When many people think of tai chi, they will usually bring to mind groups of people practicing the flowing forms that are synonymous with the gentle Chinese martial art.
However, there is much more to learning and practicing tai chi than the ‘forms’, as these sequences of moves are known.
Below is a summary of the bigger picture of tai chi, which we as practitioners should all be focusing on to improve our skills and develop to our highest ability.
Warming Up / Stretching / Balance
Preparing the joints, tendons, ligaments, and muscles for your practice will make it feel completely different. Don’t neglect this often overlooked part of your training, even just 5-10 minutes will completely change how you feel. It’s going to massively help you in everyday life also, especially as we progress from our 30’s, 40’s, and beyond.
Generally speaking when new people come to my classes, a lack of balance, flexibility and mobility is what holds them back from progressing at the speed they would often like to.
Being more balanced, mobile and flexible will give you the ability to control your body, keep your stepping and movements more relaxed, and to allow your body to get into the correct positions to advance your practice quicker.
If you don’t already, as soon as you start learning tai chi, or any other martial art, you need to be taking time to warm up your joints and stretch your muscles, and make sure that you add balance exercises throughout your day.
Qigong
Qigong is generally easier than tai chi, yet the health benefits are pretty much the same.
Qigong can be studied as an art unto itself, it is an ancient art dating back thousands of years (as opposed to tai chi’s hundreds. Regular practice benefits our tai chi immensely. There is definitely an argument to be made for those new to tai chi should practice qigong for 3-6 months before learning any tai chi forms.
The movements are relatively simple, so it is quite easy to learn the flowing sequences and stretches. It’s also great to relax and strengthen your body, and alongside our warm up, stretching and balance practice, it prepares us both physically and mentally for tai chi.
However, we want to use it mostly to improve our lung capacity, deepen our breath, slow down the breath, learn how to synchronise our breathing and movements. This breathing practice over time will help us connect to our dantian, the energy centre in our lower abdominal area which is the storage and furnace of qi in our bodies.
When you are learning, it can be quite hard to practice tai chi and also focus on the breathing. In fact, I don’t recommend this for a start (do breathe though!!). However, you can use qigong to learn how to breathe correctly, deeply, and effectively, which will then help with the process of learning tai chi when you integrate it into the form.
Basics (ji ben gong)
Our basic exercises includes things such as footwork, stance training, cloudy hands, silk reeling, fajin practice, peng lu ji a training. Each style of tai chi may focus on something different.
Take Chen tai chi for example, we focus on a lot of basic exercises to work on relaxing the hips so that we are able to rotate the body using the pelvis.
This movement is central to Chen tai chi. If you only practice the form you will find it very hard to learn how to do it, alongside everything else that needs to be focused on in the form.
It’s akin to learning how to play football by only playing matches. Or learning how to be a boxer by only having fights. David Beckham didn’t learn to be the world’s best free kick taker back in his day by just playing matches. He drilled those free kicks over and over again, I would imagine he even worked on just his footwork without even kicking a ball.
Only focusing on the form will take you so far but if you really want to excel, and burst through the plateaus that you will inevitably find yourself on, drilling these simple movements is of immense importance.
I think some people find this type of training boring and they skip through it. However, personally I have found it to be what has helped increase my tai chi level and body awareness more than anything else.
As with the breathing and qigong, we need to extract these key elements from the form, practice them daily until they are relaxes, smooth, and natural. Then you will improve immensely.
Meditation
Tai chi is a martial art of the mind. The mind controls the qi and the qi controls the movements. Sometimes we want to sink our weight and root our energy down to the ground and feel heavy (Yin), at other times we want to be light and moving as agile as a cat (Yang). It is our mind that controls this process. Our mind controls our intent and focus (Yi).
You achieve none of this if you are practicing your tai chi thinking about what you need to get from the supermarket after you’ve finished shopping, or what President Trump is going to do on his first day of office (very topical at the time of writing!)
We can do seated meditation and it definitely has its place but I am a huge fan of standing meditation.
With standing meditation we can also learn to relax the body, focus on our posture, our root, important points of the body such as the top of the head, soles of the feet, dantian, the mingmen, spine, organs, etc. All the time bringing our mindfulness into the practice, unifying mind and body.
Again, this is something very difficult to do whilst practicing your tai chi form, so we take it out, polish it up, put it back in.
Push Hands
To really test your tai chi, you need to feel an opponent’s power.
I remember this is what my teacher, Master Ping of FangYuan Tai Chi, told me at the start of our first push hands practice.
Push hands is seen as a practice rooted in the martial art of tai chi, rather than being something for those who prefer to practice the art for their health and wellbeing.
I’d argue that it’s equally valid for both.
Push hands can (and should) be practiced very gently with a willing partner in order to help you learn how to bring tai chi principles to life against an external force. I think people often struggle with push hands when they start, both on a physical level as well as being able to grasp what it is actually for. I think of it as playing, having fun with tai chi.
On a fundamental level, if someone pushes towards you, don’t push back. We allow them to push in whatever direction they want to go in by yielding to their power, eventually guiding them off balance with minimal effort and maximum awesomeness!
Most beginners, and actually many people who have practiced for many years, are too stiff, even more so when contact is made with a partner. Push hands teaches you the relaxation and sensitivity to feel how an opponent moves, and to act accordingly. It teaches you the importance of training your root and perfecting your posture.
All of this will help your tai chi incredibly.
In fact my step son is living proof. Last summer we spent a week training push hands in China with Master Ping, he barely practiced a form all week. Yet at the end of one week of intensive push hands training, his form was so much better. More relaxed, more fluid, more rooted, his movements were better, as was his posture.
So whether you want to learn push hands all the way to competitive tai chi wrestling, or you just want to be a little bit more relaxed and balanced when you practice your form, you should be learning push hands.
Theory
One of my favourite quotes is, “when you’re not practicing tai chi, you should be thinking and learning about tai chi”.
Who said it?
Me.
Maybe some other people as well but for the purposes of this blog post, I’m taking credit.
From culture to history, medicine to cosmology. As deep as it is broad, the study of the theory of tai chi can take you back to the beginning of the universe (see my blog on Wuji), to learning about the tea ceremony in modern day Guangdong. Tai chi is woven into the fabric of Chinese society.
There are concepts that as you learn you need to explore in order to deepen your knowledge and your practice. We explore and will explore more of these in this Substack of mine. If there’s anything you would like to know in more detail, please feel free to request in the comments.
Forms
Obviously central to our tai chi practice is the learning of the form. This is what brings everything together in a flowing sequence of moves.
I love practicing forms but remember that your abilities in them reflect everything that has gone before in this post.
Especially when you start tai chi, and for the first few years, don’t be in a rush to learn too much. It is infinitely better to become good at what you already know than to keep on adding moves and forms that are done badly. This actually isn’t tai chi, this is just movement.
Everyone has their own very valid reasons for learning tai chi. However, the ultimate aim is to create a tai chi state in our minds, meaning a perfect balance of yin and yang.
The forms are a tool to help us achieve this but they are not the only part of your larger tai chi practice.
Learn the basics, develop your qigong, become flexible and mobile, train with a partner, study the theory, meditate and calm your mind, integrate your body and mind. This is the ‘secret’ to improving your tai chi.