Beginner’s Taijiquan from rigidity to flexibility
Everything in the world has two sides, is positive and negative, yin and yang, inside and outside, real and virtual, just and soft …… martial arts have just and soft, taijiquan is a martial art rather than fitness gymnastics, so taijiquan also pay attention to just and soft, virtual and real and so on.
Taijiquan talk about just talk about loose talk about soft, talk about just and soft. But how can the rigid and soft together? Just how to come? Just, okay to understand, soft from where? As I said in the previous article, the beginner should hit hard and wrestle hard, stretching the tendons and pulling out the bones, and use this method to open the joints in order to get out of the stiffness. No hard enough to talk about soft, boxing style without just soft will be soft and powerless; no soft enough to raise hard, no soft hard will be brittle but not hard.
Taijiquan also pay attention to just and soft
Some people may not understand, does Taijiquan also need to be rigid? Of course. The so-called rigidity here is the rigidity at the initial stage of learning. After the gradual and natural stiffness of just, gradually and loosely and softly, manifested in the boxing posture is full of internal and external, strong muscles and bones, section through the eight sides of the support, not in the hardness of a hand and a foot, but a loose and sinking out of the practice of the stiffness and softness. It is also the overall strength of the body. That is, what is said in the theory of boxing, the soft can be no micro, the essence of just indestructible, the body of a move without moving, a static without a static and soft, pine is not soft, soft is not soft, playing tai chi is to be loose and soft and steel of the strength.
Nowadays, when practicing Taijiquan, it is repeatedly emphasized that relaxation and softness should be relaxed, punches should be loose, kicks should be loose, and loose is required everywhere, which is not wrong, but how to be loose? Loose is practiced, not thought out, loose is required, not all loose, all loose on the soft. I have seen a lot of people around the practice of taijiquan asked the teacher how to relax, the teacher repeatedly demonstrated that the people who learn to keep nodding thoughtfully, in fact, did not understand, and then practiced or shoulder frame elbow prostrate buttocks.
Young and strong boxing practice at the beginning of the practice from just and loose, from loose and soft, practicing just power, the power of the acquired blood and gas is essential, that is, the turbid gas is unavoidable, with the deep kung fu days, more and more useful power, and less and less useless power, just power gradually came out. This is like a master creating a sculpture, chopping and axe chiseling. The more useless things you remove, the more you are close to success when there is nothing left to remove. Taijiquan is the same way, the depth of kung fu is not in how much force you use, but in how much useless force you use less. Because the extra force is not only useless, but also hinders the formation of the overall strength, and the extra force is the invisible rope that binds you. In the boxing sutra, the phrase “bound by demons” refers to the excess force. Only by removing the more useless force can you ensure that your own power will be more complete, more fierce and more penetrating and explosive…
Practicing tai chi with the intention of emptying and relaxing yourself
Some people may say that there is nothing wrong with using intention to guide relaxation, from loose to soft, and using intention to dominate the body in order to achieve the realm of intention to qi to jing to, but the so-called intention, qi, jing, jing, and jing are different realms of kung fu, so how can they be generalized? After practicing for ten years, twenty years, or even thirty or forty years what is going on in the dantian is not clear, just pointing to the belly and saying that qi sinks into the dantian. Isn’t this fooling people? Many good teachers are teaching step by step, but the people who learn boxing can’t hold their breath, and after learning for ten days and half a month, they start to jump up and down, floating and dancing.
At the beginning of practicing taijiquan, they are always pursuing relaxation and softness, measuring the depth of their power by the degree of softness, and measuring their enlightenment by the number of routines they have learned and how fast they have learned them. This kind of learning is not practicing Taijiquan, it is a show. How can a soft and fluffy loose and soft have a supporting force, how can it have an impact and penetrating force? Loose sinking degree, neutral and comfortable is the Taijiquan kung fu, the body is not sitting in the real neutral, the action of playing the loose and easy that is not necessarily the real loose and soft. Only by stretching the tendons and pulling out the bones of the whole body and pulling the bones apart to the right and holding them together, is the original neutralization. It is only when the qi converges into the bones that there will be true relaxation. From this rigid force into the hand can gradually relax and produce loose and soft in order to produce penetrating force, in order to practice the endless strength.