Harmony Tai Chi - Class 1

This is the first of what I hope will be series of posts intended to provide philosophical support and background to the Tai Chi movement classes I have begun offering in Topanga CA.  Class 2 is here,
and class's 3&4 are here.
As a cautionary reminder to not take any concept or posture as rigidly absolute in its correctness I lead with this excerpt from chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching:

'Naming things loses what unites them. Failing to name things loses them into what unites them. Words are limits that make experience possible. But form and formlessness are the same. Tao and the world are the same, though we call them by different names. This unity is dark and deep, but on the other hand it is deep and dark. It opens into the center of everything.'(1)

Class 1 Objectives- Basic Stances & Principles & Forms 0 & 1

In the first class the goal is to provide a foundational introduction to classic Tai Chi and Taoist principles and to introduce the Ni Family 108 step Harmony Tai Chi Form (2). These principles are introduced as I teach the most basic Tai Chi stances ( horse stance, cat stance & bow stance) and the first two Harmony Tai Chi postures ( Wu Qi - form 0, & Beginning Tai Chi- form 1). This is done so that the principles can be experienced and felt as they are introduced. Philosophical and theoretical background context informs Tai Chi practice. This background of understanding should neither stand separate from, nor dictate to, the actual felt experience. As understanding of the basic concepts progresses the student will find those concepts being expressed in the movement naturally without intentional force.

Classic Tai Chi Principles

During the demonstration of the basic horse stance I introduce some of the most fundamental classic  Tai Chi alignment principles. This website (3) is a good resource to a comprehensive collection of classic Tai Chi teachings. The primary classic alignment principles I stress which are attributed to Yang Cheng-fu (1883-1936) include:

•  Head upright to let the shen [spirit of vitality] rise to the top of the head. 
• Sink the chest and pluck up the back.  
• Sung [Relax] the waist. " 
• Differentiate between insubstantial and substantial. The first principle in T'ai Chi Ch'uan.  
• Sink the shoulders and drop the elbows.
  

I also teach some classic principles related to movement dynamics attributed to Chan San-feng (est. 1279-1386) when having students move between the yin cat stance, and relatively more yang bow stance.

• All movements are motivated by I [mind-intention], not external form.
• If there is up, there is down; when advancing, have regard for withdrawing;
  when striking left, pay attention to the right.
• If the I wants to move upward, it must simultaneously have intent downward. 
• If correct timing and position are not achieved, the body will become disordered and will not move as an integrated whole; the correction for this defect must be sought in the legs and waist.   
• The qi is rooted through the feet, directed by the waist, and expressed though the fingers.
  

In addition when teaching the horse stance I try to communicate 3 fundamental Taoist concepts:

• Complementary Support of Opposites (Yin & Yang) - Here I use the example of embodying the foundational energy of the earth in the lower body, while simultaneously connecting to a fluid, expansive, and sky oriented awareness up the spine, in the upper torso, and through the top of the head. The students are encouraged to feel how establishing a rooted foundation below does not detract from but instead helps to actualize a light and agile expression above so long as we feel lower and upper in connection and not in separation.
  
  
• WU (Emptiness - Absence) - One of my favorite explanations of the WU (Emptiness - Absence) concept is contained in chapter 21 of the Tao Te Ching here beautifully translated by Crispin Sartwell (4):

'A path through the forest is merely where the trees aren't:
a clearing or absence.
 What is it? Where is it?
These are not exactly the right questions.
It is an absence among things that is also the way you are going.
It is surrounded by trees;
if it had a nature, that would be it:
the stuff all around it that touches and shapes the emptiness within it.
But that's where you move, isn't it?
That's how and where you go.
It is a useful emptiness, an effective absence.
You've never left it, even if you think you have,
and everything you've seen, you've seen from it.
I know it because here I am.'

• Xin (Heart/Mind)  - This is the ancient Chinese cosmological concept that thinking and feeling cannot be separated. It precedes David Hume's famous dictum that 'Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the “slave of the passions”' by a couple thousand years.
  
  Here is a quote from George Eliot's 'Middlemarch' (5) that jives nicely with Xin- Heart/Mind concept.

'To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.'

And this from Roger Ames and David Hall (6):

'The point is that in this classical Chinese worldview broadly conceived, the mind cannot be divorced from the heart. There are no altogether rational thoughts devoid of feeling, nor any raw feelings altogether lacking in cognitive content. Having said this, the prejudice to which Daoism is resolutely resistant is the dichotomy between the cognitive and the affective that would privilege knowing as some separate cognitive activity.'

Form 0 and Form 1

Form 0 - Wu Qi –The great Void- As mentioned above Wu means absence. This form simply entails a process of letting go while standing in horse stance, and feeling the emergence of the various Tai Chi and Taoist principles as they run through the absence that accompanies release. Wu Qi is a process of cultivating and staying with a receptive capacity to respond -- which is also a responsive capacity to receive -- without coercion that which is real and in the world ( and thus in ourselves ).


Form 1 - Beginning Tai Chi - Existence before Heaven and Earth - Like the Wu Qi posture, this posture is attained in horse stance with no stepping ( just some gentle arm movements). The posture involves engaging the minds intent (I) with what is known as the three dantian (or three seas of qi, or 3 energy centers). The 3 dantian are physically located at; (1) just below the belly button (lower dantian); (2) behind the sternum (heart center - middle dantian); and (3) behind the forehead (third eye- upper dantian). This engagement of intent is not solely focused internally, but means to bring forth an unmediated connection with the environment we are each embodied within as well as between the thoughts and feelings that flow through this embodiment. This unmediated feeling and thinking (Wu Xin - heart mind) is described thoroughly as what Ames & Hall refer to as one of the Wu Forms in their highly recommended philosophical translation of the Dao De Ching (5).

 
1, Tzu, Lao. Waterway: a new translation of the Tao Te Ching and introducing the Wu Wei Ching (Kindle Locations 68-73). crispy press. Kindle Edition.

2. http://www.collegeoftao.org/tai-chi-qi-gong--meditation.html

3. http://www.scheele.org/lee/classics.html

4. Tzu, Lao. Waterway: a new translation of the Tao Te Ching and introducing the Wu Wei Ching (Kindle Locations 250-259). crispy press. Kindle Edition.

5. http://www.literaturepage.com/read/middlemarch-229.html

6. Ames, Roger. Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation (Kindle Locations 566-569). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.