue. Only after conditioning and rebuilding themselves with tai chi did they
practice in its martial arts skills. The evidence speaks for itself.
