Five Fundamentals
In Real Taiji we focus on fundamentals of T’ai Chi Chuan. Imagine big bricks and build the Tai Chi System of Fighting and Healing with
- form
- applications
- natural motions
- partner drills
- striking methods
While 5 physical fundamentals firmly found the fundamental foundation, advanced Tai Chi Chuan refines the fundamentals with finer points, fun, and finesse — c-back, explosive energy, eagle vision, dragon mind, death-point striking, healing energy, internal energy circulation, meditation, silk reeling, and weapon training, just to name a few. We focus on the fundamental foundation and we fine tune this subtle internal art by flirting with advanced training method of T’ai Chi Chuan.
Lifting Upward
Flirting with advanced Taiji draws out the Qi. Visiting with advanced concepts briefly but consistently, allows us to build experience with internal motions and lets us taste little tastes of Qi experiences.
Learn outlines of Dragon Prawn Boxing (the Vertical Methods) and practice just for a bit, concentrating not-too-precisely on the form of the motions, feeling more for c-back and eye gazing methods. Practice for 20 minutes; return to it later.
We tease our Tai Chi one little advanced experience at a time. Our little experience with Dragon Prawn Boxing may sink into our form. We might begin to feel our spine moving or discover, with our Eagle-Eyes, the unity of shadows. Motion in an opponent’s push-hands might be seen in shadow shapes, as they happen, easily.
Returning to the Dragon Prawn Boxing, we discover that’s it’s easier and that we can go faster with less effort. Little by little, we flirt with the Qi.
Attention Tension: Tunnel Vision
In contrast, narrowly or tightly focusing on advanced concepts, might suppress our ability to discover advanced Tai Chi energies.
Too much focus, too much attention (at-tension), and you chase off the Qi. If I, for example, focus wholly on Death-Point-Striking, I may learn the points and develop some aggressive energies, but it’s unlikely that I gain an ability to affect Acu-Points in a stressful environment; that’s why knockouts you see in seminars are done with cooperative victims.
Likewise, when softness and relaxation become the whole emphasis in Taijiquan generally or in Pushing Hands in particular, minds numb with fantasies of fighting without force. This soft-concept is not a Foundation, rather, it’s an advanced kind of finesse, or, in many case, it’s fantasy.
Stake the foundation of practice into
- natural motion exploration
- proper and detailed form movements
- visual and kinesthetic form applications
- repetitive tension-relaxation training
- light striking practices
Tease out Qi concepts and movements, with finesse, fun, tact, and precision, by flirting with one drill, one method, one experience at a time.
