I remember reading in a Zen book that I enjoyed that you should not practice for yourself, but just practice for the sake of practice. I like that. There’s a kind of grim realism to it but it raises the issue of how exactly are you supposed to approach these sort of goaless activities, like Tai Chi and Zen? The sort of activities where even having a goal can become a problem because it interferes with the activity itself, because it needs to be about being open and aware in the moment, not thinking about things far off in the future. By definition, if you have a goal you cannot be ‘living in the moment’.
Watching that Bagua Boy documentary that I linked to in my last post I was struck by how much Mr Rogers had practiced over his lifetime. He said he spent a lot of years practicing for hours a day. It’s impressive, but it also sounds very lonely, and even if most people had the free time to do that, they wouldn’t. You need to have some sort of drive deep within you to practice anything that much.
Lots of people in the Tai Chi world practice for hours a day. Some people meditate for an hour a day. Some people stand in Zhan Zhuan for an hour.
Today I read an article by Sam Pyrah in The Guardian that asks the question, at what point does a fitness activity become a ball and chain around your neck? At some point she realised that her life long addiction to running had left her very healthy, but with a very narrow life, and at the end of the day, what was the point?
People start Tai Chi for all sorts of reasons and the reasons for doing it change over a lifetime. Since I discovered Tai Chi I’ve always practiced, but I tend to do my personal practice in little pockets of time scattered throughout the day, not in big chunks of hours at a time. Maybe when I’m too old to work I’ll do a lot more Tai Chi than I ever did before? Everything has a cost, and I wonder if the people who practice for hours a day sometimes sit down and smell the flowers and wonder if it was all worth it… Like the Bear of Little Brain, I’ve always valued doing nothing as a worthwhile activity.
Practicing a bit is good, practicing a lot is better, but sometimes you can practice too much.
The Tai Chi Notebook 
I’m a fellow migraine sufferer Linda. The only thing I’ve found that really helped me was following along with this and trying to do it every day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlxo0rmDyyQ&t=101s
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Yay! I’ll take that advice and blog about it next week. You’ve made me feel less imposter syndrome and more empowered! Linda 🙂
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Oh my goodness Linda, what are we going to do with you???
I think the main thing is that you are honest where you got it from, and who you learned it from and that you never pretend it is something it isn’t.
Pro tip: if you add the words “qigong” to whatever you are doing you can do anything. There’s no standards applied to Qigong (as far as I can see), so you can be the inventor of “Migraine QiGong” 🙂
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You two would probably be HORRIFIED at what I get up to!
I use “home made Tai Chi” moves to heal my chronic pain.
I do it most mornings at dawn, and it’s a fusion of movements I’ve learnt from YouTube.
I have no idea what school the moves belong to or whether I am doing them ‘correctly’ (I assume from reading all of this that I am NOT!)
BUT – the regular practice of movement every morning, over the last year, intuitively led by my body on the day has worked wonders.
At the risk of breaking all the rules, I promote Tai Chi on my blog to my readers as a means of healing themselves, but acknowledge it’s a hodge-podge of different approaches, all of which have contributed something to me.
I don’t doubt that nuance matters, but for some of us, anything is better than nothing, and if it helps heal our pain away, I’ll take it, ‘wrong’ or otherwise!
Linda xox
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Well, that’s why I said I’m not really interested in it. btw I generally think of people who interpret what is generally obvious about Chinese Theatre as “you are saying Chinese martial arts came from opera dance” as people who can’t read good or understand nuance. 😉
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Graham, I know from experience that you like exotic explanations of China from westerners, like “Chinese martial arts came from opera dance”, and “Yang Lu Chan was never in Chen Village”, but I’m going to pass. It’s not worth it to argue something this trivial. The idea that the Chens and the Yangs are all in a conspiracy of made-up history is too improbable to get into. Meantime, serious discussions about body mechanics, jin, qi, etc., are waiting.
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Hi Mike,
I’m just looking for actual evidence. I think you’re wrong on the point of provincial gazeteers mentioning Yang LuChan – they do not mention him at all. If they did then we’d have a historical touchstone. One of the Wu brothers is mentioned in the gazeteers, however, so we can be sure he’s real. I agree that not everything is in writing, but Wile himself comments on how little actual evidence there is for any of this, and of course, this is China, where political influence is usually the deciding factor in what version of history is agreed upon.
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Well, you have the Chen Village saying Yang Lu Chan was there and the Yang Family, who tried to skirt the issue for many decades, now publicly admits it, so what do you want? If the Chens and the Yangs are wrong about Yang Lu Chan (not to mention the provincial gazeteers recording YLC that you’re forgetting about), what proof do you have otherwise? Why not consult a legitimate and highly-credentialed historian like Douglas Wile about whether Yang LuChan was in Chen Village?
If it gets down to “show it to me in writing”, that’s a common historical mistake. Not everything was ever put into writing. Tang Hao and Gu Liuxin both constrained their historical research of Taijiquan to “it has to be in writing or it doesn’t count”. Seriously? They expected a written chronicle of the village’s secretive martial art to have been meticulously kept? I think that if both the Chens and the Yangs agree with the original “classics” that Yang Lu Chan studied in Chen Village, you’re probably safe in putting your credence in that fact.
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Hi Mike,
I’m really not that bothered about delving into this, but obviously the Yang Family web forum is pretty modern, and the CZP book is probably the first thing every published by a Chen family member, and that’s also fairly modern – published in 1930. You’ve quoted these things before, but they’re not valid historical sources on Yang Lu Chan who was around in the 1700s. Hard evidence of his being in Chen village would be contemporary accounts. But we both know there are none. All we have are stories.
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Graham, here’s the quote from Chen Zhaopi that mentions Yang Lu Chan:
From Chen Zhaopi’s writings in the early/mid 1900’s:
My great-great-grandfather Changxing, style-name “Yunting,” was born in the thirty-sixth year, eighth month, sixteenth day of the Qianlong period [September 24, 1771] and died between 7 and 9 p.m. of the third year, third month, third day of the Xianfeng period [April 10, 1853], aged eighty-three.13 Throughout the Daoguang period [1821–1851], his martial-art skill was extremely good. Standing tall and upright, regardless of how he might be crowded and jostled, his step not even slightly forceful, those around him were like water around a rock. Resistance brought ruin. Changxing’s contemporaries nicknamed him “King Memorial Tablet.” Among his famous disciples, there was Yang Fukui, style-name “Luchan,” of Guangping Prefecture.14 As an aside, contrary to his reputation, he only achieved the first part of the Chen family’s training.
Chen, Mark. Chen Style Taijiquan Collected Masterworks (pp. 8-9). North Atlantic Books.
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Graham, the last time I looked it up on an official “Yang Family” forum, they openly stated that Yang Lu Chan learned the Chen-style from Chen Changxing and I think (it’s been a while since I bothered to Google-search it) they said something like YLC was “employed” by Chen DeHu. I.e., it’s no longer the early 1900s where they were trying to claim the Yang style came from a mythical Wang Tsung Yueh, etc.
The translated comment from Chen Zhaopi about YLC only learning the first form can be found in Mark Chen’s book about the Chen-style Taijiquan (I’ve got it somewhere in my files if you need it).
But sticking to the point I was making, all of the downstream tangential offshoots (like the Yang-style) always tend to be gradually disintegrating remnants of the original art … not somehow magically better and wiser. YLC, for example, was an illiterate indentured servant, not a Taoist Sage. He was given permission to teach (I heard this from CXW directly), but was instructed to not teach silkreeling. The idea that all these tangential people found, remembered, or invented knowledge that was “lost to Chen Village” is just one more way of trying to claim credit for something unjustly.
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Well it’s a great story but is there any hard evidence of… any of it? Records of Yang Lu Chan in Chen village?
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Graham, the “internal arts” that are Taijiquan, Xingyiquan, Baguazhang, Wujiquan, and others, are all arts that move and control the body with the dantian. The actual phrase is “hit with the dantian”, but the idea is the same. All of those internal martial arts have “Taiji” in them, in the sense that their movement is a constant cycle of Open-Close-Open-Close, continuously. For instance, Xingyiquan talks about “Rise, Drill, Overturn, Fall” as their term for the Open-Close cycle, but it’s the same basic “Taiji” ☯ that is in “Taijiquan”. So, many people will say, quite accurately, that “there is Taiji in Xingyi” or “there is Taiji in Baguazhang”, fairly commonly. In other words “Taijiquan” refers to the conststant winding-unwinding of the body as it performs “Taiji”. ”Taiji” is a descriptor type of name, not some random choice of a cool-sounding name. And no, the Yang-style did not invent that name, a story from the advocates of Yang’s Taijiquan.
Yang Lu Chan was an indentured servant to Chen De Hu and YLC was allowed to study Taijiquan, on a limited basis, by Chen Changxing. When Chen De Hu set YLC free, Chen Changxing told YLC that he could teach Taijiquan to make a living, but he was not to teach the reeling silk part of it (the essence of the Open-Close that is Taijiquan). So the initial offshoots of YLC’s teachings were arts that claimed not to use reeling-silk, but instead used “pulling silk” (chousijin). In other words, they didn’t have the Open-Close from the use of reeling silk that defines what Taijiquan, Xingyiquan, Bagua, etc., use. There may be “taiji” in Xingyi and Bagua, but there is no “taiji” in the other “Taijiquan” styles, to be technical. That’s the problem.
The Yang family had reeling silk in its inner-family teaching up until the demise of Yang Banhou and Yang Chienhou. There are anecdotal stories of Yang Banhou showing-off his dantian development. But there was a gap between the deaths of the two sons of YLC and Yang Chengfu’s applied studies because YCF did not bother to really practice and develop his new-fangled “Yang style” until he was 30 years old and his father and uncle were dead. Without expert coaching, YLC had no real chance of developing his movement to conform to the Open-Close of reeling silk … so, the Yang family lost the Open-Close movements that are the essence of a “taiji” martial art.
Besides, as Chen Zhaopi noted in his writings, Yang Lu Chan was allowed to study/practice Taijiquan, but he was never taught beyond the first Chen form, the Laojia Yilu. After all, YLC was not a member of the Chen clan. So, the Yang-style “form” is an obvious downstream remembrance of the Laojia Yilu, but there is not Yang-style second form (Pao Chui) and the weapons forms of the Yang-style seem to come from different sources. The downstream arts are not carefully contrived improvements of the Chen-style Taijiquan that Yang Lu Chan practiced and taught, instead they are simply the expected devolvements over time that you would expect would happen as people gradually forget what the original principles were and how to train them. Proper Xingyiquan is more of a Taijiquan than is the “Yang-style”, for instance.
And yeah, I realize some people will get emotional about this type of topic, but that’s a good thing. We should all be discussing these basic ideas rather than covertly kidding ourselves that “our style” is the best style and anyone who says otherwise is the enemy. ;)
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Mike, I’d agree with you on the “jin tricks we see being taught in the West as “the real Tai Chi”. There does seem to be a lot of that from the popular seminar circuit people. But also, I don’t think that arguing about what real Taijiquan is helps – there doesn’t seem to be any standard that everybody adheres to. The current situation is at best a cludge.
I don’t buy into the “there is one Tai Chi” line anymore. What the Chen people do with Sillk Reeling I just don’t see in the Yang and Wu lines. They have specialised in other things. You could call it a limited subset of Chen style, if you like, but if you practice a limited subset a lot then you get very very good at it. You can put silk reeling into Yang style, but is it Yang style anymore?
I think Chen and Yang are related martial arts, sure, but I think they are different martial arts cursed by having the same name. The alternative view is that “there is one Tai Chi, it’s just that you’re doing it wrong”. And how much of people’s lives then get lost in pointless arguments about who is doing it wrong on the Internet? I think it’s better to focus on what your style is supposed to be doing, not what another style is doing.
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The real problem isn’t how much practice you’re doing, but whether you’re practicing correctly. Most people purportedly doing “Tai Chi” are doing nothing but a low-impact, low-aerobic choreography. That is not Taijiquan, aka “Tai Chi”. I read some westerner who recently said that “unless you do the form 10,000 times, you cannot talk about understanding Taijiquan”. In return, I would say that if you do an incorrect, unknowledgeable form 10,000 times you will not understand Taijiquan, either.
The Holy Grail of Taijiquan is a “Taiji body”. The basic jin tricks we see being taught in the West as “the real Tai Chi” are not even a toe-hold into the full concept of a Taiji Body. So, perhaps instead of worrying about how much practice, the first order of business should be correct practice before we call it “Tai Chi”? ;)
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