Take care of your health
and avoid stress,
consolidate your energy and build up your strength.
(Sun Tzu)
Positioning
How you position yourself in
tai chi is an essential factor.
There are two main concerns:
Your position relative to somebody else
It is important to maintain optimal
postural alignment at all times.
This means that you must remain loose, alert and flexible - yet sustain the
groundpath.
Tai chi
form is the main way in which you learn how to move smoothly without
losing your good structure.
Keeping good posture is fairly easy when performing solo work.
Partner work is another matter entirely.
All of your hard work may prove irrelevant if you cannot sustain good
positioning relative to somebody else.
Strategy
Tai chi is designed to teach you how to
adapt and change with the opponent without exposing yourself to attack.
The forms and drills are intended to reveal holes in your defences and lure the
other person to exploit the apparent weakness.
Silk arms and 2 person form train the ability to move with awareness whilst you
are under constant attack, and offer a very vigorous workout.
The postures flow from one to the next, opening and closing your defences,
striking the opponent every time they move towards you.
You must adapt and change rapidly, keeping the footwork light and sensitive.
Awareness
It is important to consider all the factors that will affect your position
relative to someone else.
Ideally, you need to adopt the posture that offers you the greatest degree of
flexibility and movement whilst preventing the opponent from comfortably
accessing your vulnerable areas.
At all times, you are exposed in some way.
Being aware of this will help you to allow for attacks from all sides and adjust
your physical use of the space accordingly.
Page created 14 January 2005