Body Rewilding through Taichi and Bagua

I think that the roots of many martial arts come from very wild places and that they can play a vital role in rewilding our bodies.

For instance, there are many origin stories or Tai Chi, but a couple of variations might interest Rewilding folks. The basic story involves the founder Chang San Feng leaving the Shaolin monastery after many years of training in Shaolin Kungfu. He then wanders the mountains studying with Taoist hermits, learning internal alchemy, and living off of wild foods especially wild herbs and medicines. He ends up on Wudang mountain and then has some form of powerful experience. In one version, he sees a Snake and Crane fighting and is inspired by their movements to create TaiChi. In another version, he has a dream in which the spirit of the mountain comes and teaches him the movments of Taichi.

In yet another version (any my favorite), he spends a lot of time on the mountain observing nature and one day is inspired by the movement of the wind, the flow of water, the gentleness of the clouds, the cycles of day and night, the stableness of earth, and the uprightness of trees and synthesizes the movements from his Shaolin Kungfu, internal alchemy, and the inspiration of nature into a totally new way of moving and being: Tai Chi, the great ultimate boxing system.

Bagua has similar origin stories with a bandit on the run from the government being lost and hurt in the mountains and being nursed back to health by Taoist hermits. They have him walk in a circle holding special postures that represent eight primordial powers: Thunder, Mountain, Heaven, Earth, Fire, Water, Marsh, and Wind. By practicing this he heals himself and creates a new martial art: Bagua.

To me these sound like some of the first bio-regional martial arts ever!

I don’t have much experience with martial arts, but even so I enjoyed reading those stories. Pretty awesome!