Internal Movement

 A primer on internal movement for internal rigor mortis!

The Tai Chi Classics say:

“A feather cannot be placed, 

a fly cannot alight 

on any part of the body.”

Some reasoning why we move slowly in Classical Tai Chi forms a rule that works for all varieties of sensory perception, including sensations of muscular effort. So, imagine you are holding a one pound weight in your hand while blindfolded. If a fly or a feather landed on the weight you would not know the difference, but if a little bird landed you would know. Now imagine holding a fifty pound weight.  You wouldn't be able to feel the little bird landing. It would have to be an eagle. The point is that when you increase the weight from one pound to fifty pounds, you become about fifty times less sensitive to changes in the amount of muscular force you are using to lift the weight.

Why do we care? Because if you want to make your Tai Chi movement more efficient, you have to be aware of when you are working too hard. If you slow down and thereby increase your ability to sense differences in muscular effort level, you increase ability to sense and correct any extra movement and unnecessary effort. You will be much better able to sense and inhibit this inefficient moves by moving very slowly and easily. By contrast, if you move fast and hard, you will never be able to sense and correct the problem.

There is a variety of ways to do simple movements in life, different angles for the joints to assume and literally different muscle activation patterns to execute them. As you age, you will likely use less and less of these movement possibilities until you are stuck in a narrow range of options. For example, there may be a chance you have one or two thoracic vertebrae that almost never turn to the right. You had an operation and just stopped moving that way one might say “internal rigor mortis” has set in. 

You are wondering about this, good!  The answer is yes!  Classical Tai Chi can put you back in touch with with an increase of movement options, so you can start “living in the springtime of life”.