Internal and External Styles
Chinese martial arts may be divided into neijia (內家, internal family) or wàijiā (外家, external family) styles.
Many styles combine both internal and external techniques; Chow Gar is a good example of this.
There is an ongoing debate within the martial arts community at both the popular and scholarly level over the distinction between "internal" and "external" arts. Consequently, the list of styles considered internal or external may vary greatly from source to source. There are only three Chinese styles that are universally recognized as internal, and they are sometimes referred to as the "Orthodox internal styles." These three styles are Xingyiquan, Baguazhang, and T'ai chi ch'uan (Taijiquan), the three arts counted as internal and set apart by Sun Lutang, who greatly popularized the terms "neijia" and "wàijiā" as a method of classifying martial arts.
Read more about this topic: List Of Chinese Martial Arts
Famous quotes containing the words internal, external and/or styles:
“Even if fathers are more benignly helpful, and even if they spend time with us teaching us what they know, rarely do they tell us what they feel. They stand apart emotionally: strong perhaps, maybe caring in a nonverbal, implicit way; but their internal world remains mysterious, unseen, “What are they really like?” we ask ourselves. “What do they feel about us, about the world, about themselves?””
—Augustus Y. Napier (20th century)
“When a person hasn’t in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog’s bark in every sound.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)