Too often students do not ask the basic questions about their study of Taiji.
How does it differ from External, or hard style, martial arts?
What is the method used to train to achieve this difference aka Internal abilities?
The most common teaching approach is to show a student a posture, then another, and then another. But nowhere in the curriculum are the above questions answered, or explained.
My friends and I spent many years with such instruction but luckily for us our teacher came from a hard knocks background where the test was always fighting ability, just as it was in Chen Village when the art was being developed.
We add one more question. Can you do anything martially useful without resorting to External methods?
Sadly the answer to that is often No, and that means that you cannot Do Taiji, you remain as a practitioner.
And thus our art becomes more debased every year.
In Taiji every movement must be driven. If you move your hand or arm that movement must be driven by root, alignment, rotation and expansion.
We use a technique sometimes called, “The union of opposites.” This is illustrated by the Yin/Yang symbol, and is also called Separation.
The Yin Yang symbol unfortunately does not show that it’s movement is meant to be transfomation
That is, the white fish gradually transforms into the black fish and vice versa.
This is the very description of Taoism and yet is missing from most people’s practice.
Taiji is a physical embodiment of Taoism.
External practices do not use any of these methods.
In this article we talk about these differences, how to train them and how to eventually be able to use them in a martial setting.
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Taijiquan is a unique and esoteric art that requires we change not only our body, but also our mind.
The number 1 attribute of Taiji is Release, also sometimes called Relax.
Whatever name it goes, by many have a difficult time with this, and it is the heart and soul of our art. It is best we pay attention to it, and have some means of cultivating it.
Training oneself to Release is not a case of simply saying, “I will relax now.” It requires arduous, daily, practice, and most importantly, a method of doing so.
Tension is so embedded in many of us that it will creep back in given the slightest chance.
All other attributes of our art depend on our ability to release our breath, our muscles, our joints and even our connective tissue.
Through Release we are able to create Peng, the essential energy of Internal arts such as Taijiquan and Qi Gong.
Martially speaking, if you cannot create Peng in your own body, you will not be able to use it to influence a partner, or opponent.
If you cannot do Applications using Peng, your Taiji skill is low.
Here is a partial list of attributes we need to cultivate in order to create Peng.
- Release
- Alignment
- Root
- Expansion
- Rotation
Release requires that we are able to release our breath. If we were to take a poll, a hands on poll, of people who can do this I’m fairly certain we would find that most people cannot.
One of the methods I support for gaining this skill is Meditation. However, as useful as this study can be, not all meditation is helpful.
Just the other day, one of my teachers classes was highlighted with the idea of Release. Everything we did had this component highlighted.
One very simple exercise was to put a hand on our belly and another on our chest. The instructions accompanying this were to take several full breaths, and then monitor what moved most, chest or belly.
To my surprise I saw several people, who I know have spent years in meditation, breathing into their chests. Not all meditation teaches this essential.
If you cannot calm your breath, you cannot calm your mind and you cannot calm your body. If you wish to say that you “Do Tai Chi”, not simply practice it, then this essential must be cultivated until you have some control over it.
The attributes highlighted above are all interdependent upon each other.
Without Release you cannot cultivate Alignment.
When a body is full of Contracting Tension the joints are often out of joint, meaning that your body is misaligned.
For instance, tension in the head, neck and shoulder area will often cause a person’s shoulders to rise, putting them out of joint.
How do you root a part of the body that is misaligned or moving upwards? You cannot.
The path to root is downwards. Rooting into the ground is a common term but still some people will raise their breath and their elbows, thereby contradicting themselves.
All body parts must go down.
Here’s an Insider Joke from our classes.
Question, “What body parts go down?”
Answer, “Wrong question!”
The reason it is the wrong question is because all body parts, save for three go down. The correct and shorter question is “what body parts go upward?”
The fingers, the head and the knees are the only body parts that go upwards. Everything else must be released downwards.
But, to say that these three do not Root is also incorrect.
They root upwards.
Fingers must act as though pulled upwards.
The head and neck root upwards so strongly that some teachers (of proper lineage) say that our weight is divided, not into two, but into three.
As an example you might say that in a forward stance you have 50% weight on the front hip, 40% on the rear hip, and an even 10% on the head.
Knees also go upward. But only if you keep your weight on your sinking hip. Otherwise knees go down as you lean and break alignment.
All of this requires serious training and a correct method of training.
Unfortunately the engineering approach to learning and training has largely been lost and replaced with either goofy references to Qi cultivation, or folks don’t realize that learning a form is only scratching the surface of what the art has to offer.
Learning a posture, or 150 postures, without understanding their Internal Mechanics, leaves you with an empty art. To make that empty art useful in a martial setting will mean that most resort to using force.
Shoving people around has never been a part of Taiji training and is frowned upon by anyone with a decent level of skill.
Using force in place of using proper body mechanics means that your art will only get worse, not better.
Training to maintain the basic Principles of movement is not an easy undertaking and probably somewhat accounts for the debasement of our art that is so common these days.
You cannot align a part of the body connected to a joint that is ‘out of joint’.
Shoulders are one major area that we need to be able to control in order to Align ourselves.
If we look at elbows we see a similar problem. Elbows have two attributes that also need to be cultivated.
One is that elbows should always point down. The other is that the range of motion of an elbow is horizontal. Which makes sense, anything other than horizontal movement will mean that your elbow is raised which is bad enough in itself, but usually also causes the shoulder connected to it to jump out of joint.
Shoulders and elbows obviously need to be able to root. Rooting is not restricted to hips or the lower body.
With the admonishment that Taiji produces ‘body as a single unit’ type of movement, and the admonishment that Root is a major attribute of the art, it is logical to presume that All Parts of our body must Root. Not pieces of our body, our entire body.
Shoulders and elbows need a route to our root. Part of this is having a place to Root to.
Where do your arms root?
What about your elbow? Do you know how to root it?
Shoulders are relatively easy to root, just don’t lean, loosen them downwards so that they sit on your hips and, as long as your hips are released and align with your feet, your shoulders should root nicely.
However, if you are unable to maintain a sunken hip ‘at all times’, you will break alignment and therefore be unable to root your shoulders.
Body parts sit on other body parts and the route to the ground must be through the hip joint, to the foot, and through the foot into the ground.
You can fool around with a skeleton or with your own body to see how this works quite easily.
If your carry your weight on your thighs rather than on your hips the line from hip to knee will always be pointing downwards off your body. You will be either canted forward or sideways.
The only clear route for all upper body parts is to have them collectively go through the hip.
And thus the quote from Grandmaster Liu ChengDe.
When asked to define Taiji he replied, “Sink the hip and turn.”
This is not an easy task as it requires training the hip joint, on both sides, to remain open at all times.
The only way to be sure that you are not contracting in that area is to have someone else press on your Kua and check that it feels soft and released. Eventually a person is able to do this for themselves but in the beginning it is best to get feedback from someone else.
For our purposes the Kua is the line between your thigh and your belly. Also called the inguinal crease, it must be soft and released or your weight will not be on it, but on your thighs and knees.
Humans are very capable of fooling themselves.
In my first experiences with Tai Chi we were shown a method that aided in Fa Jin but required a slight straightening of the rear leg.
And this method came from a teacher who was known for his softness and his emphasis on loosening.
However to even slightly straighten your leg requires inducing contracting tension, and locking the rear hip joint.
If you don’t believe me get yourself a cooperating partner and have them press on the Kua of your rear leg as you do this.
The only way to keep the hip joint, on both sides, Released, is to sink that hip and knee.
Let’s take this idea even further.
The side of your body that you are leaving must sink. The hip on the side you have left must be lower than the side you have arrived at.
The side containing more of your weight will then be the higher hip, and the side you left will be lower. Both knee and hip should be lower.
But the sinking side is not empty. It is actually where your body is mainly powered from.
This method has some problems but is the only way to maintain softness while Releasing.
The main problems seem to be; ego, pain and being capable of steady practice.
Ego because “I must be doing it correctly already.”
Pain because teaching yourself to constantly release your hip joints requires a lot of muscular exertion and is very fatiguing.
In China it is a common practice to have new students practice Circles (jibengong) for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening.
This is extreme training and not for the faint of heart. It is also the ‘secret’ to being able to produce Peng and thus was often not passed down to untrusted students, or outsiders.
Steady practice because without steadiness, i.e. daily practice. Our bodies will simply go back to their state of contracting tension that we are doing Tai Chi to get rid of.
A state of tension throughout the body is unnatural and not healthy. All sorts of health problems come from excess tension.
Poor digestion and elimination. Reduced or blocked Qi flow are only a few of them.
Excess tension can cause both mental and physical health problems.
Excess tension can cause faulty thinking processes that hinder clear thought.
Tension is equated with chaos, relaxation with calmness and clear thought.
As a martial artist you do not want to be confused or chaotic. To ensure good health and good relationships lifelong you do not want to be confused or chaotic. And yet many people go through life in this state.
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It is common in Yang Style Tai Chi to see people with an almost straight and locked rear leg.
To be clear, a locked or straightened limb breaks the first Principle of Taiji, Relax/Release.
Thus breaking the Principles of Tai Chi practice.
It is disconcerting to see people go so far as to attempt to change the very description of Tai Chi to suit their lack of capability and knowledge.
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Expansion is the glue that binds body parts together and aids in creating a Qi path, that is, a path for your Qi to flow on.
Some people believe that if they just concentrate hard enough their Qi will flow wherever they want it to go. But what if you have physical blocks to that flow, as most of us have?
Those physical blocks must be dealt with or you will have either blocked or reduced Qi flow.
The constant “grinding” of proper training will get rid of most physical blocks. Some may not be removed such as skeletal injuries, joint injuries or internal issues such as blocked intestines.
But even such serious injuries, or birth defects, can be helped by proper training.
Expansion really means to keep a series of stretches going while we change from one complex posture to another.
An exercise that is pretty simple, and a great eye opener, is to raise both arms to shoulder height, release the shoulders and elbows and ‘straighten’ the arm. Straighten is in quotes because if you release your shoulders and elbows your arms will actually be slightly curved.
Now the test, see how much you can lengthen from neck to finger tip on both sides, while remaining Released.
As with our earlier tests you should have someone testing your elbow and shoulders to be sure you have released them. If properly released your elbow will be heavy. This is easy to test but resist the urge to push down. That’s cheating and can be easily checked by having your partner take his hand away. If your elbow drastically lowers you were using force in the exercise.
Done correctly, when your partner removes their hand your elbow should not move.
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Most people cannot do this simple test, even statically, never mind while moving through a series of complex postures.
Most will tighten (contract) while attempting to lengthen (release). Sounds silly, but that is a common response to this test.
If you cannot do this simple test, you cannot do more complex versions of it, such as moving through a complex routine of complex postures.
Some common stretches we maintain while performing Taiji are; creating a line down the back of the neck and eventually extending this to the tailbone area, creating a stretch between the two hip joints (both sides of the hips), maintaining a stretch through a bent arm as in the Yang posture Push.
Other common stretches are from the bottom of our hip to our foot, between the knees and one that covers the area between the neck and the shoulders.
These curves are what is meant when people talk about “the bowing of the body”.
All body parts must be bowed, not straightened.
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Rotation enters the picture when with sufficient practice of bending (sinking) the hips, shoulders, elbows and most other body parts; we begin to realize that to maintain Principle in practice, all movement must come from the joints.
If you move by muscular effort you are breaking every Taiji principle.
If you train sufficiently to move from your joints, you will be rotating (not wobbling).
Every movement will eventually involve rotation, or circles. These may be big, or so small they are almost invisible, but, with sufficient training there is no other option but to move through rotation.
Chen Xin (1849-1929) was not only a Master of Chen Taiji but also a theorist who wrote one of the first books that detailed the method of Chan, or twisting.
Before the art was called Taiji it was referred to as Chan, or rotation. Taiji was initially called the Art of Rotation thus showing the importance of this attribute.
In his book he presented an image that has baffled many for years. It was meant to illustrate the twining of the limbs that occurs when you move from the joints.
Mr. Chen Xin also has the poetic verse stating “The element of surprise is in the turning of the
joints.” The “surprise” that he referred to is the same as the “shen” used
here. But when he used the phrase “turning of the joint” he unveiled the
mystery of the “shen” in Chen Style Taijiquan.
Why does the “turning of
the joint” give away the secret of “surprise” ？
This answer resides in the fact
that when two parties are fighting, the key element is the precision of the
angle and the timing. This “turn” can cause the seeming loser to win. When
this is applied correctly, even the practitioner himself will realize that the
art is “even I don’t know how mysterious this mysterious art is.” Doesn’t
this make people applaud? How is this feat achieved? We will follow this
up next.
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Your spine too should rotate, not wobble.
Imagine this, one day my teacher brought a long pole into class. It had a floor clamp that you could put it in and a small motor to spin it.
The pole was long enough that it almost reached the ceiling.
He set it up, clamped it to the floor, attached the motor and started it up.
Did it rotate?
No, it wobbled. Because the top is not secured it will move erratically. It is only when both top and bottom are rooted that it can rotate enough to spin off anything thrown at it. Otherwise it will ineffectively wobble and be easily toppled.
The human body is more complex than our example.
Shoulders must rotate.
The rules (principles of movement) for shoulders is that they must be seated and can only rotate either forward or backward. Raising the shoulders means you lost your art.
In the above photo you can see this practitioner is breaking principle on a simple movement. Not only are his elbows raised, so are his shoulders.
Every joint, except one, must rotate. Elbows, knees, hips and shoulders included.
The direction of rotation reverses at every joint juncture.
If your shoulder is rotating outwards and backward, your elbow must rotate inward, and your hand will rotate outward (backward).
These are not Principles I or my teachers made up. They are encoded in the Original Classics, laid down by the creators of the art.
If you say those Principles are wrong and refuse, or do not know how, to train them, you are not doing Taiji. No argument is possible when references to the Original Classics are easy to obtain.
When you consider that Chen Fa-ke was the last great Standard Bearer to come out of Chen Village, the home of Chen Taiji (the form of Tai Chi that all others descend from), and that Chen Fa-ke’s family were Standard Bearers for centuries before him, you must admit that what he said, did, and trained, is probably correct. Then if you could find someone who knew him, trained with him for a lengthy period of time, wrote down his impressions, and became a Master himself, you have probably found someone who could teach you the proper way to do Taiji.
Hong Junsheng, aka The Man with Magic Hands, was such a person.
He studied one-on-one with Chen Fa-ke for a steady 15 years. He invited Chen Fa-ke to live with him and the two families lived together for years. Hong knew Chen Fa-ke well, and because he was intelligent and came to know Taiji very well himself, you can say that he was discerning enough and smart enough to not only absorb what he was taught but was also capable of recalling stories and illustrative events about Chen Fa-ke.
Hong Junsheng, like Chen Fa-ke himself, was more interested in Applications than he was in form. They both wanted to know how the postures and principles worked in a martial setting.
From the stories handed down about both, they were successful.
About Hong it was said, “Nobody knows what he does, but no one can beat him.”
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The collection of attributes we have described come together to aid in the ability to express Peng.
The tools we use to train these attributes are only available in Chen Taiji. Due to politics and a few other factors these methods were only passed down to Indoor Disciples and trusted family members.
The creation of Yang style Tai Chi was the moment that the debasement of Taiji began. Yang Lu Chan was at a crucial point in his successful martial career. He had become so well known that the foreign invaders occupying China wanted his art.
They told him, at the point of a gun, that he must teach them. Refusal to do so was not an option.
The Tongs, who were partially created to combat these foreign invaders, told him that if he did teach his art to the foreigners, they would kill him.
Between a rock and a hard place he decided that he must teach, or be killed, but would teach incorrectly, so the Tongs would not kill him.
Yang style was born to be an inaccurate version of Chen Taiji, lacking the Internal mechanics that make the art an effective Internal Martial Art.
As we are no longer is such perilous times, and as martial art has been overridden as an effective war time art, we do not have to follow such restrictions.
We train to cultivate the above attributes by learning and eventually internalizing Circles.
The two circles, negative and positive, are said to contain all of Taiji.
Hong and many other Chen Masters required that their students all practice Circles for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, before they would be shown form.
Now when they were shown the postures that make up the form, they could do them with the integrity that comes from being experienced in Circles.
After Circles and form comes Pushing Hands.
Pushing Hands is not meant to be a martial application, it is meant to teach the Basics of how we deal with the power of an opponent. Pushing Hands is a tool.
Chen Fa-ke and other masters have expressed the opinion that students must give up force when learning to push, otherwise their path to Taiji mastery will be going in the wrong direction.
T T Liang often would say that the short term win through using force, would result in a long term loss, as you will be training yourself to abandon your art for a cheap win.
From Pushing Hands, form and Circles practice eventually students would learn the true Applications of the postures and then move on to free fighting.
These last stages have almost completely disappeared from training as most students become stuck at the stage of not being able to release their bodies.
We end this article here and hope it has been helpful in your own training.
Learning circles is crucial to your development but acts as an aptitude test. Those who cannot figure out circles, or who cannot physically spend the time required on them, are outed and would have been refused further instruction.
Fortunately for the inspired among us we can find videos of a Master of proper lineage performing them.
Here is a link to one such Master.
At the beginning of this video Grandmaster Liu ChengDe performs both Positive and Negative circles, then proceeds to perform a drill form known as The 24.
