First Step: Don’t Chase After Movements

TAI CHI RAY’S NOTES · NO. 3

Learning Tai Chi does not begin with memorizing more movements. It begins with learning how to understand and use your body from within.

IN THIS NOTE

Introduction — Why Learning the Form Is Not Enough
Learning Tai Chi Like Learning a Language
What Are We Actually Training For?
First Step: Don’t Chase After Movements
Three Stages of Tai Chi Practice

Introduction — Why Learning the Form Is Not Enough

Is learning more Tai Chi movements the same as learning Tai Chi?

Over the past 15 years in the U.S., I have taken Tai Chi classes from various Western masters to learn and gain a sense of the landscape of Tai Chi education. They all had one thing in common: they taught the entire Tai Chi form (a choreographed sequence of continuous movements) with 18, 24, 83, or 108 movements to learners of all levels.

I heard beginners complain that Tai Chi movements were so graceful to watch but so difficult to learn. When they worked on their right arm movement, they forgot to include the lower-body and left-arm movements.

Also, I witnessed dropouts typically after the third class since they couldn’t memorize the sequence of movements learned so far. Those two scenarios were not the worst.

The worst was having to look away from some of the learners who kept repeating the wrong body structure and faulty coordination in a Tai Chi movement, cumulatively hurting themselves in the long run, which can show up in subtle ways before pain or injury catches up.

Learning Tai Chi Like Learning a Language

What are the traditional steps of learning Tai Chi? You may not know the answer, but you must experience learning a new language or a sport.

Taking learning English as an example, it will not make any practical sense for a beginner to start reciting “A Tale of Two Cities” or other masterpieces. While learning a Tai Chi form as a beginner is just like reciting an English masterpiece before you know anything about this language.

Interestingly, when I was around 10 years old, I invited or even forced my nanny, who had looked after me since I was six and is a very dear person to me in my life, to recite an English text with me word by word.

As a single child, I was too bored to recite on my own. After a few days of practice, she could recite the first paragraph fluently and sound native phonetically. However, she didn’t understand a word of it, let alone how to make a new sentence based on what she recited.

By the same token, merely copying your Tai Chi instructor to learn a Tai Chi form would have the same effect as my nanny experienced in learning English. One may perform visually graceful Tai Chi movements, but this does not mean that one’s structure is strong or even correct. By being a good imitator, one may get the movements “right” on the surface without knowing their inner workings.

“One may get the movements ‘right’ on the surface without knowing their inner workings.”

Structure Must Be Tested, Not Just Seen

As I explained in my second note “Swimming in the Air”, moving through air will not give you immediate feedback on the efficiency of your movements or the correct alignment of your body. Therefore, having a correct understanding of the Tai Chi body structure and coordination, getting feedback from your Tai Chi instructor, a knowledgeable Tai Chi practitioner during Tai Chi push-hand practice, and from external forces on a train help you develop the right body structure and timely reactions to counter movements for balance, bypassing thinking.

We do have internal tension in our Tai Chi structure, since every structure expands from the inside out. For example, I talked about the arch of our crotch for the Tai Chi horse stance. This arch structure is like integrating an arch into a stone wall, which requires precise structural engineering, as gravity pulls the arch’s downward force outward, causing the vertical base walls to spread.

As you may know, besides proper load distribution, a central capstone is very important because it redirects the forces of wedge-shaped stones securely into the ground. But what is the capstone in our Tai Chi horse stance? I will not answer this question here but will leave it to you to experience the answer instead.

Therefore, after you can do elegant Tai Chi movements, you need to receive external forces from different angles to test your structure and counter movements. This is one of the purposes of push-hands practice in Tai Chi.  In sum, learning Tai Chi without being aware of the proper structure and movement dynamics may hurt you, whereas learning a language by rote memorization can activate mouth muscles you do not use in your own language and make you sleepy, since your brain may turn off when facing constant, meaningless inputs.

What Are We Actually Training For?

If the goal is not simply to perform a Tai Chi form beautifully, what are we actually training for?

What is the ultimate and practical goal in practicing Tai Chi? The goal of my English learning is to express myself wholeheartedly and effortlessly, like the greatest writers in human history, whether I am energetic or exhausted. Tai Chi includes body-mind movements and self-defense.

The ultimate goal of Tai Chi is to utilize your body-mind efficiently and mindfully, in the most extreme case, to defend ourselves against someone(s) or something(s) far stronger than us by being calm, using our bodies efficiently, and avoiding injury. I shared in my previous sessions why Tai Chi self-defense is not limited to one-on-one confrontation; its principles are also concerned with adapting to multiple threats and changing conditions. The same principles can also be applied inwardly—to stress, fear, and other reactions that can disturb our balance.

But the highest form of self-defense is to leave the danger before it materializes, just like catching oneself before falling into the whirlpool of negative emotions. Let’s talk about the steps!

“The ultimate goal of Tai Chi is to utilize your body-mind efficiently and mindfully.”

First Step: Don’t Chase After Movements

What if going deeper into one movement teaches us more than constantly learning new ones?

Some of you have been practicing with me for more than three years after the pandemic. Despite sticking to a few important movements, you may have surprisingly found layers upon layers of depth in each one, rather than rote repetition. And you are right about this realization.

Tai Chi follows principles found in nature, and nature is not divided into isolated parts. The patterns of the whole can often be found within the smallest part. In the same way, when we practice one Tai Chi movement deeply enough, we may begin to discover principles that are present throughout the entire art. Therefore, as long as you wholeheartedly practice one single movement of Tai Chi, this single movement contains the entire universe of Tai Chi movements.

“One movement can contain the entire universe of Tai Chi movements.”

So please don’t underestimate the power of any single movement, especially the Tai Chi opening. Moreover, Tai Chi can be understood as a way for the human body to embody patterns we observe in nature. Through movements of opening and closing, expanding and contracting, rising and sinking, moving left and right, we learn to experience Yin and Yang not simply as abstract ideas, but as complementary qualities expressed through the body.

Over time, the practice may begin to feel less like imposing movements on the body and more like allowing the body to move in accordance with these natural relationships. In this sense, the practice becomes less about acquiring something new and more about rediscovering the natural organization, rhythm, and responsiveness already within the body.

 You may intellectually understand and memorize each movement, but that is not enough—and can even be deceptive. Because there is still a “you” practicing “the movement.” You are still separated from the flow.

Three Stages of Tai Chi Practice

I want to end this note with something my grandfather taught me about the three stages of practice:

“The first stage is that you practice Tai Chi.
The second stage is that Tai Chi practices you.
In the final stage, you and Tai Chi become one. There is no longer a ‘you’ or a ‘Tai Chi.’ Even if you simply lift a finger, that is Tai Chi.”

Till next time!