Set your feet shoulder width apart, and in your own time, lower your centre of gravity.  Tension below the belly button, relaxed above the belly button.  Eyes looking forward, and the tongue up to the roof of the mouth.  Attention on tan tien.  Deep breathing in and out, contraction and expansion of your belly.

In the beginner’s class on Thursday, I was asked about the purpose of the tan tien.  I normally give the following explanations:

1. It is a little bit below the belly button, and a little bit inside.
2. According to Western science, it is the centre of gravity for the human body.
3. According to Eastern philosophy, it is an important part of taoist internal alchemy.

But what exactly is taoist internal alchemy?  That was an excellent follow-up question :)

I don’t practice taoist internal alchemy myself, as it’s something that isn’t part of the system handed down to me by my teacher.  It wasn’t that my teacher didn’t believe in chi and its cultivation per se, it was simply the case that my teacher rightly believed that we have no place teaching things we cannot demonstrate and put to the test.  As a result, my knowledge on the subject is simply theoretical, and I have no formal teaching in it myself.

Taoism is one of the oldest surviving philosophies in the world, best known through the great work the Tao te Ching attributed to Lao-tzu.  At the core is the concept of The Way (the do in Japanese martial arts such as akido, iaido, judo and kendo) and how we can all find our own harmony with The Way.  Practitioners of taoism are known as taoists.  As a way of living, it has a lot to offer us Westerners, and it is said to be the underlying philosophy that Tai Chi is based on.  (More on that in a later article!)

Man everywhere is obsessed with his own immortality, and taoists it turns out are not immune to this desire :)  The difference I guess is that some taoists believe that real immortality is not only possible, has actually been achieved in the past (by such as Cheng San-feng, the legendary creator of Tai Chi).  Just as western alchemists attempted to turn base metals such as lead into pure gold, so taoist internal alchemy is concerned with practices to turn the base energy into a refined spirit.

One of the practices of taoist internal alchemy is to turn ching (generative energy) into chi (vital energy), and then to turn the chi into shen (spiritual energy).  The area we call tan tien in our class is actually the lowest placed of three separate tan tiens (the second is at the solar plexus, and the third between the eyebrows).  The lower tan tien is used to refine ching (generative energy) into chi (vital energy); very appropriate from a western point of view given its location at our centre of gravity, at the place in Tai Chi where all our movement is controlled from.

This is a gross and decidedly ill-informed over-simplification of the subject, I must stress!  Anyone interested in learning more should seek out a qualified instructor on the matter, or failing that start with reading Eva Wong’s translation of Cultivating Stillness.

I freely admit that I’m not all that comfortable talking about my own experiences with the mystical side of Tai Chi.  Part of it comes from my teacher’s own understandable feelings on the subject, and part of it comes from my own training as a scientist and qualification as an engineer.  There’s also the important matter that, if we tell our students what feelings to expect, the mind has a funny way of manifesting those feelings whether or not the work has been done to make them real!  And, as if that wasn’t enough, I’m sure that there are some in our community who exploit students’ interest in and (dare I say) desire for such experiences.  I do not want to become one of them, even unwittingly.

But what it comes down to is this.  At the end of the day, how can you share your experiences with someone else?  You can’t, not without a common frame of reference (a teaching tool I need to write a lot more about!)  As teachers, it must be our role to direct our students through a programme of learning that will result in our students having these experiences for themselves.  How to achieve that is perhaps the ultimate question of teaching, and it was the last question my teacher and I discussed before he left us.

And, as I experienced on Tuesday night watching my Improvers’ students explore the principle of Relax the Waist, on those rare occasions when we pull it off, there are few pleasures in life more satisfying :)

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My own experience with books over the years is three-fold:

1. As a beginner, I simply had no common frame of reference to understand the great advice available in the great Tai Chi books.  Looking back in recent years, I can now see that many of the answers I’ve sought were there under my nose the entire time, but I simply didn’t understand enough to see that.
2. There are a great many Tai Chi books that (imho) are utter rubbish.  I don’t mean that they are written badly, but that the advice they contain is demonstrably wrong.  Much to my wife’s disgust, I collect these almost as avidly as I do the better books, and my students can look forward to the day when I share these books with them, and ask them to pick out the many flaws they contain :D
3. The books that could be called authentic are a great source of advice.  I was taught to take nothing on faith, to always seek out and verify everything I was taught by Robert.  New information can promote a path of experience to new understanding, and in the light of new information things must change.

You can’t learn from a book.  Knowledge comes from a book, but understanding only comes from experience.  Books can’t replace a good teacher, but they can certainly validate good teaching.  And they can expose bad teaching too.

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I’d appreciate the advice of my fellow Tai Chi teachers on what teaching aids work best for you.  Have you found written notes work best, and if so how have you organised them?  Videos make boost income, but what style of video best helps students learn?  Have you tried any audio CDs at all?

Let me know in the comments below.

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And if that wasn’t enough to smile about, the next Tai Chi for Beginners course has just kicked off too.  Running on a Thursday evening down at the Barry Island Community Centre, I’ve been lucky see a great group of students enrol for this year’s course, and by the New Year we’ll be able to see who has decided that Tai Chi is for them.  (Tai Chi classes in Adult Continuing Education understandably suffer quite the drop-out rate).

Now that the classes are back, I’ll be back regularly blogging about Tai Chi and my experiences teaching it.  I hope someone finds it useful; I see so little written about teaching Tai Chi.

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The students enrolling for Intermediate Tai Chi have all successfully completed the Beginners’ class.  They can all do the warm-ups, and they can all play the form from start to end under supervision.  They haven’t begun to incorporate the Ten Principles yet, and they haven’t done any push hands yet.  These are things that I’ve deliberately not included in the Beginners’ Tai Chi, because I believe that it’s simply too much all at once.

My current thinking (which will doubtless change as I refine my plans over the next two months) is centred around my desire to enable my students to take their Tai Chi and enjoy it for the rest of their lives without having to come back for regular classes.  I would love for them to come back (we all get on very well), but I don’t want them to have to.

Proposed learning outcomes for the Intermediate Tai Chi class:

• Students should be able to perform the warm-ups with minimal instruction.
• Students should be able to perform the form with minimal instruction.
• Students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the Ten Principles.
• Students should be able to perform the static push-hands drills.

What do you think?

I’m wondering how to incorporate both learning the principles and getting enough time at the push hands drills in just 60 hours of contact time.  When you take away time for warm-ups, playing the form at least twice each class, and breaks, at the very best that leaves about 40 minutes each week to introduce students to new material (principles and push hands).  Will that be enough to cover both topics sufficiently?

Today, I don’t know.

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• Tuesday, 8th July 2008; 7pm-9pm
• Tuesday, 22nd July 2008; 7pm-9pm
• Tuesday, 5th August 2008; 7pm-9pm
• Tuesday, 19th August 2008; 7pm-9pm

There will be no classes in September until the next academic year’s classes start. I don’t have confirmed dates for those yet, but when I do, I’ll post them here. I do know that Intermediate Tai Chi will be on Tuesdays, and the Beginners’ Tai Chi will be on Thursday evenings.

Students from my Beginner’s Tai Chi Class 2007-2008 are welcome to these summer classes (whether you completed the year or not).

If you’re interested in joining the next Beginners’ Class (starts September 2008 for 30 weeks), you’re very welcome to come along and see what a class is like, and to have a chat about the course. You’ll not just be able to get my perspective on things; you’ll also be able to chat to existing students to find out how they found the class and my teaching style.

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• 24 step Tai Chi with Master Wang Ming Bo and his students
• Tai Chi and nei gong with Master Zhu Jian Li
• Two persons push hands drill with Master Shen Xing You and Master Shen Xing Zuo
• Chen style Tai Chi with Master Gu Yong Fa
• Wu style Tai Chi with Master Zhang Xi Xing
• Yang style Tai Chi with David Thorpe, Colin Jefferson and Jon Kilgarriff

Well worth a look, to get an idea of how different Tai Chi styles look, especially for my students, as our style has quite a few differences that you should be able to spot :)

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Cross Hands - A Popular Move

Here’s a short video I’ve uploaded to YouTube demonstrating the different places where we cross hands in our form:

1. Cross Hands after Shoulder Press
2. Cross Hands after Box Ears (which is repeated again at the end of our form)
3. Cross Hands Low after Golden Pheasant Stands on One Leg, immediately followed by Cross Hands after Golden Pheasant Stands On One Leg (repeated twice, but not properly shown on the video)
4. Crossed Guard in Fair Ladies corner #1
5. Crossed Guard in Fair Ladies corner #2
6. Crossed Hands in Fair Ladies corner #4
7. Cross Hands Travelling Low after the Second Squatting Single Whip, immediately followed by Step Up To Seven Stars

In most of these moves, we’re in motion as we play Cross Hands.  Normally we’re moving off to the side, which is consistent with the idea of using Cross Hands to bridge with an opponent before taking control of their energy and using it against them.  But there are a couple of cases where this clearly isn’t happening in our version of the form, and I find that interesting.

Cross Hands As A Block

What’s going on with the Cross Hands Low immediately after Golden Pheasant Stands On One Leg, the third example in the video?  Take another look at it.  With my current understanding of Tai Chi, that looks like a two-handed block against a kick, in a very static position, followed by a block against a follow-up strike or punch.

This is where I had a better understanding of the fighting side of our art, for sure.  The immediate question I have about this is one of practicality.  Would the Cross Hands Low be strong enough to block a kick, and what is the likelihood of the kick causing serious damage to the hands and wrists in the process?

It stands out for me as something to investigate further because it seems quite the anomaly …

The Crossed Guard In Fair Ladies

In the first two corners of Fair Ladies Weaves Shuttles To The Four Corners, we almost cross hands but not quite.  The left hand falls and the right hand rises, but they pass left hand inside right, as if guarding the right side of the head and body as one zone from attack.  Lacking a better name for this move, I’ve started calling it Crossed Guard.

It shares one of the major characteristics of Cross Hands - the arm attached to the leading shoulder is on the outside of the move.  Indeed, in corner #4, we actually play Cross Hands, which immediately separates out into a head guard and a body guard.

So my first question to investigate is whether or not we should Cross Hands in corners #1 and #2 before immediately transitioning into Crossed Guard (artistically, possibly, but from a martial perspective, I have doubts).  And my second question?  Where should the emphasis and explanation be for folks who are in it for the health benefits rather than the martial aspect?

Summing Up

Hopefully my video doesn’t suck too badly (I’m pretty sure my performance does!) and it gives you an idea of the different ways we play Cross Hands in the Ng Family Yang Style Tai Chi form that I study and teach.

The video shows two areas - Cross Hands Low and Fair Ladies corners #1 and #2 - where we play Cross Hands differently, and where I currently have questions about both form and function.  

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And, for my students, a treasure hunt … can you spot which of the Thirteen Postures appears where in Grasp Sparrows Tail? Especially the one I haven’t mentioned yet in my class? :)

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