Tai Chi - More Than it Appears to be
The art of tai chi is much more than it appears to be. I guess that makes sense considering it’s referred to as an ‘internal’ martial art. If performed well, the more skilful stuff goes unseen.
Tai chi may look graceful and slow moving, like a dance, but that is the external
facade. It’s like looking at a house from the street, it may be fairly imposing but the real home is inside. The rooms, furniture, fittings, decor, living spaces and the inhabitants.
The architecture of a house is important both structurally and aesthetically. The human body also requires structural integrity for good ‘tai chi’. Once the structure is adequate, then interior design can commence.
Sound internal skills can not develop or even exist without solid foundation and correct body alignment. This is the area where most modern tai chi training has gone
pear-shaped. Teachers and students learning movements without correct tai chi physics. The body structure moves out of alignment throughout a form ( sequence of postures connected by movement ) and this is perceived by the practitioner as moving gracefully. It’s actually a dead end and a sure way to acquire knee, back, shoulder and neck pain. It’s a new age trick, a wafting hall of mirrors that leads nowhere. The student doesn’t remember the form, the promise of better health goes unfulfilled, they lose motivation and ultimately give up on tai chi. The sad reality is that in most cases they never actually started learning tai chi, just some cheap ‘Made in China’ replica. It looked pretty.
The art of tai chi is much more than it appears to be.
To gain some understanding of this internal dimension to tai chi, let’s look at one aspect of the training.
[ A tai chi Master is able to absorb and issue great force. ]
While this is not a strictly correct interpretation of the action, it will suffice for this example.
Imagine bracing yourself to receive incoming force. You stand well balanced with your forearm about 9” in front of your chest and a training partner applies pushing pressure to your forearm with their hands. You feel the incoming force through your muscles. They begin to tense up. The pressure increases and your muscles mobilise further to brace against the force. Your partner now pushes with all their might and at this point you are either able to withstand the force by virtue of being stronger than them or you are pushed over.
This intuitive resistance action by our muscles is applying what’s termed ‘external’ force or ‘li’ ( in Chinese ).
What sets tai chi apart from other martial arts and makes it incredibly interesting, is the ingenious way it tackles force. It converts a finite dimension into infinite possibility. Strength is removed from the equation and replaced with ‘release’. Force looks for the path of least resistance, so why block the incoming force, let it pass through.
If this concept is not part of your tai chi instruction, then seek another teacher. This stuff is pivotal to the art and without it you are simply not practicing tai chi. It’s just exercise or dance.
People could argue, what’s wrong with ‘just exercise’, it’s getting me up and moving? My counter to that would be - take a long walk, it’s probably going to do you more good than doing bad tai chi. Tai chi is simply magic and has enormous health benefits but the key to unlocking the treasure is in the type of training you do.
Let’s look a little more closely at this concept of release. We are naturally tense creatures. Our muscles do the mind’s bidding. Fight or flight is ever present. We buy in to busy-ness and process this subjective reality on an emotional level - anxiety, fear, apprehension, anger, inadequacy, jealousy, stress etc etc. Our muscles manifest this mental tension. We become good at covering up, pushing away, standing firm. Then something stronger than us or beyond our control, smashes through the barrier and messes with our core. We are only as strong as the outer defences, then the castle is overrun.
Now imagine if that unwanted physical or emotional force came at you and you simply let it pass through you into the ground. Your body becomes a conduit for force. The muscles relax rather than brace and the force has nothing to push against. Imagine a strong wind blowing against a tin fence. Once the wind becomes strong enough it will blow it over. That same wind would pass straight through a fence made of chicken wire. The fence would remain undisturbed. There is little resistance to the force of the wind.
For a human being to become like the chicken wire fence requires specific training but the physical, emotional and spiritual rewards are immense. There is nothing else quite like it. Trying to solve emotional stress using the intellect is just another form of muscle tension. Understanding physical release, genuine relaxation of our body, leads to mental release beyond thoughts.
To give you a basic idea of how the tai chi practitioner approaches this concept of muscle release we need to begin with the architecture. The body can create pathways for force to travel through unimpeded but skeletal, muscle and white tissue alignment is critical. Years of tension creates body malalignment. Poor posture, injury, lack of mental connection to areas of the body, poor ergonomics, repetitive work practices, too much sitting, mental stress, ageing etc. It’s time to begin a journey into the body and start repairing it. This is where the mind and body become better connected. A good teacher is highly recommended if not essential.
We work on alignment in conjunction with consciously releasing the muscles. Until you journey into your own body and focus on each of the various muscle groups, you have no idea just how much tension you are holding. It actually feels normal to function with high levels of tension and to unconsciously accept this state of being. Once identified, real relaxation can begin to happen. This process of conscious release coupled with continually improving our structure is very fluid and has no end point. You can go on improving forever. Never fall for the dangling carrots - ‘I’ve got it now’ or ‘I’m really good at this’. It’s a trick. The mind can be a devil. Stay humble, keep learning, the onion has many many layers.
The body creates pathways for force to travel through. The size of the holes in the chicken wire fence determine how much or how little resistance is offered by the fence to the incoming gale.
Likewise, the ever increasing skill of the tai chi practitioner is in how big he/she can make the holes in the fence. At first when you try to relax the muscles, any number of obstacles within the body will block most of the force, giving it something to push against and move you.
Gradually, through various drills and ideally some partner work, you learn to better align the structure and release more tension. You continue to remove more and more of the blockages.
Imagine a down-pipe leading from a roof gutter down to a ground drain. If the pipe has lots of bends and kinks in it, then the flow of water down the pipe is slowed accordingly. This equates to the body structure. Now imagine within that same down pipe there is lots of organic matter washed in there from the roof gutter. Clumps of moss, dirt, leaves, dead insects etc. These equate to the muscle tension within the body. Again, slowing down and often completely blocking the downward flow of water from the roof. If our down pipe is perfectly straight or even curved smoothly and the inside is released of the organic gunk, then our water force passes easily.
Most people who elect to learn tai chi are not drawn to it by the martial aspects. While some state self defence as an interest, it’s rarely the main consideration. It is important however to realise that unless you involve yourself in the aspects of tai chi that make it a martial art, then you are learning a very watered down and ineffective version of the art. I’m reluctant to condemn anything outright but I can tell you 100%, the new age concept of tai chi as dream like movement is illusory and uninformed. It has some short term wow factor but it’s a placebo.
You don’t have to learn to fight but you should be granted the opportunity to understand and experience the skills that condition a body to explore the martial application of the art. The devil is in the details. To get the health, seek the martial.
To summarise this process of structure and release, allowing force to pass through the body rather than blocking it, I would firstly urge you to seek a teacher who is able to teach it well.
Using good architecture, relaxed muscles and a calm mind to direct incoming force along the pathways, helps create a very healthy state of being. On a tangible level, whoever is pushing you is actually pushing against an entire planet. The applied force is ultimately met by the Earth. Because force can travel down into the Earth via unblocked pathways in your body, it can also travel back the other way. On YouTube ( or similar platforms ) you can witness the apparently unbelievable dispatching of opponents by a Master using what appears to be nothing more than a light touch. This is using a combination of unimpeded force from the Earth propelled by specific compression and release within the Master’s body. Again, it requires complete relaxation of the muscles.
It’s an interesting paradox that many assess this kind of internal skill as being fake. In actual fact it is the ‘real’ tai chi. Ironically it’s the external expression of the art, the majority of what you see labelled as ‘tai chi’, which is actually fake.
One other important thing worth mentioning in combination with the structure and release component of tai chi, is listening skills. Of course you should listen to your teacher but this kind of listening ( or ‘ting’ in Chinese ) is akin to sensitivity or the ability to connect with your opponent or your own body in order to feel and direct force. We use our muscles to assess the level of force being applied to us. The muscles are our sensors. If we abandon muscle strength, then how do we assess and then direct the force? This is a subject requiring more attention than is relevant here, so I will write a separate article about it.
Tai chi deserves to be explored through traditional channels and not as some addition to a physiotherapist, dance or yoga teacher’s repertoire. The health and enjoyment outcomes are intrinsically linked to the genuine tai chi skill level of your teacher.
