Taichi for Self Defense
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
If you look at the ads for any taichi chuan school, you will notice that the primary thing sold in the advertisement is the health, wellness and psychological benefits of the art. There is nothing wrong with this, but it begs the question where is all the self defense. After all, taichi chuan is translated into English as “Supreme Ultimate Fist”. Unfortunately, over time, the health aspects of taichi were stressed at the exclusion of the self defense aspects. Needless to say, this is unfortunate and it is important to mention some of the ‘forgotten’ self defense aspects of the art before they are completely forgotten. To do this one must define the basic area of self defense application of the art which is the art’s response to aggression.
Understanding Aggression
A great deal of the skepticism that surrounds the use of taichi as a valuable form of self defense is that people seem to always define self defense from the mode of an athletic perspective. In other words, they define self defense as fighting and the best method of fighting would be boxing as it teaches an individual an incredibly effective methods of using one’s body weight to deliver effective punches. This is really not the purpose of taichi as taichi does not seek to exchange blows with an aggressor. Instead, it seeks to work against the aggressive forward motion of an opponent. In other words, if the person takes movement towards, reaches out at or loads up for a huge overhand knockout punch, taichi may be able to provide an effective (albeit not all inclusive) self defense response to such aggression.
Basic Techniques and their Applications
To chronicle and detail all the aspects of the self defense applications of the art would be next to impossible in such a short essay, but what can be presented are the two primary “moves” of the system and they include foot sweeps and dissolving motions. Foot sweeps are exactly what they sound like: you practitioner of the art will use his or her foot to sweep the aggressor’s foot out form under him. This either trips the person to the ground or simply places them off balance and vulnerable to another attack. Dissolves are a little more difficult to explain as they diffuse offensive motions do to friction. In other words, a punch is ‘dissolved’ by the friction of the forearm which stops the punch from traveling further. (Yes, it is much harder to do than it sounds so don’t run off and try it) While there are other offensive/defensive aspects of the art, these are the primary move sets and they work quite well provided you study taichi under a qualified instructor.
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