natural movement

Get outside and move more

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Tai Chi wants you to create a balanced approach to life. You can tell this from the way the form itself is balanced; the posture is balanced, the mind is balanced and the breathing is balanced. Therefore it makes sense to look at your whole life, not just the part of it spent doing Tai Chi, if you want to get the best out of it.

Matt Haig, who wrote one of my favourite books How to Stop Time, shares his top tips (from his new book Notes on a Nervous Planet) for leading a balanced life here:

Matt talks about the importance of getting outside in that video.

Another Matt that I know is Matt Hill of the Systema Academy in Wiltshire, and he’s all about getting outside more. He wrote a recent blog post I’d like to share about the importance of getting outside for a good 3 hours at least once a month.

Finally, here’s a podcast by movement biomechanist Katy Bowman about How To Integrate Movement Into Your Life – And Enjoy It There are lots of tips here on how to integrate more movement into your day to day life.

 

Natural movement in Chinese martial arts

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I just wanted to say a few words about natural movement, and what we mean by it in Chinese martial arts, before I post part 4 of my 8-week course on Tai Chi movement on Sunday.

If you’ve been following the videos you’ll notice that I did a kind of ‘universal’ open and close exercise in part 1, which cycles between two phases

Open:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_31_53_am

and close:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_32_13_am

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV3DaNZz3hI

If you’ve been following up to week 3 you’ll know by now that it’s not a case of just mimicking these postures – you need to be going into and out of them using the elastic connection you’ve been developing by doing the arm circle exercise.

You can see these open and close postures in nature all the time, in movement – when a squid or octopus swims it kind of pulses between open and close.

Octopus:

Open:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_25_03_am

Close:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_25_15_am

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxawhfXGGt8

The classic example in the animal world is the Cheetah, since it’s the most majestic animal when it comes to running. It cycles between open and close quite obviously too, which helps.

Cheetah:

Open:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_28_44_am

Close:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_28_59_am

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8vejjVgIHg

In the Chinese martial arts, all the ‘internal’ martial arts like Bagua, XingYi and Tai Chi should be using open and close. The martial art that best exemplifies it though is XingYi, as all the 5 element fists go through a very obvious open and close cycle.

For example, in Pi Quan:

Closing:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_37_12_am

Opening:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_36_44_am

Closing:

screen_shot_2018_06_01_at_9_37_00_am

from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HNML_k9a-s

When we say “natural movement” is used in internal arts, this is what is being talked about.

Of course, you can use the open and close sequence in everyday life too. Just yesterday I was kicking a ball about with my kids in the park and I started to play around with open and close as I kicked the ball, rather than just doing it with my leg in isolation. When you use open and close your whole torso and back get involved – I was quite surprised by how much extra power and direction I could give the ball when I started to use open and close to kick it. Like everything, it starts off big and clumsy and first, but you soon learn to remove the excess movement and refine it.

Look out for part 4 on Sunday when we’ll be taking a look at how breathing factors into the whole thing.