Students at Buffalo State College learning
HOW TO MOVE THE ARM AND THE CORE BODY AS A UNIT
We have spent considerable time on the topic of learning
internal discipline and how to apply it in the tai chi movements. I realize
many of you are still have difficulties in this area. I have been examining my
own movements and trying to come up with a better way of teaching this. I think
I have found an approach that can accelerate the learning curve. I have tested
it out on my students in the class, and it seems to work. I want to share this with
you.
(Some of you may already practice what I am going to talk
about. After all, you will develop this naturally by just practicing what I
have shown in the video. My desire to shorten the learning curve might have
been viewed with a disapproving eye by the old masters of the past. They believe
in diligent practice and self-discovery: not handheld by their teacher. I hope
I am not doing Mencius’ story about a farmer who was impatient watching his
seedlings grow so slowly that he went to the field and pulled the seedlings up
to help their growth.)
At the beginning of the learning process, you are instructed
to relax or forget about the shoulder and the arm, just concentrate on the
abdomen and the back for the internal movements. This is to eliminate the
common habit of moving from the arm or shoulder. The shoulder and arm just
follow the movements from the internal core. (My student Ernie said that trying
to relax the shoulder did not work for him, because of the act of “trying to
relax” placed too much attention on the shoulder which kept the shoulder in
play.) For most people, the difficulty here is to find the neural pathways in
the core which can make the internal move you intended.
After you practice the form in this way for a while you will
develop some knack for moving from the core. Now comes the second stage of
learning that is to integrate your arm with the internal movements and to
expanding the circulating internal energy and qi from the torso to the arm, the
palm and the fingertips. In Forum 6, I talked about the incorporation of “yi”,
or martial art intent, in the movement. With practice, one will achieve the
state where the arm and the internal core move as “One” and, that the internal
energy and qi flow with the “yi” of the movements to the palm and the fingertips.
By examining my own movements I found that, in this state, my
arm constantly exerts a slight stretch or pull on the shoulder. This stretch
firmly engages the arm to the shoulder. Since the elbow is always lower than
the shoulder, there is a downward stretching force on the shoulder causing the
shoulder to sink which in turn connects it to the core enabling the arm and the
core to move as “One”. The stretching force involved here is quite subtle and
small, just sufficient to achieve the engagement. Those of you who have already
achieved such engagement in your practice probably do not even know it. You can
sense the difference if you purposely left out the stretch.
Example 1: Hand at the face position such as “walking
forward brush knee” (see Figure 1.)
In Lesson 3 and 4 of Vol. II, I describe the desirable
position of the elbow and arm in relation to the body. When you achieve that
position, you are exerting a downward as well as an outward stretch of the
shoulder. Similar situation in the “parting of wild horse mane”, outstretching
of the downward-pointing elbow will sink the shoulder and connect to the core.
Now, the arm, the shoulder and the core are all firmly connected into “One”.
Example 2: The punch movements with arm at the side of the
body, see Figure 2, and the arm at forwarding position, see Figure 3.
If you maintain a constant downward stretch of your shoulder
through the elbow, in other words, when the arm is bent, just lower the elbow
to engage the shoulder and the core. The arm and the core will be engaged
whether the arm is moving forward or pulling back.
Example 3: When the arm is at a downward position, such as
the arm in “brush knee”, (see figure 4,) or the folding move after the “single
whip”, (see Figure 5,) or the downward rotation of the arm in the “cloud hand”,
(see
Figure 6.)
In all these cases, you just lightly stretch the shoulder
using the arm, which will naturally sink the shoulder and engage the core. The
arm itself does not have to be straight in order to exert the stretching force.
The above examples show how to engage the arm, the shoulder,
and the core to move as a unit, following the “yi”, or intent. Since, in the
entire 108 forms, the elbow is always lower than the shoulder, the engagement
can be maintained throughout the form. Therefore, the first major goal of
practicing tai chi form is to achieve the level that every move is an internal
move and that in every move, the arm and core are engaged.
Among arm, shoulder, and core, it is often difficult to tell
which part is leading or following. It is best to always keep the shoulder
passive as a follower. But the arm, the elbow, or the finger, filled with “yi”,
may sometimes give the sensation of leading the movement. The synergistic
effects between core movement and engagement of arm and core give unexpected
results. When I try the engagement exercise on students new to my class, it
seems to help them to learn how to make the core move.
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