What is the point of silk reeling?

/ Tai Chi Notebook

So, Mike Sigman raised an interesting point in his comments on my last post on silk reeling – “Silkreeling is about developing the elastic connections of the body.”

I agree with him. That’s probably not all silk reeling is about, but that’s the fundamental idea. But I wonder how many people who teach silk reeling or Tai Chi actually agree? I mean, there are so many style and different ways of doing Tai Chi these days that’s it’s almost like it’s become a terms for a grab bag of different skills all meshed together.

But perhaps we just need to establish a baseline. I’m interested to hear what you would call the point of silk reeling? How does that statement sit with you?

3 thoughts on “What is the point of silk reeling?”

  1. The way I learned it is that it seemed like firstly an isolation of the main Dantien, the legs in deep horse stance (Chen style). Secondly, then, all turns and subsequent movement of arms and hands is connected to that Dantien. All about that simple, but sometimes elusive, connection.

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  2. you know you will have reached this point when you get the Fa Chin on every single movement of the form. While pushing hands, you can unearth opponent’s roots in no time. Taichi practice, whatever form, should help develoop silk reeling skills, which in turn improves your tai chi. A bit like chi, hard to define, but you know when you get it.

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  3. In the comments of the parent post on this topic, I indicated that the heart of the topic of chansi jin was rotation.

    I agree with a modified version of Mike’s statement, “Silkreeling develops the elastic connections of the body.” It does do that. But, whether this is a primary focus, a secondary focus, or a by-product would probably be up to the individual practitioner, so it’s not really worth a debate.

    Graham asked, “I’m interested to hear what you would call the point of silk reeling?”

    Chansi jin is the root of all taijiquan. Learning how to rotate and coordinate the body gives one the chance to learn the skills of taijiquan. So, make a list of taijiquan skills, peng, lu, ji, an, cai, lie, zhou, kao; neutralizing, being substantial or insubstantial, opening, closing, breaking, connecting. I can’t think of anything in taijiquan where chansi jin is not involved, if not as a primary factor then at the foundation or in the periphery.

    I’m not sure that is very helpful in establishing a baseline, but that’s the way I was taught.

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