Tai Chi / Taijiquan

One simple change you can make to your Tai Chi that will make it immediately better (N.B. practice required).

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Change from being ‘stuck’ in your form to smooth, effortless movements.

People often say that Tai Chi is a moving meditation. But what does that really mean?

I can think of two distinctively different ways of mediating (there are others, too). One is to focus on an object exclusively. This is a type of concentration-based meditation. Your goal is to keep that object in your mind so that other thoughts can’t intrude. The other is an awareness-based meditation. Instead of focusing on one object, you have an overview of everything going on: you, what you are doing, and the space you are in, and you try and maintain that open awareness without getting distracted. If something comes up you notice it and let it go, returning to the awareness.

An awareness mind, reflected in nature. Photo by Noelle Otto on Pexels.com

In Tai Chi we want the second type of practice. When you’re are a beginner, learning the movements, you are akin to somebody learning to drive – it feels like there’s too much to do at once. Your mind is completely occupied by what you are doing and there’s no room for anything else. The more experienced Tai Chi player knows the choreography of the form, they know what’s coming next, and they don’t need to be in the movement so much. They can afford to step back and take a more general view of the activity.

If you’re in the more experienced camp on your Tai Chi journey, then try this the next time you do your form: imagine that ‘you’ are in your head, watching yourself do the form. You can be aware of yourself, your movements, your breathing and the space around you simultaneously, without getting ‘stuck’ in any one of those things. You’re just watching them happen.

I went to see an Alexander Technique teacher for lessons once and she told me to imagine a stage, with every element that’s happening to you and around you is on that stage. In normal every day life we have a spotlight on the one thing we are doing. In Alexander Technique, she said, we allow everything to be in the light. For me that made immediate sense. Maybe it will for you? It’s the same with Tai Chi. When doing the form, we need to expand our awareness to include everything that’s going on with us right now, and not get stuck in the one thing we are doing. It’s a bigger, more expansive feeling that leads to smoother, effortless movements.

In my training my Tai Chi teacher described something very similar to this as ‘man’ in Chinese, which translates as “slowness”, which is misleading since it wasn’t about moving slowly, it was about hanging in the moment without rushing. Rushing is often the thing that takes us out of the moment.

So, slow down, stop rushing, and when you’re doing the form allow yourself to mentally step back a little so you can be aware of everything that’s happening on your stage. For me the results of doing this are profound and immediate. It’s like a light bulb going on. It also feels like the release of a lot of mental tension you didn’t even know you were carrying. And it doesn’t need to be limited to the times you are doing the Tai Chi form. You can do it when you’re sitting down and having a cup of tea, watching TV, playing with the kids, or even ‘meditating’.

Some comments from Lao Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching come to mind:

“Do you have the patience to wait
Till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
Till the right action arises by itself?”

― Lao tzu

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Standing on one leg, is a great way to improve your balance and add years to your life, and Tai Chi has it baked in from the start

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Tai Chi could be the secret to improving your balance and living longer.

Standing on one leg is one of those things that’s supposed to be very good for you, especially as you get older. It’s the sort of thing that you keep hearing studies about. It’s supposed to reduce falls and make you more coordinated. It’s even an indicator of when you will die. People who cannot stand on one leg for 10 seconds are found to be almost twice as likely to die within 10 years.

As the (now late) great Dr Michael Mosley wrote:

“When you attempt the one leg balance, your brain is performing a remarkable amount of coordination. It integrates signals coming from the fluid in your inner ears, visual cues from eyes, and even feedback from your joints and muscles. Signals from your eyes play a big role in maintaining your balance, which helps explain why standing on one leg is significantly harder when you close your eyes. If you can reach 10 seconds with your eyes closed, you’re doing well.” – Michael Mosley.

As you can see, the process of balancing is a lot more complicated than most of us realise. Of course, standing on one leg is also something that we do in Tai Chi a lot, we just don’t make a big deal about it.

‘Separate leg left and right’, from Tai Chi. Photo by Monica Leonardi on Unsplash

Therefore, to hear that a one legged stand has all these extra health benefits is great news, since we’re doing it anyway in our Tai Chi kicks, which are often done slowly, so can take 2-3 seconds to accomplish, all of which is time spent with one leg off the ground.

(That photo, by the way, is a free image from the Unsplash website – and it’s actually very nicely done. A lot of the images on Unsplash that appear for a search on “tai chi” are so bad I can’t use them here, but that one is pretty good. Look at that nice vertical alignment from head to foot down the spine and leg. Perfect!)

I find that balancing on one leg is something that beginner students in Tai Chi really struggle with. They wobble, a lot, but I think it’s just from lack of practice, and as the article says, you can get better at it very quickly. You build new nerve connections and recalibrate your brain, simply by practicing.

As this article by fellow Bath resident and journalist, Joel Snape, explains, having good balance becomes increasingly important as you get older. He also makes the argument for Tai Chi as a great way to improve your balance, and makes the important point that the standing leg needs to be bent:

“Standing on one straight leg isn’t the same as standing on one bent leg,” says Locker, who began practising tai chi with a master who “could throw guys half his age and twice his size around the room”. “When the leg is straight, the skeleton supports the body, not the postural muscles. Older people are commonly advised to practice brushing their teeth standing on one leg to build their balance, but in order to train the postural muscles to support the lower body, you should use one bent leg.” This way, over time, you’ll build not just balance but work capacity. – Joel Snape.

So, it’s important to bend your knee (even if it’s just slightly) when standing on one leg. This is something I notice about beginners in Tai Chi. Whenever the feet come together it’s natural to want to straighten your legs, as if you were doing a Waltz. Learning to keep your feet together and your knees bent is a skill that has to be learned over time, and is much harder to do than you think. As soon as your mind wanders off, your legs will straighten. If you can get good at this, then when it comes to standing on one leg, it will be much easier to keep the standing leg slightly bent at the knee.

You can train Tai Chi with me in Bath/Bristol, and get better at standing on one leg, twice a week.

Thank you for supporting The Tai Chi Notebook. If you are reading this on a website that isn’t thetaichinotebook.com, then it’s highly likely it’s been stolen. Please let me know so I can issue their webhost a DMCA takedown notice for copyright breach. Thanks.

New podcast! The martial arts of Vietnam with Augustus John Roe

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Do you want to find out what traditional martial arts are practiced in Vietnam? Do you want to know what Tai Chi is like in Vietnam? And what Ho Chi Minh had to do with the development of the 24-step Tai Chi form? You do? Well, you’re in luck!

This episode of the Tai Chi Notebook Podcast features martial artist and author Augustus John Roe who lives and works in Vietnam. Enjoy!

The origin of internal arts, with Peter Lorge

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“The origin of internal arts” is probably what I’d have called this really interesting podcast with Peter Lorge about the history of internal martial arts, however Kung Fu Genius decided to name it “Chinese Martial Arts History is Mostly FAKE” because, well, it probably generates more clicks, or something. Anyway, Lorge turns over a few sacred cows here, and I also liked what he had to say about BJJ.

Have a listen:

I think Peter makes a great point about all these different ‘internal’ things throughout Chinese history all definitely existing, but all being completely separate and unconnected until the 1920s Guoshu Institute needed to create the category of “internal” to exist in opposition to shaolin and external, so it brought them all together. (The gentleman whose name he forgets when talking about this is obviously Sun Lu Tang.)

I do wonder if instead of looking back for mentions of “internal” throughout Chinese history a look back for the phrase Liu He “six harmonies” would make a better connection between the dots of Chinese martial arts history. While the term “Neijia” may not appear very often pre-1920s, Liu He definitely did. If we’re looking at how we got where we are today, then that’s probably a better bet.

What the name tai chi chuan means

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What’s in a name? When it comes to tai chi chuan (taijiquan), then the answer is… quite a lot.

Firstly, there’s the issue of how you write it. Occasionally, you will see an attempt to guess at the spelling of the name that makes the mind boggle, such as an email asking if somebody can come to your “thai chee” class, but usually it’s some variation of “tai chi” or “taiji”.

Photo by Klub Boks on Pexels.com

Tai chi was first romaised into English using the Wade–Giles system as “tʻai chi chʻüan”. But English speakers soon abbreviated it to “tʻai chi” and dropped the mark of aspiration. Nowadays, in the UK at least, we tend to use “tai chi” and forget about the “chuan”. Perhaps a better translation would be “tai chi boxing”, but this goes against the image of the art, which is usually practiced as a health exercise, so that’s never going to catch on. There really isn’t much “boxing” going on in most tai chi classes.

Then there’s he newer pinyin romanisation system, which has replaced Wade–Giles as the most popular system for romanizing Chinese. In pinyin, tai chi is written taijiquan. It’s popular to use taiji or taijiquan in English now to also remove any colonialist connotations of the term from a bygone era.

I get that, but I think the written phrase tai chi has slipped so far into the general populations consciousness that a lot of people have no idea what you’re talking about if you write taijiquan. I use tai chi myself.

Step back into the Qing dynasty

Then there’s the issue of when the art was given the name tai chi boxing. Tai chi emerged into public life in the royal court during the Qing dynasty, yet it wasn’t freely called tai chi until after the dynasty ended. If you try and find a written occurrence of the name published before 1912 you’ll draw a blank. There are certainly written documents that claim to be from years earlier that contain the name “tai chi boxing” yet not a single one of them was made public or published before 1912. What happened in 1912? The Qing dynasty collapsed and the new Republican era began.

My best guess as for the reason that this is the case is that Hong Taiji (1592 – 1643), the founding emperor of the Qing dynasty had adopted the name “Taiji”. It’s unclear if this was his personal name or a title, but there was certainly a taboo around using that name because it belonged to an emperor. It therefore became impossible for a marital art to be called “tai chi boxing” without breaking that taboo and suffering the (presumably harsh) consequences. However, once the Qing dynasty fell, the name was back on the market. (Credit to my friend Daniel Mroz for bringing this to my attention).

The taiji symbol

Then there’s the meaning of the name. The name taiji has obvious connections to the philosophical concept of the taiji symbol – the circle with the two fishes representing yin and yang and their constant interchangeable position. One state increase till it exhausts itself leading to the other in an infinite loop.

In Yang style tai chi lineages, the art has long been associated with Taoist ideas, which the taiji symbol is representative of. Chen style seems less Taoist in origin, however, the concept of taiji is a universal symbol, and used throughout all of Chinese thought.

The name taiji can be translated as “supreme ultimate”, which has lead many to conclude that tai chi boxing must have got the name because it was the boxing system par excellence of the Chinese martial arts scene. It is literally, the best! If only!

I wish that was true, but I think it’s just a common misunderstanding, which is perhaps played on as a marketing device in modern times. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be learning the supreme ultimate boxing system, right?

The concept of being a supreme ultimate is more to do with supremely different positions being harmonised. Extreme yang and extreme yin. Polar opposites that work together and find harmony. That’s the real meaning.

In Tai Chi your body moves through position after position – we call these ‘postures’ usually – in the transition between them the body will open and close in a repetitious cycle. Once yang (open) is exhausted the body will move to yin (close) once you’ve reached the extreme position of yin, you move back to yang again, and so on.

The opening and closing is a whole body action. So, you are literally enacting the taiji diagram with your body.

That’s the general idea. Of course, you can break down your body into sections and look at how each one of those opens and closes, there is seemingly no end to the level of detail you can drill down to, but on a basic level your body is always moving from yin to yang and back again, which is the reason for the name of the art – tai chi chuan.

Photo by Murillo Molissani on Pexels.com

Making an easier Tai Chi form

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I’ve returned to teaching beginners recently and that’s left me with a problem: I need a simpler Tai Chi form to teach.

The main problem with beginners learning Tai Chi is remembering the movements. While this is all a distant memory for me, lost behind 30 years of practice, I can see that the struggle is real for them – where does this arm go? Where are my feet? What move is next?

Also, the complexity of movements is an issue. Moves involving kicks where you have to stand are a lot harder for people without any background in a sport or a martial art to do.

I also need a Tai Chi form that’s short enough that the end of it isn’t so far away as to be unattainable to beginners, but has enough content in it that there’s something of a work out going on.

So I came up with doing some modifications to the first section of our long form and running with that. Here it is:

I think this form has a good balance of everything – it’s long enough that there’s enough to learn and practice, plus the movements are relatively simple for beginners, with no complicated kicking or turning manoevers. But it’s not so long that it’s going to take months to get to the end of.

Once the form has been learned and the first 6 posture principles of Tai Chi adhered to:

  1. Suspend the head
  2. Centre the coccyx
  3. Round the shoulders
  4. Bend the elbows
  5. Hollow the chest/raise the back
  6. Bend the knees

…and a reasonable level of relaxation achieved, then they can work on principles, like arms following the body, not moving independently. A good way to work on this is through silk reeling exercise.

Of course, after beginners have reached a reasonable standard in this form, they can move on to the full Lam short form, which is more of a challenge. But I suspect that for a lot of people, this little form will be enough.

I also updated my Tai Chi teaching website with a new name Slouching Tiger. Check it out.

Image credit: eberhard grossgasteiger

A rare picture of Yang Cheng-Fu surfaces

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Is this Yang Cheng Fu, or just a clever AI fake?

Yang Cheng Fu, grandson of the Yang style Tai Chi founder, Yang Lu Chan, is probably the most photographed of all the famous early Yang style practitioners, thanks to the publication of his 1930s books on Tai Chi that showed him performing his Tai Chi form as a series of fixed poses.

Of course, we all know that Tai Chi has no fixed positions, but if you are going to present a series of movements in a book then you either need a series of drawings or a series of photos showing poses. Film was rare and video recorders hadn’t been invented when Yang Cheng Fu published Methods of Applying Boxing (1931) and the Essence and Applications of Tai Chi (1934), which was translated into English in 2005 and published in print.

Yang Cheng Fu posing in Single Whip, from his Methods of Applying Boxing, 1931

Because of books like these we are used to seeing Yang Cheng-Fu in perfectly poised shots for the camera, which was why it was so surprising to discover this week that somebody had an ‘action shot’ of Yang Cheng-Fu taken while he was doing a form demonstration at a martial arts event.

So, full credit to the person who posted this: The photo was posted to Facebook by Wong Yuen-Ming in the Internal Arts Institute group with the message “Today I am making public one such a photo, possibly the only photo that shows Yang Chengfu demonstrating his Taijiquan in public that was shot by a photographer in action. It was taken on October 15, 1928 when Yang was demonstrating at the Chinese National Guoshu championship.” There is no name of the photographer mentioned.

It’s hard to know whether the photo is genuine, especially in the age of AI where it’s very easy to fake photos in a convincing way, but it does at least look like Yang Cheng-Fu. The posture shown also looks like Yang Cheng-Fu’s frame and style.

As for the location and date, that also checks out: The Central Goushu Institute held two events in 1928, the first in Beijing was a highly competitive lei tai tournament and the second was in Nanjing From Wikipedia: “This event came to be regarded as one of the most significant historic gatherings of Chinese martial arts masters. The tournament was presided by generals Zhang Zhijiang, Li Liejun, and Li Jinglin, who separated the 600 participants into two categories: Shaolin and Wudang.[2] After the first several days of competition, the fighting competitions had to be halted because many participants were severely injured. The final 12 contestants were not permitted to continue, with the public excuse being the fear more injury or a death. The winner was determined by a vote by the participants.”

It’s not clear which of these two events the alleged photo of Yang Cheng-Fu was taken at.

Is it genuine? I don’t know, but it’s very convincing. I initially thought he was performing in front of a mirror but the arms are not a mirror image, so there are two performers on the stage.

Episode 31: Mantis boxing, BJJ, self defence and heresy in martial arts

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Here’s my latest podcast! Mantis boxing, BJJ, Self Defence and heresy in martial arts with Randy Brown.

Randy Brown is a Mantis Boxing and BJJ black belt coach teaching in the USA. In this podcast we explore how Randy has reworked his Mantis Boxing to explore the grappling potential hidden in its forms and how they can interact with his Brazilian Jiujitsu. We talk about a range of subjects including self defence vs sport, weapons vs barehand and how to turn dead systems into living arts again.

Links:
https://randybrownmantisboxing.com/

Tai Chi as a group practice vs solo practice

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A group practices the Tai Chi 24 form together for World Kung Fu and Tai Chi day.

I’ve been getting back into teaching Tai Chi classes recently, and one thing I’ve noticed is the distinct difference there is between doing the form solo in your back yard compared to performing it as part of a group. I’ve been doing the form on my own now for years now. I stopped teaching formal classes in Tai Chi way back in 2011, and although I did a few private lesson things, lockdown really saw an end to that. So, it’s been a long time since I’ve been part of a group all doing the form together.

Group practice changes things. Your awareness in Tai Chi should always be this kind of delicate balance of internal and external. You need to stay aware of your internal sense of self, at the same time as not shutting out the outside world. This is, after all, a martial art, not a meditation session. If you’re not aware of what’s going on outside of you then it wouldn’t be much use for dealing with kicks and punches coming your way. But at the same time, Tai Chi does exist somewhere on the mediation spectrum It demands a sense of stillness and awareness over your inner state. Things like the feeling of your balance, your sense of whether your body is expanding or contracting, your centre of gravity (dantien) and where you are moving from all mater, not to mention keeping your mind fixed on the task in hand and your Yi (intention) flowing with the movements.

Doing that on your own is one thing, but when you are performing the form as part of a group, your awareness needs to also incorporate the group. The group seems to naturally develop a speed together. I wouldn’t say that a group of Tai Chi beginners possess the grace and beauty of a murmuration of starlings (!), but something of the same kind of non-verbal communication is going on. You are constantly picking up on little signals from other people that keep the whole group in check. But at the same time you can’t let the other people distract you and put you off your own job.

A murmuration of starlings

Just like Starlings, we are animals too, so we have these subtle senses and the ability to move in groups. If you’ve ever experienced being in a crowd of people that get a bit paniced you’ll know what I mean. The crowd seems to take on a life of its own and move as one.

Of course, it’s quite possible that you can perform Tai Chi with other people and remain blissfully unaware of any of this, particularly if you are new the Tai Chi and your head is so full of trying to remember the moves, or telling yourself off for getting them wrong, that there’s no room for anything else.

As a final thought, my feelings of seeing people doing Tai Chi together have always been a bit conflicted. On one hand it looks cool to see people brought together over a common goal, all silently concentrating and moving in harmony. But on the other, it expresses some of the worst aspects of the Communist ideas that ended up becoming a part of Tai Chi in the 20th century, that people should be ‘all the same’, bland, expressionless, worker units all doing whatever they are told to with no room for individuality.

There is always this tension between the group and the individual in society. The trick is to try and navigate it successfully.

Portable practices – Yoga and Tai Chi

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Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti exercises and practices yoga maneuvers by NASA Johnson is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

I really enjoyed the latest Martial Arts Studies podcast by Paul Bowman on Portable practices – Yoga and Tai Chi. (That’s not Paul Bowman in the picture, but I thought it illustrated the point nicely – Yoga is so portable, you can do it in space!

A usual for the Martial Arts Studies crew, the talk is about a lot more than just one idea, particularly interesting here for me was the nature of something being authentic. So many times now you see the labels “authentic”, “orthodox” and “traditional” added on to Taijiquan, and I think it’s always wise to be wary of these things. The reality is that what we think of as “traditional” are often modern recreations or what people thought people where doing a hundred years ago, but have been vastly influenced by modern practices.

This one is on video too: