martial arts

Happy New Year (of the Dragon)

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It’s 2024, if you’ve ever commented, read or shared a post of mine, then a big thank you for contributing to the story of The Tai Chi Notebook. I feel privileged that I get such good comments here, and quite often they inspire new blog posts, so we all play a part. Let’s see where it goes in 2024.

I’ve already done one post of a training idea for the New Year, however, for New Year’s resolutions I thought I might introduce you to the more professional side of my writing – here’s an article I’ve written for the iMore website on iPhone apps that will help you stick to your New Year’s resolutions. Since most of us have smart phones these days I think it’s widely applicable to my readers here (I’m sure Android versions of most of the apps also exist). I hope you enjoy it! I’m certainly going to be using some of those apps this year.

Photo by Eva Bronzini on Pexels.com

2024 will be the Year of the Wood Dragon, (which starts on 10th February). Japan Times says “In a dragon year, people are said to be able to harness the creature’s intelligence, leadership and abilities to pursue their dreams with creativity, passion, courage and confidence.”

So, here’s a bit of Xing Yi Dragon I recorded in 5 spare minutes I had between opening presents and eating another round of Christmas dinner/left overs/chocolates – it’s out of focus, but not out of mind 🙂

In a way Dragon is the most Xing Yi animal of them all. I’ve done lots of posts about Dragons before, so check some of them out here:

  • The Azure Dragon and Shuai Jiao
  • Dragon Dance and street theatre
  • The importance of Dragon to Xing Yi

Making up your own forms – it’s not as easy as you think

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I had an interesting comment on my last post that made me think about the whole idea of making up your own forms (or Tao Lu) – in Tai Chi, Xing Yi, or whatever.

I’ve tried to do this over the course of several years and I’ve come to a few conclusions about it, which I’ll elaborate on here. Firstly, it’s hard. Making up new forms is not as easy as you think. But secondly, it depends what martial art you are making up a form in.

Author, performing Xini Yi Chicken (Ji) posture

If your martial art has forms that are constructed like lego bricks that can be slotted together in any order and still seem to work then it’s pretty simple to concoct a new form. Xing Yi is a good example of a martial art that has this quality. I was always told never to call Xing Yi tao lu by the English name “forms” because the correct term was lian huan which means “linking sequence” for this very reason.

The idea, (in our Xing Yi at any rate), is that all the links you learn are just examples, and you need to be constantly moving towards being able to spontaneously vary them as required, and then ultimately spontaneously create them. This idea has become heretical in the modern Xing Yi world to a large extent because modern Xing Yi has lost a lot of this spontaneous feel it used to (I admit that’s a subjective point) have, and things have become set in stone – forms that were once supposed to be fluid and flexible have become fixed and rigid. Forms of famous masters from the past now tend to be fixed forever. When words like “orthodox” start appearing to describe something you know it’s already dead, or on the way to dying.

But of course, anybody can make up a form, but is it any good? That’s a different matter. And it usually depends on the person doing it, not the moves themselves. With Xing Yi animals you can also ask the question – can I see the character of the animal being used coming out through the moves?

With Tai Chi I find it a lot harder to make up a form. Tai Chi’s approach to a form is quite different to Xing Yi, or other Kung Fu styles. The Tai Chi form tends to be a highly crafted piece of work that has been honed to perfection over many years. It is fixed because you need to be able to forget about the moves and concentrate more on what’s inside. It helps to do that if you don’t have to worry about what’s coming next because you’ve done it so many times that you can let go of that part of your brain and let it be aware of other things.

Tai Chi forms tend to start and finish in the same place for this reason. Usually, anyway. While long forms don’t tend to be balanced on left and right, a lot of the more modern, shorter forms make more of an effort to balance left and right movements.

If you understand Tai Chi and how to ‘pull’ or direct the limbs from the dantien movement then, sure you can make up your own Tai Chi forms, however, there is almost zero history of doing this in Tai Chi circles and it’s not really encouraged. I think this is because Tai Chi has push hands, which can be used as a kind of free-form expression of Tai Chi, completely away from the form and in contact with a partner to give you something to respond to, which is the whole strategy of Tai Chi Chuan, at least according to the Tai Chi Classics it is. To ‘give up yourself and follow the other’ you have to be spontaneous. There’s no other choice!

So, to conclude. I think that’s it’s in its application where the spirit of improvisation and spontaneity can be found in Tai Chi, not in the forms. I don’t think Tai Chi is particularly concerned with creating endless variations of forms and patterns like Xing Yi is, at all. Xing Yi, having a weapons starting point, doesn’t use this hands-on feeling and sensitivity to get started with spontaneity. Instead, it likes to create patterns, then vary them endlessly. Of course, you work with a partner when required, but it’s a different approach. Which is all quite natural, as these are two different martial arts, created by entirely different groups of people in a different locations and time periods.

You might like our Heretics history of Tai Chi and Xing Yi for more on that.


Tai Chi on the minute, every minute

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A friend shared a post recently about an interesting way of exercising called On the Minute, Every Minute. All you need to do is a number of reps of an exercise on the minute, every minute. The suggested start point in the article is 15 push ups, then 20 squats, then 20 plank jacks. That would take 3 minutes, so you just keep going 6 more times, up to 18 minutes. I quite like the idea because it’s simple, and simple is doable.

Photo by Hebert Santos on Pexels.com

Then I started to think how you could apply the same OTMEM method to Tai Chi… Here’s one suggestion: One move every minute then hold until the next minute comes around. I think a short form has around 50-60 moves, so would take roughly an hour to complete like this. It depends what you count as a move. That’s basically an hour of stance training, which would be quite challenging. One for New Year’s Day perhaps? I’m going to give it a go, so let me know in the comments if you are going to join me.

And of course, if you want to push it further you could always up it to every two minutes!

Don’t be that guy – Blind spots, martial arts and cult-like rituals

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Photo by Artem Podrez on Pexels.com

We often label other martial arts groups as a cult, and laugh at their silly behaviour and rituals, but at the same time we are a bit blind to the cult-like aspects to the things we do, because that’s ‘normal’ to us.

I went to a different BJJ school one time and they kept making jokes about my home school being a cult because we have to wear an official gi when training, which is more expensive to buy than a normal gi. There were a few other things mentioned, but that was their main issue. A white belt from another branch of my school had visited previously and he had committed the cardinal sin of facing the corner while tying his belt – that was apparently also a sign of a cult and they recounted the story with much hilarity – “I thought he was having a piss in the corner!”.

However, in that school I observed students doing several things that were equally cult-like, but were apparently completely normal to them:

  1. If you stepped on the mat without bowing, that was 10 burpees.
  2. Classes started and ended by lining up and bowing to the teacher.
  3. I (a grown man) had to ask permission from the teacher to have a sip from my water bottle, or if I wanted to leave the mat for any reason. And then ask permission to come back on.
  4. If a black belt asked somebody to roll, they weren’t allowed to say no, even if they had already agreed to roll with another person.

Now we do some of those things in my school too – we line up and bow at the start, for example, and bow onto and off the mat, but some of those things we don’t do. However, they’re all just different versions of showing respect to each other before and during training. We are learning techniques that have the ability to kill and maim, and people could easily get hurt in the training if we weren’t respectful of our partners safety. Building an atmosphere of respect around the training will hopefully instill that in the actual training.

There is something of an uneasy tension in modern martial arts between capitalism and customs. In modern times the people in a martial arts class are usually paying to be there – they are, as modern capitalism likes to call it “paying customers”. The phrase “the customer is always right” has not entirely entered the martial arts vocabulary yet. It still retains these throwbacks to its “traditional” student and master martial arts heritage, for the reasons outlined above.

But let’s not muse on capitalism too much. The point of this post is to draw attention to the blind spots we all have. To return to that BJJ school – the higher belts were technical, but also fighty without being overly aggressive or dangerous, and the instruction was good and clear, the rolls were good too. But I could have done without the undercurrent of tribalism that that had been instilled in the students and was reinforced by the higher belts.

I think it’s worth repeating that all martial arts are cults, and if you think yours isn’t… then isn’t that exactly what a cult member would say? My attitude is to accept the various rules and customs of each particular cult or organisation as the price for them existing. Without any rules anarchy and disorder would break out and there would be no club at all. The Xing Yi classics famously say – “There is only structure, and there is only Chi”. With no structure, the Chi just leaks all over the place, and with too much structure I guess it can’t flow anywhere. A happy medium is what you’re after.

We (human beings) have the same attitude to our own bodies as well – we don’t see our own blind spots. The way we walk feels natural to us, but that might involve pointing the toes outwards at 45 degrees, compromising our lower back, instead of forward, for no good reason except habit. We might have been doing that for 30,40,50 years, and will probably keep doing it until the day we die without question, until somebody comes along and points out our blind spot, at which point it has become our ‘normal’ and it feels weird to walk in any other way.

A little period of self refection on the subconscious and conscious beliefs we hold true, without thinking about them, is always a good thing.

A quick Tai Chi fix anybody can try: Tracking with the eyes

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FYI: Owls can rotate their necks up to 270 degrees! 

To some Tai Chi people it’s important to know where the eyes are looking when doing a Tai Chi form for slightly esoteric reasons: “your eyes lead your intention and your intention leads your chi.” But I think we can come up with reasons for using the eyes in Tai Chi that require no mention of intention (yi) or chi.

Try this: Sit comfortably. Turn your head slowly to the side, back to the middle then the other side. It’s a typical neck stretching exercise that you’ll find done at the start of your typical Kung Fu, Tai Chi, or Yoga class. It’s good for your neck, but there’s nothing particularly special about it.

Now try this: Instead of just turning your head to the side, actively look to the side. Lead the movement with your eyes looking to the side. Now compare the feeling of doing that to the feeling of just turning your head to the side.

If you’re anything like me you’ll find the experience quite different. When you are looking to the side for a reason your whole body co-ordinates better, not to mention, I think you can turn your head a bit further too. I’m sure there is a scientific word for this purpose driven movement, but I don’t know it.

Think of an owl, when it turns its head to look at something interesting that might potentially be prey – the eyes are always locked in.

When doing the Tai Chi form, try actively looking with your eyes and turning your head in the direction you are going. Hopefully you’ll notice the different in the quality and coordination of your overall movement.

REVIEW: Dragon Body, Tiger Spirit: A translation and explanation of the classic texts of Xingyi Quan, by Byron Jacobs

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Xing Yi is one of the oldest Chinese martial arts that is still practised today, and so naturally it has attracted a large variety of writings over the hundreds of years of its existence. These various writings can be found scattered about in different lineages and books, but now Byron Jacobs has collected them together in one weighty tome – Dragon Body, Tiger Spirit – and included not only the original Chinese texts, but also his own English translation and commentary on them.

Originally from South Africa, Byron is a student of Di Guoyong of the Hebei lineage of Xing Yi, and lives and trains in Beijing.  At one time he was a member of the technical committee of the International WuShu Federation, so he has been able to meet and talk to practitioners of other martial arts and Xing Yi lineages. He runs the Mushin Martial Culture website that offers online tuition, as well as provides excellent YouTube videos on all aspects of Chinese martial culture, history and practice.

(Full disclaimer for this review: I’ve known Byron for years, and while we’ve never met in person I’d consider him a friend. He’s been a guest on my podcast and I’ve been on his.)

The cover

Being interested in design, I always like to spend a bit of time talking about the cover of a book in my reviews, but in this case it’s not really an indulgence because discussion of the cover is properly warranted. Not only is it well designed but it contains a fully colourised reproduction of the famous black and white photo of Xing Yi masters Guo Yunshen and Che Yizhai, taken when Guo visited Che’s martial arts school. Now, since this is the only picture that can reliably be said to exist of Guo Yunshen, it has always been treasured by practitioners in the Hebei lineage of Xing Yi, of which I would count myself as one. Colourising the famous photo is an audacious and brilliant idea. The colours and shading on the faces in particular all look natural and really bring Xing Yi to life as a living breathing art practised by real people, rather than an ancient art lost to history. Did Guo Yunshen actually wear blue robes? I don’t know, but he looks great in them.

Incidentally, the photo is misleading, because the martial arts display Che and Guo are watching is definitely not Xing Yi. Che and Guo are the seated older gentlemen in the centre, watching two performers of what looks like a more Shaolin-derived art, or even a theatrical performance. The stage they are sitting on, complete with performers doing martial arts, and a painted city background behind them makes the whole thing look very much like a Chinese theatre.

What’s inside

The meat of Dragon Body, Tiger Spirit is the collection of all the classic writings on Xing Yi, including a lot of the stuff that came out during the Republican-era martial arts manual-writing craze, as well as older material. Everything is provided in original Chinese characters first, then as a translation into English and finally there is a commentary by Byron which explains what the classic is about. For me the most important classics in the Xing Yi corpus are Yue Fei’s 10 Thesis, since these are amongst the earliest writings on Xing Yi, and a lot of the other writings are based on these, but rest assured they’re included here. In fact, there’s everything you could want, including the Five Elements Poems, Cao Jiwu’s Key extracts of the 10 methods, the 12 animals poems and more. There’s also a section called “Nei Gong Four Classics”, which is a supplementary text included from the Song style lineage of Xing Yi. The classics are bookended with two different sections – the book starts with a short article about the history of Xing Yiquan, written by Jarek Szymanski, which aims to dispel some of the myths that have built up around the art, and ends with some well-researched biographies of famous Xing Yi masters written by Byron. As a practitioner of Xing Yi you’ll find these biographies useful because the names of old masters often crop up in Xing Yi discussion.

I can’t speak for the quality or accuracy of the translations themselves since I’m not a Chinese writer or speaker, however my impression through comparing Byron’s translation here to others is that Byron has used his martial arts knowledge, and specific Xing Yi knowledge to present what he thinks the real message that the classics are trying to be convey is, rather than go for a literal translation each time. This is the best way to approach martial arts texts, as often a literal translation will sound nonsensical, and  just make an English speaker scratch his or her head.

Having the actual text of the classics all gathered together in one place is an invaluable resource for any Xingyi Quan practitioner. That alone makes the book worth getting, but what really tips the balance is Byron’s commentary. He’s always clear, down-to-earth and practical. He does his best to interpret old texts that can often be esoteric and difficult to understand into something that makes sense to practitioners living in this day and age. Apparently, this book took him 10 years to complete, and you can see why. He must have spent a long time agonising over his translations and commentary before committing to a final version – nothing here seems rushed, hurried or half-baked. Everything has been carefully considered.

The casual reader, or beginner in Xing Yiquan, needs to be aware that this is not a “how to” manual – a lot of the Xing Yi classic are about things like endlessly dividing the body into sections and saying how one part works with another, which is not much use to you if you just want to learn how to do a Bengquan. They are full of things like “the eyes connect to the liver, the nose connects to the lungs” – i.e. things that aren’t that much use for practical application. There is a lot of this stuff to wade through if you are going to read the book from start to finish in full. However, having said that, Byron’s commentary on the 5 Element poems (the section of the book that deals with the Xing Yi 5 Element Fists – Pi, Beng, Zuan, Pao and Heng) is so detailed and practical that it does almost function as a bit of a How To. If you are in the process of learning Xing Yi you’ll find this section invaluable. You’ll learn where to put your elbow, fist, feet and how to move your body. And there’s a picture of Byron performing each fist, too. 

I did find myself having small differences of opinion with Byron’s commentary on occasion, but it’s always over very small details or emphasis, and it feels like nit-picking to list them all, but I think it highlights an important point, which is that translation relies on interpretation and because we come from different lineages of Xing Yi I think it’s only to be expected that we’d have slightly different ways of looking at the odd thing. And you too, dear reader, will probably have small differences too, if you are already a Xing Yi practitioner. If there weren’t small differences between lineages, then there wouldn’t be different styles of Xing Yi in the first place. 

My favourite part

For me the best part of this book is the 12 animals section. I’ve always found the 12 animals to be the most fun part of Xing Yi, and if you’re a fellow 12 animals fanatic like me then you’ll love this section. It’s also the largest section of the book, and is illustrated with pictures of the animals being described. For each animal there is a poem written by Byron’s own teacher Di Guoyong, followed by a discourse on the animal written by Xue Dian, taken from his 1929 Republican-era manual “Discourse on Xing Yi Quan” (which was written at a time when it had become popular to include aspects of Chinese philosophy and medicine in martial arts writings). Byron translates both and provides his own commentary. There’s such limited writing about Xing Yi animals available that it’s fantastic to hit such a rich vein of Xing Yi animal discussion. My experience has been that every lineage of Xing Yi has slightly different ideas about what a few of the 12 animals are, particularly “Tai” (which gets called everything from hawk to ostrich and phoenix) and “Water lizard” which gets called a turtle, an insect or a crocodile by some. The view presented here is Di Guoyong and Xue Dian’s (amongst many others), that Tai is a small hawk and Water lizard is a mythical creature being one of the 9 sons of the dragon that had a turtle’s shell.

It’s the spirits of these animals that infuse all Xing Yi practice – even if you’re doing the 5 elements or SanTi, you are still admonished to observe ‘bear shoulders’, ‘tiger head embrace’, ‘dragon body’, ‘eagle claw’, and ‘chicken leg.’ So, it’s great to see such a large section of the book, which gets its name from the dragon and the tiger, devoted to them. Di Guoyong’s poems and Byron’s commentary here are especially valuable, particularly in regard to the intent and particular features of each animal.

Should you buy?

As always with Chinese martial arts classics, these are not writings you read through once and put on the shelf, having absorbed all their insights. Instead, you need to return to them again and again over the course of your life and dip in and out. You’ll find this reinvigorates your Xing Yi practice and each time you re-read the same section you’ll discover new insights. Picking the book up and turning to any page, it’s not hard to find something to be inspired by and to get you motivated to go outside and practice.

If you are a Xing Yi practitioner then having everything here in a single book will prove invaluable to you and Byron Jacobs has done every practitioner a great service by completing his magnum opus. Even if you are a Tai Chi practitioner, I’d still say you should get this book, as many of the ideas contained in all internal arts found their first flourshings of life in Xing Yi and the Xing Yi classics. Highly recommended.

Rating: 5/5

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Where to buy::

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Direct from Mushin Martial Culture

If you want to find out more about the book then I’d recommend listening to Byron’s interview about this book on Ken Gullette’s podcast. 

You can also buy a reproduction of the cover photograph from Byron’s Mushin Martial Culture website.

Zuckerberg blows out his ACL doing martial arts

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Get well soon, Zuck! (Image credit: Mark Zuckerberg).

Meta (nee Facebook) founder Mark Zuckerberg has undergone ACL surgery thanks to an injury sustained during his preparation for his first MMA fight.

“Tore my ACL sparring and just got out of surgery to replace it. Grateful for the doctors and team taking care of me. I was training for a competitive MMA fight early next year, but now that’s delayed a bit. Still looking forward to doing it after I recover. Thanks to everyone for the love and support.”


He wrote that on his Facebook and Instagram account along with pictures of him punching the air from his hospital bed, and also a strange one of his wife mopping his brow and tending to him as he lays there. What is that telling us about his psyche? He’s clearly a little bit proud of his injury, since it adds to his macho credentials. Especially the shot of his woman tending to his wounds! 🙂

Like many previously unathletic or “nerdy” men who discover Brazilian jiujitsu or MMA training in their middle years, it looks like Zuckerberg has been utterly consumed by his new hobby. I understand – I got consumed by a passion for BJJ when I discovered it around the time I was due a mid-life crisis. It is the perfect salve for so many things that happen to people around that time of their life. But when you combine a billionaire’s bank account with a new found passion you get the ability to take your new obsession to stratospheric levels. Zuck has done exactly what I would have done if I was a billionaire – reorganise my entire life around my new hobby and pay for the very best people in the world to train me.

For example, there’s video of him sparring with two of the UFC’s current champions on a matted training area presumably on one of his many private yachts… That’s a ridiculous level of privilege.

However, even billionaires are human and an ACL surgery is no joke. Like most people who came to BJJ later in life, I had no idea what an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) was before I took up BJJ. But once you do start BJJ you hear it mentioned so often you pick up knowledge of knee injuries by osmosis, or just go and google it to find out. Of the four main ligaments in the knee, it’s the one that snaps most often due to twisting injuries. That can happen in BJJ and MMA mainly due to takedowns/wresting or leg locks, some of which, (like the heel hook), are designed to specifically target ligaments in the knee. The idea is that you tap before injury occurs, but life is full of little accidents. Clearly Zuck has either had a takedown gone wrong or been on the wrong end of a leg lock and not tapped in time.

But people destroy their ACLs doing other things too – football is a classic example, and so is skiing. Pretty much any sport you decide to do has the potential to injure you, so you might as well pick something you love. In fact, I remember a few years ago when people used to talk about Tai Chi being really bad for your knees, however that craze seems to have died down recently.

Zuck will be back, but recovery from ACL surgery is a painful, slow and frustrating business. We’re talking months of physio-type movements just to get a normal range of movement back into the knee. He might be pumping his fist in pride in his photos at the moment, but this injury will change him. Hopefully it will give him a wider perspective on life.

If you’re going to train in combat sports then it is almost inevitable that at some point you will be injured. Especially if you go in with too much enthusiasm and passion. I too have been injured doing the sport I love, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it, but quite often it happens in moments where you’re being just a little bit reckless. The lesson for us all is that massive enthusiasm and passion for something new often needs to be tempered with a bit of restraint. Remember, look after your training partners and tap early and often.

Get well soon, Zuck!

If you liked this article then you’ll like these:

New podcast! Richard Johnson on Chen Style Practical Method

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This month’s podcast guest is Richard Johnson a long-time student of Joseph Chen of Chen Style Practical Method.

As well as a Tai Chi practitioner and teacher, Richard is a full time movement coach working with athletes, so he brings an appreciation of athletic movement to his views on Tai Chi.

In our discussion Richard delves deeply into the internal workings of the Chen Style Practical Method and we talk a lot some interesting movement principles based around rotation. We also talk about how the Practical Method is different to the Chen Village style of Tai Chi.

Enjoy the podcast. You can get in touch with Richard using his email address ⁠trukinetix at gmail.com⁠

The number 1 mistake people make in Tai Chi push hands and how to fix it

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I got to meet up with a local Tai Chi instructor recently, and it was a good chance for me to do some hands-on work in push hands. One of the things working with somebody else at Tai Chi, as opposed to the endless solo practice that mainly makes up the art, brings up is the question of range.

Range is an interesting one in Tai Chi. You actually need to be in really close for Tai Chi to work. I think this is one of the things that has been forgotten along with the martial aspects of the art. I very rarely find another Tai Chi person who is comfortable working at the correct range.

How to fix your range

To get the correct range your front foot should be one fists-width apart from your opponents foot on the horizontal axis and your front toes should be roughly matching the back of heel. His front toes are then roughly matching your heel. (Look at the foot position in the photo).

This distance feels uncomfortably close to do any sort of combat actions to most people, however, this is where Tai Chi lives. At this range you will need to use subtle movements of the kua and rotation of the body to neutralise your opponent’s force, and it takes some practice. You also need to make use of Ting – or “listening” because you are definitely within punching range here, but from here you can go even closer (body to body) and turn it into wrestling if so desired, which will protect you from punches.

At the correct distance the Tai Chi techniques will work. When you are further out, they won’t work so well at all. So, this is where you should be when practicing push hands.

When it comes to actually fighting, I’m not suggesting you should “hand around” in this range, because that will just get you clipped. However, you do need to move into this range to do all the good stuff that the Tai Chi Classics talk about – controlling your opponent, knowing him before he knows you, etc. I think a lot of the time that Tai Chi fighting is described as “bad kick boxing” it’s because of the range being used. People stay too far out and pot shots at each other. Kick boxing is perfect for this range.

More of my writing on push hands:

Key details for a good riding horse stance by connecting the upper and lower

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Chen Man Ching once famously said that he only understood Tai Chi after having a dream in which he had no arms.

It’s a good indication of what you’re looking for in Tai Chi  – which is to “do” everything with the actions of the legs and waist, not the arms. The idea of moving the arms without moving the arms is, of course, contradictory, but that’s the challenge you undertake when you practice Tai Chi.

I found that I didn’t “get” this concept of “no arms” until I really relaxed my lower back and learned to sit correctly in the form. The lower back is the bridge between the upper body and the lower body. If that bridge is not open then goods and services cannot flow between the two different countries.

So, how do we do this in the correct way? I think the key is to be found in how you get into a riding horse posture properly. 

We’re all familiar with the wide-legged riding horse posture. When you start a Tai Chi form you are essentially sitting down into a narrower version of it, but it’s the same kind of stance. 

Let’s formalise what I mean by Riding Horse stance a bit more.

1. Toes point forward. 

2. Knees bent, but not further forward than the toes. 

3. Feet two shoulder widths apart. 

As aways we make sure that our upper body is relaxed (not collapsed) and upright. Just take a moment to focus not he AO joint that I mentioned in my last post, to ensure that your head is in the correct position. Your neck should feel long at the back and the chin slightly tucked at the front, crown going in the upward direction.

Now straighten your legs. This brings you out of a riding horse stance and into a leg triangle stance with straight legs.

We’re going to lower back down into a riding horse, but rather than doing what you normally do, I want you to focus on two things.

1. The knees go forward as they bend.

2. The butt does not move backward as it would if you were going to sit in a chair, but instead you open/relax your lower back so that it sinks downward.

There you go. This should feel like a different sort of riding horse stance to what you’ve normally experienced. That elongated and open feeling in the lower back is what you need to maintain during your Tai Chi form. Without that feeling you cannot connect the upper and lower parts of the body.

Play with it, experiment with it a bit, and then when you’re ready, start your Tai Chi form and as the hands come down and you sink, try and achieve the same feeling.

Then try and keep it for the whole form. If you can do that, then you’ll start to notice that Tai Chi is all about the leg movements, not the arm movements. Your arm movements can start to be directed by the leg and waist movements. 

As it says in the classics:

It is “rooted in the feet,

generated from the legs,

controlled by the waist, and

expressed through the fingers. “