Look at the whole of Chinese philosophy and culture depicted in Chinese art and we see
that just about everything is based upon what happens in nature.
The main thing that we notice in Chinese drawing and painting is the balance of yin and
yang which is an integral part of becoming a good calligrapher. The whole of Chinese
culture, philosophy, medicine and exercise is based upon balance in just the same way that
we have perfect balance in nature. We may not like this perfect balance at times, for
instance when we receive violent storms and "bad weather". But like it or not,
we have to have bad weather along with the good weather in order for the whole world to
remain in balance. When we have an imbalance in yin and yang, whether that it inside of
your body or in the whole Universe, things begin to go wrong and if it is in the body,
then we become ill and disease is allowed to creep in. The main way that we can remain
disease free is to have a perfect balance of yin and yang Qi circulating throughout the
body.
Chinese martial arts, especially those of the 'internal' type such as Taijiquan,
Baguazhang and Xingyi ch'uan are also based upon what happens in nature. The internal
martial systems have been founded by people of great genius who knew about the Qi (energy)
flows in the human body, acupuncture meridians and balance. So when they devised the
various Internal Martial/Healing systems they used this genius to invent exercises that
were perfectly balanced. They were not only balanced in the physical things that we
perform but also in that they had an even balance of martial and healing. Unfortunately,
nowadays when someone mentions "Martial Arts" we conjure up pictures of Bruce
Lee flying through the air attacking someone or Chuck Norris fighting twelve men using
round house and back-spinning kicks! We have lost that balance. Once, in China, if one was
a martial artist, that person would be held in high esteem because he or she would be
regarded as a person who had risen to a high level of healing ability and martial ability
through very hard training internally and externally. Nowadays, I am loath to even say to
strangers that I am a 'martial artist' for fear of being laughed at! That's where
television and film have brought the martial arts down to in the West and it would seem
even in China. However, Chinese film still has an element of 'Art' left in the Martial in
most of their films. So they still have somewhat of a balance.
The 'New Age' movement did more to harm great martial systems such as Taijiquan than
anything. When these "New Age Hippies" adopted for instance Taiji as theirs,
they threw that martial art in particular completely out of balance with nature and
thereby almost ruining the whole system forever! We cannot be calm and meditational at all
times, we cannot be relaxed all the time, we cannot have peace, love dove, all the time as
this is just not the way of nature, it is not balanced. And we cannot have a martial
system that is either all hard or all soft.
Apart from they Taijiquan system that I teach and a couple of others, most Taijiquan now
is all slow moving and performed at an even pace throughout the whole execution of the
form. This is not balanced. We like to quote stuff like "Taijiquan is like the
flowing river" etc. And we conjure up images of a lovely gently flowing stream
meandering through a calm valley. But what about the other side of that same stream when
it turns into a raging torrent where to even venture forth would invite death! This is the
way of nature, rivers can be calm one minute and raging torrents the next. And it's the
same with all of nature where there are not many parts of the world that are always
temperate. Thank God, that it is the way of nature that for the most part, nature has
smaller swings to yin and yang. But often there will be a reason for nature to go into
wild swings of beautiful calm and sunny weather, then into wild storms where property and
human life is taken. The epitome of this is 'the calm before the storm'. This always
happens, it is the law of nature that before a huge violent storm (yin) we have on the
opposite end of the scale a very quiet and calm period, (Yang). And it must be exactly the
same way in all of our Internal Martial Arts systems. Baguazhang and Xingyi already have
yin and yang where they are calm for a few movements, then explode into violence for the
next. Fortunately, the new age movement did not get onto these two arts as they were
thankfully not as proliferated as Taijiquan. So Taiji copped a bashing until it almost
became extinct in its former glory being replaced by a totally useless set of wishy washy
movements that did no more that what you could get from a long swim in a heated pool!
The downfall of Taijiquan was really its own fault because it is really quite easy to
learn the relatively (to the other two internal martial arts) easy movements at their most
basic beginner level. Unfortunately, those who taught in the early days of the West's
embrace of this art only ever knew those very basic movements and were never taught, or
would not stay long enough with their initial instructor to learn the advanced ways of
training. So all they ever got was a bunch of very basic stepping movements with some hand
postures thrown in. It was not a balanced set of movements and for the most part went
totally against what the old masters dictated to us as to how the movement should be
performed. To get around this, many of the great classic saying from the Chinese were
translated incorrectly due to certain phrases in Chinese simply being untranslatable! And
also to a lack of understanding and experience of the translators, some of whom had only
been doing the basic forms for three years or less.
The old masters left us certain rules by which to perform our Taijiquan. But these were
written at a time when these masters were very advanced in their own training. So here is
the mistake, we took those sayings and rules and tried to place them over the top of very
basic forms! So, we eventually lost it completely.
One of the most important things about Taijiquan is that there must be Yin and Yang
balance. Now to someone who does not know the more advanced methods of form, this can be
translated into something that is very simple, like simply saying that the legs are yang
while the upper body is yin. This is true, but what they miss out on by never learning
advanced Taijiquan is that the whole body, not just the legs and upper body must also be
in a state of balance between yin and yang. So if we take only the hands for instance, how
can we have a balance of yin and yang when both hands are pushing and are both in a state
of Yang?
We are told to be in a state of 'Sung' which has been mistranslated as to 'relax'. So the
early instructors did the whole form with even paced movements, slow and calm for the
whole form. This is not yin and yang! Sung actually means something like 'moving without
the conscious knowledge of movement'. It does not mean to completely relax as we would
fall on the ground if we were to do that. However, within this state of sung, there must
also be yin and yang balance without losing the 'sung'. So built into the 'Old Yang Style
of Yang Lu-ch'an' we have movements that balance each other out by having both yin and
yang movements. We will be moving along calmly, slowly and in as a relaxed state as
possible, then will come an energy release point in the form where we perform a movement
or set of moves that are totally explosive. Not tense, but explosive still retaining that
sung ideal. Then we will be back instantly into the calm and flowing movements, just like
the great river or nature in general.
And it doesn't stop there. Each balanced organ and portion of the body must also be
balanced yin and yang. So fro instance when we are doing a movement like 'push', we never
'push' (which, by the way, is not actually a push at all but a devastating double strike)
using both palms at the same time, but firstly use the left palm going yang while the
right is going yin. Then in an instant the palms change state to the reverse is happening.
This of course happens in an instant and is not seen by an onlooker. And here is one of
the main reasons for the demise of Taijiquan. Others would secretly watch some of the old
masters performing their forms and would learn the movements from this! I now personally
of an old master, now deceased from Hong Kong who used to watch Yang Sau-chung every
morning in the park and simply copied his movements. He then put out a film (no video back
then) and book on the Yang style! But what he did not see were the minute yin and yang
movements of not only the hands but of the whole body because he was not trained to look
for these. He did not see that the back was changing from yin to yang, from a 'C' back to
a straight back as the energy was gathered and released. He did not see that the backbone
was being compressed to allow all of the vertebra to fall on top of each other thus
forming a combined capacitor effect that had great power when released. The vertebra of
the backbone look and act very much like capacitors, which are electrical devices for
storing electricity and then releasing it when short circuited. He did not see that even
the feet were continually changing from yin to yang as the old master stepped. He did not
see the concave foot as the other foot was convex. He did not notice that the eyes were
also continually changing from yin to yang in accordance to what the body was doing. And I
am only talking here about the Yang Cheng-fu form let alone the original Yang Lu-ch'an
form which was never performed in public because it was considered to be the crown jewels
of the Yang Family.
And the 'quiet before the storm'? This is inherent in all forms of Taijiquan. However you
cannot see it of course which is another reason that most have left it out. The quiet
always comes in the 'empty' postures just before there is a relative yang movement. This
is happening all the time just as in nature, so before a yang movement such as 'push' we
will have a relatively yin movement where the whole body is empty or at the bottom end of
the 'sine wave' just waiting to begin its move upward again, or when we are at the top of
a yang movement just beginning to move down the wave again, these are the empty movements
in Taijiquan that balance out the generally attacking movements. These are those times
when we must attack an opponent because this is the time when he is the most vulnerable.
This is one of the areas we learn about in push hands.
However, just as in nature, there are times when we must move away from the 'temperate'
movements because we are about to build up a storm. So just before one of the many energy
release points or fa-jing movements in the Old Yang Style, there is an extreme yin
movement where the whole body is so still that you feel like an oak tree just being. Then
the fa-jing movement happens extremely explosive because it is balanced with the extreme
yin movement. And here lies one of the main areas of using Taijiquan for self-defence. It
is very violent! Because we go into this extreme yin or 'quiet' just before an attacking
movement, our attacking moves because extreme which is what they have to be in order to
defeat an attacker.