Chinese kung fu fans

The Grand Ultimate Fist, Taiji Quan, but what makes it so superior? What makes Taiji superior is that it takes mental prowess to make work. This is not to insult other martial arts, but an examination of the principles necessary to Tai Chi that should convince most people of the truth of the art.

I’ve selected three of the many principles that a person should learn to get anywhere in the art of the Grand Ultimate Fist. The first concept is nothing more than nothing. Most arts will take this idea only so far as having the fist loose before impact, what is commonly called focus, but that is where the true art really starts.

To understand Tai Chi one must understand that the entire body must become loose and empty. By becoming loose and empty the body can better feel the various incoming energies, and so handle them. This is easily understood if one understands that light travels best through a vacuum, and in Tai Chi the body must become a vacuum so that senses can travel through it, and emanate from it.

The second principle deals with how one generates energy. In my base art, Karate, this was developed through taking stances hard and fast and making the tan tien to explode. This is fine, except that tai chi the Tan Tien explode at a much slower rate.

To make power in the Grand Ultimate Art one must take the low stance and grind the motion back and forth between the legs, and round and round in the hips. Power comes up the legs and the tan tien churns out energy. Thus, there is a fine line between emptiness of the body, and the power generation of the legs.

Third principle, and, again, there are many more principles, is the idea of slow motion. Many people move slowly, and they marvel at how much their senses expand. Unfortunately, most people don’t understand that Tai Chi is, at heart, a fighting art.

Thus, when people move slowly in Tai Chi Chuan, they must not just relax and move slowly, they must actively push energy with their limbs. This is a point many people miss, but which is crucial to the principle of enacting the imagination, and making the imagination actuate the true abilities of an individual. The feeling should be like swimming, but the waters are imagination, and the resistance is very real, very worthwhile, and very workable when it comes to combat.

There is so much to learn, an eternity to learn, and Matrix Tai Chi is a perfect art to enable the learning process. The trick is to relax the mind and awaken the possibilities, the trick is to relax and let oneself absorb knowledge. The trick is to realize that it is not just art we are talking about when we speak of the Grand Ultimate, but the actual human spirit.