Wang Yongquan (王永泉, 1904–1987) was an important teacher in the Yang Style Tai Chi tradition whose approach placed unusual emphasis on relaxation, balance, intention, internal coordination, and control of the body’s center. His teaching is useful because he did not treat softness as weakness. Instead, relaxation was something active—structure remains, awareness remains, but unnecessary muscular tension is gradually removed.
Wang Yongquan began martial arts training when he was young and later studied within the Yang family tradition, including training associated with Yang Jianhou, Yang Shaohou, and Yang Chengfu. He eventually became a well-known teacher in Beijing and served as vice chairman of the Beijing Wushu Association.
After spending most of my life around traditional Chinese martial arts, I find many of Wang Yongquan’s ideas familiar even though my own background includes considerable Chen Style and Baji training. Different Tai Chi families may use different language and movement, but the deeper questions are often similar: How do you relax without collapsing? How do you move slowly without becoming dead? How does the waist connect the upper and lower body? And how does intention guide movement without turning practice into imagination alone?
The Four Basic Qualities: Relaxed, Stable, Slow, and Even
Wang Yongquan described Yang Style Tai Chi as natural, gentle, and comfortable in appearance. Four qualities appear repeatedly in his teaching: relaxation, stability, slowness, and evenness. These are simple words, but each becomes much more difficult once you try to maintain it while actually moving.
Relaxation does not mean making the body limp. The mind settles first, and unnecessary tension gradually disappears from the shoulders, chest, waist, hips, joints, and muscles. At the same time, the body must still remain connected and responsive. I think this is an important distinction because beginners often hear “relax” and assume they should simply become soft everywhere. Good Tai Chi relaxation still contains structure.
Wang also warned against forcing the body downward in the name of sinking. The lower abdomen should remain relatively soft, and excessive tension should not be dumped into the knees and lower legs. His phrase “Qi sinks to the Dantian” should therefore not be interpreted as physically squeezing or compressing the abdomen.
Stability Does Not Mean Standing Like a Statue
For Wang Yongquan, stability meant maintaining balance and composure while remaining capable of movement. The upper body should stay naturally upright without leaning unnecessarily forward, backward, or sideways, while the lower body remains mobile enough to support changes in direction.
This is especially important in push hands. A person can look stable while standing alone, yet lose that stability as soon as another person applies pressure. Real stability has to survive movement and contact. From my own experience, that is when you begin to discover whether your posture is truly connected or whether you were simply holding a pose.
Why Tai Chi Is Practiced Slowly
Wang Yongquan saw slow practice as a training method rather than the final goal. Moving at a measured pace gives the practitioner time to notice posture, balance, breathing, tension, and coordination. When movement becomes too fast too early, many mistakes simply become harder to feel.
But he did not advocate moving as slowly as humanly possible. Excessive slowness can also create stiffness and unnatural movement. The speed should fit the practitioner’s body and purpose while allowing the movement to remain smooth and responsive.
This is one reason I have never liked the idea that slow movement by itself proves someone is practicing good Tai Chi. You can move slowly and still be tense, disconnected, and off balance. The value of slowness is that it gives you time to correct those problems.
What Wang Meant by Evenness
Evenness means that the movement does not constantly start, stop, speed up, and collapse. One posture flows into the next in a continuous rhythm. Traditional Tai Chi sometimes compares this to drawing silk from a cocoon: if you pull too suddenly the silk breaks, while too little continuity causes the process to stop.
Breathing should follow the same general quality. Wang warned against becoming obsessed with manipulating the breath. It should remain smooth and natural enough that it does not create more tension than it removes.
Qi, Dantian, and Wang Yongquan’s Use of Imagery
A significant part of Wang Yongquan’s teaching uses traditional terms such as Qi (气), Dantian (丹田), Yongquan (涌泉), and internal energy. He also used visualization, including the image of energy sinking through the legs toward the feet and expanding outward around the body.
I think it is important to read this in the context of traditional Chinese martial arts. These descriptions are part of Wang’s training language and should not automatically be presented as modern anatomical facts. The practical value of the imagery is easier to understand: it encourages awareness of the whole body instead of concentrating all effort in the shoulders, hands, or chest.
This distinction matters to me. We do not need to throw away traditional terminology, but neither do we need to claim that every old description has already been verified by modern physiology. Sometimes traditional imagery works because it gives the practitioner a useful way to organize attention and movement.
Relax the Shoulders, Elbows, Wrists, and Hands
Wang Yongquan paid close attention to the relationship between the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and hand. The shoulders should not lift or become rigid, and the elbows should remain settled while still allowing the arms to extend freely.
He also cautioned against misunderstanding the traditional instruction sometimes translated as “sit the wrist.” If taken too literally, the hand becomes stiff. His emphasis was closer to maintaining a lively, rounded wrist and hand that can change easily between palm, fist, and hook without locking the joints.
This is a good example of why old martial arts instructions cannot always be understood word for word. A phrase may point toward a feeling or relationship rather than an exact physical shape.
The Waist and Kua Connect the Body
Wang described the waist as the central axis of movement, with the hips or kua (胯) responding to it. The waist should not be held rigidly, and the hips should neither stick backward nor collapse forward. The goal is enough freedom around the waist and kua for the upper and lower body to stay connected.
This is another point where I see a great deal of overlap between different Chinese martial arts. Whether someone is practicing Chen Style, Yang Style, Baji, or another system, the waist and kua repeatedly appear in discussions of whole-body power. The outward techniques may look different, but disconnected hips usually create disconnected movement.
The Feet Should Be Rooted but Still Alive
Traditional Tai Chi sometimes uses the phrase “ten toes grasp the ground.” Wang Yongquan warned against turning that instruction into constant toe gripping. During ordinary movement, the feet should remain naturally connected to the ground while the ankles stay mobile.
This makes practical sense. If you claw the floor continuously with the toes, the feet and ankles become stiff. Rooting should not make movement more difficult; it should give movement a stable base.
The Three External Harmonies
The traditional Three External Harmonies connect the hands with the feet, elbows with the knees, and shoulders with the hips. Wang did not interpret this as simply placing matching joints in visually symmetrical positions. The deeper idea was coordination.
He placed particular emphasis on the relationship among the waist, shoulders, and hips, with the waist functioning as the central organizer. When that connection is present, the hands and feet no longer feel like independent parts doing unrelated things.
This is one of those principles that becomes much easier to understand through practice than through words. At first, a student moves the hand because the teacher said to move the hand. Later, the hand begins to feel like the end of a movement that started somewhere much deeper in the body.
Neigong: What Did Wang Yongquan Mean by Internal Work?
Wang’s explanation of Neigong (内功) revolves around spirit, intention, Qi, and coordinated movement. Traditional terminology describes this through the Three Internal Harmonies: spirit and intention combine, intention and Qi combine, and Qi and strength combine.
The important point is that Wang did not want internal practice to become simple muscular tension. He repeatedly warned against clumsy force. Intention should organize the movement without turning the entire body rigid.
His writing sometimes describes Qi in traditional Chinese medical terms. I would preserve that because it accurately reflects his teaching system, but I would not present it as a biological mechanism that modern science has confirmed. To me, the useful part is how attention, body awareness, posture, and movement become integrated during training.
“Use Intention, Not Force”
This famous Tai Chi instruction is easy to misunderstand. It does not mean muscles somehow stop working. The body still needs muscular activity to stand and move. What practitioners are trying to reduce is unnecessary force that interferes with coordination.
Wang emphasized the mental side of practice because attention changes movement. The eyes, intention, balance, and body direction should work together instead of the practitioner moving mechanically through a memorized sequence.
After many years of martial arts practice, I find this much more convincing than mystical explanations. Attention matters because what you pay attention to changes how you organize your body. The challenge is learning to use intention without creating new tension.
Internal and External Must Eventually Become One
Wang Yongquan described the body through several useful images, including a large sphere with horizontal and vertical axes crossing through the center. The image helps the practitioner think about balance in every direction rather than leaning or collapsing toward the movement.
Beginners generally practice with larger and clearer movements. As skill improves, the movement may become smaller externally while remaining connected internally. I have seen this many times in experienced martial artists. What looks like “less movement” from the outside may actually contain better organization underneath.
Health Practice and Martial Practice
Wang distinguished between practice aimed primarily at health and practice aimed at martial skill. The emphasis is not always identical. Health-oriented training may focus more strongly on comfortable, rounded, relaxed movement, while martial practice has to deal with timing, structure, contact, and an opponent.
However, he did not treat them as completely separate systems. Both depend on many of the same fundamental skills: balance, relaxation, coordination, opening, closing, and control of the center.
Opening and Closing
Opening and closing are fundamental changes throughout Tai Chi. Opening involves expansion and expression outward, while closing gathers the body and movement back toward the center. Neither should exist alone.
You cannot continue opening forever, just as you cannot continue closing forever. One change creates the conditions for the other. When this becomes natural, Tai Chi no longer feels like a collection of individual postures; the entire form becomes a continuous process of transformation.
The Thirteen Techniques of Tai Chi
Traditional Tai Chi describes thirteen fundamental methods: Peng, Lu, Ji, An, Cai, Lie, Zhou, Kao, advancing, retreating, looking left, gazing right, and maintaining the center. The first eight are commonly associated with the Eight Trigrams, while the five directional methods are traditionally connected with the Five Elements.
The important point is not simply memorizing thirteen Chinese terms. Each one represents a way of organizing direction, force, timing, balance, or movement.
Peng Jin — Ward-Off
Wang compared Peng Jin (掤劲) to water supporting a boat. The image suggests an expansive, resilient quality rather than a hard muscular block. Peng should be present throughout Tai Chi as a connected structural quality, not only during the posture traditionally called Ward-Off.
Lu Jin — Roll Back
Lu (捋) follows and redirects incoming force rather than meeting it head-on. The center remains controlled while the waist and body guide the opponent toward emptiness. The skill lies in following without being dragged out of position.
Ji Jin — Press
Ji (挤) can be expressed through direct or responsive force. Wang used images such as a ball rebounding from a wall to describe how pressure can return through a connected structure rather than simply pushing with the arms.
An Jin — Push
An (按) was compared with moving water: soft in appearance but capable of becoming substantial when the conditions are right. The movement should come through the coordinated center rather than an isolated shove from the shoulders.
Cai Jin — Pluck
Cai (采) involves sensing the opponent’s direction and taking advantage of a moment when balance can be broken. Wang compared this quality with a balance scale because sensitivity to lightness and heaviness determines when to act.
Lie Jin — Split
Lie (挒) uses rotational and separating forces. Wang’s traditional imagery compares it to rapidly moving water or a turning wheel. In practice, waist and body rotation are more important than simply pulling with the hands.
Zhou and Kao
Zhou (肘) uses the elbow and close-range body connection, while Kao (靠) generally refers to power expressed through the shoulder or body at close distance. These remind us that Tai Chi was not originally limited to graceful hand movements performed at arm’s length.
Footwork and Maintaining the Center
The remaining five methods—advance, retreat, look left, gaze right, and central equilibrium—deal largely with direction, awareness, and footwork. Wang compared the shifting center of gravity to a pendulum, emphasizing that stepping should not become a stiff act of pulling the body from one leg to another.
The exact height and width of the stance should also depend on the practitioner’s proportions, skill, and purpose. This is an important point because there is no single ideal stance depth that fits every person. The lower body should remain stable without becoming so rigid that the knees and ankles lose their ability to adapt.
Why the Center Matters
Wang repeatedly returned to the importance of the center. Whether practicing for health, performing the form, or working with another person, losing the center usually means losing control of the movement.
In martial application, the idea becomes even clearer. You want to maintain your own center while affecting the opponent’s. This sounds simple when written down, but in push hands it can become a lifetime of practice.
What I Take From Wang Yongquan’s Teaching
What I like most about Wang Yongquan’s approach is that the deeper ideas do not require us to make Tai Chi mysterious. Relaxation does not mean weakness. Intention does not mean pretending muscles are unnecessary. Internal training does not have to mean believing in supernatural force.
His traditional language is certainly different from modern biomechanics, and I think we should respect that difference rather than force the two into one explanation. But underneath the old terminology are very practical questions about balance, coordination, tension, awareness, timing, and control of the center.
After decades around Chinese martial arts, I find myself paying more attention to those basic things, not less. When I was younger, complicated explanations sounded advanced. Now I often think the more advanced question is much simpler: Can you remain relaxed, connected, balanced, and responsive when the movement becomes difficult?
Final Thoughts
Wang Yongquan’s teaching presents Yang Style Tai Chi as a practice built on relaxation, stability, measured movement, continuity, intention, and control of the center. His explanations of Qi, Dantian, internal circles, and the Three Harmonies belong to the traditional language through which these skills were taught, while many of his practical instructions concern very recognizable problems: stiffness, poor balance, disconnected limbs, unnecessary effort, and loss of coordination.
That is why I think his teachings are still worth studying. You do not have to copy every old expression literally to learn from them. The important part is to understand what the instruction is trying to change in your actual practice.
