The Heart Treasure of Taijiquan
By Ren Gang
Translated by Mattias Daly
The following post is an excerpt from a working draft of 《The Heart Treasure of Taijiquan》 [太极拳行法释要] written by Ren Gang and translated by his disciple Mattias Daly.
This book revolves, as the title suggests, around the quintessence Tai Ji Quan and will give unprecedented insights into the cultural theoretical framework and application of Tai Ji Quan. It is a forthcoming publication of Purple Cloud Press (www.purplecloudinstitute.com/shop):
“Go from increasing familiarity to gradually
cognizing strength. Go from understanding
strength to arriving at wisdom, step by step.”
These two sentences tell us that once we understand the above theories, we then need to practice. If we fail to practice, we will end up complaining, “I understood the ideas and I studied the methods, but when it came time to apply them I still ended up fighting the same way I always have.” Training is required to remold what in China
is called the “qi of habit.” Consider the following: if one goes from using a lamp that’s turned on by pulling a chain to one with an on-off switch, for quite some time whenever one goes to turn on the new lamp one will fumble to find the chain before remembering it is no longer there. “Qi of habit” is simply a term for the normal tendency of a person to repeatedly do whatever feels the most natural. It is possible that one trains well, but in a real fight, what comes out is the wild flailing and swinging of a back alley dustup. In other words, even though one may have learned better techniques, what is most familiar is still what one falls back upon under duress.
Image: Yang Chengfu
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