Chapter
7
Horse Stance and Other Terms
In This Chapter
• Understanding the importance of T’ai Chi posture
• Learning how T’ai Chi protects your joints
• Discovering how T’ai Chi’s moves teach effortless living
• Knowing that breath is the beginning of everything
• Web Video Support: Locating Your Dan Tien and Vertical Axis; Sinking into the Horse Stance; and Your Rotating Dan Tien Massage Your Organs
This chapter explains the core concepts that will ensure a rich T’ai Chi experience for you, whether you are beginning classes or a video instruction program. You will discover the basic concepts of T’ai Chi, how its movements are to be performed, why they are performed that way, and how to breathe when performing them. By understanding that T’ai Chi is very different from Western exertion exercises, you won’t make it harder than it is, and by relaxing into it, you unlock its full, effortless potential.
I introduced the dan tien in Chapter 1. See Locating Your Dan Tien and Vertical Axis in Web Video Support: www.idiotsguides.com/taichi. In T’ai Chi, we move from the dan tien by first sinking into the Horse Stance. This is how we sink our Qi, which makes us more solid, more balanced, and more down to earth physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Make a triangle with your thumbs over your navel and with your forefingers extending downward. Your fingertips will meet at the level of your dan tien. Refer to the Web Video Support’s Locating Your Dan Tien and Vertical Axis sections.
Where the dan tien is located on the outside of the body only tells its height, for the dan tien is actually inside the body. Here’s how to find your dan tien inside:
1. With your fingers forming a triangle as described in the previous figure, point your fingers as if they could extend inside your body.
2. Your fingers are now pointing toward your dan tien; however, the dan tien is near the center of your body, so it only can be felt on the inside.
3. Now tighten your sphincter muscles, as if you were pulling up your internal organs from within, and then immediately relax. Repeat this over and over until you experience a subtle tugging sensation inside, just beyond where your fingers are pointing to your upper pelvis or lower abdomen.
4. The place where you feel that subtle tugging feeling is where your dan tien is. That isn’t your dan tien itself—that was a muscle tugging—your dan tien is an energy center.
5. Dan tien only can be experienced as energy, tingling, or other light sensations. This is where all powerful movement or action comes from, and cultivated awareness of the dan tien with T’ai Chi makes any action you take more powerful, with less likelihood of injury.
The Horse Stance and Three Dan Tiens
The dan tien is the basis of the Horse Stance. The Horse Stance is the basic stance for all martial arts, including T’ai Chi. It aligns the three dan tien points, upper or Shang dan tien (associated with the Yin Tang acupuncture point), middle or Zhong dan tien (Shan Zhong point), and lower or Xia dan tien (Qi Hai point), to give you the best posture and most effortless movement. Refer to the Web Video Support for a deeper understanding of the energetic nature of the three dan tiens.
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KNOW YOUR CHINESE |
Note that the head is drawn upward toward the sky, as if a string were pulling from the center of the head. The chin is slightly pulled in, and the tailbone or sacrum is dropped down. This has the effect of lengthening the spine.
This figure illustrates how the spine is lengthened as you drop into the Horse Stance, although this is an exaggeration.
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The Vertical Axis Aligns Posture
Many lower-back injuries are caused by poor performance posture. T’ai Chi encourages you to maintain good posture and reminds you when you get sloppy. To achieve proper posture, align the three dan tien points over the soles of the feet, with the weight slightly more to the heels than the front.
As you practice T’ai Chi’s slow, gentle forms, your back may experience discomfort whenever you forget posture and let your butt creep out too much. However, when done correctly, the slow, gentle, low-impact nature of T’ai Chi will alert you to correct your posture or any other poor physical habits long before real damage occurs. This is what sets T’ai Chi apart from other training. In fact, you often don’t become aware of problems in high-impact sports until the doctor is telling you not to play that sport ever again.
The vertical axis is not just about posture, but also about giving your body an effortless support to sink its weight onto each time you exhale. Chapter 13’s instructional figures show a short line extending from the top of the head out through the bottom of the filled-foot. Your body’s weight sinks down through the leg you are filling, down into the earth, to take the load off your body. See Vertical Axis in Motion in Web Video Support.
This will seem kind of esoteric at first, but as you again and again pretend to let your entire body sink onto the support of the energy rod that extends from 12 feet above your head, straight down through the center of your body, and roots down 12 feet into the earth below you, which we refer to as the vertical axis, it will begin to feel very tangible, and will literally hold you up. So, how do we “sink”?
T’ai Chi is about sinking. All teachers of all styles often talk about “the sinking.” This isn’t like heaviness as in a ship sinking, but more of a weightless release of muscles, allowing the skeleton to effortlessly hold the weight of the body. Let your relaxed shoulders sink away from your neck as you sink into your movements. It’s as if you were swimming through an atmosphere of effortlessness as you move through your forms. The Web Video Support’s Sinking into Your Horse Stance provides a visual support for these instructions. The Sinking is not just physical, for as you know by now, there is a mental and emotional awareness aspect to the physical. When you let your breath and muscles go, your mind and heart are also sinking into a deeper internal awareness, and letting go of their grip on the world. You are sinking into a Zen state of being here and now.
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A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE |
Each T’ai Chi movement is associated with an inhale and/or an exhale. When you move and exhale, you allow your body to sink into a feeling of effortlessness. As you transfer your weight from one leg to the other, relax the entire weight of the body down into the weight-bearing leg. The Chinese call this “sinking your Qi.”
By practicing this in T’ai Chi, you will move more effortlessly and your balance will improve. This also promotes blood and energy circulation through the body and encourages less joint damage by removing chronic tension from your daily movements. Tight muscles make tighter joints. The Web Video Support’s Let Breath Flow Your Movements provides a visual image of how the breath is related to “sinking” into the movement.
Never Pivot a Leg You’ve Sunk Into
If you ever watched the TV series Kung Fu, you may have seen Kwai Chang Caine walk across the rice paper for his graduation ceremony at the Shao Lin Temple. This looked very mystical, but it was actually a very practical test.
The purpose of the test was to discover whether he was pivoting the foot that was carrying his weight, or the leg that he had just sunk into. In most T’ai Chi, once you sink into a leg, you do not pivot on that weight-bearing foot because this can destabilize your balance and, more important, can cause knee damage. Styles that do pivot on weight-bearing legs do so rarely and take certain precautions to prevent injury. These pivots are not recommended for arthritis sufferers, but most styles will make a clear point of not pivoting on a filled leg.
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T’ai Chi movement is a process of “filling” and “emptying” each leg of Qi, or weight. The position of the dan tien over a leg determines that it is full and the other leg is empty. You “fill” the opposite foot by shifting your dan tien over that opposite foot. Then your “empty” foot has no weight on it and can be pivoted with zero damage to the knee. The Web Video Support’s Filling Left Leg to Pivot Empty Right Foot provides a visual example of how only the emptied foot is pivoted. Chapter 13’s shadowing illustrations also clearly explains this for all the long form’s movements in that chapter.
When you begin doing T’ai Chi, you will benefit from rereading this and the other earlier chapters. You’ll notice things you missed this first time through. It doesn’t mean you goofed; it means there are multiple layers and dimensions to the motions and to each chapter that you can’t comprehend all at once.
Some of the highest level of T’ai Chi and QiGong teachers have read this book several times and reported finding new insights in it each time. This is why, in a few instances, you see Web Video Support titles repeated in more than one chapter. The depth of these ancient teachings, evolved over thousands of years, is so great that you can discover whole new dimensions of each topic as you view it from different perspectives.
The Vertical Axis of the head and heart dan tien points lines up over the lower dan tien. This axis moving over a leg fills that leg with Qi, or weight. As you let your breath out and relax your body weight onto a leg, you sink your Qi into that leg.
Active Bones Under Soft Muscle
T’ai Chi is unlike any exercise you have ever done because it is done best when it’s done easily. T’ai Chi’s way will also provide a model for practicing the art of effortlessness in everything you do. When viewing the Web Video Support’s T’ai Chi exhibitions in Chapters 13 and 14, notice how effortlessness seems to be the T’ai Chi player’s goal.
Most Western exercises involve some type of force or strain. T’ai Chi does not. The more effortlessly you are moving, the better you’re doing it. You may catch yourself subconsciously tightening muscles because we have been taught that exercise must cause strain. Also, at first your balance may not be very solid, and you will tighten your leg muscles a lot to hold you steady. This is normal, and over time you’ll find that you can relax your muscles more and more. As you get used to proper posture, using the Vertical Axis alignment you’ll need less muscle tension to hold you up. So don’t be discouraged if T’ai Chi doesn’t feel so “effortless” at first. We are learning how to move effortlessly, by first becoming aware of how tight we are and then using QiGong breathing techniques taught in Part 3. Soon we begin to “let go” of needless effort as we move through T’ai Chi movements and life.
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When doing T’ai Chi warm-ups, allow your mind to let go of thoughts and center on your effortless breath. Then enjoy the sensations of the muscles loosening as you move. On each breath, think of letting the muscles beneath the muscles let go of each other, as they also let go of the bones beneath. As we relax our muscles, the bones moving beneath provide a deep-tissue massage and the body can cleanse itself of toxins. Also, the relaxed abdominal muscles allow a gentle massage of the internal organs, which tonifies them and improves their function. View the Web Video Support’s Your Rotating Dan Tien Massages Your Organs for a visual image about relaxed internal massaging of the organs.
Don’t force yourself to go as low or deep in your stances as your instructor. You have the rest of your life to get lower. Right now, just focus on breathing, relaxing, and letting the muscles relax on the bones, again by allowing the entire body to relax as you exhale.
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SAGE SIFU SAYS |
Always keep the knees bent in T’ai Chi and QiGong. The depth of that bend depends on what feels good to you. Someone with knee problems may bend his or her knees only slightly at first, whereas someone more athletic may bend more. Don’t let competitiveness cause you to go any deeper than what feels good. You won’t win a prize, and you’ll enjoy the class less because you are straining too much. The relaxed bend of the knees allows the rest of the body to be more loose and flexible, especially the hips.
As you become more familiar with your T’ai Chi forms, your body will become more adept at sinking into them, as your vertical axis’s postural alignment takes pressure off your body. What you’ll find is that when your T’ai Chi forms feel “easy” is when you are doing them correctly. Moving with poor posture and muscular tension makes the movements harder. T’ai Chi’s slow biofeedback aspect will reveal to you that “easiness” will, over time, become an internal tutor that will improve your T’ai Chi forms much more than any teacher can correct from the outside looking in at you. When your movements feel hard, you’ll begin to automatically check into your posture, breathing, and tension levels to help the movement become “easier.” See Web Video Support’s Internal Tutor for Vertical Alignment to help get a sense of what this is about.
T’ai Chi is a mind/body exercise that integrates your mental, emotional, and physical aspects. Therefore, as you learn to move more effortlessly, you will notice that emotionally and mentally you find ways to move through life with less and less effort. This doesn’t mean you’ll get less done. You’ll probably get more done because someone with calm emotions and a relaxed mind is much more creative than someone who is in constant mental or emotional turmoil.
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T’AI SCI |
As you study T’ai Chi, be aware of any patterns you have that make learning T’ai Chi more difficult. You may find that you push yourself very hard, straining at every movement. Or you may discover that you are hypercritical of yourself, or perhaps you sabotage your progress by avoiding practice and skipping classes. All these patterns are probably something you do in all aspects of your life, not just in T’ai Chi. By learning how to “play” T’ai Chi in a process of effortless learning, without strain, self-judgment, or self-sabotage, you will discover a new way to learn T’ai Chi and create a new, more effective way to learn in all your life’s endeavors. You will become more successful and self-actualizing by becoming clearer and more self-aware of unconscious patterns that inhibit the realization of your dreams.
T’ai Chi Motions Are Round Motions
In Chinese, the word for “round” is roughly equivalent to the American slang word cool. The Chinese felt that roundness was calming and comforting, and T’ai Chi is filled with images of roundness. In practicing T’ai Chi, we often move our hands over imaginary orbs or spheres of energy that, over time, become tangible enough to feel. This practice, although at first a little alien, eventually becomes very soothing. It helps us become attuned to our sensations. It is like practicing “feeling.” Practice makes perfect, and this is no exception. Refer to the Web Video Support’s Roundness Is Soothing and POWERFUL for a visual on this idea of roundness as part of the T’ai Chi movements.
In this Moving QiGong exercise, your hands begin at groin level and circle up as if stroking a huge 3-foot pearl in front of your torso. Move your hands up, over, and down the back of the pearl.
After the hands slide up and over the giant pearl, they descend along the backside until coming to rest in front of your chest, as if you were about to push someone.
Breath Is the Root of T’ai Chi and QiGong
The essence of T’ai Chi is the breath. While doing T’ai Chi, you inhale or exhale with every movement. There is nothing more effortless in the entire universe than the release of a full breath. Therefore, T’ai Chi’s ability to weave exhales with the relaxation of sinking your Qi into your weight shifts creates a powerful habit. This habit of relaxed breathing through everything you do is simple and yet may change the way you live the rest of your life. But again, the reason to do it is because it feels good.
There are many QiGong breathing exercises. In fact, all QiGong exercises are breathing exercises, when you get down to it. However, among all of them there are two main forms of breathing: postbirth breathing, which is pretty normal, and prebirth breathing, which takes a little more getting used to.
The names of these breathing forms may be based on the fact that we drew breath in through the umbilical cord before birth, and we draw air in through the upper body afterward. This is reflected in the way we draw air into the body during QiGong breathing, depending on which type we are doing.
With postbirth—or normal—breathing, the abdominal muscles expand out a bit as you breathe in to the abdomen; then the chest expands as the tops of the lungs fill. They then relax back in as you exhale, emptying first the chest and then the lower lungs. This is how T’ai Chi and many QiGong exercises are done. However, some QiGong exercises employ prebirth breathing.
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During postbirth breathing, don’t force the breath, but rather allow the body to relax as the breath enters. The following figure illustrates postbirth breathing:
1. Breathe into the lower lungs as the abdomen relaxes slightly outward.
2. Allow the lungs and upper chest to fill as well.
3. As the body relaxes with the exhale of breath, the upper chest deflates first.
4. Then the abdomen relaxes in, completely expelling the air from the lungs.
Repeat this for 10 or 15 minutes if you like, with wonderful results for mind and body. This image is animated in the Web Video Support’s Qigong Breathing Tutorial.
Four-step postbirth breathing.
Prebirth breathing is just the opposite of postbirth breathing. As you inhale, draw your abdominal muscles in gently, and allow them to relax as you exhale. (Each breathing method has different qualities and is discussed during the moving exercises in Parts 3, 4, and 5.)
In prebirth breathing …
1. Slightly draw in your abdomen, especially your lower abdomen, as you inhale.
2. Then, when you exhale, relax your abdomen back out.
Two-step prebirth breathing.
Prebirth breathing involves a bit of training and some cautionary notes. It is advisable to practice normal postbirth breathing only during your exercises, unless you’re training with an experienced QiGong instructor.
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A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE |
Knowing Your Martial Terms for T’ai Chi
Because T’ai Chi was originally a martial art, an introduction to some martial arts terms may be helpful. When you learn T’ai Chi, your instructor may use these or similar terms to describe the T’ai Chi movements.
Understand that any one of these martial arts movements can be done any way that you need to do it for your own comfort. So if you have an injury or condition that limits your movement, do it in a way that feels comfortable to you. Never strain yourself to do something that doesn’t feel right; just modify it a bit, kick lower, or reach less. As you play T’ai Chi in a way that feels good, over the days, months, and years, your kicks will get higher and higher.
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A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE |
T’ai Chi has punches. They’re not hard, grunting punches, but instead soft, relaxing punches. There are generally three types of punches used. Both punches illustrated in the following figures begin with your fist by your hip, with the palm side of the fist turned up toward the sky. The first is a common T’ai Chi punch and begins with the fist at the waist, palm turned in toward the body, with no rotation of the fist as you punch. The other two are slightly more complex and therefore are shown in the following figures. However, then you do a full twist as you send it out to punch in front of you, so the fist ends up with the palm facing down toward the ground.
The second punch is a Half Twist Punch. This begins with the fist near the hip with the palm turned up. When you throw the punch out, the fist rotates only a half turn, leaving the knuckles lined up in a row, top knuckle toward the sky and pinkie knuckle toward the ground.
In the Full Fist Turn Punch, the fist ends up palm down.
The Half Twist Punch is more common in T’ai Chi, with the knuckles ending up vertical.
Punches are generally not thrown out in big, circular haymaker punches like you’ve seen in old Westerns (think John Wayne). They come straight out from the hip like a piston, with the elbows tucked in. The elbows usually don’t extend out from the sides, but stay in near the body.
Because of the many Western movies we’ve seen, most Westerners also try to punch with the whole upper body, actually leaning into the punch. However, in T’ai Chi and all martial arts, you don’t normally lean into the punch. When the punch is complete, your head will still be posturally aligned above your dan tien.
Although there may be exceptions to how punches are thrown in various T’ai Chi forms, usually the rule of not leaning forward is observed. However, there are times when the fist may circle around rather than punch straight out from the hip. Such as in Chapter 13’s Movement #46, “Box Opponent’s Ears,” where you will see an example of this rounder punch.
There are three types of blocks: In Blocks, Out Blocks, and Up Blocks. Their names explain whether the arm is blocking in toward the center of the body, out away from the center of the body, or up away from the body. One other less-used block is the Down Block, which looks like an Out Block in reverse. An example is seen in Chapter 13’s Movement #23, “Wind Blowing Lotus Leaves.”
An In Block begins with the fist near your ear; then your arm is pulled in a circular motion across the front of your body.
An Out Block begins with the fist near your groin; then your arm is pulled in a circular sweep up across your body to block outward.
An Up Block begins with the fist palm facing your face; then your palm is twisted away up to the sky, blocking up and away.
T’ai Chi generally uses three kicks: Side or Separation Kicks, Crescent Kicks, and Front Kicks. Examples of these kicks can be viewed in Part 4, where the side kick is called “Separa-tion of the Right Foot (and Left Foot),” the Crescent Kick is called “Wave Hand over Water Lily Kick,” and the Front Kick is called “Front Kick.”