Tai Chi Principles, Wu Yuxiang’s Classical Teachings Explained
The basic principles of traditional Tai Chi are simple to say but difficult to put into the body: calm the mind, remove unnecessary tension, distinguish empty from full, keep the body connected, let the feet and legs support the movement, use the waist to direct it, and allow the hands to express what the whole body is doing. After practicing Tai Chi and other Chinese martial arts for more than forty years, I have become less interested in how beautifully someone can repeat these principles and much more interested in whether they can actually show them when they move. The current ChenStyle author biography records more than four decades of hands-on martial arts experience, including training, competition, judging and exchanges with senior practitioners. Many of these ideas appear in what we now call the Tai Chi Classics, especially the writings associated with Wu Yuxiang (武禹襄) and the Wu-Li tradition. The old texts are short. Sometimes a single sentence contains enough material to keep a serious student busy for years. That is one reason I think reading them as a list of inspirational quotations misses their real value. They were meant to guide practice.