There are lots of tigers in Yang style Tai Chi. There’s ‘Bend Bow to shoot Tiger’, which is a pretty obvious punch, and each section of the forms ends with the classic ‘Carry Tiger to Mountain’. Today we want to look at ‘Retreat to Ride Tiger’.
It looks a lot like ‘White Crane spreads wings’ on the surface, but the hands are at a slightly different angle. Also you are always stepping back when doing this move and the intention of what you’re doing is slightly different to White Crane, too.
One aspect of the move I really like to emphasis is the Kou or ‘Shoulder Stroke’ that it contains. Rather than striking forward with your shoulder you are striking behind you as you step. I happened to be near a hanging heavy bag the other day so took the opportunity to show where the power goes in the move, like this:
Rather than thinking of it as striking with just the shoulder itself, it’s more like the whole of your back is the striking surface. In fact, the literal translation of Kao is not “shoulder stroke” as it’s normally written, it’s “lean”, so that gives some more insight this member of Tai Chi’s 8 energies.
Obviously, ‘Retreat to Ride Tiger’ isn’t just about striking behind you, the hands and legs can be doing applications facing forwards at the same time. Here are some ideas:
This post is going to start somewhere you don’t expect – over 1,000 years ago in Song Dynasty China during which we find the legendary founder of Xing Yi, Yue Fei, a general in the Song Dynasty army, mulling over the advancing (heavily armoured) Jin cavalry, and wondering how his foot soldiers are going to fair against the crushing advance of an army that had destroyed the Liao Dynasty troops, scattering them to the Western regions.
The Jin/Song wars would last a century, starting in 1125, when the Jin attacked the Song after a series of negotiations between the previous allies failed. During this period North and Southern China was effectively separated between Jin and Song, with the Song retreating into the south of China. The Jin advance into southern China in 1130 was stymied by Song generals like Yue Fei and Han Shzhong. Eventually the Song allied with the Mongols in 1233 to defeat the Jin, but the Mongols then went on to defeat their previous allies, the Song, and thus the Yuan Dynasty was born.
But why this history lesson? Well, one weapon that was popular during the Song/Jin wars was the ‘sword breaker’ called a bian, which translates as ‘whip’. But it was a very solid short stick made of iron, not a flexible whip. It was often used on horseback because it was effective against heavily armoured warriors, and the Jin cavalry was very heavily armoured.
The Tai Chi move “Single Whip” (Dan Bian), has the same character for whip as the one used for the ‘sword breaker’. It’s also similar to the characters for ‘shoulder pole’, which I’d previously speculated was a possible origin for the name. But people who are better at Chinese than me have cast doubt on this theory. It seems much more likely that it’s the ‘sword breaker’ weapon that is being referred to, not a shoulder pole.
“Recently I’ve been made aware of some theories about the meaning behind “Single Whip” 單鞭 (dān biān)
Basically the claim is that the posture resembles a farmer carrying something on a pole or yoke and that the name refers to this yoke.
This yoke or shoulder pole is called 扁擔 (biǎndan)
So right away, simply linguistically, this claim is a little bit problematic.
English Character Pinyin Romanization. Single Whip 單 鞭 dān biān Shoulder Pole 扁 擔 biǎndan
We’re dealing with four completely different characters with completely different meanings. The dan in biandan is POLE not single.
To a native Chinese speaker this is like comparing apples to tennis balls. It’s just a ridiculous claim.”
The post goes on to look at the historical record, which is fairly interesting, and makes the case for the bian being the ‘sword breaker’.
Fair enough, the shoulder pole idea was just a theory of mine based on the similar name, and the way it looks. As with all good theories, it can be disproved with evidence. But as I also said in that original post of mine:
“The ‘whip’ could also be used as a weapon in Chinese Marital Arts. Again, it was usually referring to a short stick, not a flexible whip. In the excellent “Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals” by Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo you’ll find a description of a book called “Tiger Tail Whip” by Jiang Rong Qiao published in 1930. It features a “long routine for the metal tiger tail ‘whip’, which is rigid and actually amounts to a type of cane.””
“Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals”, by Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo
The ‘sword breaker’ or ‘bar mace’ was certainly more substantial than a cane. As the name implies, it could break swords, but it was also good for attacking heavily armoured soldiers as it could impact the person under the armour. Check out what it could do in this excellent video:
What’s in a name?
But it’s still hard to work out why the Single Whip posture would be named after the ‘sword breaker’ in the first place. I mean, the posture doesn’t resemble the weapon at all… But then I saw something very interesting recently:
“This brick carving is from a tomb of Jurchen Jin (1125–1234), describing a battle between Song and Jin cavalries. The one who faced to us with a sword breaker 锏 might be Jin cavalry, who snatched the pole weapon (三尖两刃刀, lit. ‘Three points double edged blade’ fig. 3) away from Song cavalry and swung his sword breaker 锏 to attack his head from right to left. Song cavalry’s head and helmet were totally whacked. Well, pole weapon user should always keep distance with enemy and, such blunt weapons like mace, sword breaker etc. are really excellent weapon against heavy armor. Picture 2 was drawn by 咪咪妈的刘sir.”
Now, what I notice about this carving, and the painting, is that it isn’t a million miles away from the application of single whip that we practice in our Tai Chi. Check it out:
Maybe that’s where the name “Single Whip” comes from? The application of the move is certainly similar to the way you’d use a ‘sword breaker’ way back in the Jin/Song wars to grab the opponent’s long pole weapon and bash them on the head with your ‘whip’.
But why “single”? Well, it turns out that the ‘sword breaker’ was often a two handed weapon. You had one in each hand, as this carving of the Jin cavalry shows:
You can also see double maces being used by cavalry in the painting that opens this article.
It’s as good an explanation for “single whip” as I’ve read anywhere else. And at least this reasoning makes some sense. At the end of the day, it’s just another theory, ready for some eager beaver to disprove.
I’m always on the look out for interesting bio mechanical things and that search recently lead me to a character called David Weck, who is known as the ‘Head over Foot Guy’. Of course, that’s not his only idea about biomechanics- he’s got loads of them – but this video is a good introduction to his Head over Foot idea:
(It’s unfortunate that there’s a picture of the controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate in the header image for that video, because he doesn’t feature in the video. I guess they’re just using him as an example of a good walker, but while he may be a good walker, I don’t like him or his opinions, nor do I think he’s a good example for kids to follow).
The ‘head over foot’ idea can be explained very easily – if you’re going to stand on one leg, then your head has to be directly over your foot if you want your balance to be good. You can try this now, by standing on one leg and playing with where your head balances over your foot. I think he’s right – if you move your head anywhere else but over your foot then your balance starts to go.
Weck then takes this into the idea of walking, so instead of the usual description of walking that you read, which is that it’s a series of controlled falls, if you alternately put your head over your foot as you walk then you end up with a more athletic, balanced and confident walking style with a bit of swagger. You can start off over exaggerating the swagger, then work on reigning it in and making it smaller until it’s hardly noticeable.
I like it – it takes a bit of getting used to, but the alternative of trying to keep your spine neutral and upright (as we are encouraged to do in Tai Chi) ends up with a very forced, stiff, walking pattern. The alternative walking pattern of placing your foot over your head creates a kind of infinity symbol movement around the solar plexus with an alternating pattern of one side of the body shortening and the other side extending.
The idea of being upright is talked about a lot in the Tai Chi classics. For example, the Tai Chi classics say “Stand like a perfectly balanced scale” (from the Treatise) and
“The upright body must be stable and comfortable to be able to sustain an attack from any of the eight directions.” (from the ‘mental elucidation of the 13 postures’.)
But that doesn’t mean that you should look like a robot when you do it. Your body is a fluid collection of hard unbending bones connected by soft joints that allow for movement. It is designed to move in spirals, and the ‘head over foot’ idea promotes this spiral movement.
A lot, in fact, almost all, of the time in Tai Chi your weight is either on one foot or the other, or you are actually standing on one leg with the other leg kicking. So, I find that thinking about whether your head is over your foot as you do the Tai Chi form is actually a good idea. If it is then your balance will be better.
Think about the classic Tai Chi walk. We do this exercise called the Hero Stroll, which looks like this:
It’s worth doing this and thinking about the concept of keeping your head over your foot as you do it, then applying that to your Tai Chi form. Hopefully you’ll find your Tai Chi becomes more balanced, especially in the kicking movements. I find that this is where a lot of beginners have problems – they can’t balance on one leg. Well, here’s the solution!
One of my projects for 2024 is to start teaching Tai Chi again. I’m looking forward to the new challenge, and a new bunch of students. My class details are here. Hope to see you?
My friend Sifu Donald Kerr of Spinning Dragon Tao has been producing some great videos recently featuring my teacher, Sifu Rand, demonstrating Tai Chi applications from our version of the Yang form. If you’re interested, I’ve written an article about the full lineage of that form before, but a quick summary is that it’s the Yang form from before Yang Cheng-Fu’s modifications, but with some input from Sun Lu Tang, so it’s a bit of a hybrid.
Needle at Bottom of the Sea, Shoulder through the arm and White Snake Spits Out Tongue.
I thought I’d do some posts as new videos become available comparing the videos to the historical books on the style that contain photographs.
There are a couple of historical books available that catalogue the long form in quite some detail. The first is the 1938 book by Gu Ru Zhang, then there’s the 1952 book by his student Long Zi Xiang, both of which have been kindly translated by Paul Brennan.
I’m using the 1952 book by Long Zi Xiang here, as the photos are of a higher quality. The English versions of the move names will always be slightly different, depending on the translator. Brennan translates these moves I’m looking at today, in order, as Needle under the sea (海底針), Shoulder through the arm (肩通臂) and White Snake shoots out its tongue (白蛇吐信).
In our school we use the names Needle at Sea Bottom, Fan through back and we don’t have a name for what Long is calling White Snake… it’s just part of Fan through back.
The application Long describes for Needle at Sea Bottom is, “If the opponent punches to my chest, I grab his wrist and press down, making his power drop downward.” It’s a pretty short explanation, but it does seem to match the modern day demonstration quite well:
For Shoulder through the arm, Long says, “If an opponent strikes from in front of me, I use my right hand to prop up his fist so that he cannot lower it, at the same time using my left hand to obstruct his waist and send him outward, causing him to topple over.”
Again, that’s a pretty good explanation of what happens in that video.
Long has one more application for the part of the form we don’t name - White Snake… – which is a simple block and strike to a different opponent, “If an opponent punches to my waist, I then press down with my right hand while my body moves back so that his punch lands on nothing, and then I use my right [left] fist to strike to his face.“
We seem more interested in the next move, which is “Torso-Flung Punch” (撇身捶) according to Brennan’s translation. We call this move “Chop opponent with fist“, and it’s the natural conclusion to the previous moves, so I’ll add it on here:
The explanation for the application is: “If an opponent attacks me with a [left] punch and [right] kick at the same time, I then withdraw my right leg, causing his kick to land on nothing, my right hand pressing down his fist. Then my left palm pushes down on his arm, and my right hand turns over from inside with a strike to his face.” Which ties in very well with the video showing the application by Sifu Rand:
“Stop doing the wrong thing and the right thing does itself.”
– F. Mathias Alexander.
Breathing has become a hot topic these days. There’s Wimm Hoff with his patented breathing methods for overcoming extreme cold all over TV and YouTube, breathing classes have sprung up in every town where you can go to where you spend an hour focusing on your breath (just type in the town you live in an ‘breathing classes’ into Google and I bet you find something), and of course, there still are all sorts breathing methods you can find out there in yoga, tai chi and qigong classes.
Often in Tai Chi we’re told that we should be performing abdominal breathing, or ‘Taoist breathing‘ – so, as you breathe-in the abdomen should expand and as you breathe out, the abdomen should contract*. We equate this abdominal breathing with deep breathing – almost as if the more we can ‘fill’ our abdomen with air, the deeper and better the breathing will be – and think that it therefore must be healthy. (* there is also reverse breathing, but that’s another topic).
Just breathe! (Photo by Spencer Selover on Pexels.com)
How to breathe
I recently started reading the excellent book ‘How to breathe’ by Richard Bennan, which has made me reconsider the way I’ve been approaching breathing in Tai Chi.
Firstly, let’s start with the basics. It’s worth remembering where your lungs are. They are behind the ribs and reach up higher than the collar bones on each side. Look at the picture below and you’ll be surprised by how far up the lungs go. So, when you expand your belly on an in-breath the air isn’t going down into your belly – it all stays in your upper torso. Of course, that might already be obvious to you, but you’d be surprised how many people think their belly is filling with air when they breathe in! It’s not.
When you practice ‘belly breathing’ what you should be doing is expanding the whole torso on an in-breath, and it’s this expansion of the lungsand the dropping of the diaphragm that pushes the abdomen down and outwards (on all sides, not just the front). If you start to try to use your abdomen muscles to lead the process, or force-ably expand or contract the belly as you breathe in and out then you are just adding tension to the whole process, which is the exact opposite of what you want. There should be as little tension as possible for efficient breathing. Trust the process – it will work on its own.
So, with me now, try an in-breath and focus on the lungs themselves filling up and expanding and this wave of expansion being the motivating force for expanding the belly. It doesn’t really happen in a step by step way either – everything expands at once. So, don’t try to fill one section of the torso, then another, that is also just adding tension. Equally, don’t try and keep the ribs still. They are designed to expand and contract with the lungs. If you try and keep them still, then, you guessed it… You’re just adding more tension.
Once you can visualise where your lungs are, (and how far up they go above the collar bones), then just focus on letting them expand freely, and stop interfering with the breathing process. Less is often more.
You might also like to think about the posture requirements of Tai Chi and what effect these might be having on your breathing. We often hear words like “round the shoulders”, “lift the back” and “hollow the chest” in Tai Chi. Think for a minute about what effect those directions, if followed literally, might be having on your breathing. Do you think they are beneficial or harmful? It’s something to consider anyway.
Breathing should feel amazing. It should feel smooth, natural and healing. And it will, if you stop interfering with it.
* I think reverse breathing is a deliberate hack to the body’s natural way of breathing, but I don’t think people should be attempting it before they’ve got better at breathing in a natural way first. If you are already breathing in an unnatural way, and then you try and add on something else, well, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that you’re headed for long term problems.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
The Tai Chi Notebook 