Two Ways to Reach Out for Real
You’ve used the terms: Yin and Yang. And you know, at least abstractly, what they mean.
Yin suggests things like dark and receptive and open and soft and easy and relaxed and feminine and expansive. Yang asserts stuff like light, creative, closed, rigid, tough, tense, masculine, directive.
But you knew that.
I bet you’ve explained Yin and Yang, to someone or other, once or twice.
It’s so abstract. And Yin and Yang, while you may recognize them in weird, conceptual, intellectual kinds of ways (it’s okay: these are legitimate ways)…the juice and guts of Taijiquan digest and release Yin and Yang quite concretely. (Is that a gripping metaphor?)
Try this → hold your arms out. Right now, get the feel for this. (You can do this right at your computer.) Hold your forearms out, parallel to the floor, palms down, fingertips pointing away to the horizon or the wall. Call that neutral. It’s a nice position, hands hovering over your keyboard.
Now point your fingers downward, noting the bend in the wrist. It’s flexion at the wrist joint: call it Yin.
Next, point those fingers up from neutral: extension at the wrist is called Yang. Your forearm, wrist, hand, and palm are Yang. It’s a real, concrete exploration of universal principles…and I offer you the nomenclature right now, so we can finesse this topic (a little now and a lot later).
That mini exploration explores the existence of Yin and Yang. But it’s static…moving enriches it.
The wrist that is Yang cannot act Yang. The Yang wrist creates Yin energy. Likewise, wrists that are Yin cannot act Yinnily. Yin arms offer Yang expression. Watch, I’ll show you….
Yin & Yang Wrists in Taijiquan
Each movement in your form (and your life), if you’re attentive and relaxed, then your wrists and hands express changes continuously. If you move without expressing change in your wrists: you’re moving wrong. Yep–it’s wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Okay…okay…if you like niceties, let’s say: you could use more relaxation and efficacy. Oh, and, if you’re new to Taijiquan or internal arts, then you should know that this is a fairly advanced topic.
But you can get it.
And when you apply it, your T´ai-chi Chüan will roll right along in an advanced way. So maybe call not-expressive wrists: bad, bad, bad, or beginner, beginner, beginner if you don’t like to be wrong.
Hold these principles as self-evident; after all, you already knew about Yin and Yang.
Then really dig down into the details of how you move. Every bit of every motion in Taiji form and pushing hands (and cutting vegetables for power stew) contains changes: real, live changes.
Yin becomes Yang creates Yin, and round it goes.
Fill your form with fluid wrist-changes. Yin and Yang radiate new, real, and tangible meanings when you embody them. Fantasies fall away.
You’re left with right, real Taijiquan.