Got Purposeful Posture?
We call it being loose with structure. For beginners this can be challenging. Students are often just told to relax. I have a bit of a problem with this word, although I find myself saying it occasionally. With most of us it conjures an image of lying back in a hammock holding a brightly colored drink sporting a little bamboo umbrella.
Even though most students seem to have trouble with this concept at first, it’s really not all that difficult to do. Once you can accomplish this, you can begin to manage it and break that old habit of holding unnecessary tension.
Let’s use holding up your arm as an example. The idea is to hold your arm out as you would in one of your tai chi postures. Now pay attention to how it looks. Does it appear to be held in place with purpose, or does it resemble a limp noodle that’s ready to fall at any moment? In case you’re wondering, it should appear purposeful and solid. Use only as much muscle as you need to keep it from looking like that limp noodle.
Once you can do this on command have a friend or training partner take hold of your arm and move it around slowly. If you’re doing it correctly your partner will find little resistance, yet your arm will continue to have the same appearance, and as soon as they let go it will maintain that solid appearance wherever it is left. When you can do this with ease, you’ll have learned a vital skill for the advancement of your tai chi forms that will translate into later push hands practice. Think of it as “being there, but not really being there.”
Your next step is then to transfer this feeling into the rest of your body. Don’t try to do it all at once. Take your time. Apply the feeling to your feet, your calves, your lower back, etc. Whenever you notice tension in your body focus on that point and let go of whatever tension you don’t need. You may find you need to adjust your posture before you can release tension. This is one of the ways tai chi teaches you to listen to your own body.
It’s been said over and over that tai chi gives you energy. That’s true, and one of the ways is by freeing up energy you were wasting in the first place. Think of it like an energy audit for the body.
If you haven’t done this already, give it a try and leave a comment about your experience. If this is old hat for you, please share your insights. Everyone has different experiences and we can all benefit from the lessons of others.
John
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Jul 1, 2009 - 09:07:18Nice photo!
One thing that interests me is that to do what you describe and propose, requires a certain “presence,” a kind of “being in your body.” It’s easy enough to say “Well, yeah, of course..,” but it seems to me that a lot of the holding-on and tension comes from habitual ways of using the body, when I’m not fully aware of how I’m moving. Until I can connect up my internal parts, mindbody, then co-ordinated movement will probably escape me. I say “probably” because perhaps people with more ability that I don’t have this concern.
Anyway, experiments like you suggest here can carry over and really help when practicing the tai chi form. Thanks!
Thanks Walt,
You’re welcome, and you’re right that we have a lot of habitual ways of using our bodies. This can be a real challenge. I still have good and bad days there too. I’ve found though that if I don’t worry too much about it and just do what I can, it gets easier a little at a time. These habits were formed a little at a time at a time and I’ve found that I’ve needed to retrain my body a little at a time. It seems to be a never ending process. Master Cui, after almost 60 years of practicing, still says he wishes he had listened to his grandfather better, and I believe he was a good student.
John
Yes, and you just swerved into one of the internal qualities of Mastery, I think — that being a kind of “true open-ness,” sometimes called “beginner’s mind,” i.e. the never-ending process. If that is so, then Master Cui not only was a good student, he still is!
(We all should have listened better to our grandfathers!)
Well said Walt!