tai chi

Internal power and the 3 internal harmonies: Going beyond words like Xin, Yi and Qi to direct experience

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 5 Comments

Almost by accident I watched Onama vs Landwher from UFC: Marlon Vera vs Dominick Cruz this morning and heavens above, that was one hell of a fight! Possibly the fight of the year. I’ve no idea how you’d score it. Landwher won by decision, but it was possibly the MMA fight of the year. Wild exchanges throughout with both fighters being so tired they could hardly stand up, but somehow kept going. It looked like they both had almost beyond the levels of human endurance, going from looking so tired they could barley move to pulling off flashy 3 move combinations.

You could almost see their spirit rising within to propel them on. It reminded me of all the phrases about the internal harmonies (san nei he) that we use in the Internet arts. The Xin (heart) leads the Yi (intention/mind), the Yi leads the Qi (energy to work) and the Qi leads the Li (physical movement). Initially this seems rather simplistic, say if you want to do something like make a cup of tea then you first have a desire to do it (heart) that travels to the brain (yi) that decides and then it ends up in a physical movement (li) and you find your feet moving you towards the kettle.

But that process happens automatically in humans and all animals, so why do we need to make a big deal of it and describe all the parts that build up to making an automatic process happen?

It’s often explained as putting the intention and will (the brains and heart) behind the movement. You can do things with a sense of purpose, or you can do them absent mindedly. In the internal arts, like Xing Yi, Bagua and Tai Chi, your actions need to have a sense of purpose. Your mind needs to be on the job, not half engaged. That’s one reason, but I think there’s more to these internal harmonies than just this.

I remember in BJJ training sometimes being so exhausted it was like my mind left my body and I became somewhat detached from my surroundings. It’s at moments like that that you start to be able to feel your “spirit” or mind as an identifiable thing. Through a sheer act of will you can force your mind to not give up and get back to the job and it can give you the energy you need to carry on fighting. That’s what I saw happening in Obama vs Landwher. A sheer force of will was being used to make them continue – their internal was leading the external.

Frankly, most people training only internal arts without hard sparring pay a lot of lip service to the internal co-ordinations, but do they ever reach an intensity of training where they can actually feel these things as tangible elements?

I’m not saying that you need to get an an MMA cage to experience your internal state under extreme physical stress before you have any idea what it is, but you can experience it in a safer way through things like Jiujitsu. Maybe Systema, too. Just some food for thought, and another reason why I think all Tai Chi instructors who re physically able should try and get a blue belt in BJJ if they are teaching the art beyond the health aspects.

There’s a risk, when reading this that people might think that using your Yi, or Xin in Tai Chi technique simply means to furrow you brow, put on a mean face, stare hard at something, get really tense and act like you really mean it, man. Because that’s not it either. That’s not what using “martial intent” or Yi means in internal arts at all. If I see people practicing internal arts like that I think it’s just bad karate. Not that there’s anything wrong with karate, of course.

Your internal state can be serious, but come from a place of calm. It’s a strange contrast between being expansive, yet laser focused, like the eyes of an eagle who is high up in the sky looking for prey. He’s taking in all his surroundings, but can pinpoint down on a single point when required. That’s using the 3 internal harmonies properly.

I think this is a Kite, not an Eagle, but you get the idea. Photo by Flo Maderebner on Pexels.com

The Tai Chi classics say:

To fajin,
sink,
relax completely,
and aim in one direction!

There it is – the (sung) relaxed body is the first requirements, once you have it you can ‘point your mind’ in the direction you want your power to go, so that the internal movement matches the external movement. When the inner and outer harmonise together, then you have internal power.

What you can learn from Tai Chi kicks

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 1 Comment
Tai Chi: balanced on one leg.

Tai Chi kicks are a great way of testing your balance. Due to the circular nature of Tai Chi technique the sections of the forms where you are kicking often involve turning the body to the left or right while you are standing on one leg. It’s more challenging than a simple one direction kick and is a great training for your balance.

I shot this during this morning’s Tai Chi practice. It’s the kicking section of the short form that we practice in the Yongquan Tai Chi Chuan Association:

You’ll notice that the kicks are done lower than you see in a lot of modern Tai Chi forms. That’s because we’re aiming at the knee. The classical technique for these moves is to block their knee with your foot and pull their arm in the opposite direction to get a takedown. Effectively using the foot as a kind of brace, not really as a kick.

But it’s the training these techniques offer in balance that is their real value I think – a lot of people end up very wobbly on the standing leg when performing these techniques. The key to making it silky smooth is not to think about sinking down into the ground as you raise the leg, but to ‘raise the back’ as you lift the leg. That upward ‘pull’ holds you in place securely so you can deliver a smooth kick.

Practicing Tai Chi in nature: Being like a teabag in the ocean

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 4 Comments

On holiday in the southwest of England for a week I managed to find some time each morning to practice Tai Chi in a lovely old wooded area.

So often we have to practice Tai Chi in our front rooms, back gardens or patios because of time pressures. Or maybe we only get to practice at a class in a village hall, gym or community centre. Either way, our surroundings are often far from natural.

Being able to practice Tai Chi in an environment where there were no other people, no human sounds and no interruptions was a blessing. It was possible to really sink into the environment for once, and not just my legs!

It’s a process one of my teachers calls “being a teabag in the ocean”. If you want to take in the good stuff from the natural world around you then you need to adopt the attitude of being like a teabag in the ocean – i.e. let nature move through you as well as around you, so that you don’t feel like something separate to it. Absorb it, soak it in. I’d say most people practice Tai Chi as if they are a teabag that’s sealed inside a plastic bag then dropped in the ocean. They can be doing great Tai Chi, but they are perfectly contained within themselves and not interacting with the environment. Often there’s not much environment to interact with, as mentioned previously, but if you get the chance to practice Tai Chi out in the woods, you should take it and take the opportunity to get out of that plastic bag.

Before you practice the form, stand for a few moments and try to let the barriers between you and your surroundings break down. Your mind should be focused on the moment and on your breathing, after all, that is as much a part of nature as anything else. Stand like that for a while before doing the form and just experience it, don’t think about experiencing it.

Then as you go through the movements of the form, you’ll start to feel like you are moving with the natural patterns around you. Don’t worry if your form takes on a subtly different quality than normal. It’s all part of the process.

I find that I don’t have as much free time for this in my normal life as I do when I’m on holiday, but I’m going to try and make an effort to get out to a secluded place now and again and practice my Tai Chi out there because the effort is well worth it.

The inherent potential of the Tai Chi form

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 3 Comments

More thoughts inspired by Chen Taijiquan Illustrated

“Training the form helps one to learn the core substance of Taijiquan. Practicing the various push hands methods trains how to apply its inherent potential.”

The function and reason for forms (tao lu) in Chinese martial arts continues to fascinate me. Were they planned to be like this all along, or is the usage of tao lu a happy accident born out of ancient religious ritual festival celebrations and the hiding of marital arts in theatrical traditions? The answer is probably a bit of both, and more of the “wrong” answer than you’d like to admit, no matter which of the two views you take.

Chu Minyi, 1929

I think all Tai Chi practitioners, beyond the mindless followers practicing in parks, 12 rows deep from the front, have a basic understanding that the Tai Chi form contains martial applications which can be brought out in push hands. But it’s the wording of the quote above that caught me: “the inherent potential” of the form.

That’s exactly it – the form isn’t explicitly martial. Certain compromises are necessarily made to maintain an aesthetic and flow to the movements. If it wasn’t then Tai Chi would look more like more practical Shuai Jiao solo drills or jiujitsu kata. And I think that’s what bugs a lot of people who laugh at the idea that Tai Chi can be used as a martial art. The martial essence is there in the movements, but it’s not on the surface. It’s buried, inherent potential that you’ll need to mine if you want to discover it.

New book alert! Chen Taijiquan Illustrated

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 3 Comments

Thanks to Ken Gullette at Internal Fighting Arts I just caught wind of this new book that’s just come out called Chen Taijiquan Illustrated. I had a quick look on Amazon using the “Look Inside” feature and the illustrations look fantastic. It looks like it’s designed to be halfway between an instruction manual and a comic. It’s a very cool style that’s quite unlike any Tai Chi book I’ve seen before.

Chen Taijiquan Illustrated – available now!

I think that often Tai Chi books, with pages after pages of printed text, can be a bit off putting for people who are learning an art that is all about feel, movement and “doing it”, not “reading about it”. And when they do have photographs in them they are often black and white and a bit dull and lifeless. So, for the visual learners out there, I think the colourful and imaginative approach found in Chen Taijiquan Illustrated will work very well.

Here’s an example:

An extract from Chen Taijiquan Illustrated by David Gaffney and Davidine Siaw-Voon Sim

Here’s another thing: Looking at the contents page, this is the first Tai Chi book I’ve seen that mentions the concept of Man, which translates as Slowness, apart from the book written by my Tai Chi teacher. Man is a concept my teacher talks about a lot, and it’s nice to see it mentioned in another Tai Chi book – I was starting to think that it was a concept that was unknown to the rest of the Tai Chi world!

Tai Chi Chuan a comprehensive training manual by Raymond Rand

Obviously everybody and their dog knows that Tai Chi is done slowly, but Man is more of a mental quality than a reference to the speed of the form. It can be thought of as “not rushing”. The speed you are moving at is irrelevant to the concept of Man, but if you want to acquire the ability of Man then the best way is by slowing the form down and focusing on keeping your mind on what you are doing. Whenever you find your mind wandering off you just stop the form (no matter how far through it you are) and start again. After a few weeks or months you’ll find you are much better at staying focused on your form than you were before. By adopting the qualities of “not rushing” you open up the headspace required to be aware of other things going on, things that you would simply miss otherwise. I’ve written about not rushing before.

At £16 Chen Taijiquan Illustrated is not particularly expensive for a colour book either. And I’d love it if there was a book on Brazilian Jiutjisu that was written and illustrated in the same manner because I think it would also benefit from this approach. Incidentally, there was a good book written about Brazilian Jiujitsu recently, that has colour photos (and very nice ones too) that I still dip into now and again called Nonstop Jiujitsu, by Stephan Kesting and Brandon Mullins. I reviewed it on my blog recently, so check out my review.

Nonstop Jiujitsu by Brandon Mullins and Stephan Kesting

I’ve ordered my copy of Chen Taijiquan Illustrated so will review it at some point in the future.

Why you should know (at least) two different styles of Tai Chi Chuan

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 2 Comments

Back when I interviewed Michael Babin on my podcast he mentioned that in addition to Yang style he also practiced Sun style on the side. He felt he got quite a lot out of it because Sun style emphasised different things when compared to his main style.

Single whip posture by Sun Jianyun, 1957

I didn’t mention it at the time, but I also have a Tai Chi-style (1) that I do on the side, and I practice it for exactly the same reasons as Michael: I get things out of it that aren’t emphasised to the same extent in my main style.

While my Yang style uses deep, wide stances with obvious circular movement coming from the dantien, my side style has slightly higher, narrower stances and is less obviously centred around the dantien area. Both styles use whole body movement, but with the different physical emphasis there’s more headspace available to focus on other ways of achieving whole body movement – effectively making more use of opening and closing the body. I think that is also exactly how Sun style compliments Yang style, too. By practicing my side style I get to focus more exclusively on the opening and closing of the body, and I can then bring that back into my Yang style practice.

Of course, style purists will find fault with this approach. I’ve nothing against people who only practice one Tai Chi style all their life, or even practice only one martial art all their life. There’s definitely something to be said for ‘don’t fear the man who has practiced 10,000 techniques, but fear the man who has practiced one technique 10,000 times’. And, of course, any Tai Chi style should be enough, on its own, to take you to the highest levels of the art. But I think that if you only practice one style then it’s at least worth dabbling in another, just to get that new perspective on what you already do. In my experience this will make you a better Tai Chi practitioner and a more well-rounded martial artist, if for no other reason than you’ll gain experience of defending attacks from more than just one style.

When we look at well known martial arts masters of the past there’s a pervading view that they only practiced one style, or were only permitted to practice one style by their teachers, but history is full of examples of famous masters who were well known for cross training – Ku Yu Chang, Sun Lu Tang and Wang Xiangzhai, to name but 3.

In terms of biology, nature prefers diversity, if the gene pool of a species starts to become too small you get inbreeding leading to genetic defects. You can see this happen in marital arts styles that become too insular as well. They maintain their purity, but at what cost? They becoming dysfunctional.

I’m all for diversity in my martial arts training and in life.

—

  1. The side style of Tai Chi I practice is a UK-centric style called Li style. I’ve been doing it since the 90s and while my interest in it can wax and wane it’s been a constant for over 30 years now. The Li style form is a nice, relaxing form to do. It’s slightly controversial because you can’t find the style in China, which is an obvious red flag, but I stopped caring about that a long time ago. I do it because I enjoy it. If I didn’t enjoy it I wouldn’t do it. It doesn’t matter to me if it was “made up” in the 1950s, or not. I mean, at some point everything was “made up” anyway, right? So what matters is if you get something out of it and if you can do it following the Tai Chi principles, which in the case of Li style, you can.

    Li style essentially looks a bit like Wu (Jianquan) stye. The form starts off following (very) roughly the same pattern as Wu Jianqan style, but after White Crane Spreads Wings it splits off into its own sequence, which is nothing like any other Tai Chi style I’ve seen before. It’s a very long form, with no repeated sections, and I’ve never quite been able to get to the end of it and remember all of it satisfactorily, but I can get quite a long way through it. Here’s a video of the Li form being done.

The most successful martial arts movement of the first half of the 20th century, that you’ve probably never heard of

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 2 Comments

I find I’m getting increasingly fascinated by the concept of ritual, magic, and how it relates to Chinese martial arts. I think I’ve just never been satisfied with the explanation that forms in Chinese martial arts are there for cataloguing techniques. There are many martial arts in the world that do not require forms to catalogue either their techniques or body methods (Shen fa). When something like that so obviously doesn’t add up, I think there has to be something else going on. But what?

It’s been a long time since I’ve linked to Ben Judkins excellent website Kung Fu Tea, but I’m going to recommend that you give this article a read. It’s about the biggest group of 20th century Chinese ‘martial artists’ that you’ve probably never heard of. They were called The Red Spears. And despite having a membership in the millions (millions!) they tend to get wiped from modern historical accounts of Chinese martial arts. Made up of poor, usually illiterate members, they existed away from the cities and the urban areas, where all the well known marital arts groups like the Jingwu Association and the Koushu Association existed. Urban association tended to write books and leave more newspaper articles as evidence for historians. The Red Spears had the numbers, but they were out in the sticks, and out there, less ‘scientific’, ‘outsider’ and ‘western’ ideas pervaded. There we find war magic, rituals and mystical arts.

Yanan China Peoples’ Militia member.

The Red Spears, as effective grassroots organisers in local areas seemed to perform something of the same function as elements of the historical Yakuza in Japan, stepping in when local authorities overstep their mark and being effective at “getting things done”.

And despite the name Red Spears, let’s not forget that these militia groups, like all militia groups, carried rifles. Performing magic rituals and being in a secret society did not mean they rejected all modern technology. 

The article contains a report called “Background and Doings of China’s Red Spears By Norman D. Hanwell (Asia Magazine), The China Weekly Review, August 19, 1939. Page 381” which talks about practices that don’t seem a million miles away from what we would call chi kung these days, if you made it more secular and removed the practices we would call superstitious.  

“Through the customs of the Red School probably differ from locality to locality and naturally the secret part of their program is difficult to confirm, since no outsider is permitted to attend, there are descriptions by Chinese in print. In some sectors members of the Red School “got to school” in a temple each evening. Arriving with their red-tasseled spears. Reaching the School Hall they come before the incense altar common to all Chinese Temples, bare their backs and kneel to listen to one their leaders lecture. Following this, each one breaths deeply and beats his breast, ending with the shouting of the slogan “Chi Kung lai yeh!”—a phrase difficult to translate. Perhaps it might be compared to “The gods be with us!” a short incantation from which strength may be obtained. Out of this process some of the Red Spears are convinced of their invincibility in battle and immunity to death therein.

The Type of Training

Certain persons profess to find in this type of training some scientific basis. For example, the regular evening attendance, the listening to lectures and the sitting in meditation are good training, they claim, for the development of the quality of serenity or tranquility.  The practice of holding the breath and beating the breast is excellent for developing the lungs. The crying out of the slogans is declared to be good training for breath control. Whether we accept any of these “scientific” values or not, we must admit that there are psychological advantages to be obtained from these practices. The peasant convinces himself of his own ability to undertake certain tasks, and his conviction inevitably increases his effectiveness.

A recently made investigation of the White Spear Society of Anhwei Province, an area now under Japanese occupation, reports that the superstitious “Chu kung lai yeh!” has been replaced by slogans more appropriate to present activities. Among these are “Kill the Eastern Sea Devils”—that is, the Japanese—and “Kill the Traitors”—that is, those Chinese cooperating with the Japanese.”

As you can see, the report talks about breath control, tranquility training, hitting the body to strengthen it and gain invincibility (The shouting of the slogan “Chi Kung Lai yeh!” may have some relevance, but who knows…? That may simply have been the historical equivalent of “Let’s do this!”)

I’m increasingly wondering how much of modern Chinese martial arts is built on all this long forgotten training from a different time and setting. It’s interesting to ponder.

I wrote about cults in marital arts yesterday. I think its pretty clear that The Red Spears would fit the definition of a cult, but by modern standards they are way more extreme than anything the Tai Chi world can conjure up today. Forget expensive training camps. They actually led their members into armed conflicts, battles and more! That’s also an interesting topic to consider.

Saanxi province China Peoples’ Militia

Yang style Tai Chi: The needle in the cotton

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 2 Comments

My recent podcast with Chen stylist Ken Gullette has led to me thinking a lot about the differences between Yang style and Chen style Tai Chi Chuan. I know the official view is that these two arts are both the same art – “there is only one Tai Chi” – but I’m not really sure I believe that entirely.

Single whip posture by Li Xianwu, 1933.

The issue is confusing because a lot of highly partisan Tai Chi practitioners tend to view one of the arts as being a more ‘watered down’ or ‘less internal’ version of the other – if they’re on the Chen side of the argument then they view Yang style as a “watered down for the masses” version of Chen style, and if they’re on team Yang style then they view Chen style as a more “external and Shaolin” aberration of Tai Chi.

I’ve never been interested in either of those two arguments myself as they betray a kind of small-minded “my style is THE BEST” attitude that seeks to simply put down the other style for no good reason beyond “I don’t like it”. It reminds me of the worst aspects of jingoism that seeks to war with other countries simply because they are not us.

When I say I think Yang style and Chen style are really different beasts I mean it in a positive sense – they’re both good, and share a lot of similarities, and both exist under the banner of “Tai Chi”. But the emphasis is quite different between the two. I find Chen style seems to be more concerned with the body mechanics like silk reeling and opening and closing in different parts of the body, and going from being soft to sudden explosive movements (hard) then back to soft again.

Of course, opening and closing is there in Yang style too, but I don’t really know of any Yang stylists that put as much emphasis on it as Chen stylists do, especially the Chen Yu branch of the art, which goes really deep on it (to my eye at least). And as for silk reeling, that seems to be absent in Yang style.

Yang style, in contrast, has its main emphasis on a kind of “needle in cotton” feel throughout. It’s soft on the outside and hard on the inside and all done at the same speed – drawing silk, rather than reeling silk, like a long river flowing. That’s not to say that Chen style can’t be like that too, but the emphasis on that way of being is greater in Yang style.

Of course, the official view from the Chinese government (and Yang and Chen families) is that Chen style is the ancestor of Yang style. End of story. But like most things in China, I suspect it’s more about political expediency than historical accuracy. For example, there’s a complete lack of evidence that Yang Luchan ever visited Chen village, let alone trained there for years and years. (If you want to get picky, there’s hardly any evidence available anywhere that Yang Luchan actually existed at all!) And the Chen family didn’t get in on the Tai Chi teaching business until 1928, which is very, very late in the day compared to Yang style, since Yang Luchan was reputedly teaching Tai Chi in the Forbidden City from the 1860s onwards. There are a lot of holes in the official story. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that the official story can’t be true, but there are enough holes in it to make me the journalist in me question it.

But anyway, In Yang Cheng-Fu’s 10 Important Points, we find number 6 – use the mind not force. Cheng-Fu goes on to explain that, “In practicing T’ai Chi Ch’uan the whole body relaxes. Don’t let one ounce of force remain in the blood vessels, bones, and ligaments to tie yourself up. Then you can be agile and able to change. You will be able to turn freely and easily. Doubting this, how can you increase your power?”

I’m willing to bet that this piece of writing is responsible for leading more than a few Tai Chi practitioners down the wrong path, towards wet-noodle Tai Chi. The attitude of being a needle in cotton is the antithesis of this. If you’re going to make the outside soft then the inside of the body has to be hard, otherwise you are just a wet noodle, which sadly a lot of Tai Chi practitioners are. That’s how the Yin/Yang balance is maintained in Yang style.

Importantly, Yang Cheng-Fu goes on to say: “The T’ai Chi Ch’uan Classics say, “when you are extremely soft, you become extremely hard and strong.” Someone who has extremely good T’ai Chi Ch’uan kung fu has arms like iron wrapped with cotton and the weight is very heavy.”

There it is – the needle in the cotton.

If you can imagine a needle (or an iron bar) wrapped in cotton, then just brushing your hand over the cotton we feel like everything was soft. But if you squeezed the cotton you’d feel that hardness at its centre. That is how the whole body should be when practicing Yang style. It’s a kind of presence that can only be acquired by long practice of Tai Chi Chuan, learning to move while relaxing the muscles and letting the flesh hang from the bones, while keeping the skeletal stricture strong. Both light and heavy at the same time.

I also think it’s very hard to get this feel by only practicing Tai Chi Chuan, and that’s one of the reasons that standing practice and Yi Quan has become so popular amongst Tai Chi practitioners. I think standing practice (Zhan Zhuang) provides a kind of shortcut to the kind of power required to be a needle in the cotton, but that’s a story for another day.

Tai Chi Notebook Podcast Episode 15 – Centre the Dragon: Tai Chi Talk with Ken Gullette and Graham Barlow

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 1 Comment

In this episode of the Tai Chi Notebook podcast I’m teaming up with Ken Gullette, to answer the kind of questions that Tai Chi teachers get asked all the time.

YouTube version for people who, er, like YouTube?

Ken is an all-round good guy and owner of the Internal Fighting Arts website where he teaches the arts of Xing Yi, Bagua and Tai Chi at a very reasonable monthly cost. Check him out at www.internalfightingarts.com

Ken is a Chen style guy, and I’m a Yang style guy so it’s no surprise we have slightly different views on a lot of different topics, but that’s part of the fun of it all.

And if you’d like to help out my podcast then you can now become a friend of the Tai Chi Notebook on Patreon. Head over to Patreon.com/taichinotebook and you’ll be able to get a downloadable version of the podcast as well as support my work and get exclusive articles.

If you’ve got any comments on what we say then send them in – we’d love to hear from you!

How do I raise the spirit of vitality?

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 1 Comment

“Could you tell me if there is a specific exercise to raise the spirit of vitality?
Or could this be just any exercise at all rather than a specific one?
I have been learning tai chi and it talks about Spirit/Shen and its importance,
but I haven’t a clue exactly what it means. I know to feel full of spirit means you feel on top of the world and ready for life- this is what I would like to feel.”

Well, that’s a tricky one to answer. You have to ask what is meant by “spirit”. In the Mongol language, for example, there are a whole plethora of words that in English would translate in “spirit” and they all mean something slightly different. The Chinese word “shen”, I think, could be translated into several different English words depending on context. In English we have to add more words to a sentence containing “spirit” to add context. For example, “spirit of vitality” – this would be the sense of feeling full of energy and ready to face the world that you talk about. But there are other words that we translate as “sprit” that have all sorts of meanings, from the mundane to the profound – and all slightly related. For example to “raise the spirit” can mean something as mundane as keeping the posture upright with the head up, or as profound as the creative realm of the tree of life.

This idea of being upright (physically, mentally and spiritually) is a big thing in Tai Chi – we are told to “let a light and intangible energy raise to the head top” in Yang Cheng-Fu’s 10 Important Points.

Yang Cheng-Fu

So, to get to the other part of your question – how to do it. There is no specific exercise for raising the spirit of vitality. Rather, it is a part of the postural requirements of Tai Chi, so it should apply in all exercise orientated towards Tai Chi practice. You want to feel as if your head if being pulled up by a thread from the crown point (between the tops of the ears). The result should be that the back of your neck gently lengthens and the chin tucks in. As always, you don’t want to achieve this posture with force, so don’t push your head into it. You should find that if you stand, focus on your breathing, generate that lightweight observation of self that is required in Tai Chi, your head and neck posture should naturally want to assume this posture.

Everything in Tai Chi works together. If you are breathing well, then it will encourage your posture to be upright and strong, which in turn will encourage you to ‘raise the head top’. If you can remove stress and tension from the body then the weight will sink down simultaneously, so you should feel strongly rooted into the ground and drawn up from the crown at the same time. These two pulls in opposite directions provide balance. You are separating yin and yang in the body – again, another part of the Tai Chi process.

I hope that helps.