Tai Chi: More versatile than you may think

Paperclips… flexible, multi-purpose, always handy.

When I first heard about Tai Chi, it must have been on television: I saw elderly people practicing in a park or dance studio, very slowly and gently, in a mysterious dance. Then my first martial arts teacher explained to me one day that tai chi was something intense and hardcore. There I was, faced with something that seemed to have different faces to it, which was mysterious to me. Of course, I had also heard plenty about “Qi” or “Chi”.

The basic idea

Well, when I went to my first class, there were definitely older people there. But there were younger people as well. And when I first got corrective feedback on my posture, I was quite surprised at how intense the act of standing could be! And I was very impressed. I realized Tai Chi wasn’t anything like I could have imagined.

But as time went on, I realized that different people practice Tai Chi for different reasons, and there is no one-size fits all approach. Some teachers teach people very simple forms, others much more complex; others are more practical, others more spiritual, and so on.

That’s all one reason I think Tai Chi can be practiced by anyone, and why it’s a profound art. In fact I think it has to do with the different stages of learning that are inherent to something so deep and rich.

In one’s own practice, various approaches must be used to find a “sweet spot”, where practice feels good and one’s skill progresses. One must find different means of relaxing, connecting, and moving within a set of basic principles. It is very much a matter of taking something “traditional” and making it one’s own. As a natural consequence, one may find in themselves a versatility in practice: they can practice in a very easy-going way, or a very intense way; a very “small” way or a very “big way”, a very “slow” way and a very “fast” way. Practice can be varying or repetitive; one can go through the whole form once or twice, or a single posture once or many times.

At a certain level one can take a single movement and practice it with different forces and expressions involved, resulting in multiple ways of expressing one movement that ultimately follow the same general choreography and same principles.

What does this all mean for deciding “who” can practice Tai Chi?

Chen Yu demonstrates a simple, easy going version of the form, that can be practiced for basic exercise or “health culivation” (yangsheng).

Tai Chi for different ages

Well, most often the elderly just need a way to keep moving and active. Sometimes they need something slow or simple, yet engaging. Tai Chi offers slow and simple, and the principles or cultural background of Tai Chi can provide that engagement. Seated exercises can easily be derived from it, and it does not require significant flexibility. Even if a practitioner’s physical abilities are limited, the exercise can still offer its profound movement methods, not to mention psychological benefits. With increasing integration in the world of medicine, Tai Chi is quite famously well-suited for the elderly.

But what about the younger folk? That could be people from their teens to 40s, even 60s if they’re fortunate to still be fit and limber. Well, depending on the person, once one has a just a little grasp of the basic principles and some basic movements, one can begin to challenge themselves, and in doing so things can be very interesting and intense. For me, the leg work was one of the key things that got me hooked. I had practiced martial arts before, which includes the horse stance, but it was only until I started getting serious about Tai Chi that this actually became an engaging workout on different levels. The deeper one goes (within reason), the more one aligns the joints, and the more one relaxes, the harder it gets. And then you add weight shifts and upper body movements… it’s a big task, and it’s quite invigorating, even (or especially) when done slowly. One feels not just the quads, but all of the muscles of the lower body working and getting stronger; one feels a strong sense of stability and “rootedness”, but also mobility. It is, to me, in some ways more intense than weightlifting.

And then in the upper body, we are working on relaxing and learning to transmit force from the legs through the torso to the arms. This sounds either very abstract, or very common-sense, depending on who you ask. But what is not abstract is the actual work, and what is not common-sense are the refined mechanics of, say, “silk reeling force”. The feeling of freeing up the joints and feeling the muscles wrap around the arms to express different actions is incredible. The feeling of moving with the “dan tian” is surreal yet tangible. Witnessing a deeper level of mind-body connection within oneself is profound and exciting.

Kung Fu or Tai Chi? Both: as a form of Kung Fu, at high skill levels the practice can be quite explosive and intense!

Different Personalities and Goals

But then, regardless of age group perhaps, you have different personalities. Business people, workers in the trades, scientifically-minded people who are not into “woo”, martial artists who want to come out on top, disadvantaged folk who need an outlet and way to get into their bodies. These people may respond in quite different ways, and they may have different limitations or needs.

For those working a lot or with busy schedules, some sort of movement-based practice may need to strike a balance between relaxing, energizing, and versatile - something that can be taken wherever, that doesn’t require much equipment and uniforms, or take too much time. Well, Tai Chi definitely doesn’t require specific equipment or uniforms. The full forms (which we call Yilu and Erlu) can definitely take some time to learn and practice… but they can also just as easily be condensed and simplified. There’s also plenty of single exercises that don’t require longer choreographies or much space at all.

I always loved taking a break to practice in a quiet room at work. Call it weird… but it helped me get through the day, and it made me feel great. Standing or sitting around all day can be pretty draining, but Tai Chi would give me something physical to re-energize with, and it could just be making circles with the hands. Besides, many employers encourage (or are incentivized to encourage) their employees to take stretch breaks etc. Well, not all of us like stretching, we like moving, and the versatility of tai chi provides a lot of movement that doesn’t necessarily need to look outlandish to anyone. Even swinging the arms can be done with tai chi principles in mind that make it just a little more engaging.

“Circling hands”, sometimes called “Silk reeling” is a popular and simple exercise that can be done at varying levels of intensity.

What about those who are fed up with all this talk about “energy” or “chi”, or those who want the science to back up what they do? Or what about those who just don’t care about high thinking and just want to move in a way that makes sense?

Well, for the scientific types, I think it is definitely worth reading the science of tai chi. There’s a lot of it. But unfortunately, there’s not a lot about the deeper components - and that’s not just talking about this “chi” stuff, but all the “traditional” methods that are hard enough learning in the first place. I wish there was more on it, but there just isn’t. But thankfully, the practice does not need to be mysticized. In fact I would consider myself someone strongly disinterested in talk about “energy”, though I know how and why it might be helpful for people to think in those terms. For me, it was just confusing and led me down too many rabbit holes.

What I needed was something that I can explore and do without playing make-believe. As I learned and met new teachers, I was grateful to find methods which made sense and were easily applicable, or which could easily be felt. Although I had interesting experiences where it felt like my teachers were manipulating some sort of energy within me (e.g. to correct my posture or provide feedback), or I felt interesting sensations, I was never one to see it as “energy” or “qi”, but the result of integrating the mind with the body - feeling things and doing things that had clear and undeniable physical effects.

And in the end, what really helped me learn were cues that had to do with intention and clear actions. When I first started learning from my teacher Ryan Craig, on thing we did briefly was go over the popular “standing like a tree” posture, which is often practiced for developing basic qualities of stability, relaxation, and focus, but also often taught in somewhat vague terms.

The instructions were quite clear: holding the hands in front, palms facing inward and elbows above the knees, press the baihui point on top of the head from the heels, relax and expand the lower back outward slightly, and press forward with the back of the hands and forearm. Usually this is best learned with feedback from the teacher, but done correctly, the resulting feeling is of fullness, stability, and strength.

This wasn’t the first time I had felt this, however it was the first time I was shown how to do it in very simple, practical terms. Before that, I was very frustrated with instructions to “fill the body with qi” and so on. However, I know some people who benefit from those instructions, and it works for them, so there’s nothing wrong with that either. For this reason, again I think the art is quite versatile and open to many dispositions.

Teacher Nabil Ranné offers a very thorough but down-to-earth and practical teaching of Tai Chi

Not just empty movement

But still there are martial artists who just want to know if this stuff just works in the streets, the ring, or at least on the sparring mat. Although I can’t say that practicing Tai Chi in itself will make one a world champion, or be the magic bullet in self defense scenarios, I have to say it has many things to offer. And although there’s a lot of talk out there about “internal secrets” or “you can only do it after 10 years or 10,000 hours”, I understand there again is a desire for practicality - and ways to apply the art sooner than later. And although many Tai Chi teachers out there do not include sparring in their curriculum (and I do not currently), I hope one day that changes.

But in terms of practicality, I think this is often an issue related to clarity of terms used in instruction, as well as the methods used in instruction. As someone who has experience in sparring and “rolling” in BJJ… I think Tai Chi has a lot to offer as well. Although push hands is an exercise often criticized as too cooperative to be any good, it certainly has benefits and carry-over potential. It is relatively common across all schools of Tai Chi. But there are many ways it is practiced.

For me, I have found again that magical terms and a certain orientalist or traditionalist perspective is an obstacle. “Redirecting energy” or “using your chi” is just too vague and often leads to bizarre habits, the idea that one can’t “use their muscles” is outright confusing, and portraying applications as an “advanced practice” is discouraging and unhelpful for getting feedback as a beginner. But as I have been learning under my teachers Nabil and Ryan, it doesn’t have to be mystical, far-off into the future, or confusing. Learning new things is always challenging and confusing, but the terms don’t always have to be prohibitively so.

So in this line, we are fortunate enough to use relatively simple terms… “contact point”, “point of force”, “origin of force”, “jin” (which is basically a refined force, the result of incorporating intention and refining different principles within physical action), “opening and closing”, etc., are all terms that can be readily applied, however imperfectly at the beginning stages. In fact I think it is very important to do things imperfectly.

One of the reasons why people shy away from teaching beginners, besides issues of liability, is because they think that people will develop poor habits that take time to correct. Thinking about applications is sometimes met with “don’t do that or you will get stiff”. Well, there is a degree of truth, but also… we start with “bad habits”. Our whole life is spent building and unbuilding new habits, good and bad. They’re nothing to be afraid of. The really bad habits like collapsing or compressing the joints, overexerting oneself… those are things which are worth addressing immediately, and they can be, fairly easily. So bad habits are no reason to avoid thinking about these matters… as a Chinese saying goes, one should not quit eating for fear of choking.

So exploring the applicability of Tai Chi in combat, whether so one can protect themselves from potentially violent encounters (like a wrist grab, as a basic example), or so one can be successful in sport, is something that I am very interested in, and I think it is a worthwhile pursuit. While I am not a sparring champion, and I currently do not teach applications extensively, I hope that one day I will be able to bridge this gap. In the mean time, I am very happy practicing push hands, which is a safe and fascinating exercise in itself.

So those are just some thoughts on how Tai Chi can be versatile, and approachable for different audiences. If you would like to talk to me more about this, please feel free to contact me!

Chen Yu shows just how rough Tai Chi can be