As you know Tai Chi is passed on from teacher to student and follows a lineage which enables you to trace back the roots of the style and form you practice.

The form we practice is:

-Yang style: which means that it relates to the Yang family lineage

-Large frame: which is wide and large in its movements

-Long form: the set comprises 108 moves which are known as long form (there are a lot of ways to count the moves so you may see them referred to as 88, 95, 103, these all essentially form the same set). There are other forms which are shorter such as  8 steps, 24 steps… There are also weapons forms!

As you may know our lineage has a Japanese background and my own teacher Rebecca Knowles studied Tai Chi from Grand master Fu Tamon Toyoki Nagao.

Here is the best lineage that myself and Rebecca have managed to put together:

     Yang Lu Chan                                                             Yang Lu Chan

     Yang Chien Hou          Cheng Ting Hua                  Yang Chien Hou

     Yang Cheng Fu           Zang Zhao-Dong                 Yang Chen Fu

     Fu Zhonwen                Wan Shu Jin              Zheng Ming(Yang Shou-Chung)

                                 Master Fu Tamon Toyoki Nagao

                                          Rebecca Knowles

                                             Helene Fleming

    As you can see two of master’s Fu Tamon Toyoki Nagao teachers where of the same lineage. You can look most of these masters up and you will find information on them.  However here are a few more bits of information which you may find useful.

Yang Lu Chan

Yang Lu Chan was the 1st person of the the Yang family to learn tai chi from the Chen masters. Chen style is the oldest style of Tai Chi. It is different to Yang style in that it has changes in the pace and is seen often as more energetic. For a demonstration please ask me!

Yang Lu Chan passed on his knowledge to his sons (2nd generation) who passed it on to their own sons.

Yang Chen Fu

Yang Cheng Fu is the 1st master to have widened the circle of his students, he is also the person who started to practice Tai Chi for health purposes and he slowed the pace down and made it even.

The middle lineage is a very interesting one as these masters also practised other internal arts such as Bagua Zhang and Xingyi Quan.

Upon returning to Japan master Fu Tamon Toyoki Nagao started a school of Tai Chi known as Naishindo, 内神道 meaning Inner Sacred Way. There are branches of this school throughout Japan.

What makes our lineage special is that it is pre-cultural revolution tai chi, it has not been systematised or simplified. It has been preserved to the best of everyone’s ability, and that should give you access to a genuine and powerful form of tai chi.

I hope you enjoyed this post if you have comments and question please as always post them.