Evolution of Jou Tsung Hwa's Taijiquan

[Bob]

In a previous thread I think it was Wayne asking about my experiences with Jou Tsung Hwa and below gives you a pretty good idea of where his forms ended up - I had one of his early students in 1983 at Four Seasons (Dr. John Ng's school, Tom Phillips was the taijiquan instructor) and by the time I got to Jou's Tai Chi Farm in the late 1980s his forms and practice had changed significantly.

If I recall correctly, and I may be off, he got into the idea that that the twisting and movement had to emanate from the dan tian area and drove all the movements out to the shoulders, arms and even hand and also similar movement in the leg areas - at that point I could not follow it any longer - it just didn't work for me - it's illustrated in the 2nd clip - I believe in the first clip this was very similar to what Jou was attempting to do although, as far as I know, there is no connection between the two practitioners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2cF4CszPsI

Tai Chi softness is synonymous with a snake's slithering.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap8yyWyYtmw

Leading the flow of inner energy and harnessing internal strength during exercise contributes to improving your overall health."

Genuine lineage Tai Chi chuan Taiwan .




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t-nsAvhUhQ

This is a real treat for all who know of Master Jou, Tsung-Hwa, author of "The Tao of Tai-chi-Chuan" and other books. He used his 100 acre property in Warwick NY as the site of the annual Tai-chi Festival, the largest gathering of Tai-chi Teachers in the world. (Now the Tai-chi Park in Wantage, NJ). This footage was taken from the 1989 festival as Jou gave a workshop on his Tai-chi forms. His accent is hard to follow but he expresses himself very well with his movements.

[everything]

it's a lot of - interesting movement. why didn't it work for you? i don't think it would work for me, either.

[Bob]

Possibility I just didn't get or understand it or train long enough in it.

Primarily I could not find a sense of flow and relaxation in it, felt stiff, more like a moving isometric exercise, saw no tangible way to develop fa jin expression and I learned alternative ways to develop the shen fa via the bajiquan and taijiquan I started to learn in the Wu Tan system of Liu Yunqiao. The da qiang (big spear training, not small spear - you can find old article we wrote in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts) and bagua brick work opened my eyes up on how to develop power and fajin along with shen fa

I am more than willing to concede that there may be other ways to accomplish this but I am only speaking from my experience which was further reinforced when we learned the da qiang work for Xing Yi. However I don't speak as some unique authority regarding these issues and mostly appreciative of what others have tried or are willing to share.

In Jou's lectures he kept insisting that he had found the "Key" to the ancient classics which opened the "door" to the real essence of taijiquan or if you wish, genuine taijiquan. My personal understanding was he thought everything else was a detour and waste of time if one was trying to attain the true internal art of taijiquan. I am not saying he was wrong because to this day I admire and respect his willingness to cut his own path and I had wonderful experiences at The Tai Chi Farm - it's hard to imagine now how little access one had to taijiquan and the internal resources available at that time, especially where I was located i.e. Kentucky and Northeast Ohio.

My point is simply a sharing of experiences and information which seems generated by a ripening of "old" age. LOL

[origami_itto]

IMHO he's onto it, I think he's exaggerating a bit much but that's the thing, the bones swimming in flesh like a dragon swimming through the clouds. All that stretching and twisting is working the fascia.

[BruceP]

Bob, thanks for sharing your insights. It's more than interesting.

The guy in the first video in your OP shows, up to the six minute mark, a fast-forward progression of what I was shown in my first year of studying Wu style. Up to the 2:50 mark pretty much sums up what was practiced in the first six months, but that work was focused on/contained in the exploration of cloud-hands instead of whip/scd.

What he starts demonstrating at the 5:00 minute mark is what I only started to 'get' on a very rudimentary level after more than a year. OMMV, but IMNSHO, it's well out of reach and not something that should be bothered with until the "straight line" he talks about is put into the body as a default of having the hands higher than the diaphragm.

From 7:15 onward shows an almost identical format for the testing our tai chi study groups engaged in their non-fighty practice of their tai chi.

Primarily I could not find a sense of flow and relaxation in it, felt stiff, more like a moving isometric exercise, saw no tangible way to develop fa jin expression and I learned alternative ways to develop the shen fa via the bajiquan and taijiquan I started to learn in the Wu Tan system of Liu Yunqiao

Your describing the work as moving isometric exercise is/was my experience as well in the first six months of both the Yang and Wu I studied. It won't yield fa jin in a direct manner and fa jin can't really be ascribed to that basic practice as it has more to do with breaking old habits of generating 'power' than building alternate pathways to expressing power. JMO

Thanks again for sharing your experiences.

[everything]

hmm, super interesting. it's hard enough for me to work on yi, qi, jin with no to some movement. hard enough to just work yi with no movement (via meditation). otoh, for twisting stuff, the spiraling "double helix" hunyuan example windwalker posted feels very interesting on "the inside". imho the "energetic" feeling is immediately clear and impressive. something from the other thread where jw says one hand needs to be up, one down, for a specific application ... think that also ties together in a way. but if it's "key" idk about that. work on yi and sink qi (without even moving) seems far more "key" to me. more yiquan, less whatever else. imho.

[charles]

In Jou's lectures he kept insisting that he had found the "Key" to the ancient classics which opened the "door" to the real essence of taijiquan or if you wish, genuine taijiquan. My personal understanding was he thought everything else was a detour and waste of time if one was trying to attain the true internal art of taijiquan.

For the sake of discussion, Jou, in the preface to the fourth edition of his book The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan, states the following:

"There is a Master Key to Tai-Chi Chuan...The Master Key defines the art of Tai-Chi Chuan...without the Master Key, we should not call our art "Tai-Chi Chuan.

"In the Tang Dynasty, a hermit named Hsu San-Ping is said to have practiced a martial art similar to Tai-Chi Chuan "with the eight trigrams in the arms and five elements under the feet."...early statements of the Master Key to Tai-Chi Chuan.

"In the fourteenth century, Chang San Feng...wrote a treatise called The Theory of Tai-Chi Chuan. At the end of the work he emphasizes the importance of thirteen postures, which corresponded to the eight trigrams of the I Ching and the five elements. These concepts can be considered the Master Key to Tai-Chi Chuan.

"I might say initially "the with trigrams in the arms" means that your hands move in unison, and your movements match perfectly those of your opponent; the "fine elements under the feet" means to be able to step forward or back, to turn left or right, while remaining poised at the centre...

"If you want to understand the eight trigrams in the arms...you must practice the Chan Ssu Chin, which I have described in chapter three... If you want to understand the Chan Ssu Chin, you must understand the Tai-Chi Diagram, discussed in chapter two... First, you must learn not to move your arms independently of your body...The arms must move around the centre as the earth orbits around the sun. Study this by tracing the Tai-Chi Diagram with each hand singly...Each hand manifests all eight trigrams as it passes around the circle, like the monthly cycle of the moon from new to full and back again.

"Second, all parts of the body must exhibit revolution similar to the rotation of the earth on its own axis, which, when added to the circularity of orbit, results in a spiralling motion through space. Study the Chan Ssu Chin exercise with both hands matching one another, like the sun and the moon...Third, your two hands must match one another in the solo form in preparation for being able to match the energy of the partner."

In chapter two, he states, "The eight trigrams represent the eight basic postures of Tai-Chi Chuan, also called the Eight Gates or Pa-Men: ward off or Peng, roll-back or Lu, press or Chi, push or An, pull-down or Tsai, split or Lieh, elbow or Chou, and shoulder-strike or Kao.

Taking all of that together, conceptually, the Master Key is pretty straightforward. It is in the implementation that everything goes to hell.

[robert]

For the sake of discussion, Jou, in the preface to the fourth edition of his book The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan, states the following:

...

Good write up Charles, thanks for that. I read that preface again - it's pretty good.

Taking all of that together, conceptually, the Master Key is pretty straightforward. It is in the implementation that everything goes to hell.

+1

[windwalker]

In Jou's lectures he kept insisting that he had found the "Key" to the ancient classics which opened the "door" to the real essence of taijiquan or if you wish, genuine taijiquan. My personal understanding was he thought everything else was a detour and waste of time if one was trying to attain the true internal art of taijiquan.

For the sake of discussion, Jou, in the preface to the fourth edition of his book The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan, states the following:

"There is a Master Key to Tai-Chi Chuan...The Master Key defines the art of Tai-Chi Chuan...without the Master Key, we should not call our art "Tai-Chi Chuan.

"In the Tang Dynasty, a hermit named Hsu San-Ping is said to have practiced a martial art similar to Tai-Chi Chuan "with the eight trigrams in the arms and five elements under the feet."...early statements of the Master Key to Tai-Chi Chuan.

"In the fourteenth century, Chang San Feng...wrote a treatise called The Theory of Tai-Chi Chuan. At the end of the work he emphasizes the importance of thirteen postures, which corresponded to the eight trigrams of the I Ching and the five elements. These concepts can be considered the Master Key to Tai-Chi Chuan.

"I might say initially "the with trigrams in the arms" means that your hands move in unison, and your movements match perfectly those of your opponent; the "fine elements under the feet" means to be able to step forward or back, to turn left or right, while remaining poised at the centre...

"If you want to understand the eight trigrams in the arms...you must practice the Chan Ssu Chin, which I have described in chapter three... If you want to understand the Chan Ssu Chin, you must understand the Tai-Chi Diagram, discussed in chapter two... First, you must learn not to move your arms independently of your body...The arms must move around the centre as the earth orbits around the sun. Study this by tracing the Tai-Chi Diagram with each hand singly...Each hand manifests all eight trigrams as it passes around the circle, like the monthly cycle of the moon from new to full and back again.

"Second, all parts of the body must exhibit revolution similar to the rotation of the earth on its own axis, which, when added to the circularity of orbit, results in a spiralling motion through space. Study the Chan Ssu Chin exercise with both hands matching one another, like the sun and the moon...Third, your two hands must match one another in the solo form in preparation for being able to match the energy of the partner."

In chapter two, he states, "The eight trigrams represent the eight basic postures of Tai-Chi Chuan, also called the Eight Gates or Pa-Men: ward off or Peng, roll-back or Lu, press or Chi, push or An, pull-down or Tsai, split or Lieh, elbow or Chou, and shoulder-strike or Kao.

Taking all of that together, conceptually, the Master Key is pretty straightforward. It is in the implementation that everything goes to hell.

Read his work long ago.
From what I remember of it,
wouldn’t agree with much of it now.


The historical monk he mentioned. Any record of him fighting with anybody having to use it

[charles]

Read his work long ago.
From what I remember of it,
wouldn’t agree with much of it now.

Before finding some good teachers, I spent a lot of time reading his book in the mid 1990's and some time attempting to practice what he wrote. Although I never met Jou, back-in-the-day, I knew a number of his dedicated students.

My eventual conclusion has been that his book contains an equal mixture of important relevant things and things that are either - or both - incorrect and/or irrelevant. The challenge is to figure out which is which, a task largely impossible for the novice. For that reason, I do not recommend the book - it does as much harm as good.

The historical monk he mentioned. Any record of him fighting with anybody having to use it

No idea. Never heard of the monk outside of Jou's mention of him. I place little importance on what Jou wrote and even less on what he practiced.

[windwalker]

No idea. Never heard of the monk outside of Jou's mention of him. I place little importance on what Jou wrote and even less on what he practiced.

monks,,,,

Thanks Charles,


found his work interesting at the time,,,,talking of different keys to opening doors ect.
His work a part of taiji development in the west

Have a different perspective now from which to view it through, speaking from.



Not meant as a judgment or recommendation, a small part of my own path..



regards..

[Appledog]

found his work interesting at the time,,,,talking of different keys to opening doors ect.
His work a part of taiji development in the west

Have a different perspective now from which to view it through, speaking from.

Not meant as a judgment or recommendation, a small part of my own path..

"After visiting and studying with a wide variety of teachers in China and Taiwan, Jou drew the conclusion that the art of taijiquan was becoming lost. Too much focus was put on the physical forms and too little focus on the founding principles of taijiquan, as elucidated in the Taiji Classics. This disconnect seemed to be the missing piece of the puzzle as to why so few modern day masters lacked the skills, stamina, health and martial abilities of the masters of old. At that moment of inspiration, he abandoned all teachers and took the Taiji Classics as his only teacher."

Jou was an interesting person, who was a great inspiration to myself and others. He is the only one who ever dared to tell the lazy Americans to stop reading the newspaper and use that time instead to practice Tai Chi. He was willing to dedicate his life to the art, and for many that was a light in the darkness. Even if only for that alone he is to be commended!

[windwalker]

@ Appledog

your quote of my post is confused....as to who you'er quoting...Me or Charles..

As to Jou Tsung Hwa's work...you denigrate Americans,
while holding him up as an example to follow....
What would be the example he presented.

Writing ?
Personality?
Was it fighting i.e. Taiji usage in combat?

[Appledog]

@ Appledog

your quote of my post is confused....as to who you'er quoting...Me or Charles..

As to Jou Tsung Hwa's work...you denigrate Americans,
while holding him up as an example to follow....
What would be the example he presented.

Writing ?
Personality?
Was it fighting i.e. Taiji usage in combat?

Twas a joke. Also thanks for letting me know about the quoting error. Actually I know a few good Americans.

As for Jou I think his dedication to the art, and his desire to spread it are great things to aspire to. I also plan to create a Tai Chi retreat someday, for the benefit of all. It is possible I got the idea and inspiration from him, and forgot, since I have often thought of him for many many years. I don't think he was a great Tai Chi fighter though. Then again neither am I.

[charles]

@ Appledog

your quote of my post is confused....as to who you'er quoting...Me or Charles..

Neither. He is quoting a passage from Jou's book.