Nobody truly knows the exact origins of Tai Chi Chuan, since its documented history only goes back to the  mid 1700s. However, it is generally agreed that the martial art was invented in China.

Centuries of unwritten history have proved Tai Chi Chuan to have one of the most mysterious origins in the world.

Tai Chi Chuan may have simply been a form of meditative exercise, based on a number of popular Chinese breathing exercises invented over two millennia ago. However, this lacks the flair of another theory of its origins.

The Tai Chi Chuan Story

It is popularly believed that the founder of Tai Chi Chuan was Chang San-Feng, who lived on Wu Tan mountain in Jupeth province, China,  in the 1400s (or the late 1200s). The Taoist priest, Chang San-Feng, is believed to have invented Tai Chi Chuan after an observation he made one day involving a snake and  a hawk (some believe it was a crane).

The hawk was attacking the snake, trying to kill it for food. Naturally, the snake defended itself from the attacks. The snake twisted, coiled and slithered back, away from the hawk. Despite it being weaker than the hawk, the snake was successful in defending itself. Seeing this, the Taoist priest realized that a self defence system could be successful even if the attacker was stronger than the victim. The success of the defence depended on the cleverness of how the victim yielded to the attacker, based on softness versus hardness. Hence,  Tai Chi Chuan was born.

However, the essence of  Tai Chi Chuan was not to make practitioners better fighters;  Tai Chi Chuan was to make its practitioners healthier and wiser.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 4:23 am and is filed under Chinese Martial Arts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.