THE CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS OF TAI CHI CHUAN Ed Owens - 5/15/96 Tai Chi Chuan is a complex and interesting martial art with four distinct faces. There are aspects devoted to healing, exercise, spiritual development and self defense, all mingled into one art. As complex and varied as the art is, it nevertheless seems to be tightly focused on a central concept of efficient body mechanics. That central concept, working on the healing and martial arts indigenous to China at the time, seems to have produced Tai Chi Chuan in a process not unlike an enzymatically mediated chemical reaction. Who can say for sure, but with what we know today of Tai Chi Chuan, it seems to have evolved out of two distinct chinese disciplines, Taoism and Shao Lin Kung-fu. Each discipline has its own guiding principles, which have been combined into a new discipline of Tai Chi Chuan. This work will be a short discussion of the individual disciplines and how their guiding concepts were fused into the newer system of Tai Chi. A major portion of Tai Chi seems to be derived from Taoist Chi Gung exercises. Chi Gung goes back at least to the 4th century B.C. and is a system of some 6000 different methods for energizing the body, developing awareness and control of chi, generally increasing health and vitality and ultimately leading to spiritual development. There are a wide variety of Chi Gung exercises: standing meditation postures, arm waving sequences, vocalizations, body slapping or tapping, jiggling, bending and stretching and meridian tracing. Common threads running through most Chi Gung methods are the access to relaxed, balanced posture, and slow deep abdominal breathing. Tai Chi has borrowed techniques for chi cultivation, breathing and the erect balanced posture directly from Chi Gung. The other part of Tai chi, which sets it apart from Chi Gung, is the ability to apply the movements for self defense. The self defense side of Tai Chi has been borrowed largely from Shao Lin Kung-fu, which developed in China after the migration of Buddhist yoga techniques from India. Shao Lin incorporates fast kicks, strikes, punches, ground sweeps, rolls and leaps into several hundred different forms of varying length and complexity. Some of the movements are very linear and direct while others are circular and sweeping. The more refined techniques of Shao Lin use circular 'soft' blocks, where the hand or forearm is used to divert or glance off a blow, without absorbing the incoming force. Tai Chi has borrowed the softest of the Shao Lin techniques for self defense, as well as some of the direct linear palm strikes, punches and two handed block/punch combinations. Imagine now that you take all of the Chi Gung techniques and throw them together with the Shao Lin Techniques into a great vessel (call it China). Now add in the guiding concept of efficiency of body mechanics acting much like an enzyme on the raw material. Stir gently for a hundred years and watch what happens: Those aspects of Chi Gung that might fit into a martial framework, that could conceivably have an application, are stuck to the enzyme on one side. On the other side of the enzyme attach those Shao Lin techniques that make the best use of body mechanics: the softest, most circular blocks, the most erect and grounded postures. In the end, Chi Gung and Shao Lin are left unchanged and distinct, but floating lightly on the top of the vessel is a totally new, coherent system called Tai Chi Chuan: the grand ultimate martial art. Not simply a mixture of techniques, but a new compound formed from the raw materials.