Introduction to the essentials

Introduction to the Essentials

To understand how these principles apply to your training, it is first important to understand a few points regarding the history and development of internal martial arts. The internal martial art principles explained below are based on ideas codified, not from legends and tales of a thousand years ago, but much more recently.
For the most part these principles were elucidated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by a select group of martial artists. Those exceptional individuals who made these remarkable discoveries are our real teachers. They practiced, mastered and were able to describe principles of body balance, internal energy in the martial arts and effortless power. They are real individuals that put a tremendous amount of effort codifying what would become the underlying principles internal martial arts.

In contrast, it is not useful to study the history and development of an art that supposedly developed from a mystical figure or figures from hundreds or thousands of years ago.Knowledge of the basic historical foundations of the arts we study helps us understand how and why principles developed. With this understanding we can reproduce the advanced skills the founders discovered and described around a hundred years ago. It is intriguing to learn how a select group of individuals commingled their thoughts, beliefs and breakthroughs to develop a martial art approach which has now been passed down to us.


A challenge to the conventional myth surrounding the genesis of Tai Chi and the internal arts (See Note 3, below)