Thoughts on Lineage

Over at Thoughts on Tai Chi, there was a good post about lineage; what it does and does not mean. The full post may be read here. An except is below.

What exactly does it mean with a lineage in Tai Chi? And does training within a lineage mean to learn a more complete art, and does it lead to a fuller understanding of Tai Chi Chuan?

Ideally, it should. A lineage means that all of the knowledge in the same style, have been preserved and standardized by the founder of the lineage (or by the founder of a branch of a larger, older lineage). Thus, lineage is something style-specific, and this is maybe my main critique of “lineages”, that is cements the idea that there are “styles” in Tai Chi, something I personally disagree with on a fundamental level, even though I accept that “style” is generally accepted in the Tai Chi community.

What is positive and on the pro side with a lineage, is that you, can study an at least somewhat complete curriculum, and that the standard of what is taught in the schools of the lineage is the same and regulated. With other words – you can usually expect some kind of standard.

However, what is taught through lineages is not always as complete as claimed. All schools, styles and branches have their own limitations, though “lineage” might be the best example of a real problem of modern Tai Chi teaching, though their teachers often claim that what they teach is the superior school of Tai Chi. Why?

First, let me paraphrase something a martial artist said. Someone I have great respect for expressed himself very well when he said, well, I think it was something like this:

When you are looking at a performance of a high-level martial artist, you are only watching the results of that person’s, training. You are not seeing the training, how the person got to that level.

It sounds very simple and obvious, but there’s something important to learn here. Namely – that you don’t know exactly how a person achieved a certain skill just by looking at him or her. So what does this mean? Well, the problem is that when people associate a person with a style or lineage, they are mostly making assumptions based on simplifications, a simplified view on how to reach a certain point of development and achieve skills.

You could take a look at many practitioners, teachers and masters and and examine their backgrounds to understand better what I men. Let’s simplify the problem with taking myself as an example. So now, if you know how a typical Yang style Tai Chi curriculum usually looks like, and I said that I was a Yang Style practitioner, you would associate the skills that I myself can show and demonstrate, were developed by studying Yang Tai Chi and doing the typical training in this style. So, here immediately, you would do a mistake if you thought that I have achieved all of my skill only through typical Yang style practice.

By assuming I am mainly a Yang style practitioner, you woudn’t take the full extent of my background in consideration. You would not take into account such things as that I have learned things from other styles, or through cross-training in different internal arts, or by meeting up with different practitioners from various styles and schools. And you would not take into account that I’ve read tons of martial arts books and adapted methods and techniques from other schools into my own Tai Chi.