Classical Tai Chi is not dance

A student once wrote the following: "I just completed my first lesson -- the walk. Very tricky but also very fun. This is going to be exactly what I have looked for so long. I have always loved to dance but never enjoyed performing for people. This dance of Taiji will be that dance I have been needing for so many years!" 

Master Stephen Hwa wrote in response: "I am glad you have made a good start. It is important that you feel fun and challenged while you doing it. Your comments about Tai Chi as a kind of dancing is what prompted me to write about the topic "Yi" – the martial art intent. I remember my teacher became unhappy when someone referred to Tai Chi as an exercise. Again, the “intent” is lost when it was called as an exercise."

I can't remember a time when I ever thought of calling Tai Chi "exercise" and/or "dance"...although I hear of or read of people referring to it as such.  This puts Tai Chi as no better than pedalling away on an exercise bicycle while watching television. Since dance also qualifies as exercise, then Tai Chi in many minds also falls into the same "exercise/dance" genre as "Sweatin to the Oldies". 

I will always correct my students as well when I hear them refer to it as "dance" or "exercise".  Although it is not surprising that people do this for I once had a student argue with me that Tai Chi originated in San Francisco and not in China.  Given that it did originate in China and given that Grandmaster Wu Chien Chuan, as an "originator" of the Wu Style of Tai Chi was an officer in the Imperial Palace Guard...can we come to the understanding that it is not "dance" nor "exercise"?

"Again, the “intent” is lost when it was called as an exercise."  (One must find out what "intent" means in Tai Chi)

In fact, in his "Six Essential Elements of Practicing Tai Chi", Grandmaster Wu stated that the "first thing to be avoided as taboo in Tai Chi is to apply "Li" (muscle and awkward power).   All the movements should be poured forth with the "Yi".  He continues by saying: "In moving the hands up, they are not automatically moved up without consciousness.  It is the Yi which moves them up.  While the Yi is not stopping, the movement will not stop.  At the moment the Yi stops, the movement instantly stops."  "...beginners...should avoid the vain attempt of applying li, then they can gradually get away from prosaic and mechanical practice..."

So far "exercise" without intent is mechanical, prosaic (it is indeed commonplace), it uses "Li" , which is no more than muscles/muscular force and for the most part is certainly awkward, lacking in skill and most definitely clumsy. To show how widespread the misconceptions about Tai Chi are, I recall students saying "I bet doing more situps will help", "I have some belly dancing videos that I am going to look at now", "I can bench press 250 pounds, now how can that not help", "The Tai Chi looks like Ballet", "I do Karate, so all I have to do is my Karate in slow motion and I will be doing Tai Chi".

Addressing just Karate  and leaving belly dancing and ballet for now I know from extended personal experience that "Karate" does solo forms that are called Kata...I did some Shorin Ryu Karate.  In Tae Kwon Do, we called it "poomsae".  I did these forms with lots of power, "snappiness", lots of "kiai" (sounds like yelling) and as much speed/acceleration as possible...moving like there was an opponent  Someone watching could say, "yep, he is fighting an imaginary opponent, that is obvious".  It was challenging doing the Tae Kwon Do because I was also doing Wu Style Tai Chi at the same time in Toronto.  Poomsae had very tense arms/forearms/fists with stacatto movements but my Tai Chi had/has relaxed arms with continuous movement.  Yes, I felt the movements in Tae Kwon Do were done from muscles in shoulders, upper chest, arms, etc. In the case of Classical Tai Chi as Master Hwa says:  "The Yi in Tai Chi is therefore purely mental".

"Again, the “intent” is lost when it was called as an exercise."  (One must find out what "intent" means in Tai Chi)

I certainly have taught weightlifters, ballet dancers, karate practitioners, etc., and for some they seemed to grasp what "Yi" is.  For most I saw that it was not easy to get and "intentions" to do something else with the movement usually began to show...early on.  The dancers would not keep their heel down on the back foot and would rise up on the toe, with "fluorish" type movements in their hands.  The weight lifters were incredibly stiff and inflexible around the upper chest and shoulders, the internal discipline of the core would elude them.  Karate people seemed to be stuck on a permanent type of stacatto movement, making movements continuously seemed to elude them.  I recall conversations with one long time Karate practitioner who said in so many words that he could not understand why anyone called Tai Chi a martial art.  The implication being that only Karate (or at least "his" Karate) could be a martial art?

For the most part, I think that all of those folks engage in superfluous/extraneous movement of the extremeties. If there is superfluous/extraneous movement, there can be little if any "Yi" or intent in movement.  At this point I must defer to what Master Hwa has written so well about:  "Extraneous motions, or nerve signals, along the path of Qi, such as shoulder, elbow, and arms, have the same effect of disrupting the flow of Qi between the body and the fingers. People who use their hands intensively, such as dancers, typists, and piano players could have such problems. It is important for them to keep localized nerve activity dormant and let the Qi from the body take over. This is a good reason to learn the square form from which the practitioner will get used to movements with steady arms and hands without localized impulses."

"Again, the “intent” is lost when it was called as an exercise."  (One must find out what "intent" means in Tai Chi)

  

This brings us the most obvious question which is "what does Yi look like?" if it can't be found in these examples. Again, I defer to Master Hwa's statement: 

Tai Chi Form should be practiced with “Yi” (martial art intention). “Yi” is not something complex and elaborate. It is single minded and somewhat intuitive with the desire to deliver the internal power externally through hands, arm and foot, what ever the movement is. If the hand is moving forward, then the Yi goes to the palm and fingers; if the hand is moving laterally in a blocking movement, then the Yi goes to the leading edge on the side of the hand; etc. Once the practitioner masters the “Yi”, it is no long a conscious effort any more. It becomes subconscious and comes naturally whenever the practitioner makes a move. At this stage, when you play the Form, you have both the internal energy and Qi (nerve signal - a simple-minded definition) circulating in the torso of your body. With the “Yi” as a catalyst, the Qi is able to flow to your hands and fingers while the internal energy continue to circulate in your torso until you need it for an application. Then the internal energy will follow the Qi to the arms, hands, and fingers for delivery.

"Six Harmonies" start with the core in Classical Tai Chi

The Youtube Video link. On behalf of Edward Hunter regarding his comment on Youtube:

"In Wu Tai Chi the movement starts with the hand. Elbow 

follows hand. Shoulder follows elbow. Hip follows shoulder. 

Foot follows hip. That is the way of natural movement. Chen 

is wrong. Yang is wrong. Wu Tai Chi teached with hands 

following the feet is also wrong."

Sifu JR said, Hi E.H. You hit a bell with a rather large stone, so my response is appropriately significant, thank you:

Thank you for the comment. I see that you are a student/teacher in a "branch" of the Wu Tai Chi style; I am as well. I was also a student in another "branch" for many years. That branch "turned the hip" as opposed to "turning the waist"; they "started the movement with the hand" as opposed to "mobilizing the extremities from the waist." One "branch" within the Wu Style raises their arms very high above their heads; Classical Wu Tai Chi does not do this. I will not argue the point from the perspective that one is right while the other is wrong; I would have my work cut out for me in doing so.

However, you imply that if something is natural, e.g., "natural movement," then it is somehow good, thus suggesting that what is unnatural, e.g., "unnatural movement," is terrible. This characterization of "natural" presents many problems. I am sure that even if we agree some things are natural and some are not, what follows from this? Nothing. In other words, I do not see facts presented to support that what is "natural" movement is good (right) and what is, by implication, "unnatural" is bad (wrong).

Do you state that "movement starting with the hand" is valid to the extent that all other schools are wrong? You say some schools, even within the same style (Wu in this case), will start the "six harmonies" ( 1)hand follows 2) foot, 3) elbow follows 4) knee, 5) shoulder follows 6) hip by using the hand first. In this case, I see you are from the "Wu" school. I also see that you do not mention the use of the core, the "hands" connection to the core, the feet, the elbows, etc.

Stating about the "six harmonies" being "wrong" as presented herein Classical Wu Style is not sound. Simply stating the premise that "movement" is "wrong" because it is not "natural" does not make or present facts to make it "wrong."

There are, however, certain observable things that one can take note of: Here, in Classical Wu Tai Chi, the movement does not start with the hand; it begins with the waist. In using the hand to begin first, one uses an extremity of the body. Whether in Classical Tai Chi or any Tai Chi, it is initially reducing or draining off some of the power of the movement, as the action is not connected to the core.

Tennis players, baseball players, golfers, etc., use an external action first with the arms/hands, then it is connected to the core, presumably for power, once the arc of the swing reaches the proximity of the core. However, using the hands/arms first does not mobilize the core of the body before the fact effectively, for it is the core itself that should be used to mobilize the hands, arms, and legs. After all, we are talking about Tai Chi for health and martial purposes and not baseball.

Hand and arm movements in and of themselves are abstract; when not connected to the core of the body, they lack strength and cannot move in a relaxed manner. Excessive hand and arm movements in Tai Chi make hand and arm movements merely extraneous.

By using the hand first and thus allowing the arms to move independently of the core, you compromise the movement and diffuse the neuromuscular signals for the body's core even to respond.

Using the hand first, you place the junction for the delineation of yin and yang (what is moving/ what is not moving) somewhere in the area of the elbows or shoulder.

Using the hand first creates a disconnect right where the shoulder meets the core.

Using the hand first you are short-circuiting and disrupting the flow of "qi," placing the disruption somewhere in the hand/elbow/shoulder…there is no circuit completion of qi flow through the core to the arm…It only begins in the core when the hand leads the arm, which engages and stretches the shoulder, which is connected to the core. In other words, it stops and then begins at the shoulder. Qi is also going where yi goes. After a move from the core, however, the qi should flow to the arms and hands, the majority of internal energy should continue to circulate in the torso until needed.

Using the hands first in Tai Chi almost sounds like the same way typists, and piano players use their hands. As we said, this disrupts the flow of qi between the body and fingers. Using the core first ensures that the localized nerve activity of the hands/arms remains dormant and lets the qi from the body take over. This is a good reason to learn the square form of Tai Chi so that a practitioner can get used to movements with steady arms and hands without localized nerve impulses.

Wu Chien Chuan himself told Yeung Wabu: "Every movement in Tai Chi Form has to have two complementary parts of the body, a moving (yang) part and a stationary part (yin). When the Yin-Yang junction is located in the torso of the body, it is an internal move. When it is outside the torso, it is an external move. This is the key to a methodology that enables Tai Chi practitioners to mobilize the body's core for Tai Chi movements to generate internal energy and internal energy circulation. I have done Tai Chi from both sides of the coin, hand first, waist first, and the latter is the most powerful. Try doing this yourself using the waist first and keeping the hand still, and you will see the difference in generation of power.s

The Correct Body Structure of Classical Tai Chi

I recall my early days of study, particularly those in which I had teachers who were long on enthusiasm and short on experience...some with only 1 year more than me.  In retrospect I recall them telling me to "sitback, sitback, sitback..." with no accompanying instructions on HOW to sitback correctly or WHY I was doing it wrong.  Obviously, I was doing it incorrectly, I thought, otherwise why would they keep repeating "sitback, sitback, sitback..." in a stacatto fashion?  Master Stephen Hwa addresses "sitback position", HOW, WHY, WHEN,  "forward position" and more in a 12 minute segment taken from a 2011 workshop.  The segment is more appropriately named "The correct body structure of Classical Tai Chi". You can go to the Youtube video of the segment by clicking on this link:

THE CORRECT BODY STRUCTURE OF CLASSICAL TAI CHI

Master Stephen Hwa: 

I went to Shanghai and a relative of mine told me his Uncle is a big guy in Yang Style Tai Chi in Shanghai.  He is also a Catholic Bishop  there and so they use the church to practice Yang Style Tai Chi. They are like this.  And then when they are older, in their “60’s”, the whole group, everyone has bone spurs in their lower back. Because the compression, the stress on the lower back caused bone spurs. You know this stress sometimes causes bone spurs, right? That unusual stress on the joints causes bone spurs. Every one of them has bone spurs in the lower back.

Student:  Master Hwa, you talk about the sensations occurring in the back, do you talk about the sensations occurring in the front as well?

Master Hwa: Some, but mostly in the back. Also, remember when he spoke?  He just raised an excellent point.  Remember, we said, going forward, all the weight has to be on the front foot? Now, the whole back is not entirely relaxed because there is a stretch in the lower back, down to the heel, try to maintain the touch of the heel on the ground.  Now, do you feel that stretch? Now you don’t have weight on it, but you should feel that stretch. You work to maintain the heel touch the ground. So the leg is kind of straight, not with bent knee.  Not with bent knee.  So you want to maintain some force on the leg to maintain the stretch. Not bending the knee.

Student: Do you sense that stretch continually when you are transferring weight back?

Master Hwa: Yes, when you are pulling back, there is more in the front now. When you are pulling back, and again using your abdomen.  Pulling your body back like this, again pulling with your back foot. There is more sensation comes more in the front. The sensation comes more in the front.  This sitting position actually is a very awkward position. But again, when we do push hands, when we do the push hands, you will realize this is such a very important position. One of the most important positions, but it is a very awkward position. A lot of people do not know how to do that correctly, a so called sitting motion.

Okay, any other questions on this segment?

Student: Can I ask you a question about sitting back?  When you are sitting back are you tucking the buttocks and sitting at the same time?

Master Hwa: Yes, tucking and sitting back at the same time.  When you are sitting back, it depends how you do it.  You can sit deeper and deeper, the deeper you can sit the better.  With the sitting back, you still should be able to turn your body.  Because that is the purpose of your sitting back.  You sit back, you turn and the guy falls.

Student: Master Hwa, when you are sitting back are you shortening the length of the abdomen?

Master Hwa: Not too much.  If your shoulder is too much (hunched over), your turning is limited, you cannot turn very well. You still need that length of body, so you can turn.  When I sit back, it is not just sitting back, I have to turn, to redirect. If you are too (hunched over) it is harder to turn. If you keep your body stretched (lengthened) then you can turn better.

Student: It is a pelvic tilt?

Master Hwa: Yes, the crease is not abdominal, it is creased in the pelvis.

Student: The farther you are down, the more your back stretches up?

Master Hwa: Yes, right, you find your back is kind of pulled up.  Certainly, if your step is big, your sitback is naturally quite low, OK? Now, we don’t teach the large frame.  The large frame, the step is big and it does teach you how to sit low. Now if you don’t sit low correctly, you are not sitting, your body weight is more toward the front. When you sit back correctly, the thighs have to be even (parallel).  Now my body is facing forward, if I am not sitting back, my body is facing to an angle.  On such an angle, I have a strong side and a weak side.  So when I sit with thighs parallel, my teacher checked it.  The reason he says this is “you are facing the opponent squarely and not crooked”.  If you face an angle, then you face opponent at an angle, so he is using the “thigh” guage.  Most other martial arts are facing the opponent really at an angle with the body.  We are facing the opponent squarely and you will be able to redirect the opponent to either direction. If I face him at an angle, I can redirect to one side only but cannot redirect to the other very well. So you are giving a signal to an opponent that you have a strong side. So if you do push hands with “outside” practitioners.  So how can you handle him to take advantage of his weak side.  Then not falling into his trap of succumbing to being pulled by his strong side.

Student:  When I sit back like this should my thigh feel tight?

Master Hwa:  Yes, really tight

Student: When I sit back this leg muscle is very tight. I have a weak right knee so I notice this.

Master Hwa:  Then you need to take a smaller step. If one has knee problems you always keep your step small.

Student: Could you address the importance of tucking the chin?

Master Hwa: Right, when your chin is not tucked, and people push you hard enough, you head may snap back.  If your head snaps back like this you are very weak. We constantly stretch our head up using the neck muscle to support the head rather than using the cervical vertebrae part of the spine to support the weight of the head.  In doing so, you also develop the neck muscle.  The neck muscle is important in preventing whiplash.  When you sit back you have to feel the tuck of the chin, the stretch of neck muscle and that is why you feel the back is pulled up.

Pulling the body backward or forward, not pushing it with the leg.

Excerpt from "Uncovering the Treasure" by Stephen C.P. Hwa, Ph.D. Amazon.com

Excerpt from Classical Wu Tai Chi Youtube video "Pulling the body forward or backward vs. Pushing by the leg"

"Uncovering the Treasure", Pg. 47:

"Normally during walking, one uses the back foot to push when walking forward and the front foot to push when walking backward.  The pushing motion by the leg muscle is entirely external and it also engages both feet stuck to the ground until the body completes its move.  In other words it is a double weighted move.  In the case of pulling forward instead of pushing forward, the back foot has no responsibility for pushing.  It is free to be lifted and moved thereby improving the mobility of the person.  The same is true for the backward walk.  This is one of the advantages from a martial arts application viewpoint.  Certainly during applications, there are situations favoring "push" or situations favoring "pull". 

"For example, when an opponent is coming at you, you want to adhere to him and sit back to neutralize the incoming force.  you certainly do not want to add to his incoming force by pushing your body back with the front foot.  Instead, you want to use the back foot and core to control the pull back and at the same time plant the front foot's heel on the ground to absorb some of the incoming force by pulling on the body.  "Push" is a natural move and it is further developed in the Large Frame Form.  On the other hand, "pull" with the core is a learned technique for almost everyone I know and is only developed in the Compact Frame Form."

"Pulling vs. Pushing" Youtube February 21, 2013:

Master Stephen Hwa, "If I am "carrying the tiger" , I don't want this.  You see that is a huge amount of energy to lift him, right? Turn him, then lift. So, with alot of these movements if you are with an opponent, you do not want to give him a signal. He may not even know you are going forward or going backward. This is because you are very quiet, there is no obvious signal. That's a part of the reason, no extraneous movement, that is a part of the reason.

Student, "I recall you either saying or writing something.  The strongest direction is upward when talking about sprinters?  Master Hwa, "Right".  Student, "Anyway, it seems that tucking in the rear end, keeps the body down". Master Hwa, "Right, and also the timing of your knee bends (pointing to a student) that is something you mentioned".

Student, "Well also this change of weight from one leg to the other is sort of smooth.  I mean this leg does not move until this other leg brings me forward and its just the shifting of weight.  Student, " I have the same experience, it becomes less a matter of feeling any strain, and more a matter of a very relaxed feeling, no extraneous tension".

Master Hwa, "Yes, other people told me that too.  In other styles of Tai Chi they keep pushing and that leg gets very tired"  Students, "Not with this style"

Master Hwa, "Again, there's lots of subtle reasons". "When I'm going forward like this, I'm pulling with the front foot and pulling with the core." "Before you get to the end point, my other leg is really free". "If you are pushing, your leg still has some responsibility". "Now if you come to pushhands, the concept of movement, if somebody pulls you, that leg with no responsibility allows me to very quickly move". The faster you can take that step, the counterattack is much more effective. Now if you are pushing, I cannot move quickly, I am still pushing with the leg. You are one fraction of a second late. Once you step forward, he will be in trouble. We are finding a fraction of a second faster with these movements and you only need that fraction faster.  So release this leg from the responsibility of pushing, to move quickly. 

Student, "I always used to wonder when doing freestyle push hands, when I was trying to retreat and someone was following me, they just lightly touch my front foot and I fell on the ground.  I found after comparing this and that, I was pushing backward.  They did not have to do much.  

Master Hwa, "You had that momentum going backward from pushing"

A Golden Rule with many facets..."do not hurt yourself"

Click here:  "Hand follows the foot..."

The Youtube Video along with a transcript under the video (the small square icon looks like stacked paper), the  photo above,  and the following is excerpted from Master Stephen Hwa's comments in a 2011 workshop.  The subject had to do with internal discipline but also delves deeply into body structure and the benefits of practicing.  You will have to link from here to the Youtube video on the subject and can either follow along with what is written here or from the "Description" at the Youtube video itself.  

One of the things that occurred to me as I was editing the video for publication was a new perspective on something I had read in "Uncovering the Treasure".  A golden rule that Master Young gave to Master Hwa was that the knee does not extend over the toe.  It occurred to me that the knee can (incorrectly and harmfully) extend over the toe in more than just the forward direction, it can extend over from a "torque" that Master Hwa speaks of in the video and here.  In other words, it can extend over the side of the toes as well as the front, can it not?  All of that resulting from a thoughtless rotational action on what should really be a simple understandable concept for a healthy stable knee joint.

Sifu James Roach

Workshop 2011, Buffalo State College:

"If you stick to this Classical Tai Chi program there will be a big improvement to the back. This is an important component about the back.  The back will respond to stretching  if you give consistent opportunity to stretch and the lower back will improve.  If you tuck your chin in correctly, you will also stretch your cervical spine as well. So the parts of this stretch are equally important. This may very well work to correct cervical spine problems or such things as a “knot” in the back of the neck.

So as relating to body posture, that is one of the central themes.  In this regard you will be able to have the energy transfer from the neck down to the heel. The energy can flow this circuit without outflowing to the middle of the body, like the lower spine for example.  This will transmit all the force to the ground in one uninterrupted  flow,  it will not be transmitted to just the lower back where it can cause problems.

The other important body posture is referred to in Tai Chi  as “Hand follows the foot, elbow follows the knee and shoulder follows the hip”. In other words we do not turn by only using  half of the upper body and neglecting to turn the lower.  The turning power has to come from the waist and the entire muscles of the back.  There is a vast majority of Tai Chi schools that do not follow this rule.

There is a question which has been raised in the past about this rule.  Where do we apply this rule?  Because we also have turning moves as well.  This is relatively easy to see in the form but when you are doing applications with other people, or as in “free form”, when is the rule applied?

I searched the entire form and found there is consistency and explanation actually. It is easy to explain and there are many different levels of explanation for this:  Any movement that you where you are going to cause a torque (a twisting force that tends to cause rotation) (the danger of which comes from “shear force” a stress which is applied parallel or tangential to a face of something  as in this case a knee or ankle) in the knee or ankle, then you use the rule.   In other words, any time you have the potential for a twisting force that tends to cause rotation, key words twisting force which causes rotation to a knee or ankle. 

This is surprisingly such a simple concept but people are not following it. One of the best examples of this I can use is a golf swing.  Do you see the torque in my knee and ankle?  This why golfers have ankle problems, lots of people have knee problems.  I am not a golfer so I cannot say but certainly if you “hand follow…” the foot out you will not have that problem.  Whether you can do that as a golfer or not, I do not know.   However, if you look at our form and in every case, every  instance, it is always following the rule to the letter.  Now if you examine the “half body” turning movement, there is no torque down at the knees or ankles.  So this type of turn is allowed because you see I do not have to turn my foot with it.

Now this is certainly for health viewpoint.  For martial art viewpoint, it is this way and you have much more power.  More power than the leg lagging behind, in which you are fighting yourself.  The torque force pulls your body backward while you are attempting to turn forward.  

On another level, remember at one time we came back to considerable argument regarding “turning at the waist vs. turning at the hip”.  People have said that “turning at the hip has more power than turning at the waist”.   Well, you see, again that turning at the hip is torqueing your knee and ankle.  WELL, YOU MAY SAY YOU ARE GETTING YOUR OPPONENT ON THE GROUND BUT EVENTUALLY YOU WILL HURT YOURSELF, YOU ARE ALREADY HURTING YOURSELF.

After all, when you learn martial arts, the first principle is that you do not want to hurt yourself.   Otherwise, your opponent can wait just a few years for the damage to set in (laughter).  Somehow not hurting yourself and delivering the power really coincide with each other.   If you don’t hurt yourself, you can deliver more power.   Now there are people, who argued with someone here in the past, now they are very strict…STUDENTS HAVE GOT TO TURN THEIR HIP.

If you are a young person, you can get away with all kinds of movements for awhile.   You see this in golfers when they are young but when they get older they are really hurting themselves.  Sooner or later this will take its toll."

Master Stephen Hwa

The problem with overdoing it in Tai Chi

For beginning and advanced students, the task is to place and keep attention on the body's core.  I repeat the word several times to indicate the mental discipline necessary to do the job.  Attention, attention, attention, etc. Whether newbies or oldies, a student will still face the same task. Nevertheless, I have seen many give up, likely because of frustration with the process.  It is very daunting to keep attention on the body, and it is as though attention itself has a mind of its own, not to be pinned to any one thing. This "attention," however, is not of the "go for the burn" mind on cruise control variety.

Here is some of what Master Stephen Hwa has to say:  "For the beginner, the difficulty lies in the mental discipline in which all attention has to be concentrated on the core region."

This is primarily the case from my experience and what I hear and see from my students.  There are a few other problems I would like to mention:

A student states they are experiencing soreness in the abdominal area from practicing.  From what I can gather, this is from doing the silk reeling exercises.  I advise you not to go after repetitions as it is a contest to see how many you can do. The object is to simply feel the stretch and energy flow, key words, "simply feel", not to engage in trying to strengthen the core like a sit up or crunch.  The difference in the latter is one of building muscle for muscle sake, in the former it is to tune the nervous system so that it can move the extremeties from the core.

What happens when you do too many repetitions, an overload of silk reeling, for instance, is that you get a sore abdomen and a sore back.  Since muscles do not exist in a vacuum and operate under the laws of science, you can overload your nervous system. This is called spiking the nervous system. We get high spikes and then drop back to lows. We are getting a sharp rise and an equally sharp decline of the nerve signals. It is a logical question, then, as to what the setpoint might be with such continuous highs and lows. Is the setpoint geared for continuous relaxation, or is it geared for continuing stress?  Additionally,  as we said,  in classical tai chi, we look to maintain attention to the core.  If we lose our attention, whether by inattention or stress to the nervous system, completing the Tai Chi form brings us to attention once again.  Ideally, it is as though it is wired into the subconscious to facilitate this process.

When we practice Classical Tai Chi, we "tune-up" the nervous system.  The highs and the low signals are smoothed out so that the signals remain even and evenly flowing.  After all, the movements are even and evenly flowing, very rhythmical. The mind begins to relax more and more during form practice or silk reeling since the subconscious mind takes over the task of remembering what to do.  So, ease back on the number of repetitions and instead learn to enjoy the sensations of stretch, warmth, and tingling at the areas that move during silk reeling. This is developing a feel for what we are doing, but we are also engaging the nervous system, just as we would engage any muscles. Over the years of doing Tai Chi, my nervous system has responded to the practice best.  My muscles and metabolism have reacted, but the nervous system has learned and strengthened the most readily.

As I stated before, Classical Tai Chi is not a go for the "burn" as fast as you can system.  As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite, for the nervous system thrives when training is done at a low level of intensity.  Look at what happens with the Square Form, for instance, with its deliberate pauses between movements. This contrasts with our almost built-in desire for power and more power by sweating, exerting, and straining. The nervous system also thrives on variety and not overload.  Since we offer a variety of silk reeling exercises, the curriculum is ideal for providing such variety. In other words, there is plenty for you to use to tune up, say, doing 20 repetitions of 5 different silk reelings instead of 100.  Advanced students can learn to use the individual postures of the form as silk reeling, thus increasing the variety once again.  In "Uncovering the Treasure" by Stephen Hwa, Amazon, you can read more about tuning up the nervous system.  Enjoy your "tune-up".

4 Oz. deflects 1000 Lbs. is also a "Ratio"...

“The true health benefits and the foundation for martial arts application of Tai Chi can only be achieved when the practitioner incorporates “Internal Discipline”…using internal movement/internal power to direct and empower external movements into Tai Chi” .    The difficulty with doing this is that there is so many things that can go wrong in the process of sensing where the movements are originating from.  “For the beginner, the difficulty lies in the mental discipline in which all attention has to be concentrated on the core of the body”.  (In the debate about use of hips vs. waist), If the beginner thinks even one little bit about the hip  for instance, then a turning move, etc. will partially be initiated from the hip.

In Classical Tai Chi we have to become not only aware of the sensory signals of our body but also to focus and catalogue them.  As I am falling asleep at night I can often both feel and hear my heartbeat, I feel when my posture has excess muscular tension. I can,  much like the weightlifters flex certain muscles which I feel (without using weights).  Finally and most appropriate to Classical Tai Chi I can not only feel but also acutely control the movements of my body core.  The problem for beginners in Classical Tai Chi is that all of these tactile “feelings” must focus on relatively miniscule nerve signals of sensation.  Those small nerve signals are overwhelmed by the background “noise” of the other body sensations.  This is why, for example,  when I was learning to shoot the M14 rifle in the Marines I learned instinctively to hold my breath and “squeeezzze” the trigger.  It actually is a delicate and complex task to fire a rifle accurately (my breathing with its innate sounds and tactile sensations in the body can interfere with the coordination of firing).  The same goes “in spades”,  for the multi-faceted and complex movements of Classical Tai Chi.

So we want to cut down on the background signal  “noise”  and in the case of Classical Tai Chi this means several things not the least of which is reducing  the amount of extraneous or “external” movement from the body.  Specifically,  I mean the extraneous movement from the limbs.  Our nervous system (my teacher says a “well tuned nervous system is prized in China”)  is hard wired to take things like tactile stimulation in terms of its ratio to other senses, it does not do this in absolutes. 

There is even a “law” governing this that was coined by E.H. Weber in 1834 that essentially states our “ratio” of signal to noise is constant however. Speaking of “signal” to “noise”: Looking at the  videos attached to some of the other blogs, we see Master Hwa speaking in what is quite a noisy environment.  He had to speak up to be heard over the ambient room noise, the sounds of the students, etc.  So it is not a simple matter of my increasing the volume on the video when before I render it, for to do that would also increase the room noise.  If we were in a really quiet environment he would only have had to whisper. I’m not sure if the law always holds true but as a rule of thumb it does seem to work.

In Classical Tai Chi we do some work with Tui Shou or “push hands”.  If you close your eyes as we push and I press down with one pound of force on one of your hands, then I added another pound of force you would notice the difference immediately.  That extra force sent a “signal”  that equaled the intensity of the original force.  If I took a feather and put it on the “one pound hand” you would not notice the extra weight. A feather has a sensory input that is too miniscule to be “heard” or in Tai Chi lexicon “ting jin” over the initial one pound weight.   If you are pushing me with 100 pounds of force, then I only need a figurative“feather”  or as the Classics say “4 oz.” properly applied (internal energy) at the right angle, with good timing…to send you flying. Now looking at the "after" image with Master Hwa and a student here you can see the results of 4 oz. properly applied:

Why is this a “ratio”?  In Tai Chi there is a saying that “a feather cannot be added; nor can a fly land without setting the practitioner in motion”. Well, if a fly lands   on your “push hand” instead of my one pound of force,  then I add a feather (we will all need good luck with getting the fly to stand still long enough) you will notice the difference in weight right away. 

Our perception of any sensation uses the same ratio principle, particularly when we focus on it.  The “signals” that a beginner senses from their movement of the core are much too small of a “ratio” to make it through the many external distractions of their environment, their extraneous movement of their bodies, the many extraneous thoughts of the mind,  etc.  A student of Master Hwa’s had achieved some internal movement but complained about cold fingers.  Watching her form he noticed that she had “flourishes” type movements, the extra movements were unnecessary.  These are “extraneous movements’ or nerve signals along the path of qi.  Other examples are extraneous shoulder, arm, elbow, finger, etc. types.  These disrupt the flow of qi (nerve signal) between body and fingers, body and feet, etc.

As Master Hwa says: “It is important to keep localized nerve activity dormant and let the qi from the body take over…all good reasoning why one should also learn “Square Form”  so practitioners can get used to movements with steady arms and hands and thus no localized nerve impulses. “

Thus,  here for instance,  are only  a couple examples of why we do not want to add in things like extra “breathing techniques” (breathing qigongs) a “top down discipline” to the “bottom up” discipline of Tai Chi; why we do not want to do Tai Chi to music, adding weights to the hands, why we want to stand still while our teacher is explaining  how to do something in Classical Tai Chi (our time will come to do it with them), why we want to stand still while our teacher is demonstrating how to do something for that matter (our time will come to do it with them), why we don’t want to “push” or “turn” our opponent with a lot of force if we are trying to keep focused on their movement.

As you can see from the picture above, Master Hwa has allowed the practitioner to generate lots of momentum in a straight ahead direction, (he did not resist or push back with lots of force when the opponent attacked) then when he was stretched out, Master Hwa used a “feather” to attack from the angle.  The opponent was generating so much “noise”, he could not hear any other “signals”, namely the “feather” of 4 oz. that Master Hwa used from the side angle.  As a teacher I experience this "signal to noise" paradigm from students who just start to learn both the form and push hands.  Even more experienced push hands players have to be reminded of this, please take this to heart.   

In the Tao of Martial Applications video of Master Hwa and a student pushing hands, he speaks of the “cooperative”  as well as “competitive” push hands. In either case one has to (along with other requirements)  use fluidity of movement, sensitivity to the opponents movements, stick to the opponent, follow rather than resist the opponents force and finally use four oz. to deflect a thousand pounds of incoming force.  If Master Hwa is pushing back with a thousand pounds on what “ratio” will he have to rely?  “Ratio”…what ratio?

"When you seek it you cannot find it..."

Why is it that when new students seek to learn Tai Chi, they cannot (find) get it?

Please have a cup of tea, take a seat, drink all of your tea…then I will tell you at least one big reason by way of a “Zen Koan” or in Chinese it is “Chan Gong’an”…a very sophisticated riddle or saying.

In other words, the teacher is not looking for a specific answer, the teacher is looking for evidence that the student has grasped the state of mind expressed by the “Gong’an” itself.

The author Joe Hyams was a  syndicated columnist who also studied martial arts.  Probably his most famous teacher was the martial artist Bruce Lee.  A little known tidbit about Bruce Lee is that he is reputed to have studied the Wu Style of Tai Chi early on. Here is an excerpt from Hyam's  book "Zen in the Martial Arts".

“Do you realize you will have to unlearn all you have learned and start over again?” he asked. “No,” I said. Bruce Lee smiled and placed his hand lightly on my shoulder. “Let me tell you a story my sifu told me,” he said. “It is about the Japanese Zen master who received a  university professor who came to inquire about Zen. “It was obvious to the master from the start of the conversation that the professor was not so much interested in learning about Zen as he was in impressing the master with his own opinions and knowledge. 

The master listened patiently and finally suggested they have tea. The master poured his visitor’s cup full and then kept on pouring. “The professor watched the cup overflowing until he could no longer restrain himself. The cup is overfull, no more will go in.’ “‘ Like this cup,’ the master said, ‘you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’” Bruce studied my face. “You understand the point?”

“Yes,” I said. “You want me to empty my mind of past knowledge and old habits so that I will be open to new learning.”

Joe Hyams, "Zen in the Martial Arts", p. 9

Here is the "Gong'an" in entirety:  "Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Mr. Hyams gave the mere “answer” to the “Gong’an” but where is the evidence that he “emptied his mind of past knowledge and old habits so that he would be open to new learning that his teacher had for him?  How can Hyams provide the evidence and not merely provide lip service?

Here is “evidence” that Grandmaster Young Wabu (teacher of Stephen Hwa who is teacher of James Roach)  “emptied his mind of past knowledge and old habits so that he would be open to new learning that his teacher had for him.  This is a small font, so the rest of this can be seen at Master Stephen Hwa’s website in the "Biography of Grand Master Young Wabu"

“In 1937, with the outbreak of war with Japan, the legendary Tai Chi Master Wu Chien Chuan left Shanghai, seeking the safety of Hong Kong. Young was then in charge of the martial art section of the South China Athletic Association and organizing a martial art exhibit. Hearing about Wu’s arrival, Young invited Wu to participate in the exhibit. The two men immediately found much in common. Young tested his martial art skills with Wu and found that he was completely dominated by Wu and unable to maintain his balance, no matter which kind of external martial art he used. At that point, Young gave up all he had learned before and became Wu’s student. He started from the very beginning.

Young remembers the difficulty in trying to forget the deeply ingrained external martial arts he had learned and switch to the very different internal martial art. He dedicated four years of fulltime study with Wu before Wu returned to Shanghai in 1941. For a period, Wu stayed with him at his residence with the teaching and learning sessions going on day and night, everyday. The photograph of him and Wu was taken at his home in July 1938.

During that time, Wu bestowed upon Young another one of Wu’s treasure-the art of treating human ailment with internal energy, or Qi. The foundation of this treatment technique are internal energy, techniques of imparting energy (broad) and penetrating energy (focused). All these are originated from Tai Chi’s internal training and its martial art application training.”

Hyams, Joe (2010-04-23). Zen in the Martial Arts (p. 10). Random House, Inc.