Daoist TCM & the Essence of Wushu

Daoist TCM & Essence of Wushu

Abstract from:

Author: Jia Shusen

--Acupuncturist Jia Shusen

With the development of the civilization of the human being, the contents of Chinese Martial Arts are getting more and more rich and colorful, nowadays they are barely fight and kill, nor are similar to the western-oriented aerobic exercise, but a all-round subject which combines classic philosophy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, physics, mechanics, aesthetics and somatology as well as is deeply rooted in the Traditional Chinese Culture. Ba Gua Zhang (Eight Trigram Palm) is such a category of Chinese Martial Arts.

The theoretical basis of Ba Gua Zhang stems from the theory of the Yi King. The Yi King or “Yì Jīng” (Pinyin); also called “Book of Changes” or “Classic of Changes” is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts and is an encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Culture. The text describes an ancient system of cosmology containing everything in the universe like the heaven, the earth, the society and even the human body, the interior Zang-fu organs, the exterior extremities, “tininess and puniness never have its limitation, while magnitude and mightiness never reach its verge”.

The theory that Ba Gua Zhang adopted comes from the three meanings of “Yi” which are ease and simplicity, variability (change and transformation), and persistency (invariability).

Simplicity - the root of the substance. The fundamental law underlying everything in the universe is utterly plain and simple, no matter how abstruse or complex some things may appear to be. It is easy to understand and simple to follow.

Variability - the use of the substance. Everything in the universe is alive and is continually changing.

Persistency - the essence of the substance. While everything in the universe seems to be changing, among the changing tides there is a persistent principle, a central rule, which does not vary with space and time.

Quoted from the Yi theory, “imaged to the phenomena in the far nature and the near body of oneself”, numbered by the diagram, trigram, hexagram, etc. the eight basic single palms had been developed into eight groups, sixty-four palms in a specific order. This is what we called “variability” of Ba Gua Zhang.

--Evolution of Taiji & Eight Trigram Symbol

--Early Arrangement of Fuxi

--Later Arrangement of King Wen

To be continued.