Customer Reviews

T'ai Chi According to the I Ching: Embodying the Principles of the Book of Changes

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Very detailed discussion of tai chi concepts, linking the techniques explicitly to the 8 trigrams, the five activities and five elements. The book is chock full of diagrams and illustrations that show these relationships, which makes it good as a reference, as you'll find few other books that lay it all out like this one does. Also discussions and presentations of the pre-heaven 16-movement form for both yin and yang parts, and the 64 move post-heaven form, the 8 hands, and the 8 stances as well. There's a huge amount of detail here also, which is bound to make it a little intimidating to some people, but overall a very detailed book although perhaps more than most people will want to wade through to gain an understanding of these concepts, since most tai chi practitioners are probably more interested in practical applications rather than an advanced knowledge of taoist theory. But at least some knowledge of that is necessary to become a truly advanced practitioner, and this book serves very well in that regard.

By the way, a little history here and also by way of comparing tai chi with kung fu. Tai chi was developed in the vicinity of the Wu Dan mountain, and is one of the three internal arts, along with Hsing I and Ba Gua. According to the history, tai chi was developed when a master (can't recall his name right now) back in the 13th took the Twelve Canons of Chinese Boxing, a famous martial arts book, added the great Da Mo's internal principles and modified the postures, and created the first tai chi movements. In the beginning there were only a half a dozen movements, but these were later expanded.

Although tai chi is known as a soft, internal art, it's not correct that it can't be hard. Tai chi is both hard and soft, but the balance between the two is different. In kung fu or Shaolin, the hardness and softness run the full gamut or spectrum. There are movements which are extremely soft and there are others that are very hard with lots of power and strength.

In tai chi, however, the two principles of yin yang come into play, which means that the hard and the soft are always balanced, and there is never an excess of either, so you don't get the extremes like you do in kung fu. However, tai chi is capable of hitting very hard when it wants. My masters would prefer to use the other person's strength against them, but when pressed, they had no problem with just hitting you hard, either, and they could hit just as hard as my karate and kung fu masters. :-)

Another point to keep in mind is that there is considerable overlap between kung fu and tai chi, as both have internal training. It's just that in tai chi, they start with the internal and work outword to the external, and kung fu starts with the external and works inward. In that sense, their methods are opposite sides of the same coin. This is because kung fu's internal chi gung methods come from Da Mo (or Daruma or Bodidharma, as he's sometimes called), rather than from the master or master's who developed tai chi. There are even similarities between the three external harmonies in tai chi, which is the shoulders in harmony with the hips, the elbows in harmony with the knees, and the hands in harmony with the feet (they are supposed to move together), in kung fu. I study hung gar kung fu also, and some of the movements also incorporate these principles.

Finally, although tai chi is well known these days for pushing hands and for off-balancing the opponent, actually, that part was incorporated into tai chi later on. Tai chi was originally a purely dim mak or points striking art. Most people who study tai chi still don't seem to know that fact as most do the short form for health and exercise, and the martial aspect and especially the point striking principles aren't taught as often. But tai chi has medical, martial, and spiritual aspects, and it is said that the Yang style form has 7 levels of performance, with the highest being the spiritual level.

Well, I didn't mean to digress so much, but I mention all this since sometimes in books like the present one, it's easy to lose sight of the overall guiding principles in tai chi, which aren't really that mysterious, they're just different, and get lost in the details. Really, the taoist concepts in tai chi aren't that difficult to understand intellectually, it's the actual physical application of them in the tai chi form that can take you half a lifetime to really learn and get good at. :-)

This book is difficult to review because if you are like me you love it when technical manuals of this kind are presented. This is a great effort and as always Mr. Olson does a great job, but I think it would have been a home run if the focus was kept tighter. I think this should have been 2 books and each might have been made even more to the point in clarity. It will be in my library though along with a simpler? version by Da Lui.

Holy Mackerel!

After my first run through of this book, my tai chi practice has been greatly enriched.
I never realized that tai chi contained an integrated ensemble of at least 4 major systems:
1) Before Heaven, 2) After Heaven, 3) Five Activities, and 4) Eight Gates (and more).

Heck, I had been trying to cram everything (hands/feet/waist/yin organs/postures/movements/Five Animals) into the single Five Elements (Activities) paradigm.

I do hope that Mr. Olson will be able to produce a future publication just as detailed on the 64-Posture I Ching T'ai Chi Form--
Master Olson's magnum opus.

But right now I'm going off on a tangent trying to decide whether these taoist concepts follow a deterministic, repeatable path or comport with newer views of nature as an irreversible, chaotic process with an arrow of time where movements are ever evolving in a non-equilibrium state.

T'ai Chi Chuan and IChing by Master Da Liu
Perrenial Library 1972
006-0804521

Pull Back
Kun - The receptive
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White Crane Spreads Wings
Pi - Grace
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White Crane is Listed in the 16 Form as Chapter #9
Does it match Pi??