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Concept
Neijia
Summary
Nei jia (內家) is the collective name for the internal Chinese martial arts. It relates to those martial arts occupied with spiritual, mental or qi-related aspects, as opposed to an "external" approach focused on physiological aspects. The distinction dates to the 17th century, but its modern application is due to publications by Sun Lutang, dating to the period of 1915 to 1928. Nei jing is developed by using nei gong or "internal changes", contrasted with wài gōng (外功) or "external exercises" .
Wudang quan is a more specific grouping of internal martial arts named for their association with the Taoist monasteries of the Wudang Mountains, Hubei in Chinese popular legend. These styles were enumerated by Sun Lutang as tai chi, xingyi quan and baguazhang, but most also include bajiquan and the legendary Wudang Sword.
Some other Chinese arts, not in the wudang quan group, such as qigong, liuhebafa, Bak Mei Pai, Zi Ran Men (Nature Boxing), Bok Foo Pai and Yiquan are frequently classified (or classify themselves) as "internal".
The term neijia and the distinction between internal and external martial arts first appears in Huang Zongxi's 1669 Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan. Stanley Henning proposes that the Epitaph'''s identification of the internal martial arts with the Taoism indigenous to China and of the external martial arts with the foreign Buddhism of Shaolin—and the Manchu Qing Dynasty to which Huang Zongxi was opposed—was an act of political defiance rather than one of technical classification.
In 1676 Huang Zongxi's son, Huang Baijia, who learned martial arts from Wang Zhengnan, compiled the earliest extant manual of internal martial arts, the Nèijiā quánfǎ.
Beginning in 1914, Sun Lutang together with Yang Shaohou, Yang Chengfu and Wu Jianquan taught tai chi to the public at the Beijing Physical Education Research Institute. Sun taught there until 1928, a seminal period in the development of modern Yang, Wu and Sun-style tai chi. Sun Lutang also published martial arts texts starting in 1915.
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