browser icon
You are using an insecure version of your web browser. Please update your browser!
Using an outdated browser makes your computer unsafe. For a safer, faster, more enjoyable user experience, please update your browser today or try a newer browser.

The Secrets of Taijiquan (Tai Chi Chuan) – The 25 Key Disciplines of Chen Family Taijiquan

Blog of 진병태극원陳炳太極院 Chen Bing Taiji Academy by Bosco Seung-Chul Baek (白承哲)

I am sick and tired of seeing inauthentic and wrong information of Taijiquan (Tai Chi Chuan).  People call it ‘Tai Chi’ which is not correct.  It is a phonetic notation of Taijiquan which sounds ‘Tai-Ji-Chuan’ in Chinese Pinyin system.  This might be my last blog thing to write because it is enough to give this kind of information to the public.

Let us see a standard of Taijiquan in this world.  So many people practice Taijiquan which seems very slow and soft.  Then they think and believe what it is and how it is as is.  Is Taijiquan just slow and soft?

What if someone does a slow motion?  Would it be called Taijiquan?  No, it is not.  It can never be.

The famous slowness and softness in Taijiquan is a great tool to maximize one’s sensitivity and feeling of energy in motions.  It is not everything.  But it is part of it.

As a Chen Family Taijiquan teacher and disciple of shifu Chen Bing, it has been very hard to teach the authentic Taijiquan because a standard in this world is very low due to lack of information and authentic teachers.

Here are the secrets of Taijiquan which Yang Lu Chan (the founder of Yang Taijiquan) deeply studied to acquire from the Chen family.  These are only taught to indoor students.

Studying Taijiquan is not about to master an external form.  It is to deepen the internal disciplines that make external postures an internal practice.

There are lot of Taijiquan books, but I have never saw and read books that explain the key disciplines of Taijiquan.  Therefore, I published the 25 key disciplines to reveal the secrets of Taijquan.

http://www.amazon.com/Chen-Family-Taijiquan-Disciplines-English/dp/1495927016/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400103987&sr=1-1

They are considered the top secrets of Taijiquan study in the Chen family.  I teach those to my practitioners because someone has to maintain the genuine and to make them as fine Taiijquan practitioners.

I am here to provide ‘The 25 Key Disciplines of Chen Family Taijiquan’ in English and Chinese.  These are direct translation from original Chinese sentences.  So it might be hard to understand them unless one can learn from the authentic lineage holders.

Please share these with your Taijiquan friends and teachers.  Again, Taijiquan is not just slow and soft.

If you are doing a slow motion and believing that it is Taiijquan, it would be better to learn something else.

Chen Family Taijiquan 25 Key Disciplines

The Law of Body // *I am modifying the original English translation, original text shown in parenthesis – in progress

Release tension in the neck to lead the energy to the crown of the head (Make the neck empty and be energy in the crown of the head)

Release tension from the shoulders and keep elbows down. (Loosen up the shoulder and immerge the elbow )

Knit the ribs and straighten the coccyx (Incubate the chest and suspend the lowerback)

Bend the knee and relax the hip

Hang the buttocks and circle the groin

Be comfortable and solid under a tray

The body stands up in the center correctly

The upper is empty and the lower is full, the empty and the full is clearly split

Support in eight sides

 

The Law of Mind

Relax the whole body deeply

Go down the energy of mind to the low

Protect dantian with intention, Sink energy into dantian

Feel and take exhalation and inhalation

Penetrate far through the body

Not to be lost and greatly

 

The Law of Reeling Silk

According to the waist as an axis

The chest and waist incurvates and folds

Dantia rotates and moves

Pass and penetrate through joint by joint

Intention reaches and then energy reaches, energy reaches and then shape reaches

Combine in and out mutually, The body becomes evenly a one house

 

The Four Major Characteristics

Harmonize and help the hard and soft mutually, The fast and slow are mixed mutually

Cultivating and discharging mutually change

Be relaxed, alive, elastic and vibrating

It goes a circular line in an external form, The internal force rotates in a spiral line

 

陳氏太極拳 二十五 練拳要訣

身法

虛領頂勁

鬆肩沈肘

含胸塌腰 , 尾閭中正

屈膝鬆胯

垂臀圓襠

下盘稳固

立身中正

上虛下實, 虛實分明

八面支撑

心法

全身放鬆

心氣下降

意守丹田,  氣沈丹田

感受呼吸

氣貫周身

不丢不頂

纏絲法

以腰爲軸

胸腰折疊

丹田運轉

節節貫串

意到氣到,  氣到形到

內外相合,  周身一家

四大特點

剛柔幷(相)濟, 快慢相間

蓄發相變

鬆活彈抖

外形走弧線, 內勁走螺旋

 

* Please share this with others.  All learning I have learned is from my wonderful Taijiquan teacher, Chen Bing.