Chen Taiji, is what all Taiji has progressed from. For more than four hundred years ago in the Ming dynasty, a Taoist x-army officer put together the very best of martial arts. He applied the soft neigong/qigong internal training and hard style martial arts of the that time and created a balanced martial art. Taiji's immense popularity has many saying it came from other beginnings, such as a famous Taoist priest, an explorer of mysterious powers. Yet it can be traced to a man, Chen Wangting and the village Chenjiagou. The origin can be argued but the basics of taiji make it one of the most exciting ways to train the bodymind.