When you become extremely soft,
then you become extremely hard and strong.
(Chen Wei-ming)
What is yielding?
One of the most difficult aspects of learning
tai chi is yielding or softness.
On a crude level, softness refers to the
muscles being relaxed rather than tense, the joints being mobile rather than
held.
This is really just the beginning.
Softness of mind
If the
mind
is rigid and inflexible, then the body will be too.
Mental tension is a kind of anticipation; a preparation for expected events.
In
tai chi, we must learn not to anticipate and to
go with the flow of what is happening
instead.
Softness feels heavy
Being soft allows the body
weight to be transmitted to different parts of the body.
To another person, your limbs will feel very heavy.
To you, they just feel loose and relaxed.
This heaviness can be used to transmit the
groundpath through somebody else.
Listening
Softness enables you to 'listen' to the opponent's body through
the use of mild
pressure.
Too much pressure and you will be resisting the incoming
force.
Too little pressure and you will not be able to maintain contact.
Double-weighted
If you are double-weighted, you cannot yield.
In self defence work, your weight should always be more to one side than the
other.
There can be double-weightedness in the arms as well as the legs.
Soft meeting
Soft meeting refers to the way
in which we encounter an opposing force.
If we stiffen and offer resistance, then the force can enter us.
If we remain relaxed and allow the force to move us, then then it will not
find purchase.
Force meeting force is not
tai chi.
Force must be met with softness and yielding.
Soft meeting requires a serious degree of physical sensitivity and
awareness within your body; the ability to feel the tension
within the incoming force and to dissipate your own tension at the same
time.
Softness is called sung
When the softness has become natural to you and your body
simply remains loose and yielding at all times, it is called 'sung'.
Sung is a highly desirable
neigong (internal quality) because it is very good for both
health and self defence.
Softness enables fa jing
The mobility of the joints and
the vertebrae provide the looseness required to produce
fa jing - the means
of expressing force in tai chi.
Without this high degree of softness, fa jing cannot occur.
Yielding is a feminine quality
The
Tao Te Ching describes
women as naturally containing
softness.
This is not intended to be a patronising statement,
rather it speaks of the elegance and subtlety of women, of their ability to
move without
aggression and force.
Men often find tai chi difficult because they are reluctant to yield to
force.
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Page created 24 September 2003