The Grand Ultimate Fist, Taiji Quan, but what makes it so superior? What makes Taiji superior is that it takes mental prowess to make work. This is not to insult other martial arts, but an examination of the principles necessary to Tai Chi that should convince most people of the truth of the art.

I've selected three of the many concepts that a student must understand to get anywhere in the Grand Ultimate Fist. The first concept is simply emptiness. Most arts will take this concept only so far as having the fist loose before impact, focus, but that is where the art begins.

To make progress in Taiji one must understand that the entire body must become loose and empty. By becoming loose and empty the body can better feel the various incoming energies, and thus better manipulate them. This is easily understood if one understands that light travels best through space, and in Tai Chi the body must become a nothingness so pure that senses can travel through it, and emanate from it.

The second principle deals with the making of power. In my base art, Karate, this was developed through taking stances hard and fast and causing the tan tien to explode with power. This is fine, except that tai chi relies on a slower explosion of power from the Tan Tien.

To make power in the Grand Ultimate Art one must take the low stance and grind the motion back and forth between the legs, and round and round in the hips. Power comes up the legs and the tan tien churns out energy. Thus, there is a fine line between emptiness of the body, and the power generation of the legs.

Third concept, and, again, there are many more concepts, is the idea of moving slowly. Many people move slowly, and they marvel at how much world there is to see. Unfortunately, most people don't understand that Tai Chi is first and foremost a fighting art.

Thus, when people move slowly in Tai Chi Chuan, they must not just relax and move slowly, they must actively push energy from their tan tien and fill up the body and direct it through their limbs. This is a point many people don't understand, but which is crucial to the principle of enacting the imagination, and making the imagination actuate the true powers of a student. The feeling should be like swimming and the air should feel like molasses, but the waters are imagination, and the resistance is very real, very worthwhile, and totally related to combat.

There is so much to learn, an eternity to learn, and Matrix Tai Chi is a perfect art to embrace the wudang arts. The trick is to relax the mind and awaken the potentials, the trick is to let oneself absorb knowledge and understand the truth of oneself. The trick is to realize that it is not just art we are talking about when we speak of Taiji Quan, but the actual human spirit.