Although Taijiquan is better known in the West as an excellent exercise that is very beneficial for health, especially for adults and senior citizens, Taijiquan was invented several hundred years ago as a martial art. It is still an excellent martial art. It emphasizes deflection, redirection of opponent’s force, utilization of opponent’s motion to get him off balance, strategic placement of body parts, and softness to overcome hardness. Advanced Taijiquan experts also use Qigong to increase their striking power and increase their capacity to absorb strikes.
In this article we discuss several basic martial applications of Taijiquan. We take several forms from the “Simplified Yang Style 24 Form,” which is often the first Taiji form set that is taught in an introductory course to Taijiquan. Even though these are forms from an introductory course, they can already illustrate the martial power of Taijiquan. For each form, there are multiple martial applications. In this article, we show only one or two martial applications for each form.
America at the Crossroad
Several significant events occurring recently in the U.S. should force us as Americans to scrutinize closely what has been happening in our country. In particular, our country, having been the richest and most powerful country in the world in essentially the second half of the 20th century, doesn’t seem from several perspectives to be doing that well in the 21st century. Actually, signs of many of these shortcomings were already there in previous years, even 20-30 years ago, we just haven’t been paying close attention to them while basking in the glory of being the richest and most powerful country in the world.
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