Notes
Twelve Animals (十二形) — Xingyi
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十二形 (Shí'èr Xíng, "Twelve Animals") is the **"shape" half of **Xingyiquan — the 形 ("form") in form-intent boxing. Where the five element fists (五行拳) are the elemental foundation, the twelve animals expand that vocabulary into twelve short forms, each distilling one creature's fighting quality — the dragon's rise-and-fall, the tiger's pounce, the eagle's seizing claw, the bear's uprooting shoulder. Each is drilled as a brief back-and-forth set; together they are the body of the Xingyi empty-hand curriculum that the Five-Element Linking Fist and the longer combination sets then recombine.
The twelve animals
The signature postures (拳譜) below follow a classic Hebei 古拳譜 (old hand-copied manual), reproduced under fair-use citation with the wiki's own glosses.
# | 形 Animal | What it trains | Signature postures (拳譜) |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | 龍 Dragon | rising-and-falling power; the supple spine ("searching the bones," 搜骨) | 龍形飛升 (the dragon soars and rises) · 伏龍落地 (the crouching dragon drops to earth) |
2 | 虎 Tiger | the pounce (撲); ferocity driven from the rear leg | 虎抱頭 (the tiger embraces its head) · 猛虎撲食 (the fierce tiger pounces on its prey) |
3 | 猴 Monkey | agility and contraction; nimble snatching and dodging | 猴子挂印 (monkey hangs up the seal) · 猴子竊繩 (monkey steals the rope) · 猴子爬桿 (monkey climbs the pole) |
4 | 馬 Horse | charging forward drive; the trampling hooves | 勒韁 (reining in) · 搬 (heaving aside) · 頂 (butting through) |
5 | 鼉 Water-lizard | parting the water — the sideways twist and floating lightness | 左右翻江 (churning the river left and right) |
6 | 雞 Rooster | single-leg rooting (金雞獨立) and pecking; the fighting spirit | 三穿掌 (three threading palms) · 金雞舍米 (golden rooster gives up the rice) · 金雞抖鱗 (golden rooster shakes its plumage) · 金雞上架 (golden rooster mounts the perch) · 金雞報曉 (golden rooster heralds the dawn) |
7 | 鷂 Sparrowhawk | compacting and unfolding the body; darting through gaps | 鷂子束身 (sparrowhawk compacts its body) · 鷂子入林 (enters the forest) · 蓋捶 (covering punch) · 鷂子拈天 (picks at the sky) · 鷂子返身 (turns its body) |
8 | 燕 Swallow | lightness and low skimming; the quick dart | 燕子晗泥 (swallow carries mud) · 燕子抄水 (skims the water) · 燕子食米 (eats the grain) |
9 | 蛇 Snake | coiling and wrapping; the supple "parting-the-grass" body | 蛇形纏身 (the snake wraps the body) · 蛇形昂首 (raises its head) · 蛇形轉身 (turns its body) |
10 | 鮐 Tai-bird | the upright tail and lifted guard; directness | 鮐形俯身 (the tai-bird bends low) · 鮐形上架 (raises its guard) |
11 | 鷹 Eagle | the claw-seize (鷹捉); grasping and tearing down | 鷹抓 (the eagle seizes with its claw) |
12 | 熊 Bear | the heavy shoulder (熊膀) and upright neck; uprooting power | 熊頂 (the bear butts with its shoulder) |
See also
Xingyi (形意拳) — the style, the five elements, the twelve animals
Five Elements & Twelve Animals (五行十二形) — the theory behind the forms
五行連環拳 Five-Element Linking Fist — the foundational linked form
Sun Lutang (孫祿堂) — whose 形意拳學 details each animal
Sources
[1] 形意拳古拳譜 (old hand-copied Hebei manual, incl. 李存義拳譜) — the animal-posture roster reproduced here under fair-use citation, with the wiki's own glosses. Public domain by age; digitised at ctext.org.
[2] 孫祿堂 (Sun Lutang), 形意拳學 (1915), Part Two (each animal in full), and 劉殿琛 (Liu Dianchen), 形意拳術抉微 (1920), 第二節 十二形拳 — both public-domain-by-age, held in the codex's Sources/internal-arts-manuals/; open bilingual editions on Brennan's site.
[3] Video: per-animal demonstrations are indexed on Xingyi on Film.
Details
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- Notes
- Updated:
- 2026-06-08
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