Taijipedia

Chen Xiao Wang is an.. um.. Chen style Taiji Master.  This display is rather recent, either 2007 or 2008 I think.

The date at which it was taken doesn’t matter, nor does the slightly jittery camera work.  Master Chen’s movements are focused, solid and powerful, he has that “flavour” of the movement and his fa jing is superb.

What I took away from watching this is that although his core does not appear to be moving that much, it must be to be able to produce movement like that and fa jing that explosive. You’ll never look like that just waving your arms without your body being involved.  So this means that what might feel like big movements of the body, can look like they’re very small or nonexistent.

The other thing to note is that his movement is so great because he has mastered the art of making his body movement small.  His centre is clearly moving, to power the form, but you can only see its manifestation clearly in the hands and feet, you’ll have to look very closely to see how he’s moving his core.

Whilst it is ironic to post a Ba Gua video on a Taiji site, this video is really rather illuminating.  Sun Zhi Jun is the teacher of Jing Li, one of our teachers and friends.  It is interesting to note that despite his age, and the complexity of the movement, Master Sun still moves from his centre and all his movement are obviously relaxed and powerful.

What I find most instructive about this video, however, is the fact that it is possible to move like that.  It may take years to achieve, but it is possible to flow like that, and to be in such good shape when you’re that old.  I find it rather inspiring actually

Photo by karloswayne

This week’s Big Idea is Breathing

Breathing in Taiji is one of the big kahunas. It’s because breathing is a primary way we relax ourselves. Think about what you do when you sigh. It’s a way for us to relax and let go of tension.

Try it now, breathe in… and sigh…

Some part inside of you just lets go doesn’t it? It may not come as a surprise then that breathing affects us physiologically in a million different ways. It isn’t a coincidence that so many internal arts and qigong forms empahsise the importance of correct breathing to help the body heal itself.

If you hold your breath, you’re automatically going to hold tension in the body. It’s an unnatural state for your body to be in, stuck in some sort of limbo between breaths, because the body’s natural state is one of constant breathing, constant change. Try it, hold your breath for as long as you can and you’ll notice that there will come a point when your body starts to tense up. Holding the breath is stressful.

What happens when you’re stressed and thinking about a difficult issue? More often than not, you’ll be holding your breath. If you work in an office, watch someone who’s having a bad day. As they concentrate intently, they’ll inhale and hold their breath whilst they’re thinking or trying to do something, then instinctively exhale and sigh as if to try to relieve the stress. When you’re holding tension mentally, or emotionally, you’ll more than likely start to manifest it physically by holding your breath.

As another example, what happens when you get startled, or surprised? Say someone hides behind that tree and jumps out shouting “BOO!”. You get startled, and you breathe in sharply, and then you hold your breath

If you do any sort of martial art and have done some sparring, you’ll know that when you get hit or put under pressure you start to run out of energy quicker, unless you can stop the panic and clear your head. I’ll bet that it’s because you’ll be holding your breath at and the added pressure from your sparring partner just saps your strength quicker.

To handle the stress of childbirth both mentally and physically, pregnant women are taught to breathe. Soldiers in some forces are taught breathing techniques to handle the stress of combat. Just as our internal state can affect our breathing, so can our breathing affect the rest of our physiology.

If you can focus on your breathing and breathe in a more controlled manner, or better yet, just let your body do the breathing, it’ll start to let go of the tension that’s been collecting in the body. If we focus on calming the breath, the body and mind will follow.

This is why breathing is important in Taijiquan.

It’s not because breathing during Taijiquan practise will make our Taijiquan better, it’s because practising breathing correctly will make every part of our life better.

It’ll do that by making you a lot more relaxed for a start.

Once your body gets used to breathing correctly during Taijiquan practise, it’ll start to remember it when you’re in your everyday life. When you hit some turbulence, you’ll instinctively start to breathe more gently to relieve the pressure. You might even find it’s a conscious thing. When you start looking at a new problem at work, you might even catch yourself doing a “Deep breath… let’s go” sort of thing.

It’s the same idea that you’re re-programming the body to do something it does naturally. Just as we can have bad postural habits, we can have bad breathing habits, and practise of Taijiquan with the right breathing can really help us let go of these habits.

And that, can only be a good thing.

This is the last posture in the first section of the Yang Taiji 24 Form.  It’s not quite as complex as some of the transitions you’ve already seen, so if you’ve got through those you should find this a bit easier to do.

Things to remember are to make sure you do a half step and not a full one, and to relax the shoulders as the hands lift.  Try not to hold your breath as you do this posture.  Holding the breath makes you hold tension in your chest, and the last part of this posture is all about a relaxation of the whole upper body, so it’ll help if you breathe out at that point.

Happy practise!

Brush Knee Twist Step is repeated twice more in the Yang Taiji 24 Form so you end up with your left foot in front.

You should be fairly familiar with these movements already as you would have covered them in the transition from White Crane Spreads Wings to Brush Knee Twist Step.

The second in our videos on Taiji for back pain. The Yang Taiji 24 form’s a good form for helping your back heal, it’s not too demanding on the body and is simple enough to learn quickly. The gentle movements and flexing and stretching is very good for your back as it will loosen up your back and allow bits of it to move.

Another benefit of getting yourself to relax is the fact that relaxation allows the circulation of blood in the previously tense areas of your back to improve. More blood going through it means more healing as blood brings with it lots of good stuff that the back needs, and takes away all the bad stuff that might have been sitting there waiting to be cleared.

The link to connecting to centre can be found here.
And here’s the first in our lessons on the Yang Taiji 24 Form.

This is something of a shameless plug, I do Taiji for back pain. That’s the main reason why I do it, and why I’ll carry on practising. Not having to live stabbing pains and terrible stiffness in my lumbar region is all I do Taiji for. Back pain is an affliction of modern times. If you’ve not suffered from back pain, you’ll probably know someone who has.

So, in this video post we cover the most common causes of back pain, why poor posture causes problems and say why it happens, but more importantly how the simple act of relaxation and the retraining of your back muscles into good habits can fix it. You can use almost any method to get your back to relax, lying on a wooden floor, going to a bodywork professional or chiropractor. We’re Taiji people so we recommend doing Taiji for back pain.

Now, the easiest thing to do is to just do Standing Meditation. Standing practise is very easy to do, but ruthlessly effective at getting you and your back to relax. You can find the first lesson on Standing Meditation here.  Standing is very effective at getting your back to start relaxing.  It’s what I started doing to fix my back as it’ll start the process of making your body aware of the misalignments and start re-training your back to hold itself correctly.

Or you could learn the Yang Taiji 24 Form.  It’s a dinky little form that ‘s easy to learn.  This will gently flex and stretch your back and stop it from stiffening up again, so it’s a good “maintenance” thing to do.  Tai Chi instruction on the form can be found here

OK, the first slightly tricky bit in the Taijiquan form.  This next lesson on the Yang Taiji 24 is structured as a  “Watch Me, Follow Me, Show Me” lesson as two separate videos, as we promised in the TWBI post.

In the spirit of keeping this as simple as possible, we’ve left the footwork detail to the next lesson so we don’t pack too much information into one lesson.  If  this is all new to you, or even if it’s not try out the learning technique on this Taijiquan posture.

The Watch Me Bit

The Follow Me Bit

The Show Me Bit

For this bit, you can practise quietly by yourself or if you feel adventurous, film yourself and send us a clip.  We’d love to see how you’re getting on.

This little Taiji video clip was almost a blooper, but repeating the “Watch Me, Follow Me, Show Me” drives a good point home.  If you’re trying to learn Tai Chi online from our videos or from a DVD or other video, this little tip is something we think is going to really help you.

This model for learning movement is effective, and I have it on good authority that they use this method to teach Olympic gymnasts new moves.  As far as movement goes, gymnastics is pretty difficult, and to top it all off, you can’t break down a Geinger, Tkatchev into a straddle handstand and teach it by the count.  You kinda got to teach those things as complete movements.  Gymnasts can only watch, then try the whole movement, however complex it is, and it works for them.

So if this method can be used to teach gymnastics, it’ll be all the more powerful where you can break a movement down into a count, like in Tai Chi. Online videos on this site all have counts to them so it should make the process easier.

So we’ve structured this week’s lesson as a “Watch Me, Follow Me, Show Me” session, you can find it here.

If you already know this transition, I’d urge you to watch the lessons anyway to see for yourself how the method works, or you could check out some movement you don’t know and apply the principle to learn it

If anyone out there is following our videos and learning Tai Chi online, we’d love to hear from you! We’d love to see how you’re getting on.

This question came in from one of our students of Tai Chi online. They asked “What is Chi?”

Taijiquan, Bagua, Xingyi and all of the interal arts are riddled with references to “chi”, or qi, ki, prana and so on. Now, this esoteric and fiddly thing that everyone calls “Chi” is many things, it’s an energetic phenomenon, a concept of life-force amongst other things.

Chi is a big part of Tai Chi, online searches for this will give you lots of different answers for what it is, and this confusion is something we’re going to see if we can clear up for you here and now.

Tai Chi online resources will also have you believe that Chi is a bit like money, everyone wants more of it, it’s never clear how to get more and when you have more it’s never enough.  The other difference is that Chi has something of a mythical image within the Taijiquan and martial arts community.

Now, most people who practise Taijiquan for health aren’t interested in going through hours of research to figure out what this esoteric property of Taijiquan is.  So to cut a long story short, we’re going to tell you exactly what you need to know about Chi.

It’s all just a feeling

As you get more sensitive to the feelings within your body when you practise your Taijiquan, you will start to notice more and more about the way things work and some sensations are very much like flowing energy from one part of the body to another.  Well that’s your Chi working.  The good news is that you don’t need to figure out exactly what it is, knowing that it’s there is more than enough, and feeling it is even better. It’s something inside of you, so no definition of it in books or on resources for Tai Chi online will be able to show you what it really is or means.