Formosa Neijia

This is a video look at the book I reviewed here.
Chen Xin does talk about applying the taijiquan martially. It isn’t all alchemy in the book, despite how it might look. The problem for most people is that his context is alchemy-based, meaning that his examples are couched in that language. But he does have [...]

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Below is the review I wrote for Amazon.com. I plan a much longer discussion here on the blog, but this will get you started. The book is available here and a 90-page preview is available there, as well.
Written by a member of the Chen family, Chen Xin, this is the first comprehensive look at Chen [...]

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I will soon be posting a long review of the first English edition of Chen Xin’s magnum opus — The Illustrated Canon of Chen Family Taijiquan.

As you can see, it’s already a big hit with the smallest martial artist in my house.

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I was reading a smaller martial arts forum the other day and I came across an interesting discussion. A woman in her late 50’s that trains taichichuan said that she trains hard everyday but that she would stop any time she felt any pain and try to ascertain the source of the pain. She would [...]

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This is Chen Qing-zhou doing his version of the taiji ball. Some people like this. No problem with that. But notice that any time this training gets discussed, the weight of the ball seems to be the main thing. First there’s talk of training a 30 lbs. ball, then it’s 50, then it’s 80. Can [...]

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This is another look at Tu Zong-ren’s Chen style. This is the old frame first road. Tu laoshi was the second disciple of Du Yu-ze and I wrote more about him here and here. He was prevented from showing his taiji for many years due to a promise to his teacher to not show it [...]

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Wow, this is an interesting story. I had heard some rumors about what was going on when Wang’s son was in jail. But this might be the whole story. It sure makes an interesting read:
There is no arguement that wang xian, and both his sons are very good at taijii quan. when i was living [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWCJK3g4g-E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaKoa-uMcRc
So here are two clips for comparison.  The top one is from the mainland and shows a great version of Chen style in the xiaojia tradition. The second clip is my teacher Zhou Bao-fu who is also doing a form that is from the xiaojia tradition, or at least heavily influenced by it.
The main thing [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kl_SL19nKs
Well, this is more than we had before. This is a much longer clip of Du Yu-ze doing the laojia yilu. I have written before on how controversial this clip is. I’m surprised this much is up. I HIGHLY recommend that you download it now that it’s out, if this clip means anything to you. [...]

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This is a quote from an excellent article by Jarek Szymanski that shows how the split between dajia and xiaojia came about (bold mine):
Small Frame combines hardness with softness, there is more softness and less hardness in the First Set (Yi Lu), more hardness and less softness in the Second Set (Er Lu). [...]

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