Tai Chi Chuan is an ancient exercise which embodies China's most profound concepts and principles of health and movement.
The history of most martial arts, including Wing Chun, has historically been passed from teacher to student as an oral history rather than through written documentation, making it difficult to confirm or clarify the differing accounts of Wing Chun's creation.
Some have sought to apply the methods of higher criticism to the oral histories of Wing Chun and other Chinese martial arts. Others have attempted to discern the origins of Wing Chun by determining the specific purpose of its techniques.
Wing Chun starts to appear in independent third-party documentation during the era of the Wing Chun master Leung Jan, making the subsequent history of Wing Chun and its divergence into branches more amenable to documentary verification.
Shaolin Kung Fu emphasizes Ch'an Buddhism. Ch'an derives its name from the Indian word Dhyana, which simply means "Meditation". In China this word became popularly spoken as Ch'anna in Chinese and was later shorted to Ch'an. Zenna to Zen also occurred, though China's adoption of Dhyanna predated Japan's. Dhyanna was an Indian form of Buddhist meditation stressing sitting meditation and other forms of meditation to help bring about enlightenment in its practitioners.
