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Some Notes On The Amazing Professor Cheng

SOME NOTES ON THE AMAZING PROFESSOR CHENG
by
Barry Strugatz

INTRODUCTION – THE ART OF TAI CHI

A series of body movements.

An exercise and health regimen that improves balance, strength and energy.

Tai Chi utilizes natural forces (gravity, momentum, etc.) to harmonize one’s body with others and the earth.

Tai Chi is called the “supreme ultimate” martial art. But much more than a fighting system – it’s a spiritual practice, a physical expression of concepts like yin and yang, non-action, chi.

Chi is the lifeforce energy that can be cultivated through Tai Chi practice.

Form: postures based on rules and principles. To be practiced daily and refined over a lifetime.

Push Hands: a two person exercise where, utilizing postures learned in the form, one person tries to push the other person off balance.

Sword: Form and fencing. The sword becomes an extension of one’s chi.

THE PROFESSOR

Professor Cheng Man-Ching is considered one of the greatest tai chi masters of modern times. He was a pioneer, instrumental in bringing tai chi and Chinese philosophy to the West in the 1960’s and ‘70’s.

Cheng was unique – not only a remarkable martial artist but also an accomplished painter, poet, scholar and doctor of Chinese medicine. All his talents were deeply rooted in the philosophies of Taoism and Confucianism, finding harmony in the way humans relate to each other and to nature.

Professor Cheng saw tai chi as an embodiment of natural laws and as a path of human growth – a way to live, a way of finding meaning, balance and peace.

CHENG’S CHINA

Traditional but open minded, Cheng came from a conservative world. In China he was a successful painter, doctor and professor. In the 1920’s he studied in Shanghai with the great Tai Chi grandmaster Yang Cheng-Fu continuing a lineage hundreds of years old.

Yang was powerful, gruff, old fashioned. He once bounced Cheng against a wall so forcefully it took days...