Where did zhanzhuang and silk reeling exercises come from?
Zhanzhuang and things like starting position, closing position and silk reeling exercises are a relatively new additions to the Chen style syllabus. Its not that they didn’t exist before, its just that they were taught in an ad hoc way before. Before, everyone learned Tai Chi from a very early age, so if you wanted to teach someone about the internal aspects of Tai Chi, you would ask them to hold a single whip so you could correct the qi flow. Nowadays, because a lot of people start at an older age, and because they don’t have the physical endurance that working a field by hand gives you, holding a single whip is too complicated and physically demanding, so you tell them to hold a zhanzhuang posture instead. The same goes for silk reeling exercises. The Chen form is just one big silk reeling exercise, so if you have been doing it all your life and you have constant access to an expert, it is not necessary to teach isolated exercises. Moreover, because you would be so familiar with the
