Taiji With Jing
Inside Kung Fu May 2001
by Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong
So often nowadays, we see Yang taiji quan stylists launching into forms that are partly slow, precise taiji movements and partly fast, powerful fighting movements. Many people want to add jing (power) to their forms without first understanding the practical applications and intentions of the Yang family when it originally designed the forms.
What we now call the Yang long form (108 movements) was originally referred to as the large frame form, named after the large, circular movements that characterize it. The Yang family masters taught the long form first to students because they noticed that most people, including other martial artists were tense and stiff with their movements. The applications of most taiji movements are pressure-point strikes and require loose, relaxed power that starts relaxed, becomes tense at impact, and then relaxes again. The tense power they observed with many other martial arts was almost a push power that hit the opponent and knocked him away. Pressure-point strikes require power that extends into the opponent and jars him internally, rather than damaging him on the outside and pushing him away.
By teaching the slow, soft, circular, large-frame taiji form first, Yang masters were able to both teach relaxed movements and instill permanent habits within their taiji students. These were habits, such as correct body posture and footwork - all things that are difficult to learn when you move too fast.
When students mastered the correct balance and movement principles and had learned to be relaxed, they were taught the use of various kinds of jing, the most popular being fa jing (explosive energy). Obviously, no one fights at the speed the long form is practiced. Fighting is fast and sudden, making the use of fa jing essential.
It is a common misunderstanding that the small circle form or Yang fast form always follows the large frame form. While certain members of the Yang family used one or both of these forms to teach fa jing, others had a different way to instruct students. Yang, Cheng Fu (grandson of Yang, Lu Chan, the founder of Yang taiji) often taught his students fa jing on a movement-by-movement basis. For example, they might work on just one technique, such as brush knee, until they had mastered it, rather than work on it within a form.
Other Yang masters made their reputations by teaching the small circle form, which contains fast and slow movements, the fast containing fa jing, and the slow movements, the same as the large frame form. These were often masters who had little patience with the slow-moving large frame form and wanted to get into the fighting aspect sooner with their students.
I agree with teachers such as Yang, Cheng Fu, who maintained that students cannot learn to use fa jing properly without first learning and understanding the benefits of the large frame taiji form. If you start using fa jing too soon, before you are relaxed and know how to emit fa jing, your power will still be tense and inefficient.
Doc Fai Wong writes a bi-monthly column for Inside Kung-Fu.
To learn more about Tai Chi visit: whitedragonmartialarts.com
Tags: Training for Life
October 19th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Great article. I agree we must teach slow relaxation as a foundation. Unfortunately, many instructors never made it past that level, and they sell Tai Chi as a pathetic, slow motion form. There’s more. And your article highlights it.
Thanks for reprinting it.
February 13th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I don’t know where Mr. Smith learned HIS taiji, or if he is an instructor of Choy li fut; but the curriculum of the White Dragon Martial Arts Schools seems to be on track in teaching the slow relaxation, which is the foundation of ANY of the family styles of taiji chuan, even, yes, the Chen-family style, which emphasizes slow relaxation and sudden fa-jing. Unfortunately for us taiji players, but in practical defense of martial arts instructors, many instructors have more kung fu students than they do taiji, and therefore concentrate their teaching energies into teaching and transmitting those kung fu forms and techniques. And let’s face it, nowadays, the younger students, yes, even those in their 30s, especially women, prefer learning the kung fu for self-defense purposes. We, as women, know that a slow-motion tai chi version of a wong-sau-choy (forgive the misspell!) or slow-motion smash to the ribs will not deter our attacker! Hence, instructors focus on teaching the kung fu, which is why they perhaps “never make it past” TEACHING a certain level of tai chi to students. However, I have yet to hear any martial arts instructor, including my daughter’s Shorin Ryu karate instructor, “selling” tai chi as a “pathetic, slow-motion form”. Perhaps it’s because intrinsically they know something about taiji that we students don’t know? . . . . . . .
March 21st, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Very few tai chi instructors teach the martial aspects of tai chi along with how to produce ging correctly. Because of this, many people feel that tai chi is merely just exercise. Sifu Smith learned his tai chi from Master Fisher who is one of Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong’s top and long time students. Sifu Smith has also worked with Grandmaster Wong on numerous occasions, which helps to strengthen the connection to authentic tai chi training.