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| History of internal Chinese martial arts, neijia, qigong and Sun Lutang |
Were Chinese Martial Arts Always “Internal”?
Today it is difficult to find a Chinese martial art that does not contain something described as “internal.”
Depending on the school, the term may refer to breathing exercises, qigong, neigong, meditation, structural alignment, whole-body power, relaxation, health practices or ideas derived from traditional Chinese philosophy.
In some martial-arts communities, the presence of these methods is even treated as evidence of antiquity.
The argument usually goes something like this:
Our system contains sophisticated internal training; therefore it must preserve very ancient Chinese martial knowledge.
But there is a problem.
The concepts that modern practitioners place under the word “internal” did not necessarily develop together, and their presence in a modern martial art does not automatically tell us how old that martial art is.
To understand why, we have to separate several histories that are often mixed together.
What Does “Internal” Actually Mean?
“Internal martial art” can refer to several very different things.
It can mean a historical classification of martial traditions.
It can describe particular methods of body organization and power generation.
It can refer to breathing and meditative practices.
It can mean health-oriented exercise.
It can refer to qi cultivation.
Or it can describe martial arts associated, historically or retrospectively, with Daoism and Wudang.
These meanings overlap today.
Historically, however, they should not simply be treated as one thing.
That distinction changes the entire discussion.
Internal and External Are Older Than Sun Lutang
One correction to an argument I made in an earlier version of this article is important.
I previously attributed the creation of the internal/external distinction to Sun Lutang and Republican-era martial artists.
That was too late.
A famous earlier source appears in 1669, when the scholar Huang Zongxi (黃宗羲) wrote an epitaph for the martial artist Wang Zhengnan (王征南).
Huang contrasted Shaolin boxing with what he called an internal school — 內家 — which he associated with Zhang Sanfeng and Wudang.
Huang's son, Huang Baijia (黃百家), who studied with Wang Zhengnan, subsequently produced a text concerning Neijia Quanfa 內家拳法.
So the vocabulary clearly predates the Republican period.
But this does not mean that the modern category of “internal martial arts” already existed in its present form.
That is the crucial distinction.
Sun Lutang Changed the Meaning of “Internal”
Sun Lutang (孫祿堂, 1860–1933) did not invent the words internal and external.
His importance lies elsewhere.
Sun was unusual among martial artists of his period because he was both a highly accomplished practitioner and a prolific writer.
He studied Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Taijiquan, and increasingly presented the three through a common theoretical framework.
His books appeared during a transformative period:
- Xingyi Quan Xue — 1915
- Bagua Quan Xue — 1917
- Taiji Quan Xue — 1921
- Quan Yi Shu Zhen — 1924
Sun's writings connected martial practice extensively with concepts drawn from classical Chinese thought and cultivation.
His Xingyi writing employed the Five Phases.
His Bagua writing connected martial practice with the Eight Trigrams.
His Taiji writing situated boxing within a broader cosmological framework.
And, importantly, he argued that Xingyi, Bagua and Taiji were different manifestations of fundamentally compatible principles. His writings became enormously influential in the modern understanding of these arts.
This is much more historically defensible than saying Sun simply “invented internal martial arts.”
He helped systematize, reinterpret and popularize the modern internal-arts framework.
Philosophy and Fighting
This raises another interesting question.
If a martial-art manual discusses the Five Phases, Eight Trigrams or Taiji, does that prove those philosophical systems originally created its fighting techniques?
No.
An explanatory framework and the historical origin of a physical practice are two different things.
A fighting method can exist first and subsequently be interpreted through an established philosophical vocabulary.
Conversely, philosophical ideas can genuinely influence how later generations practice and understand an existing martial art.
Both processes are possible.
This is why statements such as:
“Baguazhang comes from the Yijing because it uses eight palms”
or
“Xingyi's Five Fists prove that the art was created according to Five Phase theory”
require historical evidence beyond similarity of terminology.
Correspondence is not necessarily origin.
The Problem With “Qigong”
The word qigong 氣功 creates another historical problem.
Today it functions as an enormous umbrella covering breathing exercises, health practices, meditation, therapeutic exercises, martial conditioning and numerous forms of traditional body cultivation.
Projecting that modern category unchanged into earlier centuries can be misleading.
China possessed extremely old traditions involving breathing, daoyin 導引, nourishing life, meditation and cultivation of qi.
Martial traditions also developed conditioning and breathing methods.
But that does not mean there was always a clearly defined thing called “martial qigong” functioning exactly as modern practitioners understand it.
The terminology itself underwent substantial development.
Historical research on modern qigong shows that although the expression existed earlier in limited contexts, qigong acquired its enormously influential modern therapeutic meaning during the twentieth century, particularly in the 1950s.
This means we need to investigate individual practices rather than simply putting all of them into a timeless category called qigong.
Martial Arts Were Not Created Only for Health
Another modern assumption should be treated cautiously.
Chinese martial arts are frequently advertised as systems simultaneously created for:
combat, health, longevity, meditation and spiritual development.
Some modern systems certainly pursue all of those goals.
That does not prove that they always did.
Historically, martial skills had very practical applications: military service, security work, local defense, armed escort, policing, personal protection, militia activity and violence between competing groups.
Weapons consequently occupied an enormously important position.
This does not mean historical martial artists were uninterested in health or body cultivation.
It means we should not automatically project the objectives of a twenty-first-century Taijiquan or qigong class onto martial practitioners living two or three centuries earlier.
“Internal” Body Mechanics
There is yet another meaning of internal that deserves separation from all of this.
Martial artists often use internal to describe particular ways of organizing the body.
Relaxation.
Skeletal alignment.
Coordination between legs, torso and arms.
Whole-body movement.
Management of the center of mass.
Elastic qualities of tissues.
Timing of muscular contraction and relaxation.
Using structure to receive or redirect force.
These are real physical phenomena.
We can investigate them through biomechanics, physiology and motor learning without first deciding whether qi exists as a separate physical energy.
That does not make traditional terminology worthless.
Traditional terminology records how previous practitioners experienced, conceptualized and taught their bodies.
But a traditional explanation and a modern biomechanical explanation are not necessarily describing the phenomenon at the same level.
This is something I have become increasingly interested in through my own practice.
When two practitioners say they are using “qi,” we should not immediately assume that they are describing an unknown form of energy.
First ask:
What is the body actually doing?
That question can often take us much further.
Hard and Soft Are Not Historical Eras
The same caution applies to “hard” and “soft.”
It would be tempting to imagine Chinese martial history progressing neatly from:
ancient hard fighting → later soft internal martial arts.
History is rarely that tidy.
Martial traditions can contain yielding and forceful methods simultaneously.
A supposedly “internal” art can use explosive force.
An “external” system can employ relaxation, sensitivity and sophisticated body mechanics.
These are useful descriptions of training strategies or qualities of movement.
They become much less useful when treated as absolute categories.
Shaolin and Wudang
The same process helped create another powerful martial-arts dichotomy:
Shaolin versus Wudang.
Shaolin became associated with external, hard and Buddhist martial arts.
Wudang became associated with internal, soft and Daoist martial arts.
This opposition has become one of the most recognizable ideas in Chinese martial culture.
But historical reality is considerably more complicated.
Shaolin's documented martial history and Wudang's enormous symbolic importance need to be investigated separately from later attempts to classify virtually every Chinese martial art into one camp or the other.
The categories tell us something important about how Chinese martial arts came to understand themselves.
They do not necessarily tell us how every system originated.
Emei Makes the Problem Even More Interesting
Emei presents another interesting case.
Modern discussions sometimes present Chinese martial arts as three enormous geographical or philosophical families:
Shaolin — Wudang — Emei.
That classification deserves its own historical investigation.
Rather than assuming these three categories existed unchanged for centuries, we should ask:
When does this classification first appear?
Which martial artists used it?
Which traditions were originally described as Emei?
When did Emei become a broad martial category?
Those questions are considerably more useful than repeating a familiar diagram.
And they are exactly the kind of questions I intend to explore separately.
Were the Old Martial Arts “Incomplete”?
We can now return to the original question.
If an old martial tradition did not contain meditation, qigong or elaborate cosmological theory, was it incomplete?
No.
It may simply have been designed for a different purpose.
Likewise, adding health practices or philosophical interpretation to a martial system does not necessarily make that system less authentic.
Martial arts change because the societies using them change.
A method designed primarily for fighting can acquire educational functions.
A military practice can become civilian.
A combat system can become physical culture.
A traditional exercise can acquire therapeutic purposes.
A fighting art can become a vehicle for personal cultivation.
None of this necessarily makes the later practice fraudulent.
But it does make it historically different.
The Question We Should Really Ask
The debate over internal and external martial arts becomes much clearer once we stop asking which category is superior.
Instead ask:
When did a particular practice appear?
What was it originally used for?
When was it incorporated into a particular martial tradition?
How was it described at the time?
When did later philosophical explanations become attached to it?
Those are historical questions.
And they sometimes produce answers that are less romantic than martial-arts legends.
But they also reveal something much more interesting.
Chinese martial arts were never frozen systems handed down unchanged from antiquity.
They evolved.
They borrowed.
They reinterpreted older practices.
They responded to social change.
And generations of practitioners found new reasons to practice them.
Understanding that history does not diminish Chinese martial arts.
It makes their development far more interesting.
Sources and Further Reading
Peter A. Lorge. Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Excellent general scholarly history, particularly useful for putting martial practice into its military and social context.
Cambridge University Press – Chinese Martial Arts
Utiraruto Otehode and Benjamin Penny. “Qigong Therapy in 1950s China.” East Asian History, No. 40.
This is especially valuable for our correction concerning qigong: older cultivation practices existed, but the modern therapeutic category of qigong was substantially constructed and standardized during the 1950s.
Qigong Therapy in 1950s China
Sun Lutang (孫祿堂). Xingyi Quan Xue (形意拳學), 1915; Bagua Quan Xue (八卦拳學), 1917; Taiji Quan Xue (太極拳學), 1921.
Primary sources for Sun's integration of martial practice with traditional Chinese philosophical and cosmological concepts.
Huang Zongxi (黃宗羲). Wang Zhengnan Muzhiming (王征南墓誌銘), 1669; together with Huang Baijia's (黃百家) Neijia Quanfa (內家拳法).