H. Won Tai Chi Institute

Lineage and Innovation in Tai Chi Practice

First, let me provide some background. I stumbled upon tai chi when I saw a list of form titles at a friend’s apartment in 1975. Monkeys, snakes, what the heck was it? He showed me what he had learned, a part of a short form, I don’t even know what style. But it caught my eye and my attention, and I made up my mind to look for a teacher when I returned to college that fall.

I did find a class, by chance, when I saw a little sign in an alternative book store (which were everywhere in Madison, Wisconsin). I went there, wearing my old judo pants , and I was hooked immediately. I kept it up for a few years, until I moved back to New York. It was a branch school connected with a teacher in Chicago.

Here, I tried a few different schools. I won’t mention the names, but I studied with three prominent Yang style teachers and a Chen style teacher as well.

All of these teachers had some claim to a lineage they considered to be superb. The Chicago teacher claimed to have learned an “inner” teaching at an unnamed temple in Taiwan, but he taught the short form developed by Cheng Man-ching and some simple forms of push hands. He was a strong personality, no one had the temerity to question his claim to a special form of training that was not generally available to the public. His school was popular and he had many instructors and students.

In New York, I tried two teachers who originated from Cheng Man-ching’s school in Chinatown. One used the form, or something very close to it, and added a form of push hands with boxing gloves. Supposedly, he had won some international martial arts competition using his hybrid form of fighting. Needless to say, he was not following “The Professor’s” system, and staked out his own territory. At least one of his students does very well at international push hands competitions.

The other was one of Cheng’s very early students, but he broke off and started his own school without permission. He had a very strong martial arts background, with black belts in judo and karate. He used Cheng’s form and a system of push hands that was close to Cheng’s system, but he made some modifications to the postures and the method of sparring. He also was no longer connected to Cheng. His students were convinced of his superior skills, and in fact I found it baffling to push with him. He seemed to respond to my attacks before they began, while they were just an intention in my mind. I tried to progress in the system for many years, but I must admit my success was limited. After he moved to California because of arthritis in his hip (from intense judo competition as a young man), the school has dwindled down to a very small and very middle-aged group. I began to think I needed to try something else.

The Chen experiment, which lasted a year or so in the midst of all this, was not successful for me, as I found the form and pushing far too physical and never could relax or concentrate. Furthermore, there was a deluge of forms to learn and tapes to buy, even sneakers brought from China (useless), and I made up my mind to leave when the teacher got into an ugly hot-tempered episode of push hands with a new student who was a policeman and who was unexpectedly adept at fighting. However, the teacher was a student of an actual and famous Chen family member, and he came to visit for seminars occasionally. So at least our teacher maintained his connection to the lineage of the Chen system.

So I had no great sense of lineage as anything important when I began studying with Gim Sifu in New York two years ago. The explanations I heard from him and his students about his connection to the Yang Family seemed interesting, but I had heard various stories that all established my prior teachers as excellent due to a combination of learning from famous masters and adding their own innovations.

Gim Sifu had little patience for these teachers. He was convinced that the only way to maintain the vitality of the Yang system was to remain faithful to the teachers. At first I was skeptical. When I first visited the studio, and heard this from one of the senior instructors, I told him good-naturedly that I didn’t care about such things, and that every single one of my former teachers had a reason for thinking that their system was excellent and superior to all other possibilities. Why are old things the best? If you went to a doctor and he said he was still using instruments and medicines from the 1850’s, would you agree to be treated by him?

Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the appearance of the form and by the explanation that the form was the source of Cheng’s form. Indeed, it contained all the movements, but was three times as long. But there was something about the angles, the postures, the alignment, that was somehow different. I went home and tried to imitate the forms, and was immediately impressed by a stronger feeling of energy. And the school was lively and the students were dedicated and enthusiastic. I decided to give it a try.

Gim Sifu would always talk about his own instruction by Chu SIfu, a disciple of the last heir of the Yang Family, and Chu’s strong loyalty to Yang Sifu. Of course, one step back was the overwhelming and imposing figure of Yang Cheng-fu, Yang Sifu’s father and one of the giant figures in modern martial arts. I felt a twinge of excitement just realizing that I was connected to that line.

And he found no need to introduce elements of other martial arts or other systems of training. He personally had no other training before beginning tai chi with Chu Sifu. He proudly showed photographs indicating their close relationship over a period of thirty-five years of training.

I found a Youtube of Yang Sifu doing the long form. It was identical to what I was learning, in sequence and in every detail of posture and movement. No modifications, no innovations. And I could sense the incredible power in the movements of Yang Sifu, even in his old age.

As time passed, I began to perceive the system being taught, and how it adhered to the Yang Family methods. Pushing with Sifu was essential to learning. But unlike the sparring found in the other schools, pushing was meant to increase the student’s internal energy and eventually to introduce even more subtle forms of energy. There was an interplay between doing the form and doing push hands – the lessons learned from pushing provided guidance on how to do the form properly, and strong practice of the form allowed the student to push hands more effectively.

As time passed, pushing with Sifu became an exciting and even wild experience. It became clearer and clearer with time that the real development of the Yang style occurred only when one stayed in the system Sifu followed. Pushing hands to develop energy and power was essential, but I had never seen it before. Cheng and his rebellious students kept moving further and further from that kind of approach.

Furthermore, Cheng himself was a student of the Yang family. His own approach, which was to modify the long form drastically and teach push hands as a form of sparring, cut off his connection from the system. His own followers either took him as the establisher of a new lineage, or broke off and formed their own systems, declaring that nothing mattered but results. (I will not judge other students, but will note that it does not seem likely that these systems will lead students to the power and accomplishment of the great Yang teachers of the past .)

Meanwhile, I feel my tai chi improving and becoming more fascinating all the time. Therefore, I have become convinced of the importance of maintaining the lineage and the lessons of our forebears. They recognized who could teach effectively, and chose their successors with care. Practicing with Sifu, it is evident that he is connected to the real line – and that term can be understood both as a line of descent and a line of energy, like electricity.