The History of Chinese Martial Arts is both complex and not without controversy. The chart below is an illustration of my martial “family tree” this is known as a lineage, it is slightly abbreviated for clarity. The people named, connected via the pink lines, are my direct lineage predecessors, because I was a lineage student of the late Dan Docherty (Practical Tai Chi Chuan), which is a part of the Wudang Tai Chi School established by Cheng Tin Hung (1930-2005) in Hong Kong. Being a lineage student indicates that I was accepted as what is known as an “Inside The Door Student”, which means I received direct, private instruction that is not available in public classes.
You can see in the chart that Cheng Wing Kwong was a student of several different schools, it his his influence which, I believe, in part explains how this branch of TaJiQuan differs from more mainstream TaiJi schools. He was responsible for establishing the importance of Nei Gong training and other supplementary training drills. He was famous for his ability to withstand full power strikes to his body. By training in XingYoQuan I have chosen to further explore these aspects of the lineage and how they influence the Wudang School.
Both my teacher Dan Docherty and his teacher; Master Cheng Tin Hung took the decision to not use the “Wu” family name in their schools’ names, something that they were entitled to do if they so chose. They both did this because they rejected the concept of family inheritance of schools as it can be damaging to a school if a person of low ability inherits a school because of ‘birth right’. I follow the same reasoning. Master Cheng used the name “Wudang” Tai Chi, it should be understood that he was not claiming that his style of Tai Chi directly originated on Wudang Mountain, it was simply recognition of the legendary importance of the mountain range in Daoist / Tai Chi history.
I use the name Applied TaiJiQuan - YuanYi Thirteen Dynamics Long Boxing in relation to the arts that I teach because my training regime is syncretic, it combines aspects of Daoist DaoYin (Yoga - Meditation), XingYiQuan (YiQuan) combined with Wudang TaiJiQuan and personal research into the earliest versions of TaiJIQuan. Therefore my practice and teaching differs from other TaiJi schools including other practitioners of the Wudang / Practical TaiJiQuan lineage; I refer to my TaiJi as “Applied TaiJiQuan”, because I have specialised in researching and understanding the original intent (Yuan Yi) of TaiJi. I focus my training on essential foundation skills and conditioning rather than accumulation of numerous forms. The hundreds of forms that are now studied are modern creations, while entertaining and pleasant to watch, they add little to martial skill or obtaining health. The second difference is the focus on the importance of “Yi” (Intent / Will) and sound physical structure in training, this is why I use the core training of Daoist DaoYin (Yoga - Meditation), XingYi / YiQuan within TaiJi training to create YuanYi Thirteen Dynamics Long Boxing.
Dan Docherty, my TaJiQuan teacher passed away at the end of 2021. Dan was my only Taiji teacher, I started to study with Dan in the 1980’s and while I was and still am happy to train and practice with other schools I never felt the need to find another teacher. His teaching was always open and honest and most importantly he taught me how to understand and analyse Taiji and its martial application. Like all good teachers he taught his students to think for themselves. I’ve used that guidance to deepen my study into historical training methods and develop YuanYi Thirteen Dynamics Long Boxing.
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