What makes Tai Chi Tai Chi?

[Dmitri]

If somebody is correctly separating Yin and Yang

And that means....?

[GrahamB]

Exactly - it has a lot of meanings, from the very simple to the very profound, hence why I use it as my definition. On one level it seems like a simple answer, but only when you look deeper do you realise that to really understand the answer you need to do a lot of research for yourself. Those are really the best sorts of answers.

Point 5 in Yang Cheng-Fu's 10 important points is a good place to start looking.

[DeusTrismegistus]

I see taiji as a specific way of moving the body. It is also a method of learning that movement. So the method and the results become taiji. Someone who is new and doing everything all wrong is still learning it, even if they do it badly. A person playing the itsy bitsy spider badly is still playing music, just bad music. We can still do MA and be bad at them. We all suck still on some level, as long as we are trying to better ourselves and get better within our martial systems we are no different than the beginner. If learning martial arts is like climbing a mountain, the higher I get the farther away the peak becomes, not closer.

[charles]

If learning martial arts is like climbing a mountain, the higher I get the farther away the peak becomes, not closer.

IF learning martial arts is like climbing a mountain, I'd suggest that if your mountain climbing takes you further from the peak, rather than closer to it, you're doing something wrong.

[GrahamB]

If learning martial arts is like climbing a mountain, the higher I get the farther away the peak becomes, not closer.

IF learning martial arts is like climbing a mountain, I'd suggest that if your mountain climbing takes you further from the peak, rather than closer to it, you're doing something wrong.

Witty comment FAIL

[edededed]

Taiji = neutralization (huajin)

[Chris Fleming]

What makes Taiji Taiji? Apparently a guy with a book to sell....

[I-mon]

it's a combination of hippies, nerds, fat people and gay retards.

[middleway]

what makes ba gua ba gua .... what makes Xing Yi xing yi ..... what makes Karate karate ... what makes judo judo ....

Taiji quan is a martial art. If you study Taiji quan then (as with every other art) you study and adheir to its main underlying principles and body methods (whilst wearing silk PJ's). If you aint doing those then it aint taiji quan and is something else.

If we are talking what makes Taiji (yin yang) taiji .... then um .... where is Laotzu when you need him!

.... personally in the past few months i have learnt not to 'think', not overly give a shit and just practice. Its taken me a while to get there ... but Its a nice feeling!

cheers
Chris

[Ben]

Like everybody says, there's no common accepted answer.

Here's my two-cents.

Personally, I look at the name of the art "Tai Chi Chuan" as an indicator of the most important quality, so it's about TaiChi and Yin and Yang, rather than external 'look'. If somebody is correctly separating Yin and Yang in their body and movements, and in their fighting strategy (no double-weighting) for most of the time (nobody is ever 100% all the time) then I think they can be said to be "doing" Tai Chi Chuan.

I like it!

[Ben]

.... personally in the past few months i have learnt not to 'think', not overly give a shit and just practice. Its taken me a while to get there ... but Its a nice feeling!

cheers
Chris

I've been there before but I feel like I've been regressing a little lately.
I guess I have to just not worry about it and practice.

[nianfong]

I believe true taichi must adhere to the first section of the first taichi treatise--the one supposedly written by zhangsanfeng.
This one:

[I-mon]

wow i can nearly read that. maybe there is a point to studying all this damn chinese, after all.

[velalavela]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlimAL14ksM

A nice description of Tai Chi....it is translated pretty well but probably helps/you'd get more out of it if you understand Mandarin I guess.

[affa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Theory

Re: the fallacy of classically defined categories

categories are not extensionally discrete. they're not "given" by the world... although the statistical distributions of continuously variable properties on which they're cognitively based are. in other words, the only thing that makes taiji taiji is fuzzy sets of (continuously variable) individuals calling fuzzy sets of (continuously variable) things [as discernible according to fuzzy sets of the (continuously variable) properties which they bear] IT.

殂