Health

In Tai Chi you don’t look down — or do you?

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Learning how to extend the qi

When I’m teaching my Friday class one of the things I quite often say is “don’t look down” – however, like most of the short, pithy statements you hear delivered by Tai Chi teachers… it’s not really true. Rather, it depends on the context of what you’re doing. Let me explain.

Yes, generally speaking, you want to be looking at the horizon when doing Tai Chi because you want to keep your head and neck aligned with your spine. Specifically with the head and neck we are talking about the posture principle of ‘suspending the head’. However, there are times in Tai Chi, where it is perfectly acceptable to look down – particularly on moves where the direction of the application is down towards to the ground. 

Like our White Crane Cools Wings, for example:

White Crane Spreads Wings from the ‘short short form’ I teach.

The reason I say “don’t look down” a lot when teaching is that people learning a Tai Chi form have a general tendency to look down (me included!). Generally as we age our posture seems to become more slumped forward, perhaps because we sit down a lot in modern life, but also because scanning the horizon for signs of danger has long since stopped being an evolutionary priority. We also use computers, phones and devices all the time, and they lead to a general posture of our heads being tilted forward slightly.  This can result in people doing the whole Tai Chi form while never looking up from the ground. 

Extending the qi

In Tai Chi you want to have a feeling of a slight stretch all over the exterior of the body at all times – that’s really what following the posture principles of Tai Chi gives you – things like flattening the lower back, rounding the shoulders and suspending the head. This is known as ‘extending the qi’ all over the body. When you stand in a Zhan Zhuang posture you can feel this slight stretch all over the surface of the body that the posture generates – it’s subtle, but that’s what you’re looking for.

Suspending the head is part of that extension of the qi over the head, and you can keep that extended feeling even when you glance down. What you definitely don’t want to do is break the alignment of the spine and neck, which is what typically people do when looking at their phone, or their feet:

Looking down at your phone. Photo by Thom Holmes onUnsplash

If you want a good fix for this then I find regular Zhang Zhuang (“post standing” or “standing like a tree”) practice is a good way to remedy this and retrain your head position on a subconscious level.  Master Lam has a 10-day course on the subject.

The problem with looking down is that our head is rather heavy (between 2.3 and 5kg), and when you take your neck out of alignment with your spine your body automatically compensates for the extra weight that is pulling it forward (or you’d fall) and it does that by tensing some of its posture control muscles, particularly in the middle of the body, and that can interfere with the relaxation and freedom of movement we are looking for in Tai Chi. You also aren’t creating an optimal path for sending incoming forces to the ground or for sending jin up to the head. You are also not ‘extending qi’ to the head.

If you’re going to look down then you need to do it while keeping that slight stretch up the back of the neck and over the head. 

Ward-off and martial applications

‘Ward off’ is another example of a posture where I do look down, although it’s only briefly. I look down because of the martial application I’m thinking of. My active hand in that posture is first the back hand, which I’m using to send my imaginary opponent to the floor. The front hand can then be used as a deflector, so after I’ve dispatched the first opponent to the floor, I then look up and deflect the second attack, which leads into the ‘roll back’ posture.

Here is the sequence:

In this sequence, the ‘ward off’ is the middle picture, and my focus is on my right hand pushing down from where it was in the previous picture, then in the next picture I refocus on the left hand deflecting, and getting ready to perform a ‘roll back’.

Here’s a much younger and hoplessly naive version of myself showing the marital application at around 19 seconds in this video:


As you can see, where you are looking in the Tai Chi form is dependent on what application you have in mind when doing the movement. So, while there are some useful maxims to remember in Tai Chi, such as ‘don’t look down’, it’s important that you know when it’s acceptable to bend the rules so that your Tai Chi becomes a living practice, with things done for a reason, not just blindly following the rules.

Tai chi and keeping the spine aligned with the head

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“An intangible and lively energy lifts the crown of the head.”

One of the things I often notice about my rolling partners in BJJ is that when they’re passing guard, they’re too easy to pick apart and attack because they let their spine bend by allowing their head to drop. As soon as this happens, I can attack their limbs easily because they’re suddenly not as strong. The spine is an integral part of the structure of our body, and when it’s not properly aligned, we’re weaker.

When we’re rolling in BJJ, and I’m in teacher mode, I’ll stop and point out when their head is down, and it’s often a kind of revelation to them. What I mean by “when their head is down” is that their head (and neck) is not in alignment with the rest of their spine. Once your head is aligned with your spine, you’re much stronger physically, without even trying. You’re also much more resistant to attacks from your partner. The game in BJJ then becomes about how you can break their spinal alignment while they try to keep theirs and break yours.

This takes you beyond the realm of just techniques and into the realm of principles. My BJJ book is certainly full of techniques, but I also tried to include a lot of text, especially in the intro pages for each section, about principles and strategy, too.

Having a background in tai chi, I think I’m more aware of spinal position than people who don’t have some sort of bodywork background before they start BJJ. In the 10 essentials by Yang Cheng-Fu as recorded by Chen Wei-Ming, it says, “An intangible and lively energy lifts the crown of the head. This refers to holding the head in vertical alignment in relationship to the body, with the spirit threaded to the top of the head. One must not use strength: using strength will stiffen the neck and inhibit the flow of qi and blood. One must have the conscious intent (yi) of an intangible, lively, and natural phenomenon. If not, then the vital energy (jingshen) will not be able to rise.”

Now there’s a lot of Chinese jargon in there that we can probably do without, and the way it’s written is not incredibly helpful. In BJJ, I usually just say “keep your head up” because that covers a multitude of sins, but what I’m really talking about is keeping your head in alignment with your spine.

If I’m teaching tai chi and I tell a student to keep their spine “vertical,” or lift “the crown of the head,” as it says in Yang Cheng-Fu’s recorded sayings, they almost immediately stiffen up straight like a soldier, holding their shoulders rigid and looking really uncomfortable. That’s not what you want in tai chi.

I think this stiffness is what Yang Cheng-Fu meant when he said in the next sentence of Chen Wei-Ming’s work: “One must not use strength: using strength will stiffen the neck and inhibit the flow of qi and blood.” A good tai chi spine is not a fixed position; it’s an alignment, and that means it’s an ever-changing position that adapts to your movement.

The general movement of your body in tai chi is always down. You are always relaxing and sinking down. That doesn’t mean you give up and slump on the floor like jelly; it means you just stop trying to hold yourself up all the time. You don’t really ‘do’ anything.

Relax the shoulders and just stand still for a bit in a wu chi posture. If you relax and allow it to happen, your head will naturally find the right spot where it sits in balance on top of your spine. The key is to stop trying to make it happen and let it happen. It wants to be there; you’ve just got to get yourself out of the way and allow it to happen. As it says in chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching, “The sage acts by doing nothing.”

You’ll know when it feels right, and you can transfer that feeling to other situations: driving, working on a computer, and even, doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Xing yi: stepping and striking in harmony

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How to time you strikes with your footwork, a video lesson

Sun Lu Tang, performing xing yi’s Zuan Quan.

Xing yi is a martial art I’ve got a lot of time for. The first thing I noticed about it was its approach to stepping and how different it was to other Chinese martial arts like tai chi, for example. In fact, the only other martial art I can think of that uses a similar type of stepping is yi quan, which is a derivative of xing yi, and perhaps Sun Style Tai Chi, which is obviously influenced by xing yi because it was the main martial art of the founder, Sun Lu Tang.*

When approaching xing yi for the first time, most people seem to be more interested in what’s going on in the body because it is an internal art. I think that, in a way, the label ‘internal’ is something of a blessing and a curse for xing yi because it leads to a lot of intellectualising about it, which is sometimes unnecessary. Before you need to start worrying about things like the internal workings of the body, I think you should be focusing on the footwork of xing yi, because that’s the key to getting the right feel for the art.

Xing yi stepping is different

It’s not like all Chinese martial arts don’t use stepping, (of course they do), but there’s something really nice and practical about the way xing yi uses stepping and striking in harmony*. If you look at a random xing yi link (its name for forms) then no step is wasted – something is happening on every step.

But it goes a bit deeper than than – the timing of what is happening is the thing to look for. The strikes combine with the stepping to put your mass into each strike, so rather than hitting people with just the weight of an arm, you’re hitting them with your whole body weight behind the arm.

I made a video about the timing of xing yi steps and strikes before and I’ve talked about xing yi stepping basics before, but a viewer of one of my YouTube channels, contacted me recently asking to know more about it, so I thought I’d make another video.

So, here it is – I’m demonstrating some standard ‘jab, cross, hook’ strikes on some pads first. There’s nothing special about this, then I look at how it would change if you were going to adopt the xing yi footwork. I show this with the weight staying on the back leg first, then I show how you’d do it with a palm strike and the weight on the front leg – in the way you do it with Bear (Xiong Xing). And then I show some xing yi movements in a linking form, where the steps and the striking are using the same timing. This is a mix of elements and animals.

Is there anything ‘internal’ in this? No, it’s just the mechanics of stepping and striking done together in the general way xing yi uses them. However, my controversial opinion (sorry, I’m trying not to get into arguments these days) is that you need to get this down first before you start with the more subtle internal stuff.**

* Yes, I’m sure there are other Chinese martial arts that use this sort of stepping sometimes – talking in generalities helps make a point, but it is rarely accurate.

** Xing yi is a big art, what I’m talking about is a feature of Hebei Xing Yi – other styles may vary and not use the same sort of footwork. I’m not attacking the way you do XY or the way your Sifu taught you.



Real men do Tai Chi, apparently

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The latest way of selling tai chi is to say it gets you jacked

I’ve seen a lot of things come and go in the Tai Chi universe over the years, but the latest marketing trend has got me scratching my head. Almost every advert for Tai Chi courses I see on Instagram and Facebook at the moment promises ripped muscles and a hyper-masculine physique, mainly for men over 50!

Tai Chi, with its soft, slow, flowing, gentle movements, is perhaps the least masculine-looking martial art you could imagine, yet here is “Master Lee” strolling around a TV studio with his top off showing off his impressively-muscled abs, which he says he got from tai chi.

Or this guy, who claims tai chi is the path to a six pack. “Real men don’t starve… they do tai chi”, he proclaims.

So, what’s going on here?

Firstly, these confident, super-tonned Chinese gentlemen, are clearly creations of generative AI video apps. Everything about the videos looks as fake to me as the idea that tai chi on its own will get you that shredded.

Tai chi is good for many things, like learning how to use qi and jin and producing a feeling of tranquility, or as a self-defence system, but producing athletic-looking people over the age of 50 is really not one of them. *

When you look deeper into the exercises being offered here they look like simple, repetitive qigong-style movements. The idea that you’d replace weight training and body weight exercise with these and still build muscle is wrong, as far as I can see.

There’s no getting away from it, if you want to lose weight and build muscle you need a diet, cardio and weight training routine.

—-

* Now, I’m aware that there is another trend at the moment to train intensively with kettle bells and call that “tai chi” or “internal”, but really it’s no different to doing a kettle bell workout and not calling it tai chi.

Self defence and swimming on dry land

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The age-old debate on sport vs self defence training opens up again, and this time, I’m in it!


“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you had somebody who has only ever trained sport jiu-jitsu and they’ve done the most sporty of the sport jiu-jitsu – they’re only ever training berimbolos, crab rides and rolling back takes – that’s their whole game, but they’re training against resistance, and they compete, especially if they compete, they are 100 times better at self defence than a guy who just practices self defence techniques in isolation.” – Stephan Kesting

That’s a quote from the first part of this clip that has been making its way around the Internets from Stephan Kesting, one of the shining lights in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community.

He goes on to say more, but the above quote is the essence of what he’s saying. 

I completely agree with him, but not only that, I’m actually in the clip – I’m the guy with the glasses at the bottom of the screen.

This clip was part of the longer podcast we recorded I recorded along with my writing partner Seymour Yang (Meerkatsu) with Stephan about our new BJJ book, which is currently being shipped out to people that brought the pre-order.

Incidentally, the book is not on sale anymore, that pre-order was a limited run, hard back, collectors edition. We’ll probably release a softback version in the future on a similar limited print run idea, but we haven’t decided for sure yet.

But back to the clip. 

Obviously, because this is the Internet and people can’t read or listen to something without immediately copying and pasting their own opinions about what they think he said, or wrote. So, this clip caused a bit of a ruckus online, attracting comments such as:

“This is hilarious BJJ is not good for fighting at all in sport (MMA) or self defense.. but ok keep believing that “

“I don’t know not all fights end up on the ground right away. And no one’s is gonna wait for you to sit down and start fighting. My complaint with some of the sports jiujitsu has to be Takedowns, it’s like they forgot to do takedowns.”

Now on their own there is some merit to the points being made, however they don’t refer to what was actually being said by Stephan. Let me reframe his statement in the way that Bruce Lee used back in the 1970s with his article called “Liberate Yourself from Classical Karate”:

Stephan is saying that the spontaneity and natural reactions that ‘live’ training will develop is worth 100 times what you’ll learn by practicing ONLY dead forms.

That’s the point, not the applicability of BJJ to self defence or whether all fights end up on the ground. And obviously it’s not an either/or choice, and there’s a lot of grey area in regards to marital arts triaining, but that’s the crux of the matter

Bruce framed the argument around the idea of live, spontaneous training vs repeating dead forms. There are a lot of great quotes in the article by Bruce Lee, but here’s a couple I particularly like:

“It is conceivable that a long time ago a certain martial artist discovered some partial truth. During his lifetime, the man resisted the temptation to organize this partial truth, although this is a common tendency in a man’s search for security and certainty in life. After his death, his students took “his” hypotheses, “his” postulates, “his” method and turned them into law. “

“Prolonged repetitious drilling will certainly yield mechanical precision and security of that kind comes from any routine. However, it is exactly this kind of “selective” security or “crutch” which limits or blocks the total growth of a martial artist. In fact, quite a few practitioners develop such a liking for and dependence on their “crutch” that they can no longer walk without it. Thus, any special technique, however cleverly designed, is actually a hindrance.”

To me the argument that Stephan is making and the argument that Bruce is making are different aspects of the same thing. It’s the ‘learning to swim by never getting in the pool’ analogy all over again. You simply can’t learn to swim without getting wet, no matter how great your theory of swimming may be.

We would all laugh in the face of a theoretical swimmer who only ever practices on dry land and yet we tend to revere the opinions of the theoretical martial artist far too strongly, especially if they have a cool uniform and a black belt with lots of stripes on it.

Personally, I find that the less I practice sparring in a week the stronger the need for coming up with solutions for theoretical situations becomes in my mind. The more actual resistive sparring I engage in, the less my mind craves these sorts of questions. Instead, I’ve actually got something useful to be thinking about, like how I would do a technique from that last round better, or how I would escape a particular situation that actually happened, next time.

Just imagine if you haven’t done any actual sparring for years. There are plenty of ‘martial artists’ like this. Their heads must be full of theoretical knowledge, most of which probably wouldn’t survive an encounter with reality. And all of which can be silenced with just a few seconds of actual sparring practice.

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How we made Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: The Ultimate Illustrated Guidebook

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I wanted to share the process and journey of how Seymour Yang and I made our new Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu book.

First of all it’s worth noting we are both black belt instructors with many years of teaching experience. The book is aimed at beginners to developing white and blue belts and covers everything we felt was useful and relevant in today’s Jiu-jitsu club environment.

After much time planning and researching we then set about creating the contents. Every illustration is based on a photograph or video still that we took of our students or training partners. These stills Seymour used as references to hand draw the line art images. I then wrote the text.


That was just the beginning. The hardest stage was making sure the book was as accurate and tight as possible as a work of reference. For this we spent a long time proofing, editing and redesigning it. We then tested sample after sample from independent book printing companies to find the best one (we did not want to go the Amazon print on demand route)

I’m proud to say the book is finally available for our followers to buy (as a pre-order) and so far it’s proving very popular.

We decided to make it a pre-order as we just didn’t know quite how many to print in advance. A two week window was decided and after the pre-order window closes (June 11) we can then tell the print house how many to make.

If you want to know even more about how we made it then check out this informal 2 hour (2 hour!) video where we chat about making the book (it will be released in a more thoroughly edited audio-only version as an episode of my Tai Chi Notebook podcast shortly):

When it comes to tai chi, buyer beware

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(FYI: Image made with ChatGPT)

I just saw an advert for a week long “Tai Chi for beginners” intensive with the teacher in question demonstrating a tai chi posture with the head thrust forward, so the chin juts out, the hips and pelvis thrust forward so it looks like he’s doing a bad Elvis impression, the arms awkwardly twisted so the shoulders lock up and the souls of the feet rolling to the sides and coming off the floor, so the ankle joint is not stable.

And yes, he was calling himself “Master”.

I think “buyer beware” is good advice in the tai chi market.

One thing I’ve observed in so many tai chi teachers is this desire to be the teacher way before they are ready. People don’t want to be the student – that’s boring! – they want the glory of leading something, of creating something, of being the person at the front of the class sharing their vast wisdom with their adoring students…

Why is this? I think it’s just ego. I’ve definitely felt it’s twinges in me. It’s a subtle trap that you need to avoid. And one I try actively to avoid all the time when I teach.

It is undoubtedly a nice feeling when people ask you for advice, and look up to you. However, I think it’s nearly always a mistake to want to be that person. People are rarely ever ready to teach tai chi when they start. You could say it’s the curse of tai chi in the western world. That’s why we have people called “master somebody” who can’t do basic tai chi postures or understand tai chi movement leading week-long intensives.

But what do we do about this? After all, somebody has to teach something or there would be no tai chi for anyone!

Perhaps some guidelines if you are teaching:

1. Think of yourself as a coach, or a guide, not ‘a teacher ‘master’. After all, people need to do the work themselves, you can’t do it for them.

2. Don’t let people start to treat you like some guru or master – if they do instantly stop that behaviour developing. You’ll be surprised, a lot of people want a guru to take away all their self responsibility.

3. Self reflect. Are you constantly talking about things you can’t actually do? If so, just stop. There’s never any need for that.

4. The most important thing: Be honest. Tell people what you know, how long you’ve been training, where you got it from. Don’t make yourself into something you’re not in other people’s eyes.

5. Finally, you also need a teacher. Find people you can learn from and don’t stop learning.

Tai Chi fighting applications

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This video has been doing the rounds online, showing some tai chi (taijiquan) fighting applications.


I don’t think there’s much to say about it, but it does perhaps prove useful for answering that question you get a lot: “can tai chi be used for fighting?”.

Let’s just try to say a few things about it though:

Firstly, he’s clearly just taking a tai chi posture (‘Play Guitar’) that looks very like that an ‘on guard’ position and using it in the same way a boxer does to parry and block punches. The hand he has by his chin he’s using in just the same way a boxer does their back hand to parry a jab. Is there anything wrong with that? Maybe not. You could use the posture like that, but is that its purpose?

Is that what that posture is designed to be used for? At this point, who knows. Usually you see ‘play guitar’ used as an arm locking posture, or combined with a foot sweep into a shuai jiao-style throw.

On the positive side, he’s actually getting the guy to throw the attacks properly, which is nice to see. Maybe they could be a smidgen closer together, so the punch would actually land, but compared to most applications you see from non-committal attacks, it’s not bad.

No, it’s not sparring, but not everything has to be. I don’t think it would look quite as much like ‘tai chi’ if it was sparring.

Finally, is there much ‘tai chi’ going on here? I’d be looking for smoothly flowing into sticking, yielding, and neutralising. He follows up a couple of times, but I don’t see much in the way of controlling the opponent here. The opponent is more often than not just blocked, and not controlled.

The bar for tai chi applications is pretty low. There are too many videos of people bouncing away at the slightest touch to muddy the water, so I think we have to say that this is at least a step in the right direction.

Judo is returning to its roots and allowing leg grabs again, but only in specific Japanese tournaments

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Getting rid of some of those pesky Olympic rules


Judo and (Brazilian) Jiu-Jitsu might have exactly the same origins, but they’ve gone down really different paths in their evolution. While Judo has focused more on the sporting elements and becoming an Olympic grappling sport, BJJ has always wanted to keep things closer to its Value Tudo origins, which evolved into modern MMA.

Even today, many BJJ classes have a strong self-defence element, however BJJ is a broad church and some associations and classes are much more orientated towards sport grappling, particularly the no-gi variation.

One of the frequent criticisms of modern Olympic-style judo was that it had sacrificed too much realism in pursuit of beautiful big throws in competition. One way it did this was to make any grab of the pants or legs illegal. This seemingly simple rule change had dramatic effects on the sport. Since the legs were no longer a target the stance of judo players became more upright in their stance, leading to more possibilities for big dramatic throws.

Remember, under Judo rules a match can be won with an Ippon, a throw that lands the opponent on his or her back. In BJJ no such rule applies – a spectacular throw simply earns you two points and the match continues.

All Japan tournament rules

I hadn’t noticed before, but there has been a recent rule change in judo, in a particular Japanese tournament called the All Japan Championship, that means you are allowed to grab the legs again, opening up a whole range of possibilities for long-forgotten judo techniques to make a reemergence. 

There are some restrictions though. To grab the pants you have to have a grip on the upper body with one hand, and you cannot grab the legs with two hands. This rules out popular BJJ and wrestling techniques like the single leg or double leg.

This video explains the rules:


Will the new rules get adopted by wider judo federations and ultimately the Olympics? It’s unclear at this stage, and too early to say, but it will mean that going forward, judo could end up looking very different to the way it does now.

How to get a better tai chi push by pushing a wall

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The power of relaxation

Mike Sigman’s post on qi has made me want to think more about jin and qi again. I realise I haven’t been posting about it very much recently – partly because I’ve been distracted by writing a book about BJJ – but now the book is finished it’s time I came back to the subject. I read another post Mike made recently on his 6H group about pushing against a wall, which I think is a brilliant idea, because it’s so simple.

In a way this post is just me writing it out in my own words as an exercise, so I can understand it, and contextualise it a little more in terms of my tai chi practice.

Pushing is a big deal in tai chi because it features so prominent in the form – one of the four ‘energies’ of tai chi is called push in English, which (as I discussed with Ethan Murchie in my last podcast) is confusing since the translation of “an” into English is more accurately to “press down”, which isn’t what the push posture in tai chi looks like, or how you’d push a wall.

An AI-generated tai chi ‘push’ against a wall


Pushing is also part of tai chi’s two person exercise, tui shou – “push hands”. So most tai chi people are pretty familiar with the concept of pushing.

Now imagine you are pushing against a wall and somebody asked you to push harder. Most people would simply push harder with their arms and lean harder into the wall. What you’ll feel when you do this (try it) is that it pushes your upper body backwards and away from the wall quite a bit because it’s impossible to push hard with your arms without introducing excess tension into the system.

This is the “you’re using your shoulder too much!” criticism that a lot of tai chi teachers sling at their students, without really explaining how not to push using the shoulder.

So, let’s look at exactly how you could push harder without using the shoulder.

The only another way to increase the power of your push is to increase the downwards power through your legs. Now, it’s pretty hard to push downwards with your legs, since we have nothing above us to push off from if we want to push downwards. Instead, all we have in a downwards direction is gravity, so how do we use that gravity power? The answer is to relax and sink down into your legs harder.

Put your hands on a wall and try it.

As you sink and relax more through the legs you should feel the power in your arms increasing.

What you’ll notice is that you have to internally align your body correctly for this power to reach your hands. The good news is that you don’t need to think very hard to do this, you can just feel how you need to arrange yourself and your subconscious will do the rest. But you need to properly relax. If you tense up parts of your body – your shoulder being the main culprit – the power won’t slow smoothly and uninterruptedly through the body to reach its destination.

At this point you should start to realize why the word relax (or “sung” in Chinese) is said so often in tai chi practice.

That path from floor to hands is what you’d call a ground path, or a jin path. And the force you are channeling into your hands is known as jin in Chinese. The usual English translation of jin that you see used is “refined strength”.

Again, don’t get hung up with where the path goes through the body, just where you want the force to go.

You should also notice that as the jin force in your arms increases, you don’t get knocked or pushed backwards as easily as you did when you were using brute strength, because there is less tension in your upper body.

Obviously you are not going to push a wall over! But you can now feel the forces in your body that we should be dealing with when doing the tai chi form, and hopefully when you do “push” in the form, your push will now be a little bit different, more refined, a little less clumsy and a lot more tai chi-like.