Tai Chi Chuan, like most Chinese martial arts, combines elements of striking, grappling and the use of traditional weapons. It also emphasises evasion, footwork and strategy. The combination of all these elements make it an ideal martial art for ladies.
Ladies have at least the same technical ability, spirit, intelligence and grasp of strategy that men have. They are inferior in one key area - strength. This can to some extent be remedied by specific strength and focus training, but it does mean in a self defence situation that the techniques and tactics adopted by an average sized lady should often be different from those used by a 200 pound male with the same amount of martial arts experience.
This factor of strength is also often a matter of size, which incorporates height, weight and reach. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that most ladies - and many men do not wish to have callouses on the hands from hitting bags. Even if ladies do this type of training, their fists are likely to be damaged if they connect with the hard bones in the face.
Grappling training is important for ladies in teaching them how to use their strength in a skilful way to manipulate a heavier male opponent. Mary Burton, twice British Open ladies Tai Chi pushing hands champion at lightweight and middleweight, is of the opinion that many ladies come into martial arts with far less confidence than male beginners simply because from a fairly early age girls are expected to behave like ladies and so tend to indulge in far less boisterous games than boys of the same age who are always wrestling or playing contact sports.
Mary and other ladies to whom I've talked believe that competitions and the training that they require are invaluable in helping to give them the necessary strength and confidence to defend themselves. It is encouraging to see an increasing proportion of Tai Chi competitors are ladies and thet they are well able to hold their own when competing against men in the forms events.
Let us look at some of the situations where a lady may need to defend herself. Firstly, robbery; it is my experience as a former Detective Inspector in the Royal Hong Kong Police, that unless you have a high degree of martial ability and experience it is better to lose a handbag than to risk getting cut, stabbed or even killed. Secondly, sexual assault; this could be anything from touching to an assault involving extreme violence. Thirdly, a physical assault; this could be from a man or another woman.
In all these situations you must consider:-
whether defending yourself is more likely to improve or exacerbate the situation;
whether you are prepared to hurt the opponent and if necessary be hurt yourself;
how much force is required by the particular situation.
In this context the Tai Chi theory of "the Jing (technique) is discontinued, but the Yi (intent/purpose) is not discontinued" is of great importance. This means that even though you have made contact with one counter, do not assume that that is the end of the matter; you must maintain the intent to defend yourself and follow up your first technique if necessary. It also means that, if your assailant's first attempt is unsuccessful, he may still have the intention of continuing his attack. I have the personal experience in Hong Kong of kicking an assailant twice with considerable force to the groin, but so overcome with anger was he that he continued to attack despite the pain.
When shooting the pictures for this article, it was interesting that Godfrey Dornelly, a former British Open and International Tai Chi pushing hands and forms champion, who plays the part of the assailant, suggested that Mary show quite different defences to the attacks than the ones we ended up using. I think the difference is often that men are thinking of 'beating' the opponent in a fight whereas the ladies, perhaps more sensibly, are more concerned with hurting the opponent enough to make their escape.
So in choosing techniques and tactics, we tried to firstly put the assailant in a position of disadvantage and then counter immediately with a focused strike or strikes to a vital point or points followed by escape.
While it is impracticable to go walking around with traditional Tai Chi sabres, swords and spears, we can make use of every day objects such as umbrellas, keys or even books to deliver traditional techniques such as 'Point to the to the Trousers with the Sabre' or 'Dot Red between the Eyes with the Sword'. This is one of the important arguments for ladies to learn weapon forms and applications.
Neither I nor any other instructor can teach effective self defence for ladies in a matter of weeks and personally I prefer not to teach self defence as a separate subject, but as a part of the whole art of Tai Chi Chuan and in mixed classes so that the ladies can practice with the men and sometimes separately. The key things to learn are evasion, coordination, balance, focus, and timing. The other factors are conditioning and tactics. Most of these skills should be taught from lesson one. The rest is down to practice.