Styles?

[OULobo]

I'm not a frequent visitor to this thread and my Tai Chi experience is about 2hrs. of half-as*ed instruction and a ton of watching. My question is what are the different styles of Tai Chi, their ages, origins, specialties, basic descriptions?

 

[clfsean]

I'm not a frequent visitor to this thread and my Tai Chi experience is about 2hrs. of half-as*ed instruction and a ton of watching. My question is what are the different styles of Tai Chi, their ages, origins, specialties, basic descriptions?

Basics with broad ranging, non specific answers...

1) Chen... oldest, most overtly martial, almost external in nature at times. Dates back to about the end of the Ming Dynasty (give or take)... http://www.chenstyle.com/ for the bomb information. (I've practiced this for a couple of years Chen Zhen lei's 18 step)

2) Yang... 2nd oldest, used to be overtly martial, formulated by Yang Lu chan who was a servant of the Chen family for 10 years or so. (Just started learning 108)

3,4,5.....) Wu, Wu(Hao), Sun, GuangPing, Cheng man ching, Fu, etc.... all came after the main 2 branches. The two Wu's I'm not familiar enough with to discuss... Sun was found by Sun Lu tang who combined one of the Wu's with his existing knowledge of Bagua & Xingyi... Guangping is a offshoot of Yang, same as Cheng Man Ching (Did his 37 posture for a couple of years now too) ... Fu not familiar enough with...