The Journey Within

It is quite unfortunate even our Tai Ji education teaches us to focus on the “correct” movements, and not to express ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy enough to be able to do the correct movements! To perform the choreography well, getting the steps right, the weights right, the joints relaxed etc. Then I was shown a form totally different from what I’ve seen before.

My current teacher told me that even in Tai Ji, you have to express yourself.

Expression is not restricted to drawing, writing, photography, ballet and all the other creative arts. Tai Chi, after all, is a martial art. So we have to be expressive even in Tai Ji.

And here comes the nail:

The Tai Chi form that we’ve been doing, is like plain water. It lacks intensity, it lacks the inner fire found in each of us.

Then he proceeded with a version of Lao Jia Yi Lu (老架一路）, a popular Chen style Tai Ji form for those unfamiliar with the term. I haven’t seen my teacher perform it this way before. It’s as though an animal was released. This beast showed great pride in the form, and yet managed the pride with a certain sense of joy and calmness.

It’s hard for me to describe in words what I saw, but the description is not important for the point I’m trying to make. Expressing yourself is a very important part of Tai Chi. It’s not enough to just learn the moves, we must also infuse our own pride, our own fire in it.

We tend to forget ourselves while going through the form, just like how we sometimes forget who we are while going through life. It’s not enough that we learn how to speak, how to count, how to read. We need to express these knowledge as our knowledge, not someone else’s knowledge. In short, we need to express ourselves, our true selves. I guess Tai Ji offers the rare opportunity to do so without the social pressures that some other arts might entail.

So, let loose, and enjoy the expression!

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The Earth moves at 40,270 km/h, and yet we don’t feel it. Maybe because we’re standing too far away from the spinning axis – 6,371 kilometers too far! Now, if we extend the same theory to our own bodies, assuming my hand is 1 meter away from my spinning axis, I would need to “spin” at 0.18 centimeters per second, and you wouldn’t feel it. That’s just under 2 millimeters a second!

Most of the time, our hands move too fast, and our core axis, not moving. So when pushing hands, the force is felt immediately. Hey, we feel it when sitting in a car going a mere 80km/h, but do not feel the Earth moving and more than 40,000 km/h! According to my theory above, we actually only need to move at 0.18 cm/s at our core, and not move our hands at all, so that our opponent won’t feel a thing.

So if theory is your thing, and assuming we’re governed by the same Earth laws, I think we need to seriously slow down our movements to have a chance of infiltrating the opponent without them knowing! Talk about stealth…

For those keen on the mathematical bits:

Earth velocity = 40,270 km/h

Earth radius = 6,371 km

Hand radius = 0.001 km

Based on this ratio, the hand velocity would need to be moving at:

0.001/6371 * 40270km/h

= 0.006321 km/h

= 0.18 cm/s

This is a mathematical extension of my ice-cream theory.

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Turn your body, turn your body!

That’s what I’ve been hearing throughout my Tai Ji journey.

All movements should be whole. As the hand moves, the body moves, the leg moves – everything should move in perfect harmony.

In the last reality check, I haven’t found this unison yet. I found something more subtle – the turning radius of the kua.

Now, I’ve always heard how the kua should relax to allow the body sitting on it to turn. I think I’ve imagined the turning radius a bit too big. We actually only need to turn very little in the kua section, to generate a large turning on the hands. Imagine an ice-cream cone. The sharpest point of the cone actually turns very little, yet you would have licked off half the ice-cream with that little turn at the bottom of the cone!

Now, the trick is to find that point in the kua to turn, so that you actually know what you’re trying to turn! The point is quite elusive. Read – I don’t find it very often. Hope this observation will help you find yours. Look for the small, rather than the big. You don’t actually need to turn the body. Just turn that small point, and the body will follow.

This reminds me of an “observation” I’ve heard. The husband is the head of the family, but the wife is the neck. The head will always depend on the neck to turn.

You just have to find that neck.

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I don’t like going to the dentist. I’m not sure if anyone does. But for the very first time, I was very happy to be at the dentist, coming out from the dental procedure beaming with my new adopted tooth.

I lost a tooth to food. It’s unreal how much junk I stuff myself Continue reading »

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