{"id":1146,"date":"2010-06-30T02:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T06:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/?p=1146"},"modified":"2010-07-07T14:53:11","modified_gmt":"2010-07-07T18:53:11","slug":"taiji-and-martial-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/2010\/06\/taiji-and-martial-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Taiji and Martial Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"
Many people in both East and West only know that Taiji is a health exercise, but they do not know that Taiji is also a martial art, good for self defense. Just during the last couple of months, I have encountered many people, including Caucasians and to my surprise also many Chinese and Chinese Americans, who have the above belief. When I mentioned to them not only that Taiji is a martial art, it was invented as a fighting art [1], they were startled to learn that.<\/p>\n
One reason for the above mis-conception is that they know or at least have seen that Taiji involves slow and soft movements, and they thought that such slow and soft movements cannot be good for self defense. This article provides a short explanation of why Taiji is an effective martial art.
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First, let’s explain the fundamental nature of Taiji as a martial art. In Taiji, one doesn’t try to oppose an attacking force head-on, because then whoever is bigger and stronger will win. Taiji, instead, adds a supplemental force (doesn’t\u00a0 have to be large) along the direction of the opponent’s attacking force to lead the opponent to move further in his attacking direction, thus potentially causing the opponent to lose balance. Or alternatively, the Taiji practitioner could apply a force that is perpendicular to the attacking force. Since the attacking force has no component of force in the perpendicular direction, a small force could deflect that strong attacking force. This is the reasoning behind the famous Chinese saying “Four ounces can deflect a thousand pounds.”<\/p>\n
When the opponent realizes that he is being led further in his attacking direction and may be losing balance, he may change direction and then move in the opposite direction. Part of Taiji practice is to be very sensitive to that kind of changes of motion. So upon sensing that change of direction, the Taiji practitioner also changes directions and now applies a force in an opposite direction (opposite to the original direction but now along the direction of the opponent’s new movement). Again, the Taiji practitioner is not trying to oppose the opponent’s force head-on, but is trying to use his own force to complement the opponent’s force. This complementary nature of applying one’s force to supplement the opponent’s force and the constant change of motions are symbolized by the Taiji symbol<\/p>\n