A source to the knowledge of traditional martial arts, ancient feng-shui, taiji and qigong health-preservation practices.
An excellent Taiji Pushing Hands demonstration by master Shen Tiegen.
It shows how effortless and natural movements could easily deflect and control stronger force. It also carries a subliminal message of how tremendous the Qi energy could possibly be.
In short, physical size does not matter.
I wish I could tell of secret skills but I can’t.
It is also not to say that there are no advanced techniques in Taiji Chen, there most certainly are and they are very effective, but I still say that they are largely irrelevant.
Very few people persevere long enough to learn intermediate skills let alone advanced ones. There is no point teaching an advanced skill until the basic skills have been mastered.
Learning Taiji is like climbing a ladder.
Some people may be able to take two steps at a time or even jump from the ground to the third or fourth step, but very few people could jump straight to the top of the ladder.
If they could they would not need the ladder anyway. The most important things that you need to know about Chen Taiji will almost always have been taught to you on your first ever lesson.
In fact it seems to take most people several years to take on board what they should have learned in their first lesson.
In martial arts we know that having a strong and grounded stance is extremely vital during a fight, especially in combat against a grappler; Jiujitsu, Judo, Aikido styles for example.
Losing balance in a serious life-threatening situation also means you have likely decided the outcome of the confrontation.
There are many different ways to improve the coordination of the body in order to control the falling, but physical training that does not teach the student to draw the natural Qi energy from the earth will not help him much against a powerful push. (more…)
Two excellent videos of Taiji Pushing Hands techniques by master Roberto Sharpe.
When practising Taji Quan we are often told to straighten the posture by lifting the head or move slowly as if moving underwater etc., but I do not hear a great deal of information on the fundamental principle of ‘spheres’. Discovering the spheres of Taiji Quan is both enjoyable and enlightening, they are categorised as internal and external, however for this article we will only examine the external.
But first, let’s spice up the topic with a great classic Taiji clip.
Now back towhat we started off with.
Bagua Zhang on the other hand is more widely recognised for its spheres as they are blatantly obvious when you see it performed, but compared to Bagua Zhang, Taiji spheres are not so obvious although they are there.
When asked what makes Taiji Quan unique amongst other health/martial arts I always reply “It trains you to become round like a ball”, therefore let us examine some characteristics of an inflated ball:
1. Pressure inside is greater than that on the outside:
This is what gives a ball its shape, the outward expansion of air pressure pushing on the inside skin of the ball forms its spherical shape. (more…)
Taiji martial art skills have a significant foundation and it is called “Pushing Hands”.
There still appears to be some confusion about Pushing Hand, as a practioner we should often come across at least one of these questions about such technique :
So let’s examine the first question:
1. What Is It Used For?
The first thing to establish is that it is not a complete system that operates separately from Taiji form and sparring but is an integral training link between the two.
There are numerous competitions/festivals held throughout the world that include Pushing Hands as a separate stand alone event which leads the viewing public to believe that this is how Taiji practitioners defend themselves. (more…)
