MARTIAL ARTS STYLE

KUNG FU - HARD & SOFT

Shaolin kung-fu originated when a Buddhist monk named Tamo visited the emperor back in 540 A.D. He vistied the Buddhist temple and noticed that the priests were in very poor physical health. To improve their health conditions, Tamo taught them moving sets to strengthen and enhance ch'i flow. When exactly the moving sets were applied to self-defence was never recorded, but the temples were in places where wild animals and bandits roamed, so it could not have been a very long time. Later, the Shaolin temples broke off from each other to form different sects. The Northern and Southern sects. Northern Shaolin mainly uses the legs, and Southern Shaolin monks use more punches. When the monks dicovered the self defense aspect of the sets, they modified the forms to the movements of five animals, the tiger, crane, panther, snake, and dragon. The monks found that the different animals had distinct traits that better suited them to the individual creature's survival. There were other animals that the monks found capable of defending themselves in the wild, but they eventually evolved into individual styles and did not remain part of the Shaolin order. The temple was named by the the emperor who had his gardener plant new trees near and around the monastary. So the name Shaolin (in Mandarin, Siu-lam in Cantonese) is literally translated as "new (or young) forest."

Soft and Hard styles of Kung-fu. Many people may not understand what I meant when I explained that Tai C'hi was a soft style, so let me go further in detail. A hard style is one that when a punch is thrown, it is blocked, then a counter attack is thrown. A soft style would "absorb" the attack and redirect it to open up the chance for a offensive move. Confused, yet? Try this exercise: throw a piece of cotton into the air and try to split the cotton with a punch, kick, chop, whatever you want. It can't be done, can it? No, because the cotton will always absorb the attack and bounce off your hand. It is believed that in a hard style, to hit is to want to be hurt. This is the very essence of the soft styles. Soft styles are often referred to as an internal style or a mind style. Tai c'hi is not the only internal style, Hsing-I and Baugua are some others. Japanese Karate has its own soft styles: Aikido, Judo, Ju-jitsu, etc.

Link Chinese Martial Arts