Spend long enough around the Chinese arts and you will meet the famous division: external (waijia) styles - hard, muscular, “Shaolin” - and internal (neijia) styles - soft, breath-led, “Wudang”, usually meaning taiji, bagua and xingyi. The division is so widespread it feels ancient and self-evident. It is neither.
Where the divide actually comes from
The first known text dividing the arts into internal and external is an epitaph for the master Wang Zhengnan from 1669. Its author, the scholar Huang Zongxi, was an open opponent of the new Manchu dynasty - and historians read the division partly politically: “external” (Buddhist, foreign, tied to Shaolin) against “internal” (Daoist, native, Chinese). The division only truly caught on at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth century, popularised by the teachers and publicists of the new “internal” schools.
Put plainly: the division is younger than most of the styles it claims to classify.
What it is supposed to mean
The textbook version runs like this. External arts build from the outside in: first strength, speed and toughness, only later breath and feel. Internal arts build from the inside out: first relaxation, structure and breath, only later power. External is said to be youthful and loud, internal mature and quiet.
Hard without soft is clumsy; soft without hard is empty. - a principle every serious school repeats in one form or another
What holds and what is myth
It holds that there are real differences of emphasis and of teaching order. Taiji genuinely begins with the slow and soft; Shaolin training genuinely begins with low stances and conditioning. For a student these are different entry experiences, and it makes sense to choose the one that suits you.
The myth is that these are two kinds of art with different goals. Every good “external” school teaches breath, relaxation and structure - in the Shaolin tradition that is the role of Qi Gong and Chan meditation. And every good “internal” school at some point demands strength, conditioning and a martial test. The goals converge: a body that is at once strong and permeable, hard and soft. The difference is the order of the stations, not the destination.
Also myth is the romantic hierarchy in which “internal” is higher, more spiritual and more Chinese. Historically, that notion is nineteenth-century marketing - and it still sells beautifully today.
What this means for training in Ljubljana
You will not find this divide on our schedule, because our class is built the way the practice was built for most of its history - from both. Qi Gong and breath work give what the divide would call “internal”: structure, relaxation, feel. Basics, low stances and the fighting part give the “external”: strength, speed, reactivity. Chan meditation holds the two together.
So the question is not whether you are an “internal” or an “external” type. The question is which half you are currently missing - and the answer is almost always: the one you avoid.
