About zhan zhuang and silk reeling

I came across the following question and answer at a Chen style site and I thought it was worth mentioning.

Where did zhanzhuang and silk reeling exercises come from?

Zhanzhuang and things like starting position, closing position and silk reeling exercises are a relatively new additions to the Chen style syllabus. Its not that they didn’t exist before, its just that they were taught in an ad hoc way before.

Before, everyone learned Tai Chi from a very early age, so if you wanted to teach someone about the internal aspects of Tai Chi, you would ask them to hold a single whip so you could correct the qi flow. Nowadays, because a lot of people start at an older age, and because they don’t have the physical endurance that working a field by hand gives you, holding a single whip is too complicated and physically demanding, so you tell them to hold a zhanzhuang posture instead.

The same goes for silk reeling exercises. The Chen form is just one big silk reeling exercise, so if you have been doing it all your life and you have constant access to an expert, it is not necessary to teach isolated exercises. Moreover, because you would be so familiar with the form, insight into the underlying meaning would come. Today however to allow more people to understand the form, silk reeling exercises have been created to assist teaching.

As for the starting and finishing positions in the form, if you live in a quiet farming community it is not so important to calm the mind before practicing. They would start the form by simply standing still for a moment, and then go straight into it without the up, down, left, right arm wave you see today.

Most people don’t seem to know when the standing and silk reeling exercises were invented nor why they were invented. Many just assume that they were always there and being practiced. Not so.

This is a good quote because it makes the relationship between the standing and silk reeling exercises, the form, and the lifestyle of the Chen’s much clearer. But notice how it goes against perceived wisdom. Notice how the Chens were farmers with strong bodies who didn’t need the “crutches” of standing and silk reeling. Working in the fields provided a lot of ENDURANCE, so they could just hold single whip and have it corrected. They didn’t need to hold zhuan zhuang postures outside of the form.

Notice that they didn’t rely on their taiji form for physical exercise. In fact, it was the other way around: their physical endurance that was gained through working in the field was expressed in their taiji.

Interesting.

Second, if the proper foundation of strength and endurance are there along with proper teaching, then standing meditation and silk reeling practices aren’t really needed. In fact, I’ve heard that those things came about because the Chens were “encouraged” by the Reds to develop those things so that Chen style would be easier to learn. I think memories of the Cultural Revolution and how the Chen village was sacked were firmly in their minds when they were being “encouraged.” 

Taiwan Chen style reflects the older way of doing things in that form practice gets a greater emphasis and things like standing and silk reeling outside of the form are rarely practiced. Now, I’m not really against standing or silk reeling practice – those two things are very imporant IMO. But I use them as a laboratory to explore the different movements and powers (jings) found in the form. I don’t use them so much for conditioning. IMO, that’s what the form is for.