Yen-nien Daoguan - Together learn Yangjia Michuan Taijiquan

Yen-nien Daoguan / Meet Our Teac

Knowing the Goal of Tuishou

By Wang Yen-nien

July 23, 2001 France

Translated by Julia Fairchild

With cultivating one's physical and mental capabilities as a goal, [Tuishou] becomes a profound method for developing one's internal alchemical gongfu. As Zhang Sanfeng noted, hitting and killing [abilities] provide no guarantees for life or health and therefore become meaningless.

True cultivation involves uniting the intellectual (or civil) and the martial disciplines, also known as the internal and the external disciplines. Intellectuals study in inner tranquility; martial artists in movement. Inner tranquility and movement studied simultaneously becomes for Internal Alchemists the highest level of training possible.

Internal Alchemists take as their method of training taijiquan, said to have been developed by Zhang Sanfeng and based in part on the Eight Brocades exercises introduced by the Indian Buddhist patriarch Bodhidharma, who had found Chinese monks practicing stillness without movement. With each monk looking as if he had no qi at all, Bodhidharma is said to have immediately encouraged the practice of the Eight Brocades (Ba Duan Jin Shen Gong). Thanks to this exercise set, the monks’ vital energy (qi) returned. Zhang Sanfeng, seeing the results, thereupon created the precursor form of what we know of today as Taijiquan (outer body moving while inwardly tranquil) and a meditation method (outer body tranquil while inwardly moving.) With this prodigious taiji skill, Internal Alchemists saved themselves time and obtained marvelous results.

However, neither meditation nor martial practice was sufficient to promote circulation or open the body’s channels. Therefore a two-person cooperative practice, known as Tuishou, was developed. Using this method, practitioners were ultimately able to promote circulation and open the body’s channels and achieve great progress in their practice of the Dao. They found that their powers encompassed the Heavens (absorbing the essences of the sun and the moon), the earth (absorbing the essences of the Earth) and that by combining the elements wind, water and fire, their Jing, their Qi and their Shen soon entered into that exalted state where Heaven, Earth and Man are One, and they became holders of the highest wisdom.

As a teacher, and after sixty or seventy years of studying Daoist practice and martial arts, I have come to believe that it is pointless to think about these practices in terms of competition or self-defense. This only harms oneself as well as others. In Daoist practice, people interact peacefully and aim for daily progress in spirit and spiritual achievement so as to ultimately achieve supreme unity in the Dao.

Laozi, Confucius and Zhang Sanfeng of Chinese antiquity were all practitioners of the Dao. Though they carried swords, they did so not to kill people, but as a means of physical discipline through swordplay. Accordingly, we at the ROC-Taiwan National Yangjia Michuan Taijiquan Association and the Yen-nien Daoguan emphasize performance over competition as a way to encourage exercise and health and fitness. We wish everyone success in the Dao.