This would sudjest that he knows little of authentic Tai chi Chuan, Tai chi is not (as far as i am aware) taught in Shaolin, it is a taoist not buddhist system and is not really related to Shaolin at all, it is directly related to Wu dang.
The monks of the shaolin temple have (only since the emergence of yang tai chi) adopted the health forms of tai chi - but know very little / nothing of the authentic fighting style - it would appear that the shaolin may have tryed to interprite the tai chi forms using their external methods. The result is poor and incorrect.
Although i do not know your teacher or his teacher so they may very well be an exeption. I mean no offence to him or you.
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Anyway although all can help u focus chi and have many health benefits the only 1 that can be used for fighting is Chen style which is also the oldest.
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The taoists at wu dang may have something to say about that!!
Also Yang Cheng Fu, founder of the Yang style - was an undefeated fighting champion, The wu brothers, founders of one of the wu styles were only defeated once by a ba gua expert, Sun lu tang was an undefeated fighting master of Ba gua and Hsing I and later formed a tai chi system incorporating these styles. Many beleive this to be the most effective.
Chen style/chen village is now encompassed in a tourist trap much like shaolin. Very little authentic content still remains.
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Generally there are only a handful of people in the world that can actually use taichi to fight and i mean a handful.
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I would not say that there is only a handfull. There are many fighters that can use Tai chi very very effectivley. Not people that are masters of every principle in the art, but fighters non the less.
I agree that 9 out of 10 schools are very misled and mistaken regarding the meaning and application of tai chi to combat. But there are many real fighters out there.
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The reason there r so few that can actually effectively use it to fight is because it takes so long to master shifu yan jian says the quickest any1 has ever learnt taichi properly was 25yrs and that was a long time ago.
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Unfortunatley this is just not correct according to historical facts.
If we look at the formation of Sun Style. Sun lu tang studied Tai chi for 3 years before forming his own style. He was admittedley a master of the 2 other main internal systems and this is really a fast track to tai chi mastery. He already had the major principles of Internal work from the other two.
Yang cheng fu, learnt Tai chi in around 10 years and was, without a doubt one of the greatest masters of the art ever to have lived, defeating all challange matches.
there are many many other examples that contradict this statement.
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is nice to combine it it with other styles as well.
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I would say that if you were to combine you would need to do so with other internal systems. so as not to contradict your principles of combat.
Just my take on things.
Cheers
Chris