Originally Posted by
FBD
:lol: says people who have no clue! while a lot of it has devolved into that due to the longevity benefits, any real taiji person will tell you it is as deadly as you want to make it and any real taiji teacher will never separate the longevity stuff from the martial application, because the martial application ensures the correct posture and hence most longevity benefit - I've seen some amazingly fast taiji players - dont be fooled that since it is an internal martial art it doesnt mean its super effective - especially if the practitioner learns all 3 of the main chinese martial arts - taiji flows, bagua circles, xingyi (shing-ee) is straight-line. So for example if you've seen Jet Li's "The One" his main character is a bagua guy and the adversary is a xingyi guy. I think one of Jet Li's older movies is called tai chi master or something like that - its a good film, there you can actually see some martial applications of taiji.