What do the basic forms of tai chi represent?

For example at Taekwondo the yellow belt represents the earth. In which the roots of your taekwondo form are ready for a beautiful plant to grow.|||The Tai-chi forms evolved from the internal martial arts tradition of the Wudang Mountains of China. From there,Tai-chi became spread into the Chen family and from Chen style, other styles evolved. The forms as a whole don't represent specific elements - earth, wood, metal, water or fire.





Each movement encodes within it the principles of all the elements, the principles of proper body mechanics, proper attention mechanics and also are specific martial arts techniques. A teacher needs to know all these principles and how they apply to each movement in order to teach Tai-chi-Chuan properly.





In modern times, as many people who teach Tai-chi classes (notice I don't call them "Tai-chi Teachers") have a New Age approach, they don't train in the basic principles but develop beautiful terminology to give their students a feeling of what they want to convey. I think this is fine as long as the student knows they are not learning traditional Tai-chi but a New Age version of it.





The reason I say it is fine is that if this approach can help people relax and be healthier then it is doing people good and it is the approach many people want.





But I feel it is also important to keep the principles of proper body mechanics, proper attention mechanics, principles of healing according to the elemental theory and an understanding of the self defense applications of each movement alive. An entire form cannot be lumped into representing only one thing.|||My Tai Chi does not teach the hippie stuff. It is a real martial art so the pretty/symbolic references and names you mention are not used. I am most surprised you have them in Taek Won Do. They are a western invention and mostly pop up in Tai Chi taught in the west but I have seen this mythical stuff pop up in Karate too. This has nothing to do with traditional martial arts, I assure you.


More over traditional Tai Chi has no ranking, no belts or sashes to begin with let alone them representing different things.


Tai Chi does use directions, elements, yin yang, trigrams etc to explain basics but that is very different than what you are describing.