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    Yin Yang Studies: Traditional Martial Arts Association

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    Nicolas Drl
    The document discusses the concepts of yin and yang in traditional Chinese martial arts and taiji specifically. It provides examples of yin and yang opposites and explains that they contain aspects of each other. Yin and yang underpin Chinese culture and aspects like the physical body, mind, and tactical principles in taiji. It gives an example from The Art of War about attacking emptiness and defending fullness. The document then provides starting points for understanding yin and yang in standing, movement, and the five elements in taiji forms and applications.

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    Yin Yang Studies: Traditional Martial Arts Association

    Uploaded by

    Nicolas Drl
    43 views3 pages
    The document discusses the concepts of yin and yang in traditional Chinese martial arts and taiji specifically. It provides examples of yin and yang opposites and explains that they contain aspects of each other. Yin and yang underpin Chinese culture and aspects like the physical body, mind, and tactical principles in taiji. It gives an example from The Art of War about attacking emptiness and defending fullness. The document then provides starting points for understanding yin and yang in standing, movement, and the five elements in taiji forms and applications.

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    The document discusses the concepts of yin and yang in traditional Chinese martial arts and taiji specifically. It provides examples of yin and yang opposites and explains that they contain aspects of each other. Yin and yang underpin Chinese culture and aspects like the physical body, mind, and tactical principles in taiji. It gives an example from The Art of War about attacking emptiness and defending fullness. The document then provides starting points for understanding yin and yang in standing, movement, and the five elements in taiji forms and applications.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    43 views3 pages

    Yin Yang Studies: Traditional Martial Arts Association

    Uploaded by

    Nicolas Drl
    The document discusses the concepts of yin and yang in traditional Chinese martial arts and taiji specifically. It provides examples of yin and yang opposites and explains that they contain aspects of each other. Yin and yang underpin Chinese culture and aspects like the physical body, mind, and tactical principles in taiji. It gives an example from The Art of War about attacking emptiness and defending fullness. The document then provides starting points for understanding yin and yang in standing, movement, and the five elements in taiji forms and applications.

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    Traditional Martial Arts Association

    Yin Yang Studies

    Below are some examples of Yin and Yang opposites but note that according to taiji theory each contains
    elements of its opposite and the height of one leads to the creation of the other.
    Yin Yang
    Shady Sunny
    Insubstantial Substantial
    Defence Attack
    Swallow Spit
    Sink Float
    Store Release
    Close Open
    Light Heavy
    Anti-clockwise Clockwise
    Water Fire
    Earth Heaven
    Energy body Physical body
    Female Male
    Moon Sun
    Completion Creation
    Cold Heat
    Empty Full
    The theory of taiji or the constant interplay of Yin and Yang underpins many, if not all aspects of traditional
    Chinese culture and indeed extends into every day life. In taijiquan we constantly seek to embody yin and
    yang both in the physical body and in the interplay between mind and body. Furthermore the tactical and
    strategic principles of the art are rooted in the taiji.
    For example consider this teaching from the Art of War and its commentaries: “Good warriors make others
    come to them, and do not go to others. This is the principle of emptiness and fullness of others and self.
    When you induce opponents to come to you, then their force is always empty; as long as you do not go to
    them, your force is always full. Attacking emptiness with fullness is like throwing stones on eggs.” — Zhang
    Yu in his commentary on Sun Zi’s Art of War

    Starting Points

    Standing
    Wuji, the prelude to taiji
    Even as we stand in an undifferentiated posture our breath, the very stuff of life, starts the taiji. Now as we
    consider the slightest shifts in weight distribution we see more clearly the birth of the taiji.

    Moving
    Following the principle of going from the large to the small we start our study of yin and yang in movement
    with:
    yin and yang as up and down left and right.

    Yin and Yang and constant change


    The process by which all things are constituted of the ever-changing relationship between yin and yang is
    described by the Chinese bagua of which there are two arrangements the pre-heaven and the post-
    heaven
    The 8 basic symbols of trigrams are:
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

    qian2 dui1 li2 zhen sun4 kan3 gen4 kun1

    In the pre-heaven sequence the eight trigrams correspond to taijiquan’s eight basic powers thus:
    Qian Peng
    Kun Lu
    Kan Ji
    Li An
    Sun Cai
    Gen Lieh
    Dui Zhou
    Zhen Kao
    In the post-heaven sequence the correspondence is thus:
    Kan Peng
    Li Lu
    Dui Ji
    Zhen An
    Qian Cai
    Kun Lieh
    Gen Zhou
    Sun Kao
    By examining the trigrams we can learn something about the combination of yin and yang in the
    corresponding powers.
    The relationship between the pre-heaven and the post-heaven diagrams in martial arts is explained in three
    different ways:
    1/ Train the post-heaven to remedy the pre-heaven
    2/Train the post-heaven to return to the pre-heaven
    3/Train the unification of pre-heaven and post-heaven
    In order to make practical use of these trigrams in our training we shall consider the pre-heaven
    arrangement as the ideal that we are aiming for and the post-heaven arrangement as a guide to the qualities
    our movements should embody in order to attain that ideal.
    The Five Elements
    As well as the eight powers taijiquan embodies the five movements: forward, backward, left, right
    and zhong ding or central equilibrium.
    These correspond to the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire and earth.
    Forward Metal
    Backward Wood
    Left Water
    Right Fire
    Centre Earth
    We can practice these both in solo movements and with a partner.
    The constant interplay of yin and yang can be found in every aspect of taijiquan whether, form, pushing
    hands, weapons, applications or neigong but REMEMBER:
    NO MATTER HOW COMPLEX ALL OF THIS SEEMS, THE ESSENCE IS VERY SIMPLE:
    One Yin, one Yang and turn the waist.

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