Chen Style Tai Chi - Scientific Methods and Principles

All that pertains to real life and that conforms to objective laws of reality will necessarily conform to scientific principles. There are many variations of method, but principles are invariable. Method may change due to people, events, or terrain, but it still conforms to principle, you could also say it conforms to necessity.

Although Chenstyle Taijiquan has been handed down a long time from generation to generation, it was not until Chen Xin (1849-1929) of the 16th generation that the scientific principles and methods of this boxing style were summarized and put forth in writing. Chen Xin wrote that “Taijiquan is the twining method….” and added emphasis to this by saying: “if you don’t understand this, you don’t understand boxing”. The twining method (chan fa) that Chen Xin refers to is a spiraling style of movement; through spiraling, the entire body gradually attains through practice a “silk-twining energy” (chan si jin). This type of energy is a blend of both hard and soft and is the “Yin inseparable from Yang, Yang inseparable from Yin, a blend of Yin and Yang” energy spoken of in Wang Zong-Yue’s Treatise on Taijiquan (Taijiquan Lun). This energy is the product of training by utilizing scientific methods. In terms of physiology, this kind of energy can bring about the movement of the joints, muscles, and each cell of the entire body, so that when there is movement, everything is set into motion, even to the point where there occurs a self-massaging function of the internal organs as the spine rotates left and right. As the years go by, because there is the unimpeded circulation of internal energy (qi) and blood, good health is naturally obtained.

From the point of view of combat, because rotation can be easily changed, no matter which part of my body the attacker’s energy comes close to, I can turn slightly in the same direction of the attacking force – making it easy to neutralize the attack away from me. This is the “leading the attacker off harmlessly” (yin jin luo kong) required by Taijiquan. When you turn, because you are moving in a circle, although this half of the circle is for neutralizing, the other half circle comes around as the rotation continues – naturally forming a circle that is half soft neutralization and half hard issuing power. Suppose the [attacker’s] movement is slow, you could turn a quarter of the circle and easily accomplish the result [of neutralizing the attack]. When your skill is greater and the speed of movement is faster, you can make a very slight rotation and achieve the effect of neutralizing and striking at the same time. Taijiquan therefore requires one to go from big circles to small circles and from small circles to no [apparent] circles at all. Large circles and small circles are the rotation of your vertical axis [spine] coordinated with the rotation [of your limbs] left and right, front and back [so-called “gong zhuan” or common rotation]; no circles at all makes use of the rotation of your vertical axis [so-called “zi zhuan” or self-rotation].

According to the principles of mechanics, the lower the center of gravity the more stable something is. Taijiquan, therefore, has always emphasized “sinking internal energy to the lower abdomen” (qi chen dantian) – sinking qi is not intentionally sticking out your lower abdomen, however, it utilizes a scientific method [instead]. The method in Chenstyle Taijiquan is to slightly turn the tail bone (wei gu) and Changqiang acupuncture point in a backwards direction. This posture naturally results in the lower abdomen drawing inward on an oblique line thereby causing the internal energy to sink down naturally and the body’s center of gravity to also drop lower naturally. This is one of the basic requirements of Chenstyle Taijiquan and is also a fundamental difference between Chenstyle and other styles of Taijiquan.
When Master Chen Fu-Sheng (Chen Fa-Ke) taught Taijiquan, he would frequently say that there are three stages: The first stage is learning the basic movements correctly according to the rules; the second stage is becoming proficient in practicing the routine or set of movements according to the rules; the third stage starts from thorough familiarity with the rules and requires one to meticulously seek out and to understand clearly why there are these rules, what their use is, and which rules apply to the eyes, the body, footwork and stances, and the hands – in order to coordinate together with [the energies of] peng, lu, ji, an, cai, lie, zhou, kao, and the changing stances of jin (advance), tui (retreat), gu (shift left), pan (shift right) and ding (fixed stance) – and moreover, to try out putting them in use together. Master Chen said: Those who study Taijiquan should not only understand the theories (li) in their minds; they still have to train the methods (fa) into their entire bodies. They should not only understand how, they should understand why – then they won’t just be wasting their time and then they will accomplish something. He also said: How much you accomplish entirely depends on how much effort you expend. Gongfu in martial arts is not obtained without hard work. If you put out a little effort then you will get a little result; if you put forth as much effort as I do, then your gongfu will equal mine. Suppose the effort you put forth surpasses my effort, then your accomplishment can surpass mine. Chen Xin has a verse that goes: “All that idle talk does is create a tide of black ink, actually putting it into practice is the real thing.” From this verse you can see that the previous generation of masters, when they taught some kind of artistry, all insisted that actually putting it into practice was the only way to go about it.

In teaching us, although Master Chen said [learning Taijiquan] was divided into three stages, every sentence had the words “according to the rules” (an zhe guiju) which caused us students to attach importance to the rules. When Master Chen taught someone, he started with the posture for each movement and then progressed to pay attention to [the orientation of] each hand to the other hand and each foot to the other foot, and even the hand to the foot and the rules of the whole body’s coordination during the changing movements. He always said, by way of analogy, that beginners should practice slowly, like learning to write Chinese characters – they must first learn to make a single dot brushstroke correctly and then go on to combine brushstrokes into a single character; only after that can they go on to string the characters together to form sentences and paragraphs.

Master Chen also frequently said: “So long as someone comes to me to learn, I hate not being able to just drill a hole into their belly and plant a seed that would allow them to learn and learn well; but, this cannot be, because in teaching you can only show people the way, you cannot travel the road for them.” Therefore, the offspring of famous artists only take precedence in the conditions to carry on the tradition but they don’t have an absolute right of inheritance. In art, the form is to learn to produce a likeness; in gongfu, the accomplishment is in learning to produce pure skill. It is not like material money that you can give to someone as you please and to which descendants have a natural right of inheritance.

I studied Taijiquan with Master Chen Fa-Ke from 1930 until 1944 when I moved to the city of Jinan, in Shandong Province. In 1956, I arrived back in Beijing and sought out master Chen’s instruction. He told me that there was not one “empty” movement in the Taijiquan routine, that they all have practical applications. Every day, he would take one of the movements from the routine, explaining them one by one, with both of us trying out the movements on each other. He not only discussed the application (yang fa), moreover, he also discussed the counter-move (jie fa). It is only from this that I was able to grasp a little of Chenstyle Taijiquan. It went on like this from March to June, until I had to leave Beijing. Before I left, I asked Master Chen for his permission to teach Taijiquan according to its practical applications; because of this, I changed the beginning-level movements after I returned to Jinan and tried them out together with my compatriots. All of them that were in accord with the basic rules were sure-fire winners.

Summarizing my over 50 years of experience in learning Chenstyle Taijiquan, I have come to realize the following points:

(1) The principles and the methods of Chenstyle Taijiquan can be opposite yet united. Those aspects with form are: movement and stillness, open and closed, big and small, and advance and withdraw. From the aspect of energy: there are empty and substantial, hard and soft, and neutralize and hit. When each of these are motionless they are opposite; in movement, they are opposite yet united. For example, in the first movement of the first “Jingang Dao Dui” form in the set, the eyes look forward, the body turns a little toward the left, and the two hands rotate forward, out toward the front from beside the ribcage. One hand is high and one hand is low, and one hand is forward of the other. The directions of the eyes, body, feet and hands are all opposite; [yet] in motion they are united. The object of the application is to meet and ward off the arm of the opponent attacking from the front, this is also a united aspect. The uniting of internal energy and the practical application is: your right hand twines inward (shun chan) as it meets and wards off the attacker’s wrist, your left hand twines outward (ni chan) as it moves into contact over the top of the attacker’s elbow. The twining of your left and right hands is opposite yet they are united in warding off and working together at the same time. All of the movements of the entire set are accomplished within the spiraling movements of the twining method (chan fa). Within the spiraling movement, however, the direction of movement is opposite at different points [along the spiral]. The combative use requires that I draw the opponent off balance (wo shun, ren bei) and both neutralize and strike at the same time. The four “Jingang Daodui” forms in the First Routine are each performed differently and the practical applications are all different, although they bear the same name. This is opposite yet united.

(2) Using the twining method is the principal law in Chenstyle Taijiquan, it is necessary to strictly master it within each movement. In learning it, you must be precise down to every detail, [yet] in using it you must be lively. Coordinating the angle and speed must be according to the attacker and not a millimeter off. Chen Xin said: “Keep the rules but don’t get bogged down in them.”

(3) On the foundation of practicing correctly according to the rules, practice until you are thoroughly proficient. You should do so however, according to the relative strength or weakness of your body and your age, and differentiate the number of sets and degree of athletic difficulty of the practice appropriately. Let being natural be the overall guiding principle, you can’t force it. The appearance of internal energy comes about naturally from regular practice sustained over time.

In his teaching, Master Chen only stressed relaxed and circular, requiring that circularity be sought from relaxing the entire body. The circularity of Chenstyle Taijiquan is not only circular arcs like the outer line of the Taiji Diagram; when changing the direction of rotating movements it is circular like the “S” shape [in the middle of the Taiji Diagram]. This is because the circular arc is made up of [both] point and line. The point is hard and the curved line is soft. The so-called “circle within the square” (fang yuan xiang sheng) is actually the point within the line, in action it facilitates the blending of hard and soft. Therefore, Master Chen always said relaxed and circular (song yuan), and he didn’t say relaxed and soft (song rou). Even more so, he didn’t stress “spring shaking” (tan dou). The reason for this being that when a flywheel picks up speed, it can’t start “spring shaking”. In discussing those rules having to do with [external] form, they were those rules that are known to all who practice Taijiquan, such as: ”The top of the head is pulled upward as if suspended by a string” (xu ling ding jin); “Sink internal energy [or “breath”] to the lower abdomen” (qi chen dantian); Neither inclined or leaning” (bu pian bu yi); “Suddenly hidden, suddenly manifest” (hu yin hu xian); and, “When the left [foot] is weighted the left [hand] is empty, when the right [foot] is weighted the right [hand] fades” (zuo zhong ze zuo xu, you zhong ze you yao) in Taijiquan terminology. One should also correctly understand the methods of coordinating these with the movements. While Taijiquan terminology shares on the surface a commonality, in actual practice it also has specific characteristics. For example – we believe that the “energy of the crown” (ding jin) in the terminology “the top of the head is pulled upward as if suspended by a string” (xu ling ding jin) indicates that the energy of the Baihui acupuncture point on top of the head should be “empty” (xu) and lead upward. The “Song of the Thirteen Postures” (Shisan Shi Zong Ge) [possibly authored by Yao Han-Chen, a student of Yang Lu-Chan] says: “The whole body will be light and agile when the crown is suspended from above” [Douglas Wile’s translation]. Chen Xin’s explanation likewise uses [the image of] a string pulling the Baihui acupuncture point upward; Yang Cheng-Fu changed the character for “lead” or “draw upward” (ling – which could also mean neck) to another character meaning “ethereal” (ling – as in the neck naturally empty of force and not stiff, the head upright, and the spirit raised); Gu Liu-Xing said it was as if the top of the head was something very light in weight. There are also some people who say that “empty” (xu), “light” or “agile” (ling), and “crown” (ding) are three distinct internal energies (jin). [With the possible exception of the three distinct energies explanation – all of the above explanations of “xu ling ding jin” or “ding jin ling qi” (a term used in contemporary Chenstyle sources) amount to nearly the same thing; whether the head is as if suspended or raised upward by an ethereal energy – the resulting posture of the head and its capability to turn freely is the same. Master Chen Zheng-Lei suggested this to me in a letter dated 4/1/94.]

In Chenstyle Taijiquan, because the coccyx and the Changqiang turn slightly out to the rear, the internal energy or breath (qi) of “sink internal energy to the lower abdomen” (qi chen dantian), sinks downward naturally. [Sinking internal energy or breath to the lower abdomen can also be expressed as “accumulate breath (or internal energy) in the lower abdomen”. This is an early Daoist concept that can be traced back to at least the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD) work Shen Jian (Stating History’s Lesson) by Xun Yue and which appears to be present in prototypic form in an inscription on a twelve-sided jade belt pendant from c. 380 BC see Xi Yun-Tai, Zhongguo Wushu Shi pp. 48-49.]

Wang Jiao-Yu is quoted as saying: “the posture for practicing crotch energy (dang jin) is like when you squat to go to the bathroom”. There are many people who say that you should use conscious intention (yi) to sink the internal energy; or, they say: “coordinate the movements with the breathing, when you inhale, Dantian qi rises to the stomach and the stomach protrudes; when you exhale, the stomach qi drops down again to the Dantian and the lower abdomen protrudes.” They also introduce the so-called “reverse abdominal exhaling method” (fu shi ni hu fa). Master Chen, however, always emphasized natural breathing, mindful or regulated breathing (tiao qi) [as is done in meditation practice] but he didn’t emphasize moving qi around within the body (yun qi). Someone once wrote to me to ask me about whether or not the Dantian “qi” and the stomach “qi” were interlinked. I asked some older experienced doctors of both Chinese and Western medicine about this, they all answered that it wasn’t possible for there to be a communication of “qi” between the Dantian and the stomach. I don’t understand physiology so this question was unfathomable to me; and, because of this, there was no way I could answer the letter. [In the above discussion of “qi” communicating between Dantian and stomach it is unclear if the “qi” referred to signifies energy or breath in the literal sense. Master Hong’s intention, however, seems to be to emphasize that Master Chen Fa-Ke didn’t go into such details in his teaching.]

While relaxing your shoulders and sinking your elbows is the general rule [in Chenstyle Taijiquan], it is actually a rule of physical labor. I believe that all of the rules in Chenstyle Taijiquan are consistent with [practical] life. At present, however, there is a portion of those who practice Chenstyle Taijiquan who emphasize the so-called “movement of intention and internal energy” (yi qi yundong) of abdominal breathing (fu shi hu xi), intention (yi), and internal energy (qi). They emphasize “sinking the shoulders and dropping the elbows” (chen jian zhui zhou) in the movements. Since the shoulder is rooted to the upper torso how can it sink downward? Master Chen stressed that “the elbows don’t leave the ribs” (zhou bu li lei), that is, when the hands stretch outward the elbows drop downward, about five or six inches below the shoulders, in order to protect the vital points of the ribcage. There are people who maintain however, “the elbows don’t stick to the ribs” (zhou bu tie lei); I also can’t fathom whether or not this is emphasized in Chenstyle Taijiquan. The phrase “when the left is weighted the left is empty, when the right sinks the right fades” (zuo zhong ze zuo xu, you chen ze you yao) originally described not allowing both the hand and the foot on the same side of the body to be weighted or substantial, as a method to remedy [the defect of] double weighting. Many writings about Taijiquan only say that this phrase is the method for avoiding head-on resistance (ding) in push hands, or that the horse stance is double weighting. Some works even go so far as to take the phrase that Master Chen frequently said, “drop down and roll outward” (xia ta wai nian), which originally described hand technique, and use it to describe footwork, although it also makes sense in that context too. [Drop down and roll outward refers to dropping the base of your palm after making contact and sending the force down to destroy the attacker’s root like a stone roller husking rice. See Ma Hong’s correspondence course bulletin, “Chenshi Taijiquan” March 1996 (no.5) pp.3-4]. Other phrases that Master Chen always emphasized, such as:” meet the attacker’s incoming left hand with your left hand, his incoming right hand with your right hand” (zuo shou lai, zuo shou ying; you shou lai, you shou ying); “[when you] issue to the front, drop downward at the back” (qian fa hou ta); “push aside an attack coming straight at you” (zhi lai heng bo) and “control with both hands an attack from the side” (heng lai peng ye) are seldom introduced by anyone.

Out of my love for Master Chen and his lineage descendants, and even more love for the priceless cultural heritage of Chenstyle Taijiquan, I have written the above article describing the details of what Master Chen taught concerning the rules of Chenstyle for reference, not to criticize anyone.