Chinese Martial Arts And Health Centre - Fourways

10/06/2020

24/09/2019

A thought on thinking.
A few words that teachers use all the time; thinking or focusing, “mindful” and “awareness”, oh and intention. These are words that I use a lot and that I often feel students are not really processing correctly. And that’s also ok, by the way, I only understood how to be mindful and aware in the last few years and the point of this article is draw our attention to the understanding and implementation of the idea behind these words.
There are two different ideas to communicate here; external and internal awareness. The external awareness encompasses an overall physical awareness, which is something simpler than what I wanted to write about, but it is still valid and necessary, so let’s cover that first.
So, you are practicing form. Let’s assume it’s a form you know well enough, so let’s say it’s the first form you have ever learnt, let’s assume that its practiced fairly frequently so its really in your memory and let’s assume you are a pretty senior student, lets say upwards of 8 years. These points will ensure we are dealing with someone who has practiced a certain set of movements for some time and remembers them well.
Most students will practice forms with very little body awareness, this will firstly be reflected in the ‘performance’ quality of the form. To be clear, I am not talking about one’s athletic ability, but rather the correctness of the moves. To tick this box of general body awareness, which I feel is crucial before you move onto ‘internal’ awareness, you need to know where each hand is located in space. I am talking about its placement, its orientation, it’s martial structure (hook hand, fist, palm, etc) and everything related to how it got there and where it is exactly. Then this awareness should be extended to the arms; how is the arm placed, is it angled up, down or level? How bent or straight are the wrists and elbows? This awareness then extends to the neck, the body, the legs and feet. You can appreciate that this awareness just won’t be in place when we are flying through the form at full pace. The speed of a form has its place, but speed is actually quite a basic skill. Looking slick and doing a hot performance of a form is not even close to the primary skill of martial arts at all. Granted the speed is useful, but the form and its technique and function are lost when it is performed with speed as the primary skill set.
As a primary requisite to really advance into our practice one needs to be able to take a form and go through it at a slower speed to really nail down all the physical attributes that should be there. Fix the structural things first, basics like the shape of your stances and how you move from one to the next – it’s a whole other realm to look into if you haven’t done so before. Then fix all the top body structural aspects, as mentioned above; arm and hand placements, body placement, etc. And we all have different body structures, the structures of a shorter person will be different to that of a tall person for example. Once those two are done then the focus can move to how the middle of the body connects the arms/hands and the lower body. This bring attention to the use of the ‘Kua’ (the creases of the pelvis meeting the thighs) and how they assist and control movement between the legs and the top body. Keep checking all the structural aspects, ensure the movement from the legs is being linked correctly into the body by using the kua and pelvis properly. And to connect properly to the arms, the lower abdominal area, the chest and the shoulders and finally the spine need attention.
The chest and shoulders need to be relaxed, and sunk – not pushed out, as is stereotypical of the western male. I feel the sinking of the chest (referred to as ‘hun’) has also been overdone by many students. My view on the description of this feeling is that the tension of the chest area, mainly obvious in the peck muscles and the shoulders, must be removed so that the meat of the chest can feel like its sitting back slightly and allowed to drop down slightly. I find that many ‘pull’ their chests in so much that they create more tension in that pulling back action then there may have been in the front of the chest in the first place. Also, that action will push the tension into the upper back, this is not the desired effect. Personally, the feeling is that the meat of the front of the torso is relaxed and loose, and when its in that state it naturally sits closer to the spine. The downward feeling is that of the inside of the body, the meat/flesh of the upper abdominal area, sinking down.
An important note is that the bodies structure shouldn’t be distorted by trying to create the feeling of ‘hun’, it should be more of a feeling than of an appearance. If its too visible then it’s being forced. Once the chest and shoulders are corrected, the focus should be about how the arms connect to the shoulders, primarily how much tension is being held there. Get rid of the tension – simple. Tension talks to how much muscle we are using (consciously and often unconsciously) and our Martial Arts system is not built on the idea of muscle use. If that was the case then we should stop doing all technical exercise and get to doing push ups and physical as our primary concern. This is not real martial arts.
So back to our structure; the spine and linked to this is the position of the head. Keep the chin in slightly, rise the top of the head slightly – this action mustn’t cause tension in the neck. The basic requirement is that the head is not just sitting ‘plonked’ on top of the neck, by creating a raised feeling at the head top one creates a sense of space in that connection of neck to head. It should feel like the head is carrying its own weight, not getting a lift all over the show by resting on the neck. This is a theme that is carried through to all joints of the body, the idea of creating space between joints.
So, the head is corrected and the spine is the final and most tricky part to really be aware of. It must be straight up, for most of the time we try to avoid leaning. The feeling of the spine is quite elusive. It’s not really a limb, we don’t really have a tangible feeling of it, we can’t really create an action with it or sense it - aside from standing up straight. It’s a long bony structure, covered in nerves, but we can’t really feel it – ironic! We can come back to this later, but as a primary skill we need to create a feeling of the centre of the body and learn to try and move from there whilst linking the rest of the body that we have correctly connected to.
All this physical ‘stuff’ is what I refer to as body structure. The focus of this whilst doing form work tends to be close to non-existent in most students due to the speed issue. As mentioned, the first problem is performing your forms over and over again trying to make the form into this fast performance. And please, I am not saying that speed is bad and isn’t required, but I am saying it’s a basic skill, get it done and then move on – too many people get stuck in this hamster wheel mentality of going through forms over and over again expecting their martial arts to get better for it – I did it for too many years! Another problem is that due to the lack of insight into the proper mechanics of the body, most people speed through the form using just muscle. This stems from students wanting to put intent into their moves, which is good, but they learn to do it incorrectly at beginner level. We want our punches to not be flimsy, to have ‘power’ and to feel effective. But most of us don’t do this by using body mechanics correctly, for the most part this gets done by finding as many muscle groups as possible to use (i.e. tense up) in that punch. Wrong. That’s again leading us down a road to no-technique martial arts.
The aim of this article was not to write this much – it’s just happens, as I spill thoughts out and one topic leads into the next. I didn’t want to go into how overuse of muscle is not as effective as correct structural body mechanics, and there is more about this topic that is quite interesting, but its leading me astray. To sum this, point up, it’s about balance; the body needs to be in a state of yin and yang. Too weak, flimsy, too Yin - won’t get you anywhere. Too strong, blocked up, tense, too Yang will lead to a similar result and it also means you are only better than your opponent if he/she is weaker than you. Yin against Yang won’t work, and Yang against Yang won’t work. They are both undesirable states to be in and lead to an ineffective martial arts system. Moving on…

To try sum up the idea of the basic level of external awareness that needs to be cultivated; students need to be more and more aware of all parts of the body. Be aware of when you are using just muscle. Learn to be aware of the spine’s rotation, the closing and opening of the kua and make your moves flowing and smooth where possible. Realise with the fact you can’t do this while speeding through forms. Take the form and work it in sections of moves at a speed that allows for a brain to body connection. Learn to BE AWARE of your body folks!

Right moving on.
Internal awareness – it’s a tricky thing. Can you focus your intent/awareness in your finger, say if you have your hand up in the typical tiger single finger bridge hand position? Try it before moving on.

The most common reaction is to ‘think’ about your finger. One may start this by often looking at it, or if the eyes are closed, imagining it. The problem with imagining it, in this example, is that in your mind you have taken a snapshot picture of the finger and are observing it. This in fact draws the mind out of the finger to a 3rd person observer position. So yes, you are focusing on it but the focus is an external focus or a view of it with no or very little connection to the finger. The same goes with focusing on it with eyes open. In this option most people get the eyes looking at the finger as though they were trying to will their intention into it. Again, the effect is very limited as most times the eyes are staring at the finger and remain in a ‘detached external’ state.

The internal aspect of martial arts is all about generating or creating feeling inside the body. Most people don’t even get to start down this path as the examples above become how they attempt it and these methods just don’t open any real doors for the student who attempts the internal path this way.
Here is another way to try this; as I said, you need to create a ‘feeling’ inside the finger. Hold it up in front of you, eyes open or closed is not an issue. Firstly, you need to relax, it’s just easier for feedback and makes it easier to feel. Relax from the shoulder to the finger, don’t let it go limp – remember it’s about the balance between yin and yang. Hold it up with enough structure to have it look firm and ‘be in place’. Then start to release the strength of the structure that you have formed. You don’t need as much strength there as you think, so release as much as you can whilst still maintaining the structure of the hand/finger.
This release of tension is a major component of Taiji, and it is just important in Kung Fu if you wish to go deeper into the technique. In Taiji we refer to it as ‘song’. It starts with releasing tension from the most outer component, the skin, relax the skin, use your breath to try assist you. Breathe out and feel the tension release from your skin surface, focusing on the skin you can see, from your arm to your finger. Now take another breath out, release the tension on the meat/muscles just underneath the skin, and so on. I don’t use breathing often, but it can be a good tool to help as you venture into this space. Now try feel inside your finger, really feel the flesh/meat of the finger. The thing is to really feel inside the finger. There is no easy instruction here, it’s a matter of how well you can concentrate you mind. It’s not easy if you haven’t done this type of focussing before. It takes perseverance and an attentive mind. There will be a definite feeling that you will eb able to create and feel that will may start in your finger but which you can then trace back into your body, so a path if you like. Ultimately it needs to be a path to and from the Dan Tien, hence the discussion.

This opens a new field of training, exercising the mind as how to focus or how to sense. In Taiji circles it is said the Yi (mind) must direct the Qi. A lot of people think the right way to feel the Qi is to imagine or think about the Qi. Personally, I don’t agree, and I did this for a good number of years with no result. How can you think focus on something that’s not tangible and something which you have not felt before, something you have no real concept of? To me it’s the wrong method (that’s my disclaimer right there by the way). With reference to the Taiji classics again, it is said that one shouldn’t focus on the Qi, rather focus on using the Yi, and the effect will be movement of the Qi. They say that the more one tries to focus on the Qi the more elusive and stuck it will become. I must say from my personal journey, it seems true. Focus on the body, focus on using your mind on focusing. The more you do that the more you feel.

So where is this going? It was the idea behind intention, awareness and focus that started me on this. This by itself will enhance your training a hundred-fold. It’ll allow you to develop a better understanding to technique, to training methods and to the internal side of things and to enhance and support the understanding of the mechanical structure that was mentioned. But it goes further to our goal of trying to establish a feeling of Dan Tien.

To quote Yoda, “Elusive the Dan Tien is” …. he didn’t say that, he should have though, with all the talk of the force!

Again, how to establish this feeling of something that’s not tangible and that you can’t feel. I applied this method above to establishing a feeling of DT, and it worked for me.
What I have realised from this process I undertook, which took years of focusing through slow movements and static meditation, is that the key to it all is the mind. How well can you focus and feel inside of your body? There are a few helpful exercises handed down through our system that tied in with the development of using the Yi, can help to establish this DT feeling. I want to share one here, but I must say that in my opinion it really only can work if you are ‘aware’, so time spent on other methods to develop the Yi should be practiced a lot before really expecting results in this exercise.

The exercise is to stand in front of a wall and place your hand on the wall. You can do this is a short horse, or mabu or whatever stance is comfortable. The idea is to place a gentle force through your hand into the wall and to try feel the reaction force of it coming back into you – as it obviously doesn’t go into the wall, it must clearly come back to you. One must not lean on the wall, it’s a gentle force/pressure that needs to be applied. Then the task is to be aware, lead that force back into your body and try feel it in the DT area. I can safely say at this point that my wife really thinks I’m nuts, can you imagine what she thinks when I’m there in the lounge pressing the wall – looking all focussed? Yup, it’s not for the faint hearted.
Imagine it like this, you press the wall and that force goes out to the wall, hits the wall and returns into your body. So, where does it go, it doesn’t just disappear. It comes back in and as you try lead it to the DT area it will become trapped in whichever muscles are most tense on its route into your body. Mostly you will feel it get stuck in your arm, if you are aware enough to release your own tension enough for it to get past the arm, it will most likely get stuck in the shoulder. Anyway, the point is that it’s a feedback exercise and for that to work you MUST be aware. And if you want to get it to the DT then be SUPER aware!
I am no ninja, I have managed to allow the skill of ‘song’ to assist my marital arts, so there is a tangible milestone there that I can attest to. With regards to the DT, I cannot use my DT for awe-inspiring techniques (working on it though!), but I have started to have a feeling of it, which is exciting. When I press the wall, I don’t feel a definite path from my hand to my DT, but it seems to connect the two. The path is not clear, just the feeling in the hand and DT, the connection of the two.
I’m in my journey, I’m not the Guru, and I just wanted to share information that may possibly ignite something in one of you to help you on your journey. Enjoy.

24/05/2019

I was recently asked a question by one of my students about training Taiji as a martial art. I started writing this article in response to that question, it has proven to be more complicated than a quick yes or no, and the article has grown out of this simple question. I guess it became a platform to refresh ideas and put them on paper.

Disclaimer: The article below is my opinion based on my training and experiences, it’s open to discussion and may not be the finite opinion on the topic – Taiji is a journey, these are my thoughts on my journey thus far.

Historically Taiji was taught for self-defence and specifically as a martial art. These days that has changed, partly due to the transmission of the ‘old’ methods of Taiji not being passed down correctly, or purposely being withheld from students as they were not family or not worthy in their teachers’ eyes.
Another reason for the lack of martial instruction was that as Taiji was introduced into the general populace it underwent changes, some subtle and some quite noticeable. The idea behind these changes were partly to make it more appealing to the general populace as it a was easier to do and ultimately started the movement of Taiji from a martial art form to a health/wellness routine.

Having taught Kung Fu as a practical and self-defence orientated art, I can say that I could teach Taiji as an effective marital art. To do that we would use certain training mechanisms in order to transfer the moves that are practiced in the forms into fighting techniques – as we do in Kung Fu and most other martial arts. This can be done, and there are a lot of teachers that do teach this way, although when this is done without the correct structure to the teaching, then the result looks like any other ‘externally’ oriented martial art. The problem with teaching Taiji like this is that it moves away from the methodology which is specific to Taiji training.

If I look at the moves and techniques that we practice in Taiji, I don’t feel that they make taiji vastly different or make it a superior martial art to learn – when I say that I mean in comparison with another martial art, say Kung Fu. The main difference between Taiji and Kung Fu (and again I use Kung Fu as a comparison as I think is the most similar martial art based on how the movements look and function) is quite clearly the speed at which it is practiced. Most martial arts have form work, partner application work and sparring within their frame work, but it’s noticeable that the form work is practiced at speed. So why do we move slowly in Taiji and what does it mean for the difference in the result of training Taiji vs high paced martial art. Training the form slowly allows for certain ‘skills’ to develop, these are:

o to find a more efficient way of issuing force, using the entire body
o to be able to ‘dissolve’ or ‘redirect’ force applied to them by an opponent
o to become more aware of the Dan Tien and its role in one’s physical movement
o ultimately allows developed sensitivity for the development and possible use of Qi

It is crucial to note that for the correct Taiji training one must focus on a few primary points when training:

1. The body must be relaxed – the famous saying on this point is ‘relax but don’t collapse’. This talks to us about the concept of trying to achieve the correct balance of yin & yang, or hardness and softness in the body. You cannot do this while moving quickly.
2. The mind must be aware and present. A person can train for 10 years, but if the mind is not aware of the movements being done then the training will not result in true Taiji. Twenty years of unaware training are not as good as 2 years of training with full awareness.
3. The structure of the body must be correct. This is simple, one must move in accordance with the taiji principals and theory to achieve a well-balanced movement.
4. Consistency in one’s training. I used to think I was consistent in my training, and to a degree I was; training 2 or 3 times a week (and a lot more in my youth, but life does tend to take over). The word ‘consistent’ was what I heard from my teachers, but it does not mean that you must ensure you train those 2 or 3 times a week consistently. The real point here is that you need to train every day. That is consistent! As with any body related activity, the more you do it the better you become. But, Taiji is no ordinary body activity, it requires diligent practice every day for the real essence of it to be engrained into our body and mind.

The mechanism of training Taiji form slowly must remain in place and must remain as an important aspect of Taiji training for the effects above to develop. For the martial aspect to develop we need to increase the practice of application work and sparring. Now, this is where it gets a little tricky. We suppose that one is practicing applications of Taiji on a partner, so practicing different scenarios of an opponent punching or grabbing you, and you are responding with a certain application. If you do too much of this type of practice before allowing the results of ‘slow form practice’ to develop the ‘body and mind awareness’ mentioned above, then you will most likely never allow, or at least delay, the development of those important ‘skills’ that specifically define Taiji.

This is because as one drills applications, they are constantly overriding the real body/mind development (from slow form practice) by drilling applications in a manner that is inherently focused on the result of the application. Normally that result requires a ‘layperson’ to use certain muscles and body movement to do achieve the result. A layperson will do these movements in the natural way of everyday movement, which will ultimately not be in line with Taiji principals. The way this is done conflicts with the teachings of Taiji, so unless you have first trained the body on how to move and bought one’s attention to the mind, then the result will not be Taiji as the moves that are being practiced cannot relate back to the ‘skills’ development that Taiji is mostly concerned with.
The trick is to develop the skills specific to Taiji and then one can look at practicing partner techniques using this more refined body and mind development. This is how Taiji can become an effective martial art.
All that said I think it’s imperative that students are shown how specific movement can function as an application of martial arts so that as they practice the form, they allow a theoretical scenario to unfold as they do the application. They need to imagine an opponent attacking and the movements unfolding in accordance with the various attacking scenarios. This is important to the first stages of the body/mind development.

The problem with this method of learning is that it takes a long time. Most students are practicing Taiji maybe once or twice a week, at their place of learning. The specific skills of Taiji cannot develop when practicing at this frequency. The body and mind need to be reconnected by training as often as possible. Training twice a week will yield very limited results and ultimately there is no way that Taiji can be anything but a health benefit when trained like this. This is where Taiji finds itself today, for the most part, it is a health benefit and yields no real martial arts skill. In addition, if it does look like the practitioner can use it for marital arts, it’s probably not being utilized in the intended manner with the correct skills due to the problem mentioned above of not spending the right time practicing the form slowly, but rather overriding the development of skill with the training of applications and sparring.

Further to this brief explanation there are other topics that underlie the thought process above.
One topic that requires a short discussion is chi, or Qi. Qi has attracted a lot of attention over the past 20 years as eastern martial arts have become popular. I am not qualified to confirm what exactly Qi is, or what it is isn’t. Qi has been described as many things such as your bodies’ biological energy, its vital energy, or generally it’s just referred to as our internal energy.
I don’t discuss Qi too much when teaching due to the lack of experience / feeling of it, and I tell my students that they shouldn’t obsess over it. I feel it has become a very common and overused concept that is thrown around as if everyone should be able to feel and move their Qi about ‘nilly-willy’. Instead I talk more about ‘awareness’ and ‘intention’ as I feel these are the words that will lead the student to the correct usage of their Yi (mind). I believe that only through the correct awareness of one’s body and being able to guide ones Yi through the body, will we ever have the possibility to feel Qi.

I think there are a lot of people that are perhaps initially confusing the feeling of Qi with other processes in the body. Through my training of Taiji came more experience with meditation, and I don’t mean spiritual mediation, although this may be a path that opens later for a lot of students, but one needs to start with a very physical-based meditation. I have discussed the training mechanism of Zhan Zhuang (post standing) in other articles, so I won’t delve into it too much here.
What needs to be said is that Zhan Zhuang is a body awareness mediation that requires the practitioner to develop their sensitivity to the body and its internal structure. One must realize that the benefit of this is twofold, the physical work you do during the meditation, which includes relaxing the body, dissolving/releasing the tension throughout the body, establishing a feeling of your ‘root’, sinking your ‘intention’ and becoming aware of your structure. These are all the things that one needs to do whilst performing Zhan Zhuang, but the second advantage (which is not often thought about) is that you are strengthening the Yi / mind by doing all this ‘paying attention’ of your internal body. The mind is ultimately the most important tool in the training of Taiji, Qi Gong, Kung Fu and any system of martial arts that goes deeper than just external movement.

Anyway, the point on this was that the more I did Zhan Zhuang and the more I took that experience into my Taiji practice, the more my body started to ‘open up’ and release. As your body becomes relaxed and loose and ‘open’ and free of tension, you start to feel things. Very subtle feelings start coming into existence and I have a ‘feeling’ (excuse the pun!) that a lot of people will immediately think this is their Qi - and maybe it is? However, one must think about the movement of fluids in one’s body and the fact that the more you ‘open’ and release the body the more freely those fluids will flow. This is an important part of the ‘good health’ factor of practicing mediation and Tai Ji, and I theorize that it leads to the development of sensitivity to Qi.

Before we think we are suddenly feeling Qi inside the body it may be an idea to consider what else we could be experiencing. There are many side effects to the practice of Zhan Zhuang and the slow practice of Taiji; a few are feelings of hot and cold, pressure changes on the skin, tingling feelings like pins and needles, even nausea – these are primarily felt during Zhan Zhuang, although not limited there and they can arise during Taiji practice. I have experienced many of these and they are normal, as the body opens and things change within there just has to be an effect.

Below is some information that relates to ideas of how the subtle feelings that may arise. I can’t say that someone is not feeling Qi, I wouldn’t know. However, I believe if Qi is to be felt then it is more subtle in its nature than the points below and therefore would only be felt after much training and after experiencing a lot of ‘other’ subtle feelings, which may be part and parcel of the points below.

The primary liquid that ‘flows’ in us is obviously our blood, which is the plasma carrying red and white blood cells. In addition, we need to be aware that there is more than just the blood moving around inside of us. Lymph flows through lymphatic vessels and makes up about 10 percent of the fluid movement inside of us. Intracellular fluid makes up about 60 percent of the total water in the human body. Other body fluids that occur in lesser amounts are urine, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord, the synovial fluid in joints, the pleural fluid in the pleural cavities (formed by membranes surrounding the lungs), the pericardial fluid in the cardiac sac, etc.
The point is that there is a lot of movement happening in our bodies that we can’t feel – at a normal level of awareness. As we learn to allow our bodies to relax and open so the fluids inside move more freely and start to create new sensations / feelings. These sensations are not feelings that one can identify easily, in terms of location or what they actually are, they are too subtle for that.

In addition to the flow of liquids inside of us we can also discuss the flow of currents / charges inside the body. I tried to find information on the internet pertaining to the electrical charges within our blood and other fluid systems, but it gets quite complicated. I think it suffices to say that there are different currents / charges within our bodies and the rate or ease at which the fluids flow within our bodies will affect these. This may also give rise to subtle feelings within the body.

Finally, varying body parts are subjected to different types of internal pressure – for example, the definition of ‘hydrostatic pressure’ from Wikipedia is; “Hydrostatic pressure is the force generated by the pressure of fluid within or outside of capillary on the capillary wall.” Without going into it too much, different parts of the body experience different pressure/s. I theorize that a lot of the subtle feelings that start to arise could include the different pressure systems inside our bodies – this forms part of internal awareness.

The important idea behind this is the realization that as the body releases and opens so we will be able to detect new feelings and that its very likely that a lot of people are identifying those very physical effects with the movement of Qi. I theorize that we first feel subtle sensations in the body as we open it and that these feelings are the movements of physical parts and physical processes of our body that are affected by the process of opening and releasing the body. It may be that at the same time energy or Qi in the body is being felt.
Qi Gong is another tool that we use for internal focus and development. My experience has been that we should start with meditation then move to Qi Gong or do them concurrently. I found that meditation allowed me to feel more which then allowed me to feel more happening in my Qi Gong. In fact, I felt that my Qi Gong was limited in its sensory feedback until I had a year of meditation behind me.

This path of my experience has led to the structure that use to instruct my Taiji classes;

i) Standing Post / Zhan Zhuang
ii) Qi Gong
iii) Form work
iv) Partner and chi sao work.

Step one, the Zhan Zhuang practice informs us of the basics, all the little aspects that you need to be still to feel. It starts us at foundation level of noticing the body with all its issues and adjusting them in a very subtle way. As I mentioned earlier it also starts the student in the practice of awareness or mindfulness.

Step two is Qi Gong practice which relies on the step one’s conditioning of the mind and body from the meditation to allow the student to start moving the body through the basic Qi gong exercises correctly. Step one INFORMS step two; relax, focus, be aware of the feelings in the body and then do your Qi Gong with a better understanding of your body. The Qi Gong practice is where we start to encourage the awareness of the dan tien area and how to have the arms moving whilst maintaining the conditions of Zhan Zhuang. The dan tien area is another enigma of martial arts which is for another discussion.

Step three is the form work. Learning moves that one is not accustomed to is a very different process; its external, so move your hand here, do this, do that – it requires more external awareness and coordination, we are basically working with the student’s fine motor skills. The student is very much removed from the type of practice of steps 1 and 2, until they have been training for some time and the moves come naturally. The process of step 3 can only draw on the information and skills from step 1 and 2 once they can perform the moves without having to think through each move and think about where the hands should be, is the structure correct, how is the stance, etc. Once the movements are engrained then the task is to bring the feelings and teachings of steps 1 and 2 info the moving form.

Step four, Chi Sao. It has been said by many teachers and authors that this is the method of testing the principals and theory of Tai Ji - partner work is the transference of the theory that we learn in the form into practical application. This is the stage where we learn to apply techniques/applications from the form and we learn to feel our partner/opponents’ body along with the force that it transmits. Learning to become sensitive to this force is of primary concern for the advanced student as it develops new ways of receiving, disrupting and redirecting of our opponents’ power or attack. This stage of learning is the most interesting.

As a summary, the primary focus points of Taiji are that one first and foremost needs to relax. We relax the body so that we can loosen the ‘meat’ of the body, its muscles, tendons, etc. which will allow us to become more sensitive and thereby we develop the ability to channel force through the body more effectively. We need to open the body and its joints and move slowly so that we are aware of the physical structure during movement – I am certain that this cannot be done whilst practicing form at a fast pace.

In martial arts we should be aware of how we generate and receive force. Once we have changed our perception of the body and we have noticed the surface of the skin and let our attention permeate further into the body, that is when the real skill of Tai Ji starts to blossom. It is not a process of learning countless applications of blocking and punching; this is not the skill of Taiji, this is not the function of the art form. The function is to learn to connect, control and understand force. Once you can connect to your partner, and you understand the flow of force, then the response to the opponents attack becomes instinctive because it’s not the opponents attack that dictates your reaction, it’s your connection to their body, irrespective of the point of contact, and then your instinctive understanding of the force they are issuing.