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What is Tai Ji Quan?
Hearing Tai Chi Chuan many people associate a picture of old people in China
coming to the public parks in the early morning doing slow and dance like movements.
In fact there is much more behind these exercises than the impression at first glance may tell.
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Exercises
The inner beauty of this art is only to experience by learning it and
regular training. Wu style Tai Chi Chuan is all-round and its traditional system includes
a wide variety of different exercises which are all connected to each other.
Basically speaking there are two different exercises:
-Forms (with and without weapons)
-Partner exercises ( Tui Shou=Pushing Hands)
The forms are defined sequences of certain movements which comprise all
important principles of natural movement.
By learning and exercising the form one also trains his power of
concentration and to calm the mind.
Partner exercises’ purpose is to get a feeling for the partner’s directions of movement
while staying in contact to him using hands and arms in order to be able to react to any of his offensive attempts.
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Inner martial arts
The different asian martial arts systems can be roughly devided in two groups, the inner school and the outer school. In this content the two terms inner and outer derive from the main focus of each groups’ traditional system. Styles of the outer school emphasize the role of muscle power, speed and hardness in movement while the inner school basically regards the cultivation of the inner power and defensiveness. However outer styles also have aspects of inner training as well as the inner school also has aspects of outer training.
Tai Chi Chuan is part of the inner school which philosophical backround bases on Daoism and Neo-Confucianism.
Especially in the last century the aspect of fighting has more and more taken a back seat, so today aspects of health, meditation and body self-cultivation have come to the fore.
Despite of this development almost all of the traditional methods and exercises are cultivated in the Wu style Tai Chi Chuan.
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Different Families
The names of all the different styles derive from the families that cultivated and developed this art in the past centuries.
E.g. the Wu Tai Chi Chuan comes from the family Wu (吴家), Chen Tai Chi from the Chen family(陈家). Today the styles of the Yang(杨家), Chen陈家, Wu(吴家)and Sun family (孙家) are the most spread.
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