Yang style - Chen style - Sun style
Wou style - Wu style - Conclusion

There are 5 major styles – clans - of taijiquan: yang, chen, wou, wu, sun. If we compare the taijiquan with a tree, we see a fair number of major branches corresponding to the major styles: they are made of the wood of taiji tree. At the present time, a certain number of counterfeits appear : it seems the wood of the taijiquan, but it is not. The wood of taiji tree synthesizes in itself the large currents of the Far-Eastern culture, thinking and tradition : Universism, Shamanism, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, …

Within the clan, the family, one inherits a style by filiation as a prince inherits the crown of his father.

The members of the clan are perhaps acuterly aware, more deeply, of the tradition with a risk of passeism that the expert will not run. This one was often trained in one or more of these clans. It inherited a little this tradition but is more modernistic. We undoubtedly have here a phenomenon similar to what happened to the trench literature, with the quarrel of Old and of Modernes… Between the taijiquan of chen style and the taijiquan of sun style there is an enormous difference. The first one is originating in the countryside, the second one in the city. The first one is of XVIIst century, or even before, and The second one of XXst. The first one was practised by illiterate chinese peasants, the other was created by a scholar. There are great differences in the form, but the essence is the same.

To practise several styles of taijiquan –some wider, others more compact, others still with more regular tempo or with changes of rhythm is perhaps a way of better understanding the characteristics of a style in particular or simply the principles of the taijiquan, the common denominator, so to be able to centre more on only one style.

The five major styles of taijiquan represent one of the matrices of the teaching in Eric Caulier school, some other matrices are sinological, anthropological, sociological, biomechanical.

Each element of each matrix was assimilated, decomposed, recomposed, formatted, reformatted, modelized in many times in many ways and under various angles. Various traditional and modern systems complete this transdisciplinar approach, sharp and including at the same time.