Search the internet and you’ll be flooded with information about recent medical studies extolling the near-miraculous healing benefits of tai chi for both the elderly and the young.
“OK,” you conclude, “It’s part of Chinese medicine and is an amazing healing art.” But wait! A few more clicks into your internet search tell you that tai chi chuan is a powerful martial art.
How can martial arts like karate or MMA training also offer healing to the elderly, injured or chronically ill? Well, it’s because tai chi’s traditional principles are far different than those of karate, MMA or other popular martial arts.
The majority of tai chi taught today very watered down.
So even if a teacher reveals its traditional principles, students who prioritize excuse-making over scheduling in time for practice will never be able to execute any of its martial arts applications – or if they try, they’ll do it in a way that is not from tai chi principles and can lead to serious self-injury.
This is why many of the old Chinese tai chi masters were very picky about who they would teach and how deeply they would teach them.
Those who stuck with tai chi practice in the old days of China seemed to heal better and age slower than their brethren.
China has loosened its restrictions and tai chi has once again been recognized as the martial arts discipline that was its origin.
If you are lucky enough to find a teacher or school that teaches traditional tai chi, your teacher will immediately help you to understand how the principles can be used both for healing and martial arts.
One of the basic “Energies” you learn in traditional tai chi is “Peng jin.” While covering how to peng jin is far beyond the scope of this article, suffice it to say that peng jin teaches you how to harness the earth’s gravitational force in a way that allows your skeleton, muscles, organs, nervous system and acupuncture meridians to be aligned in the most energy efficient way possible.
Mental comprehension of this seemingly illusive tai chi principle is easy once a good teacher explains it to you, but it requires a dedicated mind and practice to get your body to understand how to call up the “Feel” of it at will.
Remember how I mentioned that practicing just the tai chi principle of peng jin aligns your skeleton, nervous system and meridians in the most effective and energy efficient way possible? Well, that is precisely why it can also lead to a superior state of health.
Just putting the tai chi principle of peng jin into play prevents this useless stress and “Pulls” the tension out of you and delivers it to the ground.
No one – unless they practice traditional tai chi or its related arts – has even heard of this strange principle.
Traditional tai chi teachers will first help to condition the physical, mental and spiritual health of the students before involving them in martial arts applications.
If a student has a busted knee, shoulder pains or an agitated mind, what good will it do to risk their condition in martial applications if they are not conditioned enough to manifest the tai chi principles correctly? For if they focused on working the principles, their body and mind could become solid as a rock and as flexible as a pine tree’s boughs.
That’s why so many of the few traditional tai chi chuan practitioners are surprised that not more people are taking it up.
Keep in mind too, that even if you want to learn how to develop tai chi combat skills, you should first focus on using the its principles to optimize your physical and psychological stamina.
What are you most likely to face in your everyday life – an enemy instigating a hand-to-hand fight with you? Or, the everyday enemies of: stress, pollution, depression, anger, aging and the wear-and-tear of life? Just to test the logic of this for yourself, you’ll see that if you research the backgrounds of traditionally trained tai chi teachers, almost all of them were originally referred to practice it to address a health issue.
Only after conditioning and rebuilding themselves with tai chi did they practice in its martial arts skills.
Find Discipline in your local area
