Tai Chi Glossary > Thirteen Postures (十三势)

Thirteen Postures (十三势)

Definition: The Thirteen Postures (十三势, Shi San Shi) are the core technical framework of Tai Chi Chuan, consisting of Eight Gates (Ba Fa) — the eight fundamental hand energies — and Five Steps (Wu Bu) — the five footwork patterns. Together, they form the complete vocabulary from which all Tai Chi techniques derive.

For an interactive map of the eight gates and five steps, with their trigram, direction and five-element correspondences, use the Taiji Thirteen Postures tool.

It is a framework, not a routine and not a set of thirteen movements. The thirteen is an addition: eight hands plus five steps. Any single posture in any form can be broken down into some combination of them, and the work of practising a form is the work of applying them.

The definition that everybody quotes comes from the text traditionally titled 《太极拳释名》:

“太极拳，一名长拳，又名十三势。长拳者：如长江大海，滔滔不绝也。十三势者：掤、捋、挤、按，采、挒、肘、靠，进、退、顾、盼、定也。掤、捋、挤、按，即坎、离、震、兑，四正方也；采、挒、肘、靠，即乾、坤、艮、巽，四斜角也。此八卦也。进步、退步、左顾、右盼、中定，即金、木、水、火、土也。此五行也。合而言之，曰十三势。”

(The passage is preserved in Shen Shou’s collated 《太极拳谱》, volume one. Whether Wang Zongyue wrote it, and when, is still disputed by scholars, so it is cited here as the traditionally attributed text.)

Two things follow from it. The eight methods correspond to the eight trigrams — the first four to the four 正 directions, the last four to the four 隅 corners. The five steps correspond to the five phases. And 八门五步 is what “thirteen” counts.

Key points at a glance:

• A classification framework: eight hand methods and five steps, from which every other technique is assembled
• The eight gates: 掤、捋、挤、按、采、挒、肘、靠. The first four are the 四正手, the last four the 四隅手
• The five steps: 进、退、顾、盼、定
• 势 is not 式. 势 is the direction of the jin and how a routine is divided; 式 is a named, fixed position
• Three different things share the name. The classical framework, the thirteen segments Chen-style teaching uses for Lao Jia, and the “thirteen forms” set attributed to Zhang Sanfeng are different things
• It is the older name. 太极拳 is a later name; 十三势, 长拳, 绵拳 and 软手 were in use before it
• Not the modern 13-form routine. The standardised 《太极八法五步》 promoted nationally from 2018 is a modern set, not this framework

势 and 式: one character apart

The distinction matters more in Chinese than any English translation can carry.

• 势 (shì) — the direction of the jin, the trend of a movement, a segment of a routine. It is alive: it describes where the force is going.
• 式 (shì) — a named, fixed position with a specified shape. It is settled: it describes what a movement looks like.

So the classical manuals write 十三势, the jin framework, while modern simplified routines write 十三式, thirteen fixed positions. The character itself carries the distinction. (This is a distinction drawn by modern research on the usage, not a classical definition, and it should be presented as such.)

The eight gates: four orthogonal, four corner

The eight methods are also called 八法 or 八劲, and they are grouped in two.

The four 正 hands meet force coming straight at you and are the backbone of the “four orthodox” push hands drill. The four 隅 hands are oblique, close-range and short, and are the core of the corner drill.

A mnemonic in wide circulation assigns each method to a part of the body — “掤在两臂，捋在掌中，挤在手背，按在腰功，采在十指，挒在两肱，肘在屈使，靠在肩背”. It is a teaching formula rather than a classical line, textbooks differ in their wording, and the text it comes from, the 《十八在诀》, is a later compilation rather than a nineteenth-century source.

The eight are not isolated. The methods contain each other — 掤中有捋, 挤中有按 — and the pairing of yin and yang inside each method is part of what makes the framework work rather than a list.

The five steps: advance, retreat, look, gaze, settle

顾 and 盼 are the two turning steps, and turning is not the whole of them. The usual way to describe them is directional: left and right. But in Shen Jiazhen’s 《太极拳论》 the phrase is 此顾盼之碾步 — the grinding step of gu and pan — which ties them to the way the whole body grinds round rather than to a change of facing. (The 《太极拳论》 is preserved in Li Yiyu’s handwritten “old three books” of 1880–81, and its authorship is disputed; an English translation of Shen Jiazhen’s discussion is at brennantranslation.wordpress.com.)

Of the five, 定 is the one most often called the root of the system: whatever the step, the centre has to hold. The maxim is 中定是太极的根. (The five-step-to-five-phase correspondence is consistent across the transmitted manuals and can be used; the emphasis on 中定 comes from teaching material.)

The correspondence, and where the copies disagree

The five steps map onto the five phases — advance fire, retreat water, left turn wood, right turn metal, centre earth — and this is consistent enough across the manuals to state without qualification.

The eight-to-trigram mapping does not get the same treatment. The mainstream pairing is peng–kan, lu–li, ji–zhen, an–dui, with the corner methods taking qian, kun, gen and xun. Other transmitted copies give different directions — the Yang-family old manuscript line, for instance, has peng south and lu west. The framework is stable; the directions are not, and an entry that gives one set of directions as settled is overstating the record.

The related maxims: the Yang family’s old manuscript has “怀藏八卦，脚跐五行” — hold the eight trigrams in the body, tread the five phases with the feet — and later practitioners have continued it as “头顶太极，怀抱八卦，脚踩五行”, the crown holding the Tai Chi, the arms the trigrams, the feet the phases.

How the framework relates to a form and to push hands

A form is the framework in combination. One movement contains several methods at once — Grasp Sparrow’s Tail is peng, lu, ji and an in sequence — and one routine uses the five steps throughout. Practising a form is practising the application of the thirteen, not the memorisation of thirteen movements.

Push hands is the framework taken apart. The four orthodox hands are drilled in the four orthodox drill, the four corner hands in the large corner drill, and the 《打手歌》 is the mnemonic for the whole thing:

“掤捋挤按须认真，上下相随人难进。任他巨力来打我，牵动四两拨千斤。引进落空合即出，粘连黏随不丢顶。”

(Preserved in Shen Shou’s 《太极拳谱》. The words vary between transmitted versions, and whether Wang Zongyue wrote it is disputed.)

Three things that share the name

This is where English-language searches go wrong, so the entry should separate them once:

The name, and the attribution

Tai chi was called a number of things before it was called 太极拳: 长拳, 绵拳, 软手, 十三势. The name 太极拳 is generally traced to the 《太极拳论》, and when Li Yiyu had the “old three books” copied, the earlier sections still carried the name 十三势. So 十三势 is the older written name for the art.

A note on 长拳. In 《太极拳释名》 the phrase is “十三势，一名长拳”. Before the Republican period 长拳 was not the name of a separate art but one of the two broad categories of hand-fighting — the other being 短打. The sentence therefore means that 十三势 belongs to the long-hand class.

The attribution is genuinely open. Wang Zongyue’s dates are given both as Ming Jiajing–Wanli and as Qing Qianlong, his birthplace is disputed, and researchers have not settled whether there was a Wang Zongyue at all; some argue the 《太极拳论》 is Wu Yuxiang writing under another name. The story that the Wang Zongyue manual was found by Wu Qingyang, Wu Yuxiang’s elder brother, in a salt shop in Wuyang county and passed to Wu Yuxiang in the Xianfeng era is itself a recorded account. The entry can say “traditionally attributed to Wang Zongyue” and note the dispute; it cannot say it as settled fact.

The attribution to Qi Jiguang is a research claim, not a conclusion. It is commonly said that tai chi absorbed twenty-nine of the thirty-two forms in Qi Jiguang’s 《纪效新书·拳经捷要篇》, and Tang Hao’s 《太极拳源流考》 counted twenty-seven-odd shared forms. But the 《拳经捷要篇》 is a compilation of forms in its own right, and its thirty-two forms and the eight-gates-five-steps framework are two different things; attributing the framework to the Qi text is not hard evidence. Tang Hao’s method has itself been criticised. Present the connection as a research claim with its evidence status, and do not assert it.

The modern confusion

A framework is not a routine. The “13-form” tai chi sets sold for beginners, the “newly compiled thirteen-form” routines, and the national standardisation 《太极八法五步》 — promoted across China from 2018, consisting of sixteen movements comprising thirty-two single-posture actions, practised symmetrically left and right — are all modern sets. The last is an official entry-level routine built from the common technical ground of the different styles. It is not a traditional family form, and it must never be attributed to one. Some writers have criticised compiling the framework into a routine precisely because it does not carry the original meaning of 十三势. How the framework and the 2018 routine relate sets out the two side by side.

What is shared, and what is particular to a lineage

Shared: the classification framework — eight methods and five steps — is used across the main lineages, Chen, Yang, Wu, Sun and others. Sun Lutang’s 《太极拳学》 (preface, 1919) already treats it as common ground: “八卦者，掤捋挤按采挒肘靠即八卦也；五行者，即进退顾盻定也.”

Particular: how the framework is actually driven differs, and the difference should be attributed to a specific lineage and a specific manual rather than generalised.

• Chen style drives the methods through the spiralling jin, 缠丝劲, with 掤捋挤按 as the primary four.
• Yang style leans towards a long, soft, silk-drawn jin, with an expansive movement and a strong health orientation.
• Wudang and the Zhang Sanfeng line carry a separate vocabulary of single-form practice, which is the third sense of “thirteen” above.

Sources

• 《太极拳释名》 (traditionally attributed to Wang Zongyue; also titled 《十三势释名》 or 《长拳十三势解》) — the definition quoted above, preserved in Shen Shou’s 《太极拳谱》, volume one.
• 《十三势歌》 / 《十三势行功歌》 — “十三总势莫轻视，命意源头在腰隙.” The title differs between transmitted copies: 《十三式歌》 in the Yang-family manuscript, 《十三势行功歌》 in Li Yiyu’s, 《十三势行工歌》 in Hao’s, 《太极十三势歌》 in Tu’s, 《十三势歌诀》 in Sun’s — which is itself evidence for the 势/式 distinction.
• 武禹襄《十三势行功要解》 (also titled 《十三势行功心解》) — the line-by-line commentary on the song.
• 《打手歌》 (traditionally attributed to Wang Zongyue) — the push hands mnemonic.
• 沈寿点校／译注《太极拳谱》, 人民体育出版社 — 1991 first edition, ISBN 7-5009-0684-6; 1995 revised edition, ISBN 9787500911920. The standard collection for the classical literature, and the source used above.
• 孙禄堂《太极拳学》 — 1924, 中华书局. The preface quoted above.
• 唐豪、顾留馨《太极拳研究》, 人民体育出版社, ISBN 9787500907749, and 顾留馨《顾留馨太极拳研究》, 山西科学技术出版社 2008, ISBN 9787537729789 — the historiography, including the attribution disputes.
• 陈鑫《陈氏太极拳图说》 — begun 1908, completed 1919, published by 开明书局 in 1933. The source of the Chen thirteen-segment division.
• 国家体育总局《太极八法五步》 (2018) — the modern standardised routine, to be kept distinct from the classical framework.

A note on citing these: the titles, the authorship and the dating of the classical texts are all subjects of scholarly discussion, and the pre-modern material should be cited by the version used. The page numbers and editions of the printed editions still need checking against the copies.