Yang Style History & What We Are Doing-
We don’t really know who invented Tai Chi although there are many interesting stories. What we know for sure is that all major styles of Tai Chi practiced today originated from Chen family of Chen Jia Gou village, Wen County, He Nan Province, except for Wu Dang Style, which has not showed us any convening arts yet.
Yang Lu Chan was the one who brought the art out of Chen Jia Gou Village and made it known as the ultimate martial art in his time and at the meantime earned “Yang, the undefeatable” as his nickname. Ironically, he was also the one who made Tai Chi a successful business and a trendy sport for royal families and other wealthy people by striping the fundamental training out of the practice. After three generations’ successful commercialization by Yang family and other schools, Tai Chi training was reduced to a mere slow dance. When Yang Cheng Pu, the head of 3rd generation, died in 1936, Tai Chi had lost all that had made it an effective martial art and all that had made it an effective art of health.
The Yang Style forms popularly practiced today and admired by millions of practitioners was originally called “the Kung Fu forms”, meaning it was used as a vehicle to carry out the Kung Fu training and Kung Fu here meant fundamental training. It is said that there were two more sets of forms being practiced within the first three generations of Yang family. Unfortunately, they lost in history.
Yang Cheng Pu, the head of 3rd generation of Yang family published his 2nd and last book on Tai Chi in 1934. His choice of forms for this book was a set of 85 forms, hence was called 85 step forms. Of the 85 forms, there are actually only 37 individual forms and the rest are repetitions of some of the 37 forms. You may have heard people saying long forms, short forms, or 113 step forms, 108 step forms, 88 step forms, 24 step forms and so on. These are all different arrangements of the 37 forms.
Tai Chi practice is not about what forms or how many forms one practices but about how the forms are practiced. If you use the 37 forms as a vehicle to carry out your internal energy training, it is so consuming that even once a day is enough. If you just like to play the forms, you can repeat them anyway you want.
The key in Tai Chi training is to stand the ZHUANG, or holding the ball as we call it. It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to learn to play the forms to a decent standard before one’s body is adequately conditioned and internal energy is strong by standing the ZHUANG and other body loosening and internal energy basic training. It is also unlikely to bring any meaningful health benefits by just playing the forms unless one is too old or too weak to do anything else more vigorous.
