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Martial Arts of China
China is the mother of all martial arts. Their styles vary from region to region. With thousands of years of a continual culture as reference, the people of China have created and developed the most colorful set of modern martial art styles anywhere. In the south region, their styles concentrate on the upper body, boxing and punching techniques. The most famous style being Wing Chun. Bruce Lee popularized the style after using it as his base for the development of Jeet Kune Do Kung Fu. In Northern China, the styles reflect the people of that region. Many feet and kicking styles can be found there. Very dramatic and showy styles such as Choy Lay Foot and Wushu. In many respects, the Northern Martial Art styles of China are similar to the karate of Korea. Both regions reflect North East Asian fighting: A lot of kicking and foot techniques.

Chinese Boxing is a highly organized and institutionalized theory. Chinese Boxing has been taught, documented and practiced for centuries. The supply of information surrounding Chinese Boxing was kept secret from the west for many years. Sifus or Martial Art teachers were not allowed to accept foreigners or Non-Chinese as Martial Art Students. This was considered to be almost a betrayal of the Chinese Culture. They felt they had something very valuable and cultural to protect and that the West were not yet privy to it. Bruce Lee was one of the pioneering teachers who opposed this rule and chose to teach westerners the art of martial arts and Chinese Boxing. Him being 1/8 German himself (his grandmother was half German) probably helped him embrace western culture a lot more easily.

Tai Chi is one of the most notable of the "soft" martial arts of China.

  • Tai Chi Chuan is translated as primordial, undifferentiated, and absolute, prior to duality.
  • In Chinese: Chuan = fist; yet Tai Chi Chuan as an art is essentially formless. "Chuan" connotes manifestation; we are human bodies, we couldn’t turn into something else. The formless is formed through the body; It’s your form; it’s your art, what you do is you.
  • It is a martial art that is well suited to life because there is no blocking and no fighting another’s strength. The power is effortless; mindfulness is its fundamental practice. It is often referred to as a Chinese internal art. It is not a growing, vital art but a study of shapes and the memorization of a philosophy.
  • It is not good to follow the teachings of an instructor blindly without realization of what mastery is, what the masters realized, what is the truth of the matter, what is relaxation and what is tension. The future of Tai Chi Chuan demands that we realize what the founders realized.
  • There are a lot of Tai Chi sets or forms in the world; yet the basic principles are the same (relax, sink, align with gravity, use the whole body).
  • Typically the martial arts are characterized by how they arrive at power: the external, by muscular effort; the internal, relaxed and effortlessly. Tai chi that puts its focus on form (specific shapes taken with the body) is external Tai Chi. It is not relaxed and not unified. In internal Tai Chi Chuan, we acknowledge our present state, physically, emotionally, energetically, and go from there. We use Chi to manifest internal power of Chin, which is called intrinsic strength; it is the compression of Chi in the body’s tissues then made manifest.
  • Body awareness is the foundation of our art. To be aware is to feel; it’s a matter of choice. From one’s being mindful and aware of one’s body, Chi arises as something tangible and workable. So, we must participate and live in our bodies before Chi can be experienced. We must feel before we can experience. Whatever we experience is energy because everything is energy. There is no separation between you and energy. We always get confuse our thoughts with what is true. We need to participate in order to realize energy and what is true. It is no beliefs or opinions; it starts with our body. Our foundation is to feel our skin, all over, completely and then proceed to fill it up, feeling muscles, blood, and everything.
  • The cultivation of Chi for health and for power has been well documented in the internal martial arts.
  • The foundation and the pinnacle of the martial arts are the experience and use of Chi.
  • There are some principles to allow the use of Chi:
    • Relaxation: Throw opens our joints’ let our pelvis drop; soften our tissues. We have to pay attention to our body in order to relax. We have to feel what we want to relax before we can relax.
    • Align with gravity: One vertebra sits on top of another, relaxed and resting ultimately on the ground.
    • Sinking: If we are relaxed we are also sunk and grounded. From here, we can start to feel the world around us. We want to put our feeling attention into the earth under our feet and cultivate a feeling of actually being plugged into the earth.
    • We feel relaxed and soft but unified and connected to the ground. The pressure built up in the feet and legs is given direction with the pelvis and manifest as intrinsic power when contact is made.
    • We get the feeling of draining from our upper body into our feet and legs when we are being relaxed, sunk and aligned with gravity. We relax more, sink more and compress more Chi when compressing Chi in the feet and legs. Tai Chi set is for the cultivation and storing of this compressed Chi.
    • We use that pressure in our feet and legs to manifest the compressed Chi as power, especially on the bottoms of our feet to move. To continue moving, we keep relaxing, sinking, lifting our foot, turning our waist to move the foot, and putting it back down. We are feeling and using our body as one piece during this activity. To deliver a punch, we just turn our waist, moves our arm and fits toward our target. We remain relaxed, aligned and bottomed out when fits meets target.

Note:
martial art
n. any of several Asian arts of combat or self-defense, such as aikido, karate, judo, or tae kwon do, usually practiced as sport. Often used in the plural. (Reference: Dictionary.com)

China: A country of eastern Asia. Its ancient civilization traditionally dates to c. 2700 B.C. After a bitter civil war (1946-1949) a people's republic led by Mao Zedong was established on the mainland, and the Nationalists fled to Taiwan. Beijing is the capital and Shanghai the largest city. Population: 1,237,000,000. (Reference: Dictionary.com)


Coming Soon...
* What is the Most Powerful Chinese Martial Art? * Street Fighting vs Chinese Karate * Chinese Kung Fu - is it a Lost Ancient Art?