Jade Dragon School

The Toothless Tiger of Tai Chi

Written by

paul

in

Whenever I perform tai chi I bring to mind the image of a tiger. The tiger is an animal that embodies many of the principles of tai chi.

It uses its weight very well and constantly relaxes down into the ground.

It holds no excess tension in its frame. It blends into and is completely at one with its environment.

When it moves it is a poem of grace, balance, beauty and power.

It is fearless in combat but completely relaxed at other times.

Tai chi is a martial art, it was developed as a martial art yet is often ridiculed by other martial artists as being just a series of slow exercises for old people rather than an effective fighting style. It’s like a once ferocious tiger that has lost its teeth and is now just a pussy cat. It can still move with balanced grace and beauty but has lost its fearsome power.

This may be true in some cases, but the teeth of tai chi are still very much there. This article aims to explain why, in so many cases, the old tiger of tai chi has lost its teeth and gives ideas on how it can get them back.

If there is one golden rule of physics that can never be broken it is the second law of thermodynamics. This states simply that everything in the universe is moving constantly towards a state of disorder or entropy.

The only way that can be stopped or reversed is with the input of energy or effort. Our homes will gradually become more and more untidy and messy unless we put in the effort to keep them tidy. Our bodies age and only through the effort of exercise can we maintain any level of health and fitness.

It is the same with our tai chi forms. Gradually they lose their edge, they become weak and the principles disappear. This can only be stopped by understanding what is going on and putting in the effort to keep the power of tai chi intact.

It is down to the teachers to understand and teach the skills and principles as best they can and down to the students to take the time and put in the effort to learn them properly. But now it will take even more than that as so many tai chi schools have already lost so much of the knowledge that they once possessed.

To retrieve that knowledge will require a major input of effort and energy. I have spent a lifetime trying to keep those principles alive.

Tai chi is an extraordinary art. There is nothing else like it in the world. It is much richer and deeper than many people (including many tai chi teachers) realise. It is perhaps the most comprehensive system of health, fitness, self-defense and self-development that has ever been developed.

Tai chi can give you the best training in the world when it comes to stress and how the body and mind react to it. The Chinese are lightyears ahead of the West in their understanding of how the mind and body respond to stress.

Their work on posture, breathing, efficiency of movement, mindfulness and so on has been developed over many centuries. There is simply nothing in the Western educational system that comes anywhere close to it. The gradual degradation of this knowledge is a huge tragedy as it is of vital importance to human health and wellbeing.

 I know that if this knowledge was embraced by the West and taught in schools and universities then our health services would no longer be at breaking point. We would not be so hugely reliant on medication to treat the symptoms of a loss of balance in our bodies and lives as that balance would not be so apparent.

Tai chi is being embraced all over the world as, even at its most basic, it offers huge health benefits. It has proved beneficial against almost all the chronic diseases of the modern world. Yet tai chi is also so much more than that.

Unfortunately, so many tai chi instructors teach at a very basic level and don’t truly understand the deeper meanings and benefits of their art.

Some places are offering instructor courses that you can do over a weekend or two. They do ask that you go along to some classes first to become familiar with the forms but what they end up knowing is almost nothing of the huge depth and complexity of tai chi.

They have little to no knowledge of yin yang theory, rooting, breathwork, meditation training, energy circulation, structural integrity etc etc etc.

These modern ‘certified teachers’ have no idea how to use their mind alone to release tension in a muscle, how to develop their breathing to control their emotions and the amount of energy they have available to them at any given moment, how to open their joints to keep them mobile and healthy throughout their life, how to stop resisting the downward pull of gravity and how that can release tension and make stress so much easier to cope with and so on.

Naturally they also don’t touch on the devastatingly effective yet health giving martial skills that are buried in the forms. These are skills that I dedicate my life to developing and passing on to others.

This isn’t their fault. They simply weren’t trained in these all-important elements of tai chi. Often their own instructors weren’t either. A very shallow understanding of a very deep art is being promulgated around the world as ‘certifying’ people to teach can make a lot of money.

It is a far cry indeed from where tai chi came from.

It took me one full cycle of the Chinese Zodiac (twelve years) before I was judged worthy to teach and pass on my knowledge. That is how it was done traditionally. Twelve years of hard work, study, dedication and discipline. Teachers now are ‘qualified’ after less than twelve days in many cases.

In short, tai chi was developed as a martial art but those martial skills are in danger of being lost as the focus has now turned to health. Worse than that the skills and knowledge are becoming increasingly shallow. Does that matter? I think it does because by not fully learning the rich martial and healing heritage of tai chi you are missing out on far more than just the ability to defend yourself.

In other articles I will explain these benefits and give suggestions for how existing tai chi schools can bring these elements back into their curriculum.

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