Seacoast Tai Chi Kung Fu

 Tai Chi Quan & It's Evolution

The complete name for the art is Tai Chi Quan. Quan in this context means martial art. It is a very important part of Chinese martial arts or Kung Fu or Wu Shu.

With the facts available to us now, we know Tai Chi is a young martial art when compared with other styles of Chinese martial arts. It spread out from the Chen Jia Gou village of Wen County in the He Nan province after 17th century.

Chen style is said to originally have 7 forms for different aspects of training. But by the time Chen Changxing (1771-1853 -14^th generation of Chen Clan) was teaching Yang Luchan (1799-1872 The founder of Yang style and the one who first brought the art out of the village) the 7 forms had been condensed into 2 as they have been practiced until now. The 1^st set is mainly for body loosening and internal strength developing therefore it is slow and soft. The 2^nd is mainly for releasing the internal strength (Fa Jin) so it is fast and hard. Collecting this "energy" is called Ying and releasing it is Yang. Together the two forms complete a Tai Chi.

Chen style of Tai Chi Quan has 2 Forms, The first form has 45 different movements. When practiced traditionally some of these movements are duplicated to make it have 83 movements. The second Form has 27 different movements. When traditionally praticed these are duplicated as well so there are 60 movements. I performed the 45 and 27 movements without duplication except one movement. I repeated this movement three times: at the beginning, in between the 2 forms and finally at the end.

Each of the 2 Chen forms have 2 different ways to practice. The terms are: old frame and new frame. The new frame was an improvement on the old frame. Here we can just understand the word frame as style. The difference is that the new frame puts more emphases on spiraling movements powered by our Dan Tian. What I did was the new frame.

Yang Luchan, the founder of Yang style, learned the 1^st form of the old frame. He, his two sons and a grandson reformed it to what is known as the Yang style large frame that is practiced today. The flow chart of the 37 forms I have on the website is the condensed version of this form. It was also what Julie performed at the party.

Strictly speaking, the forms of Yang and other popular styles practiced today should not be called Tai Chi for there needs to be two sides (Ying and Yang) to complete a Tai Chi.

Next: popular stories about Tai Chi....

I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to write this article for us! I enjoy knowing the background of what I'm training in. To me that is a very important part of the overall understanding of the art itself. I'm looking forward to learning the forms. Forms have always been one of my favorite parts of training. I always thought the invisible opponent we all have is the most difficult one to defeat & I think forms help in that. I'm my own worse enemy, but since I have started training with you, I feel more at one with myself then I ever had. I know I still have so far to go, but I couldn't be any more excited about the journey! 

Well that was long winded... again I just wanted to thank you for everything!

Sincerely,

Jenn 

Hi Jon

Here is the Martial arts terminology we discussed the other day I hope it helps. Chen style of Tai Chi Quan has 2 Forms, The first form has 45 different movements. When practiced traditionally some of these movements are duplicated to make it have 83 movements. The second Form has 27 different movements. When traditionally praticed these are duplicated as well so there are 60 movements. You have desided to not duplicate the movements in each form when you teach them to us. So when we pratice the first (Yin) form we will only do 45 movements and when we do the 2nd (Yang) form we will only do 27 movements. I enjoyed this artical and our discussions and look forward to the next one.

 Tom P.