Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Chuan Lineage

                                                            Yang Lu-Chan (1799 – 1872)

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                                                                        Yang Pan-Hou

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                                                                          Wang Jiao-Yu

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                                                                          Kuo Lien-Ying

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Let no one esteem lightly

The Thirteen Movements,

But bear in mind that your consciousness of them commences in the waist,

          distribution of blanks and substantives in a given movement,

While keeping the chi freely circulating throughout your whole body.

All changes and motions are conceived and touched off in the stillness of

          absolute quietude,

Hence motion and action are kindred to rest and inaction, in other words,

          ultimately indistinguishable from each other.

Likewise, the mystery of Tai Chi Chuan is that

It is your opponent’s movements that condition your own as adapted by

          nature to his own undoing.

Remember to be mindful of every single move by trying to feel its meaning,

And you will eventually come into possession of the art’s secrets without

          conscious effort.

Rivet your attention, without even a moment’s interruption, onto the waist

          interval, and

Keep your abdomen free from tension due to food or impurities, so that

Your vitality flux (chi) may, as it were, boil and rise like steam.

          all the while, when

Your limbs and body are gyrating with effortless nimbleness, and your head

          is held up buoyant as if suspended from above.

Carefully observe and investigate and convince yourself that

Your way of bending or straightening, your closing-in or throwing-open

          should never be as you will them to be, but as Nature wills.

A novice will require verbal instruction during the initial stages.

But practice will steer its own course and bring about its own perfection.

The spirit is sovereign and the body its servant,

The end purpose of these exercise is to prolong life and endow it with the

         youth of eternal spring.

Oh, sing!  Oh, sing!  Sing this short song of 144 Chinese characters;

Commit every single word of it to memory without exception.

Enquiries and researches that deviate from this approach

Only waste time and leave behind regrets and sighings.

For information on any of the classes,