T'ai Chi is many things to many people.
It's important to have a sense for why you come to T'ai Chi so that you can focus your efforts and get what you need.
You'll get out of T'ai Chi what you put into it.
I teach the Yang Style Short Form as adapted and taught by Professor Cheng Man-Ch'ing.
Professor Cheng brought this form to the United States in the 1960s.
He condensed this form from the Yang Style Long Form by eliminating some repetition and a few postures in order to make it more accessible to the lifestyle of the Western world.
As anyone knows who has studied this form, it is challenging enough in its length and complexity.
T'ai Chi Ch'uan is an "internal" art which seeks to develop and harmonize the human energy system in the context of a martial arts form.
In my teaching, I emphasize the energetic or health and self-development aspects of T'ai Chi.
As a beginning, T'ai Chi enables us to recognize and actively release tension.
This opens the way for us to develop balanced, free-flowing energy which creates the conditions for optimum health and well-being.
T'ai Chi has been called moving meditation since its practice quiets the mind by centering us into body awareness (and, later, energetic awareness).
The deepening of awareness integrates body, emotions, mind, and spirit.
Ultimately, T'ai Chi can be practiced as a comprehensive system of self-development.
When you are proficient at T'ai Chi you can use it as a tool to shift your state of being.
During T'ai Chi practice you become relaxed, present, energized, and aware.
You shift into what I call a Core Energy State in which you experience yourself as a part of the Oneness of life and you feel the flow of universal qi ("chee":life energy) throughout your body.
In addition to these profound effects, T'ai Chi just plain feels good.
We often lose this sense when we try too hard to excel or to get something out of it.
Practice T'ai Chi with awareness and pure enjoyment and the rest will take care of itself.
Of course, to enjoy T'ai Chi you've got to do it.
The good feeling one gets in T'ai Chi is developed through daily practice.
To guide you on the path towards embodying the essence of T'ai Chi, focus on five principles: THE FIVE PRINCIPLES: 1) RELAX DOWN: release tension around all joints so they become open and free moving.
Drop your shoulders; let your elbows hang heavily; release tension in the low back and hips so the buttocks and hip flexors are soft.
Sink your energy.
Feel as if your lower body is filled with water or as if there is a heavy weight attached to your tailbone.
This is balanced by 2) STAND UPRIGHT: raise the crown point of your head (Bai Hui point) as if it's suspended on a string from above; let your spine rises straight from the coccyx to this point.
Tuck your chin slightly and raise your back.
Feel as if your upper body is filled with helium.
Allow your elbows and wrists to rise slightly.
3) BREATHE FROM THE LOWER DANTIAN: focus your awareness inward and downward to the center of your body, the lower dantian ("dahn-tee-en": an energy center approximately three finger-widths below the navel and one third of the way from the front to the back of the body).
Imagine this energy center as a heavy sphere in your lower abdomen.
Its weight spirals down into your legs and feet.
All movement is guided by the waist around this center.
In T'ai Chi, we keep awareness "centered" in the lower dantian.
Whenever your mind wanders to any other thoughts, feelings, or sensations, let those go and gently return your attention to breathing from the lower dantian.
As you inhale, feel as if the lower dantian expands and fills up.
When you exhale, feel as if the lower dantian relaxes inward and empties out.
Awareness expands from the lower dantian to fill the body as a whole.
Feel the connection from the lower dantian to the top of your head (Bai Hui point).
Feel the connection from the lower dantian to the soles of your feet (Bubbling Well points in the center of your feet).
Besides unifying body movement, the lower dantian is the storehouse for universal energy or "qi.
" By focusing on this energy center we accumulate qi.
The movements of T'ai Chi help to circulate qi throughout the body.
4) SOFTEN YOUR HANDS: release tension from your hands: they are soft, light, flexible, and sensitive.
Don't curl your fingers or overextend them.
Maintain a neutral wrist position.
"Soft hands" relaxes tension, enhances the flow of qi, and opens the way for sensing life-energy.
Feel the connection of your hands to your lower dantian.
The rotation of the lower dantian spirals out through the arms.
Allow your hands to be like cotton which can feel the air like thick clouds around you.
5) SINK INTO YOUR ROOT & SEPARATE YOUR WEIGHT: feel your feet contacting the ground; your weight distributes evenly across the entire surface of each foot.
Maintain a slight knee bend.
Sink your weight into the Bubbling Well points, your roots (in the middle of your feet, just behind the balls of your feet).
Except at the start and finish of the form (when your weight is 50% in each leg), separate your weight distribution between your feet, either 70%/30% or 100%/0%.
Being rooted comes from the weighted rotation of the dantian that "screws" your legs into the ground.
Another sensory image for "root and separate" is to feel as if your lower body is full of water.
Gradually pour the water 100% into one leg while emptying the other leg, then vice-versa.
At first, practice the five principles as a checklist.
In time, they will blend into one feeling that you can shift into with a moment's attention.
Beyond the five principles, the following cues are also essential to T'ai Chi practice: *Roll the tip of your tongue up to touch the roof of your mouth.
*Center your chin with the center line of your body.
*Square your shoulders and hips to one of the eight directions.
*Movement is slow, continuous, flowing, soft, and circular.
*Movements initiate from the ground, move up through the legs, are directed by the lower dantian, and released at the fingertips.
*Sense inwardly: the eyes maintain a "soft focus" to the outer environment.
*Find balance by harmonizing opposites: sinking with rising, forward with backward, left with right, expansion with relaxation.
To progress in T'ai Chi, practice daily.
Even ten minutes a day will grow your ability.
If you become frustrated in what seems complex, remember the five principles; these are the heart of T'ai Chi.
After going through the five principles at the beginning of each session, a fruitful method for practice is to focus on one principle at a time.
In the first stages of learning T'ai Chi, focus on the fifth principle, root & separate, and on feeling solid contact with the ground.
This principle forms a solid base for the other four.
In time, the five principles become one sensation, a feeling of rooted, relaxed, upright, soft, centered, energetic presence which is maintained by focusing on the lower dantian.
At the finish of your daily practice, stay in the last posture and hold it.
Breathe into your body as a whole.
Go through the five posture principles.
Take a few moments to record the feeling of relaxation and energy in every cell.
This experience then becomes a reference point that you can return to when you feel rushed, tense, or overwhelmed, at other times of the day.
BEYOND THE MOVEMENTS: After learning the movements of the form, become aware of how your breathing is coordinated with the postures.
Breathing further integrates, informs, and energizes the movements while giving them a natural ebb and flow.
You may also want to work with Push Hands, or two person T'ai Chi.
Push Hands develops your ability to follow T'ai Chi principles while interacting with another.
We increase our internal and external sensitivity and learn to feel and respond to another's energy while maintaining our own energetic core.
In Push Hands the connection between T'ai Chi and everyday interactions becomes apparent.
As you see in this brief summary, there are many levels to T'ai Chi practice.
One of my T'ai Chi teachers says: "T'ai Chi is simple, but it isn't easy.
" In China, to learn T'ai Chi is considered a life-long study.
To maintain such a study, remember the desire that brought you to T'ai Chi.
Find the pleasure in practice.
Enjoy.
Copyright 2006 by Kevin Schoeninger
It's important to have a sense for why you come to T'ai Chi so that you can focus your efforts and get what you need.
You'll get out of T'ai Chi what you put into it.
I teach the Yang Style Short Form as adapted and taught by Professor Cheng Man-Ch'ing.
Professor Cheng brought this form to the United States in the 1960s.
He condensed this form from the Yang Style Long Form by eliminating some repetition and a few postures in order to make it more accessible to the lifestyle of the Western world.
As anyone knows who has studied this form, it is challenging enough in its length and complexity.
T'ai Chi Ch'uan is an "internal" art which seeks to develop and harmonize the human energy system in the context of a martial arts form.
In my teaching, I emphasize the energetic or health and self-development aspects of T'ai Chi.
As a beginning, T'ai Chi enables us to recognize and actively release tension.
This opens the way for us to develop balanced, free-flowing energy which creates the conditions for optimum health and well-being.
T'ai Chi has been called moving meditation since its practice quiets the mind by centering us into body awareness (and, later, energetic awareness).
The deepening of awareness integrates body, emotions, mind, and spirit.
Ultimately, T'ai Chi can be practiced as a comprehensive system of self-development.
When you are proficient at T'ai Chi you can use it as a tool to shift your state of being.
During T'ai Chi practice you become relaxed, present, energized, and aware.
You shift into what I call a Core Energy State in which you experience yourself as a part of the Oneness of life and you feel the flow of universal qi ("chee":life energy) throughout your body.
In addition to these profound effects, T'ai Chi just plain feels good.
We often lose this sense when we try too hard to excel or to get something out of it.
Practice T'ai Chi with awareness and pure enjoyment and the rest will take care of itself.
Of course, to enjoy T'ai Chi you've got to do it.
The good feeling one gets in T'ai Chi is developed through daily practice.
To guide you on the path towards embodying the essence of T'ai Chi, focus on five principles: THE FIVE PRINCIPLES: 1) RELAX DOWN: release tension around all joints so they become open and free moving.
Drop your shoulders; let your elbows hang heavily; release tension in the low back and hips so the buttocks and hip flexors are soft.
Sink your energy.
Feel as if your lower body is filled with water or as if there is a heavy weight attached to your tailbone.
This is balanced by 2) STAND UPRIGHT: raise the crown point of your head (Bai Hui point) as if it's suspended on a string from above; let your spine rises straight from the coccyx to this point.
Tuck your chin slightly and raise your back.
Feel as if your upper body is filled with helium.
Allow your elbows and wrists to rise slightly.
3) BREATHE FROM THE LOWER DANTIAN: focus your awareness inward and downward to the center of your body, the lower dantian ("dahn-tee-en": an energy center approximately three finger-widths below the navel and one third of the way from the front to the back of the body).
Imagine this energy center as a heavy sphere in your lower abdomen.
Its weight spirals down into your legs and feet.
All movement is guided by the waist around this center.
In T'ai Chi, we keep awareness "centered" in the lower dantian.
Whenever your mind wanders to any other thoughts, feelings, or sensations, let those go and gently return your attention to breathing from the lower dantian.
As you inhale, feel as if the lower dantian expands and fills up.
When you exhale, feel as if the lower dantian relaxes inward and empties out.
Awareness expands from the lower dantian to fill the body as a whole.
Feel the connection from the lower dantian to the top of your head (Bai Hui point).
Feel the connection from the lower dantian to the soles of your feet (Bubbling Well points in the center of your feet).
Besides unifying body movement, the lower dantian is the storehouse for universal energy or "qi.
" By focusing on this energy center we accumulate qi.
The movements of T'ai Chi help to circulate qi throughout the body.
4) SOFTEN YOUR HANDS: release tension from your hands: they are soft, light, flexible, and sensitive.
Don't curl your fingers or overextend them.
Maintain a neutral wrist position.
"Soft hands" relaxes tension, enhances the flow of qi, and opens the way for sensing life-energy.
Feel the connection of your hands to your lower dantian.
The rotation of the lower dantian spirals out through the arms.
Allow your hands to be like cotton which can feel the air like thick clouds around you.
5) SINK INTO YOUR ROOT & SEPARATE YOUR WEIGHT: feel your feet contacting the ground; your weight distributes evenly across the entire surface of each foot.
Maintain a slight knee bend.
Sink your weight into the Bubbling Well points, your roots (in the middle of your feet, just behind the balls of your feet).
Except at the start and finish of the form (when your weight is 50% in each leg), separate your weight distribution between your feet, either 70%/30% or 100%/0%.
Being rooted comes from the weighted rotation of the dantian that "screws" your legs into the ground.
Another sensory image for "root and separate" is to feel as if your lower body is full of water.
Gradually pour the water 100% into one leg while emptying the other leg, then vice-versa.
At first, practice the five principles as a checklist.
In time, they will blend into one feeling that you can shift into with a moment's attention.
Beyond the five principles, the following cues are also essential to T'ai Chi practice: *Roll the tip of your tongue up to touch the roof of your mouth.
*Center your chin with the center line of your body.
*Square your shoulders and hips to one of the eight directions.
*Movement is slow, continuous, flowing, soft, and circular.
*Movements initiate from the ground, move up through the legs, are directed by the lower dantian, and released at the fingertips.
*Sense inwardly: the eyes maintain a "soft focus" to the outer environment.
*Find balance by harmonizing opposites: sinking with rising, forward with backward, left with right, expansion with relaxation.
To progress in T'ai Chi, practice daily.
Even ten minutes a day will grow your ability.
If you become frustrated in what seems complex, remember the five principles; these are the heart of T'ai Chi.
After going through the five principles at the beginning of each session, a fruitful method for practice is to focus on one principle at a time.
In the first stages of learning T'ai Chi, focus on the fifth principle, root & separate, and on feeling solid contact with the ground.
This principle forms a solid base for the other four.
In time, the five principles become one sensation, a feeling of rooted, relaxed, upright, soft, centered, energetic presence which is maintained by focusing on the lower dantian.
At the finish of your daily practice, stay in the last posture and hold it.
Breathe into your body as a whole.
Go through the five posture principles.
Take a few moments to record the feeling of relaxation and energy in every cell.
This experience then becomes a reference point that you can return to when you feel rushed, tense, or overwhelmed, at other times of the day.
BEYOND THE MOVEMENTS: After learning the movements of the form, become aware of how your breathing is coordinated with the postures.
Breathing further integrates, informs, and energizes the movements while giving them a natural ebb and flow.
You may also want to work with Push Hands, or two person T'ai Chi.
Push Hands develops your ability to follow T'ai Chi principles while interacting with another.
We increase our internal and external sensitivity and learn to feel and respond to another's energy while maintaining our own energetic core.
In Push Hands the connection between T'ai Chi and everyday interactions becomes apparent.
As you see in this brief summary, there are many levels to T'ai Chi practice.
One of my T'ai Chi teachers says: "T'ai Chi is simple, but it isn't easy.
" In China, to learn T'ai Chi is considered a life-long study.
To maintain such a study, remember the desire that brought you to T'ai Chi.
Find the pleasure in practice.
Enjoy.
Copyright 2006 by Kevin Schoeninger