Summary: All you want to know about Tai Chi, past and present

You probably have seen it on parks. Groups of people practicing a dance that looks like a slowed down Kung Fu. Or you have probably overheard those noisy neighboring housewives chattering loudly about how it cured almost practically all illnesses. Or you have just stumbled onto an array of sites about Tai Chi but still haven’t got the foggiest about this wonderful art. Let’s take a quick peek about Tai Chi and its inner workings.

Summary: Everything you need to know about Tai Chi

What is Tai Chi? It is a Chinese combat art system that developed way back ancient china. The name Tai Chi Chuan meant ‘Supreme Ultimate Fist’, so obviously this was developed primarily as a martial art. But instead of employing explosive kicks and hard punches, Tai Chi instead uses slow tempo maneuvers and subtle movements to overcome an opponent.

Summary: The best Tai Chi movies of all time

Circa 1960s, there was an abundance of Tai Chi themed movies or what we refer as video Tai Chi. At the turn of the decade though, other martial art videos started to share the limelight until video Tai Chi was unseated from its long held box office seat. But still, video Tai Chi was one of the principal successes of the majority of Hong Kong film producers, with films like “Once upon a Time in China”, “Iron Monkey” and “Tai Chi Master” under their belt.

Summary: The original Tai Chi was also a Taoist way of life that Chang San Feng followed.

The word ‘Tao’ (sometimes spelled as Dao) has the literal meaning of path, way, or truth. Tao is primarily associated with Taoism (hence the word), but Confucianism also refers to it since the social ethics and moral teachings of the two are blended together.

Summary: The Chen style of Tai Chi was the forerunners of the art, but it was the Yang style that made it in the limelight.

The true history of Tai Chi was never known. The fact that the art is as old as the Chinese heritage itself has the history of Tai Chi shrouded in legend and mystery.

Birth of the Yin and Yang

Summary: Tai Chi Chuan as a martial art, and its decline.

Before the evolution of Tai Chi as meditation practice, or as an alternative inner healing practice, Tai Chi was an efficient and deadly combat art that originated in ancient China.