IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YANG,CHEN AND WU STYLE TAI CHI?

If there is please explain. Thank you.

Outwardly, there are major differences. Internally, the idea is the same. Chen style is the progenitor of all taichi styles. It is very martial and likes deep stances and mixed time in its movement pace. Yang style in the early days was for all intent exactly the same as Chen, but over time Yang Luchan (楊露禪) the founder of Yang style began to make changes including the emphasis on slow movement training. He did this because he felt it was more important to start right of off the bat training relaxed with proper alignment and balance before adding speed.

This led to probably the most prevalent misunderstanding about the slow movements of taichi. They move slow not because they are old, but because they are monitoring every movement for correctness. It is that old proverb, do not fear the man who does a technique well 1 in 100 times but fear the man who does it perfect 100 out of 100.

Yang also raise the stance because he felt that in combat most people don’t move into deep stance but fight it out at near normal stance especially if they are surprised. Yang was also comissioned to teach some members of the Imperial court include the guards who worn heavy armor that did not allow for bending especially around the waist, and some of the modification to Chen techniques can be seen in the straight back postures of Yang practitioners.

Among the Imperial court members Yang Luchan taught was a man who went on to create the Wu style – Wu Yu-Xiang, whom Yang later introduced to the Chen family. I’ve only had very little exposure to Wu style so this is just an impression from that limited experience and it is the Wu stance is basically Yang, but the hand, arms and everything else is closer to Chen but not quite Chen. Wu Yu-Xiang was a talented man in his own right and he wrote many treatise on taichi, but sadly most have not been translated into english.

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