Little Nine Heaven

The Systems · The Root

Little Nine Heaven

Little Nine Heaven is the parent system beneath everything else on this site. Where the other arts we teach are complete in themselves, this one is the trunk they were grafted onto — the oldest continuously transmitted Taoist martial system known today, with roots traced by tradition to the Yellow Emperor and the Nine Chamber scriptures.

For most of its history it was not taught publicly at all. It passed from one Taoist priest to a single successor each generation, carried orally rather than written down. Grandmaster Chiao Chang-Hung, the thirty-third generation holder, was the first to open any part of it to the outside world — and even then only to a handful of people he selected himself.

The Three Skills

The system rests on three pillars, and a student is not considered to hold it without all three:

• Ju Kung — Nine Chamber Fist. The boxing method. Its theory works through nine "chambers" of the body: palms, fists, elbows, shoulders, waist, thighs, knees and feet, each trained as a coordinated whole rather than as isolated weapons.
• Chiankuan Jen — Swordsmanship. The straight sword, treated not as a weapon added to the hand but as an extension of the same body mechanics that drive the boxing.
• Shih Shui — Bone Marrow Washing. The internal cultivation half of the system, and the reason many students come to it at all. It has its own page here.

What Study Looks Like

Little Nine Heaven is not an introductory curriculum, and we do not treat it as one. Students generally come to it after establishing a foundation in Hsing-I, Ba Kua, or Chen Tai-Chi — not because those are lesser arts, but because the body mechanics and the patience they build are what make this material legible at all.

If you are drawn specifically to this system, say so when you write. The honest answer for most people is that the path in runs through several years of other work first, and it is better to know that at the start than to discover it later.