Customer Reviews

Essential Tai Ji

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This is a beautiful little book, that along with the author's book: "Embrace Tiger Return to Mountain," shows the true essence of Tai Ji: the dance of life from within, the joy of pure movement. I give copies of this book to family and friends who I think are mature enough in their thinking to appreciate it. I found two of the reviews above troubling and misleading--there is far more to Tai Ji than "devastating martial art" and "the forms." I have been a teacher of martial art and forms for more than 40 years; fighting and forms are only shadows of the books' lessons. Instead of teaching dance steps, Chungliang Al Huang is teaching readers about the spirit of life's dance. If you don't understand, please read the book (or reread it). I recommend both books--unequivocally and joyfully!

The book is full of breath-taking pictures and awesome poetry, but for beginners its a big no-no. Due to lack of illustrations of movements in detail, a novice may just think Taiji is all about following your body, which in turn may make the learning of forms difficult. The approach of AlHuang to Taiji will be of tremendous help to people who have already fluent with their forms. To make myself more clear - say if you know the small circle form, then you may use such books to make them more fluent and dancelike by following your body which already "knows" how to do the form. For beginners - NO!. This is where the author misses the "Balance" between form and formlessness. Though the "Essence" or "Principle" behind Taiji is formless, it is only through form that we can begin to learn to implement this principle. So if you think you don't need the details of forms then go ahead and buy or else? Don't!!!

This is a nice book to show you what IS NOT Tai Chi. The REAL Tai Chi is one of the most devastating martial arts (Ask Master Erle Montaigue)This guy Chunglian is pleased to sell books about something NOT EXISTING such Tai Chi for health, meditation and peace. I really feel annoyed by this good-for-nothing Tai Chi (?). Why almost nobody explains about Dim Mak & Fa Jing?