Welcome to the taichido monthly email Newsletter where we give you news about taichido and Doshi Gary Robinson gives his thoughts on aspects (both practical and esoteric!) of tai chi and related areas.

Hello and welcome to the 19th Newsletter from tai chi website Taichido.com. This month Gary talks about his own tai chi origins and his teacher, as he now teaches others. I was having a converstaion with a friend the other day about how tai chi developed and in specific the Yang form (being my own form, of course). It moved me to add for your attention the following article by Gary's teacher Ray Wood about the Yang 'family tree'. It makes fascinating reading.

Please email mark@taichido.com if you have a view. Mark Allen, webmaster for taichido.com

"The true creation; principle and fundamental techniques; structural framework and historical verification of Tai Chi Chuan is extremely difficult to authenticate. However, the following "family tree" is believed to be a path leading to the present modern day Yang style of Tai Chi. Other styles being the Chen, Wu, Ho, Sun systems.

Legends mention that the founder and acknowledged patriarch of Tai Chi was a Taoist Priest by the name of Chang San Feng (1270-1364) . He lived as a recluse on Mount Wu-Tang in the Hupeh Province. He reworked the original Forms of Shao-Lin with a new emphasis on breathing and inner control. It is reputed that he learnt and created the so called "internal" boxing method either as a result of a dream, or, by watching a fight between a bird (crane) and a snake. The snake protected itself by using soft, circular, flowing movements. He then started a school which was known as the Wu-Tang School of Internal Boxing. The most ancient style of Tai Chi is the Chen style - after a garrison commander named Chen Wang Ting (1557-1664) who expanded the original ideas. The Chen style contained jumps, leaps and explosion of strength all within a circular path. The Yang style, formulated in the mid-l9th century, is however the most popular system.

Yang Lu-Chuan (1799-1872) lived in the Chen village of the Honan Province. He was a servant of a drug merchant and secretly watched, from a hidden vantage point through a crack in a wall, for ten years the training sessions being conducted by members of the Chen family. During the night he would practice what he had seen during the day, and so he became very efficient at fighting using this art (boxing system) . As a result he was invited to practice with the Chen family. Later Yang Lu-Chuan went to Peking where he became the chief combat instructor for the Manchu Imperial Guards. Yang Lu-Chuan was the founder of the Yang style of Tai Chi. He gradually changed the fighting style, which he had learnt, into a system of keeping fit.

Yang Lu-Chuan had two sons: Yang Pan-Hou (1837-1891) and Yang Chien-Hou (1841-1917)

Yang Chien-Hou had two sons: Yang Shao-Hou (1862-1929) and Yang Cheng-Fu (1883-1936) . (Grandsons to Yang LuChuan).

Yang Cheng-Fu started teaching in 1928 and developed the modern day Yang style of Tai Chi; the Long Form consisting of one hundred and eight movements and thirteen sequences. The Form became at this point in time a set of slow, continuous and harmonious movements, performed at a constant speed. This became the foundation of Tai Chi as we know it today. He relegated the fighting aspect to a less prominent role.

Chang Yin-Lin (born 1887) . Started studying Tai Chi at the age of fourteen with Yang Cheng-Fu.

Cheng Man-Ching (1901-1975) was a student of Yang Cheng-Fu. Cheng Man-Ching took the fighting art of the Yang style and combined it with his vast knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy. The result was a shortened Form consisting of just thirty seven postures. The main reason for the development of the Short Form was that few people had the time and patience to study the formal one hundred and eight posture classical Yang style. His Form was renowned for its soft and relatively small movements, compared to the larger movements of previous styles. Cheng Man-Ching studied "pushing hand techniques" from Chang Yin-Lin. In Japan and China, Cheng Man-Ching was acknowledged as a Master and Professor of medicine, painting, calligraphy, poetry, and martial arts.

Wang Yen-Nien (born 1914) studied Tai Chi from Chang Yin-Lin.

Peking Form (Yang Style) After the founding of New China, Tai Chi has undergone unprecedented development. In 1956, a simplified set of Tai Chi based on the most popular sequences of the Yang style was issued by the Sports Committee of the People's Republic of China. This series consists of twenty-four sequences which progress logically from the easy to the difficult, and take five minutes to complete. In 1957 a long Form was added, with eighty-eight sequences. These simplified versions have proved to be a great stimulus to the popularization of the art, and has brought about a resurgent interest in Tai Chi both in China and throughout the Western World."

(attributed to Ray Wood. This article and others can be found on the www.taichido.com website)

Plan A Plan A? Do not rely upon Plan A! The time has come again when I willingly shelve various other projects for a day or two and write you this newsletter - beginning as always with a blank page and approaching it like a letter to a pen pall. My first piece of news is that the Tai Chi student that I shared 'the house of taichido' with moved out on the 15th of last month leaving a space that, for financial as well as practical reasons, needed to be filled ... quickly. It was towards this financial imperative that my attention to other projects has recently been diverted , but now, with that possibly disastrous crisis dealt with, I am able to turn my attention to back to Taichido with a clearer and more settled and focused mind. Richard was actually due to move out at the end of the month, however (Plan A) ... so was I! Plan A was that I would become ordained as a Buddhist Priest on the 15th and further to this part of the plan, I was then supposed to go Japan at the end of that month (June) and reside there for one year in a Shin Temple. So, it came to be that I didn't really have a leg to stand on when Richard left two weeks earlier than expected for he was not to know that by then I had decided anyway to ditch Plan A altogether; well at least the going to Japan part, and thus it followed, the being ordained part. It sure has been one of those months when fact has been more outrageous than fiction and where "all the world is a stage and we are all but players ..." etc. Plan B. Pray for a miracle. I often worry that these newsletters are either too personal of too far off of the track of Tai Chi to be of any use or benefit to anyone. Regular readers will know this, and those that read beyond my words will know that this is my Tai Chi and I am actually never off the subject! My Tai Chi teacher said "always be prepared to put more into your practice that you will ever take out" and "just do it for the doing". It has become my pleasure to come to know, admire and be inspired by many other people since the retirement of my Tai Chi teacher, yet it is still his benchmark that I measure all of my aspirations or achievements against. My Tai Chi teacher (Ray) was an was an extraordinarily ordinary man. Take for instance - and why don't I get straight to the point - his 'retirement' when suddenly ... he was gone! For about ten years Ray was consistent and ever present and as such, perhaps the most important person in my life at that time. Now, just a couple of years later, he's gone altogether. What a great teacher! I am reminded of his first 'vanishing'. I studied the Yang Long Form with him for about five years. Throughout this period I was a 'carry over' from successive groups of about ten reduced to two or so in about a year. When a group has reduced to this minuscule size a new group was formed (following small adverts in the local newspaper) and I was then absorbed into this new group as just another beginner. This process must have reoccurred five or six times. Finally, in the company of a middle management type middle aged male and two young nurses with hippy (and who knows what other!) tendencies, this group of four completed is silece the Three Parts of the Long Form together for the first time and then Ray announced "group disbanded" ... and we each went our separate ways. I wrote to him the next week suggesting that he had a wicked if somewhat dubious sense of humor and then asked "when can I start all over again"? Thus I continued to meet with him regularly for another five years or so, but about half of the way through this he decided that he would not 'teach' (as opposed to 'do') Tai Chi any longer and he suggested to all of his remaining students that if they wished to continue practicing Tai Chi they should contact me - not because I was qualified instructor but because, at that time, I has access to space that could be used as a dojo. One of the people that contacted me was Mark and thus, though none of us were to know it then, the seed that became www.taichido.com was sown. Ray did continue teaching some martial art; not Tai Chi but Karate. I once asked him why this was and he explained that he felt he had simply gone full circle and was now returning to his roots - that being Karate and the deeply philosophical form of 'soft' of Karate within the traditions of Kyushindo as developed by the Great (if eccentric) Master Kenshuro Abbey. For more information of Kenshiro Abbey and Kyushindo please visit:http://www.soton.ac.uk/~maa1/chi/menukyu.htm. This article, based upon material provided to me long ago by Ray illustrates that Kenshiro was a man who personified martial art "just for the doing", and the story of his efforts reveals an elusive man who, like Ray, was impossible to pin down. Many people claim to have been a student of Kenshiro Abbey but few in fact were, because Kenshuro did not really have students per say. He just did what he did and just did it for the doing. Please do also visit Sensei Abbey's biography, written by myself bassed upon some of Ray's notes @ http://www.soton.ac.uk/~maa1/chi/kyushindo/abbe.htm Back to Plan A So instead of becoming a Buddhist Priest and going to live in a Temple in Japan for a year, I opted instead for 'the action of non-action' that meant staying where I was and doing what I do. And as regards to a housemate? Pray for a miracle! I write this newsletter to you now sat in the same old chair facing the same old screen in my relocated office. Relocated that is, to another room in the same old house. On the 23rd of this month a practicing Buddhist named Martin moved into the house taking two of the six rooms to treat as his home. The good thing about 'doing for the doing' is that when you get used to the idea you realise that nothing gets left undone! Throughout this turbulent period the dojo on the top floor has ticked away quite happily. In fact, because for a while I was working towards dealing with a worse case scenario, that being liable myself for the whole or the rental, I had very recently taken in more beginner students and hey presto, next week I shall entertain a total of seventeen students. In all of the years that I have been an instructor, this will be the greatest number that I have ever seen in a single week. All is well at the house of taichido and this newsletter confirms that we continue to do what we do ... just for the doing. Gassho, Gary gary@wheelswithinwheels.net