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The Importance of Releasing in Tai Chi Chuan

The Importance of Releasing in Tai Chi Chuan

One of the aspects that I have found most important to teach over the years is the release aspect in Tai Chi Chuan practice. Why is this important?

Our Western culture, and perhaps human nature, emphasizes the active yang aspect, with less understanding and practice of the receptive yin aspect. Since Taoism is a fundamental source for understanding Tai Chi Chuan, and Taoism expounds the understanding of yin and yang, this is an important entry point for understanding Tai Chi Chuan, with two translations being “great ultimate movement” or “grand ultimate fist.”

From fully expressed polarities of receptive and active comes a complete experience that is beyond the duality. That is the meaning of the word “ultimate” in the translation “great ultimate movement” or “grand ultimate fist.” It is ultimate because it is beyond the limitation of passive and active.

Because the perception of brain and body being distinct from each other is mostly an illusion, the degree to which we release “mentally” can also be seen in our movements. In my experience, the most visible difficulty in releasing for beginners comes in relation to the abdomen and the hip joints. Lack of mid-section release can especially be seen in those who have not practiced long, or where a previous teaching environment did not emphasize releasing the mid-section before action.

At some point, the practitioner is able to start releasing the abdomen and hips, and correspondingly following that with activation of the ball and toe of the foot in order to support finger movement. When this occurs, the practitioner often emits a statement of enthusiasm and excitement, because it is like discovering a lost super-power.

The ability to flexibly and fluidly use the mid-section to connect the extremities of the feet and the fingers, is essential for every sport.

Another essential aspect of releasing is allowing the triceps (or elbows) to stay floating when the upper body tilts forward and the tailbone drops, as part of our pre-action. This is how we naturally jump, and is similar to the way most birds sink and open their wings before taking off from the ground.

The subsequent action movement follows the pre-action setting up phase. It involves making the back vertical again, with exception of Get the Needle at the Bottom of the Sea and of Snake Creeps Down, although the principle applies there in a different format, beyond the scope of this current article.

When the upper body goes from tilting to vertical, it sends a vector of force straight down into the ground while also creating a forward force that counters the backwards direction of the upper body. Our brain inherently understands this if our tension does not interfere. Movement and brain function without tension is restorative of physical comfort and a good mood!

The continuity of connection, activated starting from the brain, using the ball and toe of the activating foot, through the leg’s vastus medialis muscle and the rest of the quadriceps, and through the hips, the ribs, and the triceps, and finally to the fingers, allows the whole brain and body to activate fully, even if the force being applied is subtle such as during Short Form or other Form practice.

This awakening of brain and body is good for martial arts and all sports, for musical and other performance, and for energy flow and well-being.

I won’t go into great detail here, but for those who enjoy Push-Hands practice, releasing is similarly of vital importance. When there is tension in any part of the body, your partner in practice or your competitor can sense that and rapidly respond to the tension with an effective push.

Whether it is tension in the arms, often leading to the arms being used by your practice partner or competitor as convenient handles for uprooting, or tension in the mid-section, leading to a direct and effective attack on the body position itself, the ability to fully and rapidly release is an essential component when trying to enter to an advanced level of Tai Chi Chuan Push-Hands skill.

Can We Say That Tai Chi Chuan Is a Spiritual Practice?

Dreamy girl looking up at sky in countryside

Can We Say That Tai Chi Chuan Is a Spiritual Practice?

Can we say that Tai Chi Chuan is a spiritual practice? Yes, and mostly no.

Not too long ago, a fellow Tai Chi Chuan teacher stated to me and others, in a class I was running: “Tai Chi Chuan is a spiritual practice.” I did not reply to that, since the speaker clearly had his understanding. Instead, I engaged with other points of discussion that he brought up.

The problem is that if you call Tai Chi Chuan a spiritual practice, that can imply that other activities are not spiritual. And yet, everything we do in life is “spiritual” and wonderful, when we see it clearly. So, we can say that Tai Chi Chuan practice is spiritual, but that can lead to problems.

What if we said “Tai Chi Chuan is a meaningful practice”? I am more at peace with that statement. Tai Chi Chuan practice is certainly meaningful, and perhaps using a neutral word like that allows the person hearing it to ask themselves, “Oh, what is meaningful about it?” which allows further exploration.

When we use words that have a high-sounding set of associations, like “spiritual,” we can get into a problem of creating mystery, or idealizing what we are doing. For example, are those who are not practicing Tai Chi Chuan, or meditation, less spiritual? In the absolute sense, my studies and my life experience says “No!” to that.

Yes, Tai Chi Chuan can help us awaken to our fundamental nature, letting go of the excess physical and mental tensions that make life more difficult. That can be called “well-being”, or “mental health”, or even… “spiritual.”

It is important to understand that words are always most effective when used with awareness of context. It may, in some environments, be useful to state “Tai Chi is a spiritual practice.” That might help those who are only seeing it as a physical practice, and may open another door of consideration for them.

For an example of this principle, taken from a very evolved wisdom tradition, there is a famous story involving Bodhidharma, the Indian teacher who brought Zen Buddhism in China. Here is the story, which is believed to have really happened:

Emperor Wu asked the great teacher Bodhidharma, “What is the first principle of the holy teaching?”
Bodhidharma said, “Vast emptiness, nothing holy.”
“[Then] who are you, standing here in front of me?” asked the Emperor.
“I don’t know,” said Bodhidharma.
The Emperor didn’t understand.

Bodhidharma was trying to help release the emperor from divisions in the emperor’s thinking, such as “holy / not holy,” and “wise person / ordinary person.”

Any divisions in our thinking, called “discrimination” in most translations of Eastern thought, separate us from the wonderfulness of being fully in this moment. As poet William Blake wrote, “If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they’d immediately go out.”

The teachings of wisdom since the beginning of time have praised the importance of non-dualistic awareness, where so-called opposites are seen without seeing conflict between them, allowing a more complete experience of our world.

Coming back to Tai Chi Chuan, I sometimes call it a meaningful practice, or a practice that helps us be more fully ourselves, and of course a practice that has benefits for physical and mental health. High-sounding labels, while occasionally they can be useful, do tend to create a subtle division that it is better to avoid.

On somewhat of a tangent: I use English in my classes, saying “energy” rather than “chi”, since my own thinking, being American-born, understands the concepts and associations of “energy” far better than those for the word “chi”, not that there is inherently anything wrong with using “chi” for those who are very comfortable with that word.

When there is a concept or experience that does not easily translate from the Chinese words, I look for a way to express it in language and movement that are part of everyday life, and that all the students can connect with.

The point is to be very grounded in our various actions and words, including when practicing or teaching Tai Chi Chuan.

Out of respect and gratitude for the caring, wise teachers I have had in the past, I will continue walking in a path that finds inspiration in the experiences of everyday life. “Happiness”, “Energy”, “Well-being”: these are a few of the many words to describe that way of living, and I would like to stay with that.

How about you?

Nosey, Noisy Muscles and Training Your Brain

Tai Chi Chuan ward off right, showing hands

In our daily lives, most of us, even those who consider themselves relatively relaxed and stress-free, are holding a lot of muscle tension in our bodies, and corresponding tension in thoughts and feelings.

As psychologists and scientists have been exploring for well over 100 years, there is activity in the brain–feelings, worries, and so on–that cause us to create that muscle tension. And we are not even aware of the majority of that tension, since it is habitual.

Tai Chi Chuan practice is one way to gradually release that tension. By focusing on full brain / mind / body integration and action, we start to cut through our own seemingly endless loops of thought and feeling, loops that create stress and loss of simple enjoyment in our selves.

I like to call the Yang-style Short Form a framework for self-development. The reason we repeat the “same” thing over an over is that each time we do so, we are learning something new.

The Tai Chi Chuan form is never the same, even for the same person who carries it out twice in a row. Each time we practice the form, we are actively creating our experience as we move slowly and with awareness from moment to moment.

What does that mean in practical terms? How do we do this?

One key is to understand and use the Yin-Yang polarity. As human beings we can never function in total release nor in total action. Life is a moment-by-moment flow between letting go and engagement, on a background that is neither one of those. That is our reality!

While practicing Tai Chi Chuan, we are connecting to and embodying that reality. And when that happens, our brain / mind / body starts to feel both more awake, and more free of stress. In pre-action moves we release into the ground and sink energy into the feet and below into the Earth. In the subsequent action move, the energy expands from toes to fingers, filling our whole brain / mind / body with warm feelings and energy. The flow between release/letting go and action/engagement helps our nervous system function better, circulation improve, and has other positive effects as well.

This scientific article points out positive, measurable brain effectiveness changes due to Tai Chi Chuan practice. It is dense reading, but the conclusions point to less “noise” when we activate functions, and more consistent integration of the parts of the brain that need to be integrated.

Grandmaster William C.C. Chen coined the term “nosey muscles”, referring to the unwanted activation of muscles that get in the way of simple, enjoyable movement. It turns out, we can also call them “noisy muscles”… that is, muscle and thought activations resulting from noise in the brain that interferes with clean, effective, enjoyable functioning in the moment.

Nosey, noisy: the key is to realize our brain can and should activate our body functions in a more integrated and less stressed manner.

Practicing the form day after day and year after year helps build a new set of circuits and a new set of resulting perceptions and experiences that allow us to accomplish more with less stress and more enjoyment. And that is a good thing, right?