The Curriculum

Training

Six disciplines, taught as one complete system.

The Approach

One body of knowledge

The Practical Wu Dang curriculum is not a modular course. The six disciplines are interconnected — each one informs and requires the others. A student may focus on one area at a given time, but the work is always in service of the complete system.

Teaching is individual. The instructor works with each student to address what that student specifically requires, within a shared structure that keeps the curriculum coherent.

Forms 套路 Tao Lu

The foundation of the system. Solo sequences that encode the principles of the art in movement. There are five open-hand forms in the system, increasing in length and complexity. The beginner's form is the first years of study; the forms together constitute a complete body of knowledge that takes a practitioner a lifetime to understand.

Forms are the means through which structure is built, maintained and corrected. Every subsequent discipline — weapons, partnered work, applications — draws directly on what the forms establish. To skip forms work is to build a structure without foundations.

Weapons 兵器 Bing Qi

Sword, sabre, staff and spear are each taught as complete sequences with distinct characteristics. The weapon extends the structure of the body and exposes any weakness in posture, root and intention that a bare-hand form might allow to be hidden.

Weapons training is not separate from body training — it is a continuation of it. The body must be correctly organised before it can transmit intention through an implement. Weapons work demands precision that free-hand practice can obscure.

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Nei Gong 內功 Internal Work

The internal cultivation that underpins everything else. Nei Gong includes standing meditation, breathing practices and slow internal movement designed to develop structure, sensitivity and the energetic qualities the system requires.

Without Nei Gong, the forms remain external movement. With it, the practitioner begins to understand what the forms are pointing at. This work is slow, unglamorous and essential.

Push Hands 推手 Tui Shou

The introduction of a partner. Push hands is listening practice — the development of sensitivity to force, the capacity to neutralise it, and the ability to respond. It begins in fixed patterns and develops through increasingly free-form exchange.

Push hands is where the solo work is tested. The form teaches what to do; push hands tests whether you actually know it. The difference between understanding a principle and having it in the body becomes immediately apparent when another person is applying pressure.

San Shou 散手 Free Application

Structured free exchange. San Shou bridges push hands and real martial application — it introduces greater freedom of movement, full-body engagement and the pressure of an unpredictable partner. It tests whether the principle survives when the situation is no longer fixed.

San Shou is reserved for students who have developed sufficient foundation through forms and push hands. To introduce it too early is to teach people to fight before they understand what they are doing.

Applications 用法 Yong Fa

The martial meaning of every movement in the forms. Applications are studied so that the practitioner understands why the form is shaped as it is — not as an end in themselves, but as a means of illuminating the principle in the form.

A form movement understood as an application is no longer arbitrary. It has meaning, and that meaning informs how the movement is practised. Applications study and forms practice are in constant dialogue throughout the curriculum.

"Six disciplines. One principle. The art is not in any of the parts — it is in the relationship between them."