FINALLY MY BOOK IS OUT!

After long procastination, my dream book is finally published - How To Master Tai Chi Chuan's Internal Secrets". Fellow Tai Chi friends have shown overwhelming supports and I am truly humbled. The publisher has agreed to give 20% discount on the book until further notice.

You may buy it by clicking the above payment button, at Facebook fanpage Tai Chi Secret Movements or http://www.taichisecretmovements.com/


The book aims at providing proper understanding and step-by-step training to develop Tai Chi internal strength (Peng Jin) which is the fundamental internal strength in Tai Chi Chuan. Hope it will be useful to fellow Tai Chi Chuan lovers.

GET A COPY NOW AT 20% DISCOUNT AND WITH FREE SHIPPING FOR USD32.40).

Please allow 12-16 days for the book to reach you as it will be shipped from Malaysia.

GAZE TO LEFT AND BEWARE OF RIGHT

Most Tai Chi Chuan players are fast to claim they know the form they are doing when asked. They will tell you it is 24 postures, 48, 36, 108 and so on. Nothing wrong with that, and when you ask them to show you the applications of these postures, many long time practitioners will be able show you how a posture can be applied to intercept an attack, often in a stationary manner. Often a ward-off posture is used to deflect a straight jab or punch. Try probe further by asking them how a ward-off can be used against a rain of multiple punches. I can guarantee you many would struggle to give you a satisfactory answer. Why? It is because ward-off cannot be used to defend against multiple punches, not in the way it is often demonstrated. If you are careful to scrutinize Tai Chi classics, it advises us never to oppose force with force, never to confront an opponent directly from front.



So what is missing? Most Tai Chi Chuan people lost touch of the transition movements in the form. Transition movements link individual posture together and they are very very important. It is here that hides the secret stepping application of Tai Chi Chuan. It is here that side stepping, gaze to the left, beware of the right, retreat and advance are hidden.

THE SECRETS OF HEN-HA SOUND

In most martial arts, shouting and yelling is encouraged when issuing force, but we often do not see this in Tai Chi Chuan. Shouting when issuing force or Fajin in Chinese was common in the traditional way of practising Tai Chi Chuan, however it is not done anymore because today people do not practise Tai Chi Chuan like they did in the past.

In fact, shouting in traditional Tai Chi Chuan was so important that special sounds were used so that the sounds correspond with Chi. This secret is revealed in Tai Chi classics too but often ignored. It is the secret sound of Hen - Ha. When force is used to pull inward, the sound "Hen" will be yelled. Dantian will contract and Chi will flow to Dantian. The sound "Ha" is used when force is exploded outward. Dantian will expand and Chi will rush out.

Try using these two sounds and see how your Dantian and Chi will react to them. Who knows, you may unveil the secrets of Hen-Ha.

TAI CHI FREE SPARRING - SANSHOU

"Sanshou" or free hand is a Chinese term refers to free style sparring. In the past Tai Chi Chuan training will progress from learning the form, to pushing hands and finally free sparring. However, nowadays most Tai Chi people don't do sparring anymore. Tai Chi Chuan requires us to maintain a calmed mind and relaxed body when facing at attack so that we can apply Tai Chi strategy i.e. adhere, stick, follow and lead and so on. Without sparring training, how can a Tai Chi student remains calm and relax when facing an attack in real fight? Serious Tai Chi people should really consider re-introducing sparring into the syllabus so that Tai Chi student is well prepared to use Tai Chi Chuan for self defence.

I have enclosed a video here where we do what I called free style pushing hand sparring for your viewing pleasure. Have a good weekend friends. www.taichisecretmovements.com

TAI CHI WEAPONS, QUANTITY VS QUALITY

Nowadays, it is very common to see students moving into learning sword, saber, spear and so on right after they have finished learning the Tai Chi form. Within a short 1 year a student would have had learned the form and several weapons. It appears student today are more interested in quantity than quality.

In the past, a student was not allowed to learn anything else until the student had sufficiently mastered the form which required good awareness of internal body. Weapons were considered as an extension of body and were not allowed until mastery of own body had been achieved. Quality was more important than quantity then.

However, time had changed. People has fewer patient and different objectives o learning Tai Chi Chuan. Instructors have no choice but to cater for this change. Is it a right thing to do allowing students to proceed learning weapons before they have truly mastered the form and body? I don't have the answer. I guess it all boils down to the objective of the student taking-up Tai Chi Chuan. Instructor should assist student to attain his/her objective and not impose the instructor's own agenda.

However, it is my sincere hope that within these quantities there exist a group of people who want quality and willing to walk the traditional part of acquiring Tai Chi kung fu. When they do, instructor must not keep secret and should assist in whatever way they can.

Happy training friends.

Please visit us at www.taichisecretmovements.com

TAI CHI 1 INCH PUNCH

The recent Ip Man’s movies have generated a lot of interests in Wing Chun kung fu which to me is a very good thing. A friend who taught Wing Chun told me there is a surge of enquiry to learn Wing Chun over the past few months. A close friend who is learning Tai Chi Chuan got so excited after watching the movie that he went to sought out a friend who is practising Wing Chun to spar. Some of the Wing Chun attacks breached through his defence using ward-off (peng), but he was able to push the Wing Chun guy a few times too. I believe both of them had a lot of fun exploring. Of course as usual he will try the same Wing Chun techniques on me to see how I would fare and I guess he is convinced ward-off is quite a strong defence and attack in one if used correctly. The Wing Chun hype also led to another question “can Tai Chi deliver the same power of the popular 1 inch punch in Wing Chun?”

1 inch punch is made popular by Bruce Lee and is a technique used in Wing Chun for close-range fighting. It is not unique to Wing Chun though. Tai Chi Chuan also has inch jin and according to the writing of Yang Ban Hou, a Tai Chi student should further refine the 1 inch jin into 10th of an inch and 100th of an inch. In order to convince my students that Tai Chi inch jin is equally as powerful I decided to test the same. Frankly, this is my first time trying to break a wooden board using Tai Chi inch jin. Imaging where would I put my face if I fail in front of my students ha ha... luckily and to a great degree expectedly the board broke easily. We then tried two 1 inch boards and succeeded too. We wanted to try using 3 boards but couldn’t do that because we didn’t have enough board left to break. Will try that and update the next time. It is a relief to myself at least that Tai Chi Chuan’s inch jin is equally as powerful.

MASTERING TAI CHI CHUAN WITHOUT A MASTER

There are 200 millions people practicing Tai Chi in the world but just a fraction of them do Tai Chi as a martial art. Out of this small fraction even lesser are proficient to use Tai Chi effectively to defend themselves. Why is this so? Personally I can attribute this problem to at least 3 reasons. Firstly, lack of serious training hence no self confident in using Tai Chi. Secondly, lack of understanding how the soft Tai Chi can be used effectively in fighting and thirdly, lack of knowledge on Tai Chi fighting strategy and techniques.

Though the 3 reasons I provided are inter-related, the first, which is lack of training can easily be overcome by putting in more efforts. The second attribute of lack of understanding is a bit trickier. Traditional Tai Chi training emphasize on acquiring power (Jin). To achieve this, one needs to understand proper body alignment and acute awareness of energy flows within and without the body. Proper instruction from a qualified master will be most helpful. Last problem requires understanding of TC principles such as Yin Yang, sensitivity, centreline etc..again a good instructor will be most helpful . Can one do it without a master? Yes...though a bit harder but yes.

In the internet era, information which was secret then is no more now and is widely available. You just need to ponder on this information, test it and experiment with it. With some hard works, a lot of creativity and never hesitate to ask around, you will still able to do it without a master.

Visit us at our official website www.taichisecretmovements.com to share and learn more

COMBAT TAI CHI CHUAN

The terms "combat taichi" shouldn't even has arose if tai chi chuan was kept to its original form and purpose. Tai chi chuan was originally created as a martial art first and health exercise second. But nowadays when we mention tai chi chuan first thing that pops-up in everybody's mind is health tai chi chuan. In fact Tai Chi Chuan was first made popular by Yang Lu Chan for its fighting effectiveness and not because of its health benefits. However, Tai Chi Chuan with its slow movements and gentle gestures may be difficult to believe as a combat or fighting art for many people. But the reality is, it was created originally created a self defence system and a damn good one too.

The combative aspect of tai chi chuan has been vastly disregarded in modern society. Personally I think if one wants to reap the full benefits of tai chi chuan, it is better to approach it as martial art first and health second. Because if one approach it as martial art one has to do a few things :

1) train harder
2) understand tai chi deeper
3) focus more on the development of chi, jin and shen

By these few things, health benefits will also increase by that much extra efforts one put in. Tai chi chuan is so much more beautiful when approach from the martial art's perspective. Suddenly you will find the principles become alive and the path is a life long journey..what a great companionship. Personally, I have seen a 60+ year old guy effectively defended himself from a robber using Tai Chi. Pink of health and able to deefend oneself..isn't that wonderful?

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FAST TAI CHI

One common question I always get especially from people who are not familiar with tai chi chuan is how can tai chi be effective in combat when it moves so slowly. I am not surprised because once I asked the same question too. This perception comes about because we often see people performing tai chi chuan very slowly. We hardly see people who do tai chi chuan in fast pace. In fact in olden days students begin tai chi chuan with slow and expended movements to build kung fu and once they have mastered it, they will gradually increase the speed and contract the form.

In traditional yang style tai chi chuan, students start with a 20 minutes form and work their way up to 45-60 minutes. To do this, they have to consciously slow down the movement considerably. A very slow form builds physical strength, calm the mind and excites the chi. Once they are very strong with the slow form, they will speed it up from 45 min to least than 10 min. This is to tell in olden days, they did practice tai chi fast form for martial art purposes.

Having shared the above, it doesn’t mean a tai chi expert who only did slow form cannot move fast. Because tai chi chuan advocates relaxation and letting go of all stiffness and tensions, a good tai chi player can react in blinding speed. Tai chi experts can punch as fast as wing chun experts if not faster. However, this doesn’t mean tai chi people can have the false sense of confident that they can punch very fast and without much practice. Though tai chi chuan requirement of been soft and loose provided the device for great speed, we still need to practice punching, striking, moving fast to truly master it.

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