By Robert Amacker             In my article The Trouble With T’ui-shou I mentioned that one of the great stumbling blocks on the road to correct and productive t’ui-shou is the obsessive desire to duplicate the phenomenon of discharge, in...

DISCHARGE – ITS USE AND ABUSE   By Robert Amacker           Of all of the techniques and skills of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, probably the most misunderstood is that of discharge. Before we even begin to talk about it, we should make a semantic distinction,...

By Robert Amacker, 1989  [As you can see from the above date, this article was written exactly twenty years ago, and I offer it here without alteration as evidence of my long and entirely unsuccessful struggle against competitive t'ui-shou tournaments. This was written in response to a...

By Robert Amacker         I am rather known for my categorical condemnation of t’ui-shou tournaments, and to the whole notion of competitive t’ui-shou in the first place. Just to cast aside any aspersions that this be merely a case of sour grapes on my part,...

By Robert Amacker In my previous article, I tried to outline the dangers associated with defining one’s practice, in an attempt to establish purity of style, by obsessive concentration upon one element or another of technique. In making these criticisms I might give the impression that I am a...

By Robert Amacker           I am occasionally asked how many styles of T’ai Chi Ch’uan there are. I confess that I don’t know what to say, certain that any answer would be wrong by someone’s reckoning. I used to think there were the Chen, Wu, and Yang...

By Robert Amacker, 1999         For those who practice T’ai Chi Ch’uan on a regular basis, the answer to this question is simple: it is what they practice. The fact that T’ai Chi Ch’uan has an esoteric reputation makes it an easy receptacle for any number of...

By Robert Amacker           Around Nineteen-Eighty I was living in San Francisco and, among other things, studying African drumming with teacher Kwaku Dadi. One day, while addressing a group of about thirty assembled students, he asked the question,...