Tai Chi: Gain Insight & Energy Through Movement
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Performing tai chi on a beach in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo.[1] Image: Alan Kerroux.
Let us begin with some funny observations proving that we ourselves are living contradictions. We are a walking contradiction, because we need two opposite poles in order to walk: a left and a right leg. We are a talking contradiction because, well, who is not familiar with saying one thing while doing the exact opposite? And finally, we are a breathing contradiction, because we need both the opposite movements of breathing in and breathing out to live.
Even though at first glance these pairs of opposites appear to be mutually exclusive, particularly the movements of walking and breathing reveal directly that balance and health can only be maintained by an endless pendulum-like dance between the opposite poles.
In Chinese Taoist philosophy, the yinyang symbol represents this dance of opposites: the continuous movement from the black fish into the white fish into the black fish ad infinitum. Yet, since they together form a perfect circle, the two opposite poles form a whole, in which they ceaselessly alternate in their infinite dance.
This can easily be observed in natural phenomena (besides walking and breathing) like the cycles of waking and sleep, day and night, the tides, the coming and going of the seasons, the menstrual cycle, and the phases of the moon for instance.
The same principle becomes more difficult to fathom when it is applied to abstract terms like good and evil or pleasantness and unpleasantness, especially when a culture encourages us to obtain the positive and avoid or eliminate the negative. That one-sided perspective of life enhances the belief that it’s actually in our power to do so, and the more that belief becomes anchored in someone’s psyche, the more confusing life becomes when positive things are not obtained, and when negative things are.
The endless pendulum-like dance between the opposites pleasantness and unpleasantness as the whole of what we call our state of being. Notice that the joker, who can play any role, fully understands the dance. Image: GDJ
To end the confusion, and the anxiety that accompanies it, we need ways to see through the illusion that opposite poles are mutually exclusive, that we need a healthy balance between them both in order to thrive. For this reason, we can again turn our gaze towards China, for if the yinyang symbol is the abstract representation of the dance of opposites, then tai chi is its physical expression thereof.[2]
When watching people practicing tai chi (or qigong), two features can easily be observed:
1. In tai chi movements, the arms and legs are either moving away from the body or are returning to it;
2. In spinal rotations, the trunk either rotates away from the center towards the right or left, or is rotating from either side back to the center.
That might sound obvious. Yet what makes tai chi stand out as a method to really experience for yourself the continuous going back and forth between opposites, is that it focuses on actually becoming the pendulum yourself by placing your full awareness on the movements.
When you push your arms forward, at some point they are fully stretched and you can’t push any further. The push then turns into its opposite, a pull, where you return the arms in the direction of your body. It’s impossible to indefinitely move your arms (or legs) away from your body, nor is it possible to indefinitely move them back. Pushing at some point inevitably has to turn into its opposite: pulling. Then, together the pushing and pulling form a whole in which they continuously alternate, they are the yinyang of arm movements.
Arms pushing out and pulling in; the yinyang of arm movements being expressed in tai chi.
We can apply this principle to every moving part of the body. It’s quite obvious that it’s impossible to indefinitely and exclusively breathe in, or only breathe out. Every inspiration at some point inevitably has to turn into its opposite, expiration, and together they form the everlasting alternating yinyang of breathing.
Now, in tai chi, which means ‘supreme movement’ or ‘dance between opposites’, we can group all pairs of opposite movements under one heading: giving and taking.
When we give someone a present our arms reach out to that person, and when we take food our arms move back towards our head. That notwithstanding, the reciprocity of giving and taking becomes even more obvious in the process of breathing.
While breathing in you take air from your external world and extract oxygen from it, which is then transformed into carbon dioxide while moving the body around, which is then given back to the air around you on every outbreath. The carbon is then being taken in by plants and trees, and transformed into oxygen that they give back to the air. Subsequently, we and other animals then take that in again while breathing in.
What we observe here is the inseparability between humans, animals, and vegetation, who are all part of an infinite loop of giving and taking, where the one can’t go without the other. In other words: forming a whole.
Therefore, by connecting the movements of the body and breath to the opposites of giving and taking, tai chi places emphasis on their inseparability and unity. This works as follows:
* Giving movements comprise of our limbs moving away from the body, or the trunk rotating to either side from the center, and is accompanied with an expiration (breathing out);
* Taking movements comprise of our limbs moving back towards the body, or the trunk rotating from either side back to the center, and is accompanied with an inspiration (breathing in).
In an equation, it looks like this:
Giving = pushing out + breathing out (or: trunk rotating to either side + breathing out)
Taking = pulling in + breathing in (or: trunk rotating back to the center + breathing in)
In tai chi practice, concentration on these equations will playfully enlarge your awareness of the inseparability of all pairs of opposites. You gently become more receptive to the notion that every contradistinction can only exist when both poles are present, and that if one is eradicated, like breathing in, the other will simultaneously vanish.
So, then, how is the integration of opposites beneficial for you as an individual? The answer is so simple that it’s often overlooked: you stop being anxious.
Once you know with every fibre of your being that you are a human being, and will therefore experience pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the same way that sunshine and rain continuously alternate, you will see that your tendencies to frantically try and obtain the one while avoiding the other slowly disappear. Your whole attitude towards life will become much more relaxed, because you’ll begin to understand the silliness of excessive seriousness which arises from our attachments to all things positive and aversions to all things negative.
Demonstration of the grounding and simultaneously moving power of taiji. Image from acupuncture-goldcoast.com
It can therefore be said that tai chi is a very practical technique. Through the practice, and the insight you gain, you come to literally feel, experience, and become aware of how the flow between opposites is actually a flow of energy; just like electricity can only flow between negative and positive poles. In the same way that a lamp can be seen as a funnel through which electricity flows, we are a funnel through which the energies of heaven and earth continuously flow. Awareness of all that energy makes it available to you.
Finally, remember that tai chi is really about you! It’s about discovering how you breathe, how you move, how you sound, how you physically manifest yourself, how you feel. Tai chi is really about rediscovering something in yourself, and that can only happen through experiencing yourself. Master Huang Chungliang proclaims rightfully that it’s not something that should be superimposed upon you. Naturally, the choreography is an important part of tai chi, but the main thing is that you make it your tai chi. That means that instead of trying to exactly mimic a master, you use the tai chi movements to investigate how your body moves, where your limits are, and how you get to feel the energy flowing through you.
Only then tai chi has the potential of becoming powerful, wholesome, and utterly joyous!
Jolly practicing,
Erik
Notes
[1] From September 2023 until August 2024, I undertook an 11-month tai chi training in a traditional shaolin in China.
[2] Tàijí (太極) is the official Chinese name, which I found out the hard way in China because no one understood me when I tried to explain that I was learning ‘tai chi’.
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