Yang Family’s Contributions and Failures The Yang family’s biggest accomplishment was taking Tai Chi from the village of Chen Jia Gou and making it a popular sport. However, this outcome may not be so satisfactory in the eye of martial artists. Today Yang Style Tai Chi has almost become the antonym of Tai Chi. The Yang family started the trend that made performing the forms the only content of Tai Chi training. Other popular styles followed the Yang family’s economic success, but as with the Yang style the important parts of training were left out and then finally lost. Even the essence of performing the forms was left out and lost. Today’s Tai Chi practitioners can be grouped into 3 categories. 1. Playing forms only. This group is the largest. They believe that forms are everything about Tai Chi. Practitioners of this group never do any basic training therefore what they do is actually Tai Chi without Tai Chi. I once had a conversation with a woman who claimed to have practiced Tai Chi for over 20 years. When I tried to explain to her that Tai Chi was much more than just forms and that there was a lot of basic training before playing forms was even possible; she said “Oh, yea. We did all sorts of basics, such as breathing and walking.” 2. Playing forms with some casual Push-hand. Casual push-hand is the kind of push-hands that requires both parties keep their right wrists together and keep their left hand on their opponent’s right elbow and vice versa, and push against each other back and forth. The fancy push-hands, we did a little. Since they don’t do any basics, “Fa Jin” is never practiced and “Peng Jin” will never be developed. So this Tai Chi is not much different from the first group, with the exception that they may develop a quicker reflex which the first group will never do. 3. The third group does the forms and push-hands that look like wrestling. Although wrestling is a martial art, it is not Tai Chi. Here I have to say that it is OK. (Our push-hands tend to look like wrestling in the beginning, but this should only be for a little while. Once we develop our body movement through basic training our push-hands no longer looks like wrestling.) What the Group 1 and 2 practice are no longer martial art and the third is not doing Tai Chi. Therefore all 3 groups are not doing Tai Chi. What they do, in my opinion, should be called something else. The bottom line is that Tai Chi has been reduced to a sport instead of a martial art regardless of what style you practice. The positive side is that playing forms is so highly accessible that anybody can do it. It is especially true for those whose physical conditions make it impossible for them to do anything harder. Every morning in China, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly elderly, practice Tai Chi in parks. One Chinese sport research organization claimed that Tai Chi was the most popular sport in China. Considering the size of her population, it might mean the most popular sport in the world as well. Although, it has sacrificed it’s essence for popularity. It is because of this loss of essence that the health benefits have diminished to the point of being almost non-existent. Along with the other core roots of Tai Chi, health benefits have been slowly stripped away. Having only one inconsequential part left, Tai Chi has since lost its art. It can no longer be synonymous with a martial or healing art. Many scholars have conducted studies out of their enthusiasm for Tai Chi in hope to find meaningful evidence proving its health benefits. Unfortunately, all have failed, because there is almost none in today’s practice. Since their research subjects have never done real Tai Chi, and consequently have no “Chi” the studies were always destined to fail. Next: Chen Style |
