The Real Cost of Learning Chen Taijiquan

This article is for anyone seriously considering the study of Chen-style Taijiquan, or anyone already on that path who wonders why progress feels so slow. After more than 45 years of practice and teaching — beginning under Master T.T. Liang in 1981 — I have watched many students come and go. What follows are the most common obstacles I have seen, and some honest thoughts on each.

One — Understanding What You Are Getting Into

Chen Taijiquan is a high-level Gong Fu art with deep roots as a serious martial discipline. It was, at its origins, a matter of life and death. Many people arriving at a Taiji class have a very different picture in mind — something gentle, meditative, not physically demanding. That picture is not wrong exactly, but it is incomplete, and the gap between expectation and reality is where most students are lost.

If you come to this art understanding what it actually is and what it will ask of you, your chances improve considerably.

Two — The Problem of Relaxation

Most people are not interested in relaxing. Not in any real sense. We are protective of the armour our tension provides, and surrendering it feels genuinely threatening. But in Taijiquan, relaxation is not optional. It is the foundation of everything else.

You must be able to control your breath, and breath control requires relaxation. You must breathe from the diaphragm, not the chest. You must root your body — not a vague, loose, almost-falling quality, but an alive loosening of the entire structure, sinking through the hips and into the feet. That quality cannot be forced. It has to be cultivated, patiently, over years.

Three — Finding a Competent Teacher

This is perhaps the most serious obstacle of all, and the one least within your control. Through a chance invitation to a workshop in Vancouver, I encountered Silk Reeling for the first time. I also found it demanding. An hour of serious Silk Reeling practice involves a great deal of sweat.

That introduction led me to study for eight years with the San Francisco Chen teacher Zhang Xue-Xin. And yet, at the end of that time, I was nearly ready to quit Taijiquan entirely.

"Push Hands is a stage of great danger. Not physical danger, but the danger of abandoning your art for a cheap win." — Chen Fa-ke

Both he and T.T. Liang promoted what they called investing in loss — do it correctly until you can win by doing it correctly. If your teacher cannot create Peng, cannot explain it, and cannot transmit it, keep looking.

Four — The Physical Demands

The most persistent lie told about Tai Chi is that it is easy and not physically demanding. When I first encountered the basic exercise called Jibengong — sometimes called Circles — I could not complete even one full repetition. I was strong from years of prior practice. It did not matter. I fell down at three-quarters of a circle.

Five — Time

Master Liang used to say that to become good at Tai Chi, a student must be either very rich or very poor. He meant it in terms of time. A realistic daily schedule for achieving genuine competence over five years looks something like this:

Chen Fa-ke is said to have performed up to one hundred repetitions of Yi Lu in a single day. His student Hong Junsheng trained similarly. Both became legendary. The connection is not accidental.

A Final Word

None of this is written to discourage you. It is written so that you can make an informed decision about what you are walking into. The art is real. The rewards are real. But they are proportional to what you put in — and what you are willing to put down.