If
there is qi, there is no external strength.
(Wu Yu-hsiang)
Tai chi & strength
The
tai chi way of using strength has some
basic considerations:
Never employ force against force; always yield to strength
No more than 4 ounces of pressure should be exerted upon your body or expressed by you
Each movement should be a whole-body movement
Unite internally using neigong yet remain soft, pliable and yielding
You can transmit strength via groundpath
Intention can unite mind and body into one focussed unit
People read these points and feel
dissatisfied, as though some crucial part was missing.
So what is the answer? The answer is akin to the
flower sermon.
Even though the answer is right in front of you, it will not satisfy.
If you 'get it' - the answer will feel
like a slap across the face and you will be unable to explain why it makes
sense.
Question: why don't you tense the muscles and use force in tai chi?
Answer: because you don't need to.
Feeling strong
If you feel strong, you're doing it wrong...
You need to feel as if you are doing nothing at all. No exertion, no
pulling, no strain, no effort.
When you touch another person, your contact should be feather-light,
soft, yet heavy.
If force is delivered into you, your body must offer no resistance
whatsoever and yield rather than crumple.
Being "as still as a mountain" is not an invitation to resist force or
become externally hard.
The other half of the saying is "move like a great river".
Have you ever encountered stiff water?
Exertion
Students repeatedly fail to understand
neigong.
Having trained the skills, they prevent their emergence by sustaining
external
habits of muscular tension.
You must only apply the absolute minimum amount of strength required to
move the body or hold a limb in place.
Striking
There are two sides to striking:
Your delivery
If your body is soft, loose and internally united, your blow will feel
effortless and easy.
It will feel weak and harmless.
There is no extraneous tension in your body and no contraction of the muscles.
Your arms and legs are like heavy, boneless tentacles.
Your opponent's experience of
the strike (jing)
Your opponent should find your strike to be powerful, heavy and
penetrating.
It should cause painful internal pressure to build within their body.
If this is not the case, you are still to learn the basics.
Consider: if your strikes felt like hard work, what would be the point?
Indications of the external
People often think that they are using internal strength but are still
tensing their muscles or just moving their arms.
These are the telltale signs:
Pushing when delivering force
Their arms tremble when you push them
There is no 'give' (folding) in the joints
They push back into you rather than:
a) yielding
b) employing inherent peng to absorb and channel the force - this also
involves yielding
Wardoff/peng is seen as a stiff barrier rather than a springy 'feeler'
Pathways of power
Tai chi form teaches structural
alignment.
The so-called postures are an interconnected network of body parts, united for
the purpose of delivering loose, whole-body power.
Kinetic energy and the dynamics of impact require the body to be soft and
springy.
If you hit another object without shock absorption, you will suffer adverse
feedback and much of the power will dissipate at the moment of impact - or
worse: be fed back into you.
The physics of the form are exceptionally important.
If you are caught up in aesthetics then your structure will be weak should you
attempt to apply tai chi in self defence.
The form trains habits of structural relationship.
Your body learns to feel the optimal shape at any moment of delivery; you
do not need to think about it.
In self defence, a trained student instinctively establishes the optimal pathway
of power at the very instant of impact - delivering a kinetic wave of
energy into the target - without force, without pushing.
Once the strike has been delivered, the structure becomes protean once more.
Learn from mammals
Look to your own body as a source of inspiration.
Explore how the human
body works, why it works and how you can optimise your use of the body.
This is a taoist approach to tai chi.
Taoism was never about revering the past.
It was about observing nature and how
the principles you identify can work in practical reality.
Consider the mammalian body. Other animals seldom demonstrate habits of poor
body usage.
Humans do. All the time.
Form serves to train your body to follow inherently stable patterns of usage. It
encourages strength and alignment, wholeness and comfort.
But only if you listen to your body and explore each movement thoroughly and
carefully.
Copying will lead you nowhere. You must understand it for yourself.
Consider how you use your arms relative to a cat, dog, horse or cow. Are the
zones of strength any different? Is the body radically different?
Quadrupeds have strength in the limb when moving the limb forwards and backwards
- this translates to up and down in a bipeds arms.
Quadrupeds have very little strength in the limb when the limb moves from
beneath the torso - the body weight falls incorrectly and the structure is
weakened.
Yet how many humans stand with their legs wider than shoulder width or rely of
elbow/shoulder power rather than adhere to the
6 balanced pairs?
Most animals lead with the spine - with the head in perfect alignment and
relationship with the vertebrae beneath it.
Most humans disconnect head from back by becoming too caught up with the eyes
and thrusting the head forward.
Watch nature carefully. Observe it diligently. Then ask questions about your own
body. Explore it. Get someone to test your inherent strength and
stability.
Optimise. Adapt. Improve. Learn.
Page created 24 October 2003