Talk:Tai chi/Archive 1

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It's about time to remove the Wade-Giles from the article.........

Much of the English literature about TCC is still published in Wade-Giles. Fire Star 13:28, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Change some of the misconceptions for Tai Chi. For example, (1) Tai chi does not necessary mean slow (for example, in Chen style, you have far ji - short burst of speed) or low impact (high kicks in some styles). (2) Tai Chi is a martial art whether you use it for fighting or not its up to use but to make Tai Chi alive you have to understand the reason for each posture (3) corrected the linearage for Ching Men Chen Ottawakungfu

I am removing those references which suggest that Tai Chi's "martial arts" elements are seperate from its other benefits. "Martial art" should not be used to refer only to combat techniques. BarkingDoc

In English, the "Chuan" is almost never used. I suggest moving to Tai Chi. --Jiang 05:44 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Tai Chi actually is more accurate as a disambiguation page (not as a redirect like now anyway). Because "Tai Chi" has two meanings.
  1. Taiqi (太氣) "Supreme Ultimate" (a universal energy), or
  2. abbreviation of Taiji(quan) (a martial art/exercise).
I think Taiqi is used in Taiji, but by other arts as well.
--Menchi 06:39 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

This article should at least have a redirect from "Taijiquan," the pinyin for "T'ai Chi Ch'uan." The spelling 'Taijiquan' is not uncommon these days.

Edededed 08:58, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Also, does anyone here know more about the so-called 'Wudang' style of Taijiquan that is included in this article? I don't think it is usually accepted as a style of taijiquan. (If nobody responds, I will edit it away from the top of the list, as it is surely a minor style.)

Edededed 03:19, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Comments

I agree that the "Wudang style" article should be removed. It isn't recognized as a major style by the families, and is likely a repackaged version of Chinese govt. Yang or Ch'en style.

Also, why is the Ch'en style article boasting about their martial ability to the exclusion of the other styles? It is fine that they are known for martial training, but the wording in the article suggests that they have more than the other styles, and that isn't strictly speaking true. All of the styles are very good for martial arts if trained the proper way. It would be equally rude if the Yang, Wu/Hao, Wu and Sun articles had sentences saying how they've all improved on Ch'en style and each other, for example. In traditional Chinese martial circles such statements just aren't made.

Comments?

-T'ai Chi Teacher

I softened the offending sentence in the Chen article, without neglecting their undisputed martial emphasis.

I also softened the Wudang article somewhat, making it more of a description of the relation between the Chang San-feng story and the theories of Neo-Confucianism, without deleting refrence to the minor style (in terms of the number of practitioners, at least) of "Wudang T'ai Chi."

-TCT

Wu Quanyou was awarded the Han surname 吳"Wu" (approximating the pronunciation of the first syllable of his family's Manchu surname) in recognition of his exemplary military service very late in his life, and the Wu family have used it ever since when referring to him. This is the story I have been told by his great-great grandson, Sifu Eddie Wu. See http://www.wustyle.com

Fire Star 13:56, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why is there an alternative medicine infobox on this page, when it is barely mentioned in the article at all? -- Jim Regan 00:50, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I have added an alternative medicine section to the article plus supporting research. Tai Chi as you very well know is a very popular form of exercise and meditation. Perhaps we should change the name of this article to Tai Chi? The current title is stupid. -- John Gohde 01:38, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
No, the name of the martial art is Tai Chi Chuan. I realise that many of those who practise it purely for health reasons abbreviate it to "Tai Chi", but Tai Chi is a disambiguation page. There's a note higher up this page if you're interested. -- Jim Regan 01:53, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ah, I just noticed that it's a redirect. Maybe you should change it into an article about the AM uses. (You'd have to have some disambiguation, but I don't see that as a problem). -- Jim Regan 01:57, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The martial and the therapeutic are interdependant in T'ai Chi Ch'uan. You really can't have one without the other and this is addressed in the article. TCC is presented to new students strictly as a martial art by the 5 families mentioned in the article, and the health benefits are taught as secondary. They are told why a certain set of move works martially, then how they enhance health, and then how the health improvement will enhance their martial abilities.Fire Star 05:26, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How do people feel about having that Complimentary/Alternative Medicine Box on the article? Before you respond you might like to know that the person who added it, Mr Natural Health, is currently in arbitration [1] for adding these boxes to many tens of articles. However, I am not sufficiently interested in Tai Chi to guage whether this instance is useful. Personally, I feel it's of dubious value. --bodnotbod 01:20, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)

It was removed. T'ai Chi has a lot of potential to help people help themselves, but as a professional T'ai Chi teacher representing a prominent (and conservative) T'ai Chi family I don't call it a form of alternative medicine. Therapy, perhaps, for the right person. Training, certainly. Many of us don't like to be associated with the New Age "natural" holistic crowd, as they don't seem (at least to us) to really know what they are doing. Fire Star

I've put together an article using pinyin at Taijiquan (pinyin article). Fire Star 16:44, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)


Romanization

Hi Taichiseeker. We currently have two versions of the same article (T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Taijiquan (pinyin article)) in order to avoid problems between those who prefer pinyin and those who prefer Wade-Giles. They are cross-referenced, so it is easy enough for someone who wants to check the other version to switch back and forth. This helps to avoid the inelegant and confusing mixture of different romanization schemes in the same article, a problem endemic to articles relating to Chinese culture. I hope this helps. Fire Star 16:44, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No. I don't think we should have two versions of the same article. It's harder to maintain them both with two different versions. We can always include both romanization systems in one article. WhisperToMe 03:12, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

See Talk:Taijiquan (pinyin article) WhisperToMe 03:15, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I am consolidating both articles. WhisperToMe 03:15, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't pinyin being "formally used" by the whole wikipedia? I mean: the rest of the world is going in that direction since years; it's even the official standard of the Library of Congress and ISO. Of course redirects should be in place, but I think any "article" should be named using official pinyin. --Lapo Luchini 16:39, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, T'ai Chi became well known to the English speaking world in its Wade-Giles form. Most people, schools and publications still use the Wade-Giles form or at least a derivative of it. As well, a significant portion of the writing in English, translation and original, still uses Wade-Giles. I tried having both for a while. Myself, I don't like either system, but we are stuck with them. Fire Star 14:59, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_martial_art add yourself!

Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_martial_art

World championship event

Anyone know what this "world championship" event is? http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/prweb/20041216/bs_prweb/prweb188826_1

Well, it seems like just another tournament. The winners may call themselves "world champions," but that doesn't mean the rest of the world will recognize them as such. I had a chance to ask the late Master Wu Ying-hua (Wu Chien-ch'uan's daughter) about the relative importance of tournaments to T'ai Chi training. She repied: "It is a nice hobby and a good way to promote your school, but it has no bearing on whether or not you are actually learning T'ai Chi Ch'uan. T'ai Chi Ch'uan's focus isn't competition, you do it for yourself, not other people. You could be highly accomplished and never have entered a tournament in your life." Fire Star 21:25, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Lineage project

I have removed this link from the article:

The Taiji Lineage Project by Oliver Richman

The site appears sloppy and is riddled with duplicates (due to multiple romanisation schemes) and inaccuracies in its designations of Chinese names and who studied with whom over the years. I will be happy to provide citations on request. The website says that the project is open to input from lineage holders in the various T'ai Chi Ch'uan family lineages (which I am), but even though I have been in email contact with Richman and provided my references he was dismissive and informed me offhandedly that he didn't intend to update the site. If anyone one else is dead set on including this link, perhaps at the bottom of the article, it should have a caveat appended. Fire Star 16:37, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Name of Form/Posture/Movement pages

Which is better for naming a Form/Posture/Movement page: "24 Form T'ai Chi Ch'uan" or "T'ai Chi Ch'uan 24 Form"? I might be adding more pages for 42, 48, 37, and others Petersam 01:40, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Either one is fine with me, since they'll be linked from the main page most people finding them will go from there. I've seen them designated both ways by different schools. I think I like the sound of "T'ai Chi Ch'uan 24 Form" better, but it is entirely subjective on my part. We should have a redirect from whichever version isn't the primary title, however. Fire Star 02:21, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Since the other Form pages (103 form Yang family T'ai Chi Ch'uan and 108 form Wu family T'ai Chi Ch'uan) have the nn Form before T'ai Chi, I will continue to do the same. Petersam 23:47, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Meaning of "supreme ultimate"

"Supreme ultimate" sounds kinda boastful, but according to B.K. Frantzis (in his book "The Power of Internal Martial Arts") it's actually Taoist religious jargon. Quoting: "Tai chi is the taoist philosophical term for that place of nonduality from which the specific opposing yin and yang forces of any modality exist in a potential undifferentiated state before they seperate into some form of opposite (dual) manifestation"

The concept owes a lot to the Neo-Confucian school as well. Bruce is actually quoting a passage common to many of the family T'ai Chi classics. T'ai 太, is a superlative of "big," meaning "bigger than big" and Chi 極 in its meaning of "an ultimate goal of life" is a rebus of a man standing on the ground reaching for the sky, for Heaven, with his hand and his mouth (word and deed), in addition to the tree radical on the left which also implies that which is beyond the average human's grasp. So it is a bit boastful in a martial sense, but mostly it implies that T'ai Chi Ch'uan is a transcendant art form in a Taoist/Neo-Confucian sense. Fire Star 18:58, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Important Addition

It appears an administrator has taken it upon himself to leave out 50% of what Taijiquan is all about. That is fighting. Since he will probably revert it back, ill put my blurb here.

The above definition left out a very important aspect of what Taijiquan is about, that aspect is fighting. Taijiquan was developed to be a system of fighting, the health benifits are a byproduct that was capitalized mainly by Chen-Man Ching, otherwise reffered to as "CMC" in China. He removed the explosive movements, and martial aspect so he could share it with the elderly for health purposes. When it was brought the USA it was brought to California during the 60's hippy revolution. Anything Chinese was "counter-culture" so Taijiquan enjoyed great success in its watered down "Tai Chi" format. People should be informed that by not knowing how to fight with Taijiquan they are not doing the art, but only a partial immitation in the form of a health dance.

Done correctly, and trained correctly Taijiquan is a devastating fighting art. Contrary to what most people think its not about minimal harm, Taiji's methods can be very nasty, poking eyes out, snapping necks, striking to vital areas, its all there. Sadly most Taijiquan instructors are not really as advertised, they are frauds when it boils down to it, they only teach an empty health dance form, not the great art of "Taijiquan".

Umm, we already talk about the martial art all through the article, and again at pushing hands, nei chia, and Chinese martial arts. What you are saying isn't wrong, but since we already do thoroughly discuss T'ai Chi's martial aspect in this series of articles, restating it is superfluous at best. Also, as you say, most people who take a T'ai Chi class never train, or even want to train, martially. Fire Star 02:42, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The format of this twice reverted addition is not proper for an encyclopedia, but I do agree with its author that the article is biased. I think it must be stated quite clearly in the article that the tai chi world is divided into different styles and schools, putting different weight on the different aspects of the art, and that the matter is controversial.
I don't understand why you'd think the article is biased. I'm familiar with the field, having studied for 21 years, 18 of them with the Wu family, and have gone out of my way to mention the notable aspects of the different manifestations of T'ai Chi Ch'uan. The article does list different styles and schools, at least the major ones (some of which have their own articles), and the differences between them, martial versus health, are briefly mentioned. To put value judgments in great detail on those differences would be too close to POV, one would think. There are hundreds of schools and styles, the most notable being the families and the Chinese govt. The most popular styles get the most notice, which is a statistical bias, if anything. Fire Star 13:45, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)


I got to agree with the first poster. I don't think this article mentions enough about the fighting aspect of the martial art, only the watered down hippy style, that seems to be so popular with the Western Practioners right now. - AviAvi

I don't know what article you guys are reading, but this one mentions the martial aspect of T'ai Chi training all through it. T'ai Chi Ch'uan happens to be more than just a martial art, though, and Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia that should report on as many aspects of a subject as possible. If you don't have the health aspect of T'ai Chi, then your training is incomplete, at least according to the T'ai Chi families. IME, they know more about it than the hippies or the "ninjas." Fire Star 01:15, 18 May 2005 (UTC)


  • There has been mention of taijiquan's martial history and application but the emphasis is definitely on the health side of things. While taiji is more than a martial art it is first and foremost a martial art... --Shadowdh 10:02, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
  • HI there... I am pretty new to this wikipedia, so will try not to make too many mistakes... I have read the article and it looks ok (but it does have a heavy health/alternative bias)I have made some slight changes to the article (just suggestions really), nothing too grand but some things that may be needed...

T'ai Chi Ch'uan or Taijiquan (Chinese: 太極拳; pinyin: Tàijíquán; literally "supreme ultimate fist"), commonly known as T'ai Chi, Tai Chi, or Taiji, is a nei chia ("internal") Chinese martial art which is first and foremost a martial art, is also known for the claims of health and longevity benefits made by its practitioners and in some recent medical studies. T'ai Chi Ch'üan is known as an internal or soft style martial art, an art applied with as complete a relaxation or "softness" in the musculature as possible, to distinguish its theory and application from that of the external or hard styles which use a degree of tension in the muscles. T'ai Chi Ch'uan is best known as the slow motion routines groups of people practice every morning in hundreds of parks across China and, increasingly, other parts of the world. In T'ai Chi classes one is taught awareness of one's own balance and what affects it, awareness of the same in others, and appreciation of the practical value in one's ability to moderate extremes of behavior and attitude at both mental and physical levels and about taijiquan’s applications for self defence. Overview While its practitioners have historically considered it primarily a style of martial art, T'ai Chi Ch'uan is also called an art of moving meditation. T'ai Chi theory and practice shares many of the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. Besides general health benefits and stress management attributed to beginning and intermediate level T'ai Chi training, many therapeutic interventions along the lines of traditional Chinese medicine are taught to advanced T'ai Chi students in traditional schools. T'ai Chi Chuan as physical training is characterized by its requirement for the use of leverage through the joints based on coordination in relaxation rather than muscular tension. The slow, repetitive work involved in that process is said to gently increase and open the internal circulation (breath, body heat, blood, peristalsis, etc.). Over time, proponents say, this enhancement becomes a lasting effect, a direct reversal of the physical effects of stress on the human body. This reversal allows much more of the students' native energy to be available to them, which they may then apply more effectively to the rest of their lives; families, careers, spiritual or creative pursuits, hobbies, etc. The study of T'ai Chi Ch'uan involves three primary subjects: • Health - an unhealthy or otherwise uncomfortable person will find it difficult to meditate to a state of calmness or to use Tai Chi as a martial art. Tai Chi's health training therefore concentrates on relieving the physical effects of stress on the body and mind. • Meditation - the focus meditation and subsequent calmness cultivated by the meditative aspect of T'ai Chi is seen as necessary to maintain optimum health (in the sense of effectively maintaining stress relief or homeostasis) and in order to use it as a soft style martial art. • Martial art - the ability to competently use T'ai Chi as a martial art is said to be proof that the health and meditation aspects are working according to the dictates of the theory of T'ai Chi Ch'uan. The Mandarin term "T'ai Chi Ch'uan" translates as "Supreme Ultimate Boxing" or "Boundless Fist". T'ai Chi training involves learning solo routines, known as forms, and two person routines, known as pushing hands, as well as acupressure-related manipulations taught by traditional schools. T'ai Chi Ch'üan is seen by many of its schools as a Taoist practice, and it does seemingly incorporate many Taoist principles into its practice (see below). It is an art form said to date back many centuries (although not reliably documented under that name before 1850), with precursor disciplines dating back thousands of years. The explanation given by the traditional T'ai Chi family schools for why so many of their previous generations have dedicated their lives to the study and preservation of the art is that the discipline it seems to give its students to dramatically improve the effects of stress in their lives, with a few years of hard work, should hold a useful purpose for people living in a stressful world. They say that once the T'ai Chi principles have been understood and internalized into the bodily framework the practitioner will have an immediately accessible "toolkit" thereby to improve and then maintain their health, to provide a meditative focus, and that can work as an effective and subtle martial art for self-defence. Teachers say the study of T'ai Chi Ch'uan is, more than anything else, about challenging one's ability to change oneself appropriately in response to outside forces. These principles are taught using the examples of physics as experienced by two (or more) bodies in combat. In order to be able to protect oneself using change, it is necessary to understand what the consequences are of changing appropriately, changing inappropriately and not changing at all in response to an attack. Students, by this theory, will appreciate the full benefits of the entire art in the fastest way through physical training of the martial art aspect. Wu Chien-ch'üan, co-founder of the Wu family style, described the name T'ai Chi Ch'uan this way at the beginning of the 20th century: "Various people have offered different explanations for the term T'ai Chi Ch'uan. Some have said: 'In terms of self-cultivation, one must train from a point of movement towards a point of quiescence. T'ai Chi comes about through the harmony of yin and yang. In terms of the art of attack and defense then, in the context of transformations of full and empty, one is constantly inwardly latent, not outwardly expressive, as if the yin and yang of T'ai Chi have not divided apart.' Others say: 'Every movement of T'ai Chi Ch'uan is based on circles, just like the shape of a T'ai Chi symbol. Therefore, it is called T'ai Chi Ch'uan.' Both explanations are quite reasonable, especially the second, which is fuller." T'ai Chi training and techniques As the name T'ai Chi Ch'uan is held to be derived from the T'ai Chi symbol, the Taijitu or T'ai Chi t'u (太極圖, pinyin tàijítú), commonly known in the West as the "yin-yang" diagram, T'ai Chi Ch'uan techniques are said therefore to physically and energetically balance yin (receptive) and yang (active) principles: "From ultimate softness comes ultimate hardness." The core training involves two primary features: the first being the solo form or quan or ch'uan (拳), a slow sequence of movements which emphasise a straight spine, but not necessarily vertical spine, relaxed breathing and a natural range of motion; the second being different styles of pushing hands or tui shou or t'ui shou (推手) for training "stickiness" and sensitivity in the reflexes through various motions from the forms in concert with a training partner in order to learn leverage, timing, coordination, finding the opponents centre and positioning when interacting with another. Pushing hands is seen as necessary not only for training the self-defense skills of an internal style such as T'ai Chi by demonstrating the forms' movement principles experientially, but also it is said to improve upon the level of conditioning provided by practice of the solo forms by increasing the work load on students while they practise those movement principles. The solo form should take the students through a complete, natural, range of motion over their centre of gravity. Accurate, repeated practise of the solo routine is said to retrain posture, encourage circulation throughout the students' bodies, maintain flexibility through their joints and further familiarize students with the martial application sequences implied by the forms. The major styles of T'ai Chi have forms which differ somewhat cosmetically, but there are also many obvious similarities which point to their common origin. The solo forms, empty-hand and weapon, are catalogues of movements that are practised individually in pushing hands and application scenarios to prepare students for self-defence training. In most traditional schools different variations of the solo forms can be practiced; fast/slow, small circle/large circle, square/round (which are different expressions of leverage through the joints), low sitting/high sitting (the degree to which weight-bearing knees are kept bent throughout the form), for example. In a fight, if one uses hardness to resist violent force then both sides are certain to be injured, at least to some degree. Such injury, according to T'ai Chi theory, is a natural consequence of meeting brute force with brute force. The collision of two like forces, yang with yang, is known as "double-weighted" in T'ai Chi terminology. Instead, students are taught not to fight or resist an incoming force, but to meet it in softness and "stick" to it, following its motion while remaining in physical contact until the incoming force of attack exhausts itself or can be safely redirected, the result of meeting yang with yin. Done correctly, achieving this yin/yang or yang/yin balance in combat (and, by extension, other areas of one's life) is known as being "single-weighted" and is a primary goal of T'ai Chi Ch'uan training. Lao Tzu provided the archetype for this in the Tao Te Ching when he wrote, "The soft and the pliable will defeat the hard and strong." This soft "neutralization" of an attack can be accomplished very quickly in an actual fight by an adept practitioner. A T'ai Chi student has to be well conditioned by many years of disciplined training; stable, sensitive and elastic mentally and physically in order to realize this ability, however. Other training exercises include: • Weapons training and fencing applications employing the straight sword known as the jian or chien or gim (jiàn 劍), a heavier curved sabre, sometimes called a broadsword or tao (dāo 刀, which is actually considered a big knife), fan, staff (棍), 7 foot (2 m) spear and 13 foot (4 m) lance (both called qiāng 槍). Less commonly known weapons still in use are the large Da Dao or Ta Tao (大刀) or Bagua sabre, halberd (jǐ 戟), cane, rope-dart, Three sectional staff and steel whip. • Two-person tournament fighting (san shou 散手); • Breathing exercises; nei gong or nei kung (內功 nèigōng) or, more commonly, qigong or ch'i kung (氣功 qìgōng) to develop qi or ch'i (氣 qì) or "breath energy" in coordination with physical movement. These were formerly taught only to disciples as a separate, complementary training system. In the last 50 years they have become more well known to the general public. T'ai Chi's martial aspect relies on sensitivity to the opponent's movements and centre of gravity dictating appropriate responses. Effectively affecting or "capturing" the opponent's centre of gravity immediately upon contact is trained as the primary goal of the martial T'ai Chi student, and from there all other technique can follow with seeming effortlessness. The alert calmness required to achieve the necessary sensitivity is acquired over thousands of hours of first yin (slow, repetitive, meditative, low impact) and then later adding yang ("realistic", active, fast, high impact) martial training; forms, pushing hands and sparring. T'ai Chi Ch'uan trains in three basic ranges, close, medium and long, and then everything in between. Pushes and open hand strikes are more common than punches, and kicks are usually to the legs and lower torso, never higher than the hip in most styles. The fingers, fists, palms, sides of the hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, back, hips, knees and feet are commonly used to strike, with strikes to the eyes, throat, heart, groin and other acupressure points trained by advanced students. There is an extensive repertoire of joint traps, locks and breaks (chin na), particularly applied to lock up or break an opponent's elbows, wrists, fingers, ankles, back or neck. Most T'ai Chi teachers expect their students to thoroughly learn defensive or neutralizing skills first, and a student will have to demonstrate proficiency with them before offensive skills will be extensively trained. There is also an emphasis in the traditional schools on kind-heartedness. One is expected to show mercy to one's opponents, as instanced by a poem preserved in some of the T'ai Chi families said to be derived from the Shaolin temple: "I would rather maim than kill Hurt than maim Intimidate than hurt Avoid than intimidate." T'ai Chi styles and history There are five major styles of T'ai Chi Ch'üan, each named after the Chinese family that teaches (or taught) it: • Ch'en style (陳氏) • Yang style (楊家) • Wu or Wu/Hao style of Wu Yu-hsiang (武家) • Wu style of Wu Ch'uan-yü and Wu Chien-ch'üan (吳家) • Sun style (孫家) The order of seniority is as listed above. The order of popularity is Yang, Wu, Ch'en, Sun, and Wu/Hao. The five family styles share much underlying theory, but differ in their approaches to training. There are also several groups teaching what they call Wu Tang style T'ai Chi Ch'üan: • Wu Tang (Wudang) (武當) The designation Wu Tang Ch'üan is also used to broadly distinguish internal or nei chia martial arts (said to be a specialty of the monasteries at Wu Tang Shan) from what are known as the external or wei chia styles based on Shaolin Ch'üan, although that distinction is sometimes disputed by individual schools. In this broad sense, among many T'ai Chi schools all styles of T'ai Chi (as well as related arts such as Pa Kua Chang and Hsing-i Ch'üan) are therefore considered to be "Wu Tang style" martial arts. The schools that designate themselves "Wu Tang style" relative to the family styles mentioned above mostly claim to teach an "original style" they say was formulated by a Taoist monk called Zhang Sanfeng and taught by him in the Taoist monasteries at Wu Tang Shan. Some consider that what is practised under that name today may be a modern back-formation based on stories and popular veneration of Zhang Sanfeng (see below) as well as the martial fame of the Wu Tang monastery (there are many other martial art styles historically associated with Wu Tang besides T'ai Chi). There is also a modern T'ai Chi style going by the name Wudang as a term of convenience that is fairly well-known internationally, especially in the UK and Europe, originally taught by a student of the Wu (吳) style. When tracing T'ai Chi Ch'üan's formative influences to Taoist and Buddhist monasteries, one has little more to go on than legendary tales from a modern historical perspective, but T'ai Chi Ch'üan's practical connection to and dependence upon the theories of Sung dynasty Neo-Confucianism (a conscious synthesis of Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian traditions, esp. the teachings of Mencius) is readily apparent to its practitioners. The philosophical and political landscape of that time in Chinese history is fairly well documented, even if the art later to become known as T'ai Chi Ch'üan's origin in it is not. T'ai Chi Ch'üan's theories and practice are therefore believed by some schools to have been formulated by the Taoist monk Chang San-feng in the 12th century, a time frame fitting well with when the principles of the Neo-Confucian school were making themselves felt in Chinese intellectual life. Therefore the didactic story is told that Chang San-feng as a young man studied Tao Yin (導引, py dǎoyǐn) breathing exercises from his Taoist teachers and martial arts at the Buddhist Shaolin monastery, eventually combining the martial forms and breathing exercises to formulate the soft or internal principles we associate with T'ai Chi Ch'üan and related martial arts. Its subsequent fame attributed to his teaching, Wu Tang monastery was known thereafter as an important martial center for many centuries, its many styles of internal kung fu preserved and refined at various Taoist temples. T'ai Chi in the present Recently there has been some divergence between those who say they practise T'ai Chi primarily for fighting, those who practise it for its aesthetic appeal (as in the shortened, modern, theatrical "Taijiquan" forms of wushu, see below), and those who are more interested in its benefits to physical and mental health. The wushu aspect is primarily for show, the forms taught for those purposes are designed to earn points in competition and are mostly unconcerned with either health maintenance or martial ability. More traditional stylists still see the two aspects of health and martial arts as equally necessary pieces of the puzzle, the yin and yang of T'ai Chi Ch'üan. The T'ai Chi "family" schools therefore still present their teachings in a martial art context even though the majority of their students nowadays profess that they are primarily interested in training for the claimed health benefits. T'ai Chi has become very popular in the last twenty years or so, as the baby boomers age and T'ai Chi's reputation for ameliorating the effects of aging becomes more well-known. Hospitals, clinics, community and senior centers are all hosting T'ai Chi classes in communities around the world. Along with Yoga, it is one of the fastest growing fitness and health maintenance activities, in terms of numbers of students enrolling in classes. Since there is no universal certification process, and most Westerners haven't seen very much T'ai Chi and don't know what to look for, practically anyone can learn or even make up a few moves and call themselves a teacher. Relatively few of these teachers even know that there are martial applications to the T'ai Chi forms. Those who do know that it is a martial art usually don't teach martially themselves. If they do teach self-defense, it is often a mixture of motions which the teachers think look like T'ai Chi Ch'uan with some other system. This is especially evident in schools located outside of China. While this phenomenon may have made some external aspects of T'ai Chi available for a wider audience, the traditional T'ai Chi family schools see the martial focus as a fundamental part of their training, both for health and self-defense purposes. They indicate that while the students may not need to practice martial applications themselves to derive a benefit from T'ai Chi training, their teachers at least should know the applications well enough to ensure that the movements they teach are done correctly and safely by their students. Also, working on the ability to protect oneself from physical attack (one of the most stressful things that can happen to a person) certainly falls under the category of complete "health maintenance." For these reasons they feel that a school not teaching those aspects somewhere in their syllabus cannot be said to be actually teaching the art itself, and will be much less likely to be able to reproduce the full health benefits that have made traditional T'ai Chi Ch'uan's reputation in the first place. Modern forms In order to standardize T'ai Chi Ch'uan for its citizens' daily exercise, and because many of the family T'ai Chi Ch'uan teachers either moved or stopped teaching after the Communist regime was established in 1949, the Chinese Sports Committee brought together four T'ai Chi experts who truncated the Yang family hand form to 24 postures in 1956. They wanted to somehow retain the essential principles of T'ai Chi Ch'uan but make it less difficult to learn than longer (generally 88 to 108 posture) classical family T'ai Chi Ch'uan hand forms. Because shorter forms don't have the conditioning benefits of the classical forms, they wanted more difficult forms for the purposes of further studies and demonstration that didn't have the demanding martial requirements of the traditional family forms. In 1976, the Combined 48 Forms were created by three T'ai Chi experts headed by Professor Men Hui Feng. The combined forms were created based on combining and condensing elements of the classical forms of four of the major styles; Ch'en, Yang, Wu, and Sun. The idea was to take what they felt were distinctive features of these styles and to express them in a short space of time. As T'ai Chi again became popular on the Mainland, competitive forms were developed to be completed within a 6 minute time limit. In the late 1980s, the Chinese Sports Committee standardized the many different competition forms. It had chosen the four major styles and combined forms. These five sets of forms were created by different teams, and later approved by a committee of T'ai Chi experts in China, but not by direct representatives of most of the T'ai Chi families themselves. All sets of forms thus created were named after their style, e.g., the Ch'en Style National Competition Form is the 56 Forms, and so on. The combined forms are The 42 Form or simply the Competition Form, as it is known in China. In the 11th Asian Games of 1990, wushu was included as an item for competition for the first time with the 42 Form being chosen to represent T'ai Chi. It is likely to be the official form in the 2008 Summer Olympics. [2] (http://www.egreenway.com/taichichuan/short.htm)[3] (http://www.ohioshaolin.com/China%27s%20Arts/history_of_tai_chi_42_competitio.htm) Representatives of some of the traditional families do not necessarily agree with the assessments of the Chinese Sports Committee, however. T'ai Chi Ch'uan has historically been seen by them as a martial art, not a sport, with competitions mostly entered as a hobby or to promote one's school publicly, but with little bearing on measuring actual accomplishment in the art. Their criticisms of modern forms include that the modern, "government" routines, being what they see as a mostly random combination by committee of some external elements of the traditional styles, have no standardized, internally consistent training requirements. Also, that people studying competition forms rarely train pushing hands or other power generation trainings vital to learning the martial applications of T'ai Chi Ch'uan and thereby lack the quality control traditional teachers say knowing the martial aspect of the art is essential for. T'ai Chi as a form of traditional Chinese medicine Researchers have found that long-term T'ai Chi practice had favorable effects on the promotion of balance control, flexibility and cardiovascular fitness and reduced the risk of falls in elders. The studies also reported reduced pain, stress and anxiety in healthy subjects. Other studies have indicated improved cardiovascular and respiratory function in healthy subjects as well as those who had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery. Patients also benefited from Tai Chi who suffered from heart failure, high blood pressure, heart attacks, arthritis and multiple sclerosis (See research citations listed below).

Its not alot... the changes I added/made are in bold (I hope)... --Shadowdh 10:16, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, the edits in boldface that you propose are fairly reasonable. While TCC is a martial art, and should always be taught that way, most people who actually do the forms do them solely for health purposes. Martial students are unfortunately very rare nowadays, and we have to represent that. To those of us who practise the martial, of course, the two aspects are inseparable. I will re-open the article once our spammer has gone to sleep in a few hours ;-) Once we have worked them in, I will be archiving this talk page as it is getting a bit long... Fire Star 03:55, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Spamming

As you will see from the page history, we have a dynamic range spammer who has been vandalising the external links section. From what I can guess, they are on the west coast of North America, and I will probably protect the page during the "business hours" of that part of the world for now. If anyone wants to legitimately edit the article, please contact me or another admin and we can unprotect the page for you. Fire Star 04:43, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

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