Flapping Around in Tai Chi and Qigong.

Feb 16, 20193 min read

Updated: Jan 24

Copying movements in Tai Chi & Qigong

When seeing Tai Chi or Qigong for the first time, it appears that all those graceful movements are the result of moving our limbs into the ‘correct’ position. So in order to learn those arts, we attempt to emulate the movements as precisely as possible.

The art of precision

I know this because I spent many years being an exponent of this way of learning as precisely as possible:

Make sure you slip your heel to 45 degrees.
Is your wrist precisely level with your shoulder?
Step forward and push your arms ahead of you.
Are your fingertips level with the tip of your nose?

... and so on; in other words, instructions for the body parts.

On the other hand, if you don’t learn that way, it’s very difficult to learn anything; you need a structure to play around with.

Once upon a time...

In the olden days (whatever they are), the teacher would spend weeks on one move only, refining and polishing it until it was as near perfect as possible.

Nowadays students don’t have the patience, they want a ‘product’, something that they can take home with them. I don’t have a problem with this, but it means changing the method of teaching. The superficial is taught first, and then honed.

Approaching the matter

About 8 years ago, I had a student who, having been with me for several years, one day said to me, “You keep on changing it; you used to tell us to do it this way.”

On paper, this makes it sound as though this particular move had become unrecognisable, which of course it hadn’t, but the focus was different, and a movement that she thought that she’d ‘sorted out' had now become uncomfortably flexible again.

Change

However, a number of things had happened since she had first learnt the move:

1) Her tai chi had reached the point where the basic shapes weren’t enough, so she needed more information, and

2) My own understanding had developed and I had different ways of explaining things from additional perspectives.

My student also wanted a finished product that she could bag up and take home, which is exactly how I used to think about tai chi; I had the “there is only one way to do it and this is the correct way" syndrome. ...She eventually left.

It’s the connection

It’s the Qi connection that really counts.

Yes, you might to certain extent be able to be precise about the position of arms and legs, but at the end of the day it’s how you are feeling inside that’s the main thing.

This feeling is an over-all sensation of unity.

It's as though your body were a medieval castle and you need the infrastructure the walls to be very efficient. When it’s working well you are protected on all sides effectively.

This has nothing to do with your being tense or hard, more a feeling that the supply lines between all the walls are working smoothly and to maximum efficiency.

(In Tai Chi this includes above you and below you also).

When one part moves...

My rather clumsy castle analogy comes down to the fact that, gradually you become more and more aware of how your body is knitting itself together during the movements. The result of this is that you’ve never really finished learning tai chi or qigong because there are always new discoveries to be made.

This comes down to the paraphrased saying that "when one part (of you) moves, every part moves". Every part knows what the other part is doing; nothing is hanging around waiting. When something happens in one part of the body, it is reflected in all other parts.

This is the 8 energies and the Principles in practice

James Drewe teaches Tai Chi and Qigong in both London and in Kent and online.

Details of weekly classes both live and online can be found on the website, and there are classes for 2-person Tai Chi on one Saturday a month.