The
actual practice goes from shallow to deep,
from crude to fine.
(Golden Flower)
Baggage
Everyone who starts tai chi approaches the art with some sort of
baggage: whether physical or
psychological.
The habitual actions and thoughts, the misconceptions, preconceptions and
expectations are all present from the very first lesson.
People see what they want to see and frantically attempt to
understand tai chi in terms of their existing life experience and memories.
As a consequence, the
beginners
syllabus involves shedding the baggage before the real
training can begin.
Awareness
Most people have a faulty sense of their own
body.
Learning to feel your own body and correlate the information it is giving
you with the actual physical reality is quite a challenge.
We are yet to encounter a new starter who has any sense of
muscular
relaxation.
To most people, 'relax' means slump and this is not correct.
The body must be slowly re-trained, re-shaped and re-patterned.
This takes
time,
concentration and
patience - most
of the work is psychological, not physical.
Whole-body
Tai chi is about
whole-body
movement, rather than
independent limb movement.
The difference between the two is immense.
Beginners learn how to move their body in a new way.
Punches, palms, finger strikes, elbows
and shoulders are no longer produced by the limb - but are possible
outcomes of a whole-body movement.
Open
When the body can move as a whole, your mind must change
from a technique-oriented attitude to a wider scope of possibility.
Consider two different types of question:
Do you like sport?
What do you like?
Question 1 is how most martial arts operate - yes or no,
this or that, one or the other. It is a closed question.
Question 2 is more open and could be answered any number of ways, entirely
relative to the individual.
Tai chi is more akin to question 2, where the underlying principles offer a
greater scope for application.
Versatility
A beginner learns to use their body in an ever-changing variety of ways in
order to increase their capacity for adaptation.
This is why each tai chi posture is not intended as a set response to one
particular attack.
It is deliberately abstract, deliberately indistinct.
The more closely defined something becomes, the more limited its range of
possibility.
If you plan to use response A against attack B, what happens
if your opponent uses attack C instead?
Or counters your response?
Random?
'Open' does not mean random.
A beginner learns how to release energy -
jing.
It is initially unfocussed and needs to be fine tuned.
An intermediate student releases specific types of jing: initially 8 powers
from the 13 postures.
Further jing combinations are considered in the
experienced syllabus.
Students also learn different ways to deliver the release - this is the study of
fa jing.
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Page created 8 December 2004