The term 'Taijiquan' is a short form of 'Taiji quanfa'. 'Taiji' is the Chinese word meaning 'the grand ultimate' or the cosmos. And 'quanfa' means 'fist techniques' or martial art. Taijiquan, therefore, means 'Cosmos Kungfu'. Indeed every movement in Taijiquan is made according to martial considerations, i.e. a Taijiquan practitioner moves the way he moves in a Taijiquan performance because that particular way gives him the best technical advantage in a given combat situation. Hence if you say that you practise Taijiquan for health and not for fighting, you probably do not realize that Taijiquan actually means Cosmos martial art, and that virtually all great Taijiquan masters in the past practised it for fighting.
This paradox is actually easily understandable. If you practise Taijiquan as a dance, which in my opinion is not a wise thing to do and moreover is insulting to all the great Taijiquan masters in the past who have bequieted to us this wonderful martial art, you will get the benefits that a dance will give, such as elegant movement, loosening joints and gentle blood circulation. Ibut if you wish to have the kind of radiant physical, emotional and mental health that characterize accomplished martial artists, you have to practise Taijiquan as a martial art.
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Find out from Basic Self-Defence of Taijiquan why you should still practice Taijiquan as a martial art even if your main objective is health.
But if you prefer a more gentle approach to developing power and stamina, as well as calmness and mental freshness (which are not readily found in martial arts that emphasize aggressiveness and brutality), practising Taijiquan as a martial art is an excellent choice. Hits are sometimes sustained in Taijiquan sparring too, but unlike in many other martail arts where such hits are routinely left untreated, such accidental injury which is far less often in Taijiquan than in most other arts, is relieved by the internal energy flow which forms an integral part of Taijiquan training.
How can a student tell whether he is practising Taijiquan as a dance or as a martial art? It is actually quite easy, although it is amazing how very few students have given a thought to it. If much of the training time is given to performing beautiful external forms, with little or no training to develop internal force and combat efficiency, it is likely to be a Taiji dance. If after learning the external forms, the onus of the training is to develop internal force and combat efficiency, Taijiquan is practised as a martial art, which was also the way all great Taijiquan masters practised it in the past.
Some Taijiquan exponents, especially those of the Chen style, regonize Chen Wang Ting instead of Zhang San Feng as the First Patriarch of Taijiquan. Chen Wang Ting was a great scholar-general at the end of the Ming Dynasty. If you examine his poems you can find much evidence that his main concern, like that of Zhang San Feng a few centuries before him, was spiritual development rather than martial efficiency. The following lines from his poem are illustrative:
Now I only have the 'Classic of Yellow Palace'
to accompany me.
In times of leisure I invent martial art,
In times of activity I farm the fields,
And teach children and grandchildren
to be strong and healthy
to meet life's expediencies.
Practising Taijiquan is helpful if you are interested in spiritual cultivation. If you can attain the advanced level of Taijiquan training whereby your form, energy flow and mind have beome one, you may have direct experiences that you are actually more than your physical body, thus giving you experiential result of spiritual cultivation which many people merely read about in books.
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