Taiji and Other Chinese Internal Martial Arts
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Taiji and Other Chinese Internal Martial Arts
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Taiji, also known as taichi, is a Chinese martial art well known for its health benefits. Taiji practice is characterized by its slow movements. Practicing taiji is known to improve balance, hand-eye coordination, and blood circulation.
There are many families of taiji, each with its own defining characteristics. I practice the Sun family style, which is characterized by its relatively upright stance and mobile footwork. The signature movement of the Sun-style taiji is the "kai-he" or "open-close". The traditional Sun-style form consists of 98 movements.
In Chinese martial arts, taiji is classified as one of the three "internal" styles. The other two internal styles are xingyi and bagua. Xingyi's movements are simple, direct and linear while bagua's footwork is quick and circular. I'm mentioning them here because the founder of Sun-style taiji incorporated some of these features into the Sun taiji form.
There are various other styles that claim to be "internal" forms -- tongbei, baji and liuhebafa to name a few. Liuhebafa (also known as water boxing) is a particularly interesting style worth mentioning. There are some who claim that liuhebafa is oldest internal martial art, and all others (taiji. xinyi, bagua) stem from this style. One can certainly see elements of those three styles in the form, but the origins of the form are unfortunately lost in myth and legend. The liuhebafa set consists of one main form of 66 movements; however, each movement consists of many sub-movements, so this form is actually much longer that is seems. Add to the fact that there are no repeated movements, and you have one monster of a form...
There are plenty of other martial arts as well, of course, and not just Chinese ones. Another martial art I find particularly interesting is Shorinji Kempo, Japanese in origin. It's a relatively new martial art (about 50 years old). It's rooted quite heavily in Buddhist philosophy. "Shorinji" is actually the Japanese pronounciation of "Shaolin-si" (Shaolin Temple), and while the two don't actually have anything in common in terms of techniques and flavour, they both have the Buddhist philosophy aspect.