Taijiquan

Taijiquan (太極拳) is a Chinese martial art built on the logic of Yin and Yang. Its name combines taiji (the Supreme Ultimate, the undivided whole from which yin and yang arise) with quan (fist, meaning unarmed combat). The art trains the practitioner to embody that alternation physically, yielding where an opponent applies force and then redirecting that force without opposition. Sustained, conscious movement also circulates Qi, so taijiquan appears in the primer alongside Qigong as a body-based cultivation practice.

Yin-Yang As Martial Principle

Yin and Yang describe a cycle in which each pole contains the seed of the other and every extreme tends to reverse. Taijiquan applies this to combat. A direct attack is yang, forward and forceful. The defender’s response is yin, yielding and following until the attacker’s force is spent, then converting that spent force into a counter. No strength is matched against strength. The yin response absorbs the yang attack and becomes the new yang initiative.

The Daodejing states in chapter 78 that water overcomes rock not by force but by yielding, because water offers nothing to push against. Wu Wei, acting without forcing, describes the same disposition at the level of personal conduct. In taijiquan it becomes a physical training protocol.

The Solo Form and Push Hands

The solo practice is a sequence of postures connected by continuous, slow transitions. No movement stops and restarts. The body circles rather than angles, and the weight shifts from one leg to the other in a rhythm that practitioners describe as constant yin-yang alternation. When weight is on the left foot, the right is empty, and when the arms extend, the spine draws back. Each expansion is paired with a compression somewhere else in the body.

The circulation of Qi is thought to depend on unbroken movement. Obstructions arise where motion stops or where tension locks a joint, so practitioners are instructed to maintain song (松), relaxed openness throughout the joints, for the entire form.

Partner practice, called tui shou (push hands), applies the same principles between two people. Partners make contact at the forearms and attempt to uproot each other by listening through the point of contact for the opponent’s center of gravity, yielding when pushed, and redirecting when the push reaches its limit. The drill trains sensitivity to incoming force, which the solo form cannot.

Styles and Historical Origins

Taijiquan is traditionally attributed to the Daoist immortal Zhang Sanfeng, said to have drawn the art from watching a snake and a crane fight. No documented biography of Zhang Sanfeng exists before the Ming dynasty, several centuries after the dates sometimes assigned to him, so the attribution is a claim about theoretical lineage, not history.

The traceable history begins in Chenjiagou, Henan province, where Chen Wangting (c. 1600-1680) codified the Chen family style in the seventeenth century. The Chen style alternates slow spiraling movement with sudden explosive bursts. In the nineteenth century, Yang Luchan (1799-1872) studied with the Chen family and then modified the form by removing the explosive releases, producing Yang style. Yang style is now the most widely practiced form worldwide. Three further styles (Wu, Wu of a different family, and Sun) developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from students who trained in Yang or Chen lineages.