At the 2008 Hunyuan World Seminiars in GA, USA, I spent several hours one night after the evening class to work with several disciples on taiji fighting.
I will not go into details of what we did, as there is no way to explain it with simple words. We didn’t make any videos of the session either. What I want to discuss here is some of the comments from students. These comments or questions are as a result of the fact that what we did did not APPEAR to be taiji.
- It’s almost the same as praying mantis.
- It’s the same as karate.
- Is taiji this fast?
- Master Chen, you kick is so fast we cannot even respond to it.
As a matter of fact, real taiji IS a martial art. It does not resemble that taiji that we see practiced and taught today. What we normally see is the training set or method of taijiquan. Here is a video clip of a simple teaching session with some applications.
Here is another youtube video that has some elementary fighting techniques.
