Tai Chi (太极拳 - tài jí quán): Soft inner power and its philosophies

There are 2 types of inner power:

• Hard type; often seen in many martial art practices, such as: expelling enemies without touching them, bare protection to any sharp weapon, etc.
• Soft type, which I will describe more in the following passage.

Every one has soft inner power (SIP). The simplest illustration about the SIP is: if someone moving a box from point A to B, than he has been already used an SIP. However, once the box has been placed at point B, then the SIP has also been over.

Maintaining our SIP is essential. The more long-lasting the SIP we maintain, the higher our body immunity will be, consequently the more resistant our body to any disease will be. The point is how to train our SIP to be more continuous and more long-lasting. The simplest answer is by practicing “Tai Chi Chuan”.

Every movement of Tai Chi is inspired by philosophies of Buddhism and Taoism. The period when Tai Chi was created, these two teachings were popular in China. It’s believed that most of Taoist monk practiced Tai Chi for maintaining health reason.

The philosophy of Buddhism "form is emptiness, emptiness is form (空即是色, 色即是空)" and the balance of Yin Yang (阴阳/yīn yáng) of Taoism: softer and harder, upward and downward, outward and inward, bigger and smaller, centrifugal and centripetal, are basic philosophies of Tai Chi movement.

Here I can describe Tai Chi Chuan 24 styles and 42 styles, the two styles that I am familiar with. Each movement, from the beginning until the closing part, must flow and not be fragmented, although the formation theme of each movement must be shown obviously .

The best illustration to explain the concept of Tai Chi movement is: Our universe! From an empty space, then the big bang initiates the whole thing, the forming of solar system and other star systems. And everything works based on natural gravity power (as analogized to be the SIP), hence there appears revolution (major movement) and rotation (minor movement), night and day light; and everything must be balance. If any of this system doesn’t work properly, or stop rotating or revolving, then it is the end of the world.

From this analogy, says you are practicing Tai Chi 24 styles, if you perform the whole movement (open-close, revolving-rotating, major-minor, etc) without a balance flow, then your practice of maintaining ISP is totally useless. That’s why the more practice the better.

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The first day I practised Tai Chi Chuan - 24 styles, my right leg was so painful. Both legs used to be trembling during and after practice. But, it was getting better and better after practising several times.

dedicated to my late Tai Chi master, PekPiu