Al Simon – The Tai Chi and Qigong Blog

I wanted to thank everyone who sent me comments about our last post, on A “Chi River” or a “Chi Goal” Person – Which are YOU? (click here).

A number of you left public comments, but quite a few of you emailed me directly.

Many of the emails were quite emotional.

Quite a few echoed what Jackie, John, Mary, and other “River people” posted publicly in the blog. They talked about being made to feel by other teachers or other “gurus” like there was something wrong with being a River person … that they need to be more goal oriented in order to succeed.

Many said that this was the FIRST TIME EVER they were told it was OK to be a River person!

I also received email from Chi Goal people. They talked about having Chi River teachers who didn’t understand their need for structure. The impression Chi River teachers left them with is that being a River person was what being a Chi student was about. And if you aren’t a River person, you are just not “getting it”.

Let me first say, I truly do understand what both of these groups are talking about. I’m more of a River person myself, so I understand what it’s like when most of the messages and role models you are shown and told to emulate are goal people. And I have to admit with a cringe, that 20 years ago I was one of those asinine River teachers who though that that being a River person was actually part of Chi Development.

Today, that seems so obviously wrong, and I’m really embarrassed to admit that I ever taught that way. But I heard from student after student how their teacher is a Goal person who insists on everyone using Goal methods, or a River person who insists on everyone using River methods.

The longer I teach, the more I realize that each of us is unique. We have unique ways of learning, unique ways of perceiving the world, and unique strengths and weaknesses. And that a good teacher HONORS that uniqueness, and even CAPITALIZES on it in their instruction.

I believe the best way to do that is to teach students how to customize what they are learning. Whether it’s a physical movement, a concept, or a learning approach, you need to teach the student how to make it uniquely his or her own.

It’s obvious to see how important customization is to the physical movements. I was emailing about this with one of our new students who just joined us this week.

She was telling me, “I injured my knee and shoulder through bagua. I really hate it now, I was absolutely healthy, I guess it is my fault, bagua is not for middle aged women.” Well, of course it’s NOT her fault. I told her bagua wasn’t the problem. I told her the problem was she had an inept bagua teacher, who didn’t help her customize the movements to her situation.

She also said that her Tai Chi teacher told her that because of her injuries, she shouldn’t practice Yang style Tai Chi – that Sun style was much better for the knees. I told her that I’d stay away from a teacher who would make such a stupid statement. It’s her teacher that’s the problem here, not Yang style.

As I wrote her, “Forgive my bluntness, but I’ve been there. I had injuries as a student. It wasn’t intentional on the part of my teachers. But when a student complains of injury, it’s a sign that they need to re-examine their teaching skills (or lack of them) – and not shift the blame to a ‘style’ or anywhere else.”

Well, if that’s true of the physical movements, it’s also true of the learning process. Whether you are a Chi River or Chi Goal person, there is a place for you in Chi Development. Don’t ever let any teacher, or anyone else, tell you otherwise.

Though he’s not a Chi teacher, I think Harry Browne put this best:

“You are what you are. Your greatest pleasures will be those you experience when you can be yourself completely. Only then will you be free to enjoy every good thing the experience has to offer you …

“Being yourself is actually a skill. It takes time to become thoroughly acquainted with yourself, to throw off a lifetime of pressures, to relax and accept what you see in yourself (no matter how it may conflict with social standards), and to learn to act in ways consistent with your nature.”

- Harry Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

And if you can’t be yourself in Tai Chi and Qigong, well then, where CAN you be yourself?

All my best for your continued Chi Development,

On the ChiFusion support forum for my advanced training students, a few students asked me about “trembling” during Tai Chi practice. One student wrote about a recent experience:

I’m a beginner, about 4+ months into ChiFusion, no previous experience with Tai Chi or Qigong. I’ve worked through Levels 1 and 2 … Yesterday I did my Level 1 early in the morning, then mid-morning began my Level 2 routine. … I then started Lifting Water, and after a minute or two, my hands and forearms started trembling uncontrollably as I raised them. This didn’t feel like fatigue, rather like my arms were over-excited or something. It felt like a surge of pressure or energy that had nowhere to go and caused a shuddering sensation as I lifted my arms. When I tried to relax my arms to quiet the shuddering (still lifting), my legs actually started shuddering too!

This alarmed me a bit, as I’ve not had this happen before, so I stopped exercising, and went into my relaxation routine (Embracing the Pearl and Falling Water) and everything calmed down and I was fine. This morning I performed both Level 1 and 2 routines with no trembling/shuddering.

Another student wrote:

I’ve been doing [other styles of] Tai Chi for about a dozen years now … that is similar but usually just with my fingers. They will begin to flutter as I move through my [non-ChiFusion] Tai Chi forms. I’ve heard that, in fact, it’s a result of the energy in your system. It’s not harmful and I’m told it’s relatively normal.

That’s why I brought the question up. It doesn’t happen all the times but it was rather disconcerting the first time I saw it.

It only happens after I’ve gotten into my routine after about 15 -20 mins.

I actually had trembling as well when I was a student. When I became a teacher, I looked at the experience in great detail to find out what was going on. Trembling is a complicated issues in Tai Chi and Qigong, because many different situations can cause it.

Assuming it isn’t just simple muscle fatigue, with trembling I usually look for:

1. Increase in energy flow through meridians
2. Increased flow encounters a blockage in a meridian
3. Overflow of vessels into meridians (storing too much chi or storing without meridian preparation)
4. Misalignments in movements
5. Physical problems (poor muscle tone, pinched nerves, misalignments, dehydration, and other medical conditions)

For #1, if you are relatively new to advanced chi training, sometimes the body isn’t accustomed to the increased chi flow. This can cause trembling. The trembling goes away though once your meridians become habituated to the increased flow. Assuming you are practicing regularly (5 to 6 times a week), the trembling shouldn’t last for more than a few days, certainly no longer than a week, as the body adjusts.

For #2, the trembling is caused when increased chi flow encounters a blockage in the meridians. Ideally, the increased flow will remove the blockage and the trembling will go away. This can happen in a single practice session, but may take a few days or a week. But if the blockage is really stubborn though, it may last longer. If it does, other intervention (acupuncture, Qigong massage, herbs) may be needed to help with the blockage.

#3 happens when students work on chi vessel storage Qigong or Tai Chi BEFORE working Qigong to improve meridian circulation. Unfortunately, this is quite common among Tai Chi students outside our ChiFusion program. (It should be rare among ChiFusion students who’ve never done Tai Chi before, because we work on meridians first before working on storage).

The reason it is common is that Tai Chi is usually taught as a vessel storage practice. The idea here is that if you work on Tai Chi storage and store enough chi, it will “overflow” the vessel reservoirs and automatically flow out to the meridians, and automatically improve meridian circulation by forcing the chi out the vessels.

That’s the theory. In my experience, it usually doesn’t work quite that smoothly. In the first place, most students cant get enough storage to happen to make that “overflow” work for them, at least not until a few months or years of practice. Then when they do get the overflow, the meridian system is often not prepared for the increased chi flow. The overflow becomes a bull in the china shop, causing all sorts of problems as it encounters blockages and discontinuities in the energy system. Trembling is often a major sign here.

This is what happened to me as a student. And unfortunately, my meridian system never seemed to “right itself” using this method. It always responds the same way to the increased chi overflow. And as the student becomes better and better at storage, the overflow becomes more regular, and the trembling becomes a regular feature of the student’s practice.

Prevention is the best medicine here – work on circulation BEFORE working on storage. (We talk about this both in the “Energy Pathways” section of our advanced training, plus in our Complete Chi Health webinar that we occasionally hold for people on our mailing list. We discuss how you can structured your practice and how we’ve structured the ChiFusion program to do this.) If you’ve seen some of the introductory videos to the sample lessons in our course, I mentioned how I started over at one point, stopping everything I was practicing and going back to the beginning. This is part of the reason I did that. I needed a meridian system “reboot”, to give my meridian system a chance to right itself after stressing it out for so many years.

#4 can happen when there is a physical or energetic misalignment in a movement. If a particular Qigong or Tai Chi movement always causes trembling, or it always happens at the same place in your practice, that can be a sign. Whatever limb or part of the body is trembling, try adjusting the movement or posture. Often times, an inch or two can make a big difference. If the trembling goes away when you make the adjustment, then it was probably #4.

#5 are usually physical problems that are not a result of practice, but practice can bring them out and make them more obvious. Poor muscle tone can of course contribute to trembling, especially since Tai Chi and Qigong often causes you to use muscles that we don’t normally use, or don’t normally use in the same way as we do during practice.

Pinched nerves often cause trembling. The irony of course is that while you might experience trembling in your hands, for example, the pinched nerve is usually NOT in your hand. It might be in your spine, neck, shoulder, or elbow. Spinal vertebrae that are out of alignment might not even be noticed by you during your regular day, but Tai Chi might be showing them to you.

Believe it or not, dehydration might also cause trembling, and again, you might not notice it during the day, but Tai Chi can bring it out. There are many more physical causes and medical conditions that can cause trembling. (Actually, I’ve just been emailing with a new student who joined us that has Essential Tremors, a medical condition that causes trembling in some postures.) So if the trembling is persistent, you might want to have this checked by a chiropractor, osteopath, medical doctor, or other health professional.

For the first student above, I suggested that his experience was most likely #2 above. He should monitor this for the next week or so. If the trembling comes back and stays around, it might be something else. But if it has happened just once, and stays away for a few days, it was probably #2.

For the second student, it’s a little more complicated. I suggested that it’s probably #3, based on a few things he said: that he has been practicing Tai Chi for a dozen years, it happens during his form, and it happens after about 15 or 20 minutes in. I’m wondering if it takes him that long to build up the storage in a practice session until it overflows. And if it happens sometimes and not others, he might just be sometimes hitting the “high water mark” for overflowing, and sometimes not.

But it could also be #2 with a stubborn blockage, #4, or #5. If it was #2, he should probably notice the trembling as he practices the meridian work in Level 1 of his new ChiFusion program. If it’s #4, he might want to see if it’s reaching certain postures in his practice (rather than just practicing for 15 to 20 minutes) that is causing the trembling. Keep in mind that I can’t give medical diagnosis, but #5 is the least likely in my opinion, though it’s a possibility he should check out.

Trembling is so complicated that it’s hard to know exactly what’s happening without some experimentation and observing on each student’s part.

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In Part 1 of this article (click here), we discussed that people who practice for health sometimes have a difficult time knowing if their practice is really “working”.

That’s because many of the health changes provided by arts like ChiFusion Tai Chi and Qigong can be subtle and easily overlooked. So you might find yourself asking, “Is my practice really making me healthier? How can I tell?”

We talked in Part 1 about three important signs to look for. These signs show you that your are getting the health benefits of Tai Chi and Qigong. To find these three signs:

• You actively search out and look for examples that your health condition improves
• Your health care professional evaluates your condition and notices changes
• Your “body signals” tell you about it, recognizing that there may be a delay effect identified by psychoneuroimmunology (PNI).

If you are unsure how to find any of these three signs, please refer to Part 1 of this article (click here).

What To Do If You Don’t See Results – The “Serious Health Benefits” Checklist

So what if your health condition doesn’t improve, your doctor or chiropractor doesn’t notice any differences, and you don’t notice any body signals? Should you give up practicing?

Instead of abandoning your practice, first check these important points to make sure you are giving your body “what it needs” to improve. This checklist will ensure that you are getting “serious health benefits” from your practice.

Know the Precise Purpose of the Movements You Are Practicing

This may seem obvious, but knowing the precise health purpose of a Tai Chi or Qigong can tell you whether the exercise is appropriate for the results you want.

For example, a Qigong exercise that concentrates on the legs probably won’t do much for a stiff neck. Or a Tai Chi movement that concentrates on the liver may not help you improve your blood pressure, if that’s what you want.

So it’s important that you know the precise purpose. I can’t stress this enough: Never do a Tai Chi movement or Qigong practice unless you know precisely what it is trying to accomplish!

Too often, we accept vague “reasons” or “purposes” from our instructors for what we are learning. But in order to make sure our practice is working, we need definite descriptions of what to look for. Instead, let’s look at an example of the type of precision we want.

Here’s an example of a precisely defined purpose from our Level 3 advanced training, for the movement called Water Pump Qigong:

Water Pump Qigong helps us loosen and stretch muscles in our lower back, hips, waist, thighs, and calves. These are important posture-stabilizing muscles, as they connect our spine and lower back physically through our hips, and into our legs and feet.

And as with all of our kua-focused exercises, Water Pump increases our range of motion in the hips, making everyday activities like walking, bending, and squatting more fluid and free. Finally, Water Pump Qigong will allow us to look at the structural alignment in our legs and feet, adding to our physical awareness of stability and rooting.

This is the type of information you’ll need to know for every Tai Chi or Qigong movement you learn. Your instructor or learning material should spell this out for you clearly and precisely for every single movement.

Make Sure You Are Practicing Regularly

Some of your health problems may have been around quite some time. In addition, it takes repeated practice for PNI systems to become “habituated” (physically used to) regular doses of increased endocrine and immune secretions.

So as a result, regular practice is necessary. 10 minutes of practice daily is not the same as 20 minutes every other day, or 30 minutes every third day. While you may think that these practice schedules are equivalent, you’ll notice benefits much more quickly in small daily doses rather than large weekly doses.

An analogy I’ve used before is brushing your teeth. Brushing your teeth two minutes a day is far better than fifteen minutes once a week!

Make Sure You’ve Customized the Movements to Your Body

Let me be as blunt as possible: If your movements look exactly like your teacher’s, or like the other students in the class, you are doing it wrong!

I make no compromise here. Every movement must be customized to your body. If not, at best you will delay any benefits from your practice. At worst, you’ll cause injury or further aggravate any conditions you have.

The only way for you to notice benefits is for you to make sure your practices fit you like a glove! So how do you customize the movements? Quite simply, you need to …

Make Sure You Are Following All Details Specified in the Course

Every movement in ChiFusion Tai Chi and Qigong is accompanied by several “ChiFusion Details.” These details tell you how to customize the movements, and also point out common pitfalls that can prevent you from seeing benefits from your practice.

Make sure you understand and practice every one of these details. It’s better to limit your practice to a few movements that have all of these details in place, rather than practice a dozen (or a hundred!) movements in a sloppy fashion. So do not skip over any details, or skimp on your practice of any details.

As an example, Michael once mentioned on our Support Forum exactly that point. He told us of what happened when he learned to follow the details for one of our simplest exercises, Touch Heaven and Earth. “I must say”, he wrote, “that even though the difference (spatially) was only an inch or so [in the placement of the hands], the sensation was quite different.”

The old saying is that “horseshoes is a game of inches” – but as you’ll notice when you start incorporating more and more ChiFusion Details into your practice, Qigong and Tai Chi are games of inches as well. And these inches may spell the difference between that works … and Tai Chi that doesn’t work!

Checking Your Practice to Get “Serious Health Benefits”

Quite simply, the reason these details are in our ChiFusion course material is because they work! From our research backed by intensive research, testing, and feedback from masters, instructors, and students just like you, they are GUARANTEED to improve your health, relieve stress, and provide you with in-depth, advanced Chi development quickly and easily.

Of course, that only happens if you are serious about your practice and you actually do them! Don’t expect to see benefits if you sign up for the ChiFusion Complete Course, then let it languish on your hard drive or in your email!

Many people practice ChiFusion Tai Chi and Qigong for health, but are you certain your practice is bringing you benefits? To make sure you are getting benefits, actively look for improved health conditions, get the objective observations of your health care provider, and look for body signals after your practice.

If that doesn’t work, check your practice to make sure it’s regular, customized, and detailed. Use the above checklist. If you do, you’ll know that ChiFusion Tai Chi and Qigong is bringing you the benefits you want – and that you have Tai Chi that works!

As far as I know, Taoist Master B. K. Frantzis, in his book Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body, was the first to document the importance of what he called “the 70% rule” and its application to all aspects of Tai Chi and Qigong practice.

In our advanced training, we describe this important practice rule this way:

The 70% Rule for Tai Chi and Qigong from Advanced Training Level 1

ESTIMATE YOUR GREATEST ABILITY to perform any given exercise, then practice at only 70% of that maximum level.

For example, if we ask you to bend over and reach towards your toes, and you know that you can only reach as far as your ankles, well, your ankles would be your 100%. So you should only reach down to your knees or shins.

Apply this 70% rule to everything: how far you stretch; how many repetitions you do; how long you practice in a given session. Any type of straining represents 100% or more, wasting energy and causing injury. And if you are injured or hurt, go only 40% or less. Practicing at the 40% or less level will give your injury the time and energy to heal without aggravating it.

The 70% Rule applied to the Spine Stretch in our Level 1 training

Through our work with various Tai Chi and Qigong masters, and in working with our students during the 6-year research project that produced our advanced training, we learned an important corollary to this 70% rule. It is what we call the Balancing 70% Rule of practice.

In our advanced training course, we first describe this rule while learning the exercise Looking Backward in our Level 1 course. Looking Backward is a simple Qigong pattern that is great for the head, neck, and tops of the shoulders. Many of these areas become frozen or stiff after long hours of sitting, especially at a computer. The simple neck turn of Looking Backward can help loosen and relax the muscles, tendons, and vertebrae in the neck and shoulders.

The “Balancing 70% Rule”
An Example from “Looking Backward” in Level 1

Please keep in mind the 70% rule when you practice. Use this rule for the amount of time that you practice and how far you turn your neck from side to side. Also remember to keep to 40% or less if you are injured or compromised in any way, especially with a neck injury, throat problems, head injuries, tinnitus, or thyroid conditions.

If one side of your neck is more stiff than the other, keep within the limits of the stiffer side on both sides. For example, let’s say your 70% limits (or your 40% or less limits if injured) are that you can turn 60 degrees from the center to the left, but only 30 degrees to the right. Then you should turn only 30 degrees to both sides.

This will allow both sides to eventually balance and get stronger. If you ignore this balancing rule, the strong side will get stronger, but the weak side will continue to get weaker. In Tai Chi and Qigong, however, we try to work on our weaknesses with the goal of balancing both sides.

We consider the Balancing 70% Rule so important that we introduce it within the first two lessons of Level 1 of our advanced training.

I answer a couple of comments on my previous video (click here) about protecting the knees in Reverse Bear Qigong and Reverse Turn Tai Chi movements.

The Bow Stance is the most common stance used in Tai Chi. The Bow Stance, more than any stance Tai Chi and Qigong, strikes a balance between stability and mobility. You will feel rooted and grounded in this stance, but still able to move your body freely.

When it comes to Bow Stances where your weight is shifted forward (called the Forward Bow Stance), you’ll find that there are two different types of Forward Bow Stances taught by Tai Chi masters. You can differentiate between these two types by the relative position of your feet and hands while you are in the Forward Bow Stance.

While different teachers have different names for these two stances, we’ll use two terms you may have heard – “twist step” and “favorable step”. Wen-Shan Huang, a student of Chen Wei Ming and Tung Ying Chieh, who in turn were students of Yang Cheng Fu (the grandmaster of today’s Yang Family Style Tai Chi), documented these terms in his book.

Twist Step

“Twist step” refers a forward bow stance in which the opposite hand and foot are forward. For example, if you are in a right-foot-forward bow stance, but your left hand is extending in front of you, then you are in a “twist step”.

This term is actually used in the names of some Tai Chi stances, such as “Brush Knee and Twist Step” (shown at right).

Some people believe the “twist” in the name “Brush Knee and Twist Step” refers to the waist turn in the movement, but that’s not the case. It simple describes the final position of the hands and feet.

Favorable Step

As opposed to twist step, “favorable step” refers to a forward bow stance in which the forward hand is on the same side as the forward foot.

For example, if you are in a right-foot-forward bow stance, and your right hand is extending in front of you, then you are in a “favorable step”. Tai Chi movements such as Single Whip (shown at right) are technically called “favorable step stances.”

Note that “favorable” does not carry any connotation of “favorite” or “better” in this context. Think more of how we use the word “favor” as in “He is favoring his left side when he walks.”

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I’ve had a number of people email me about the post I recently made on Qigong organs (click here). So I wanted to clarify a little more about what we mean by “organs” in Tai Chi and Qigong .

Let me ask you, when I mention your internal organs, such as your heart or your lungs, what do you think of?

If you are like most people, you think of the physical organs in your body – the actual living tissue structures, such as the heart that beats, or the lungs that fill with air. We think of these organs as “things” that surgeons operate on, or that we can see on x-rays.

But the “organs” in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and its derivatives, including Tai Chi and Qigong, are quite different. These energy arts use a “process-oriented” viewpoint rather than an “object-oriented” viewpoint. As such, in Tai Chi, Qigong, and TCM, the internal organs of the body are not “things”, but “abstractions” that describe processes that happen inside the body.

This causes a lot of confusion for Westerners. For many Westerners, we are used to thinking of the organs as “objects” – the physical living tissue structures in your body.

For example, we think of the kidneys as those “bean-shaped” organs near the middle of our back just below the rib cage. But as Chinese medical references point out, when a TCM doctor talks about your “kidney”, he’s not talking about your “bean-shaped” tissues. He’s talking about a process that includes these tissues, plus the entire urogenital system … as well as the endocrine system, part of the immune system, and part of the higher nervous system! The “kidneys” in TCM are much more than what most Westerners think of as the kidneys.

So what I’m about to say may seem odd to you, but it’s crucial to understanding Tai Chi and Qigong: A doctor can’t open you up surgically and point to your TCM kidneys! The same is true of other TCM organs. They too refer to processes, not just the physical objects or structures in the body.

This “abstract process” orientation also explains why TCM has some “organs” that can’t be found by Western doctors. For example, TCM doctors include in their list of organs one called the “Triple Burner”. But the “Triple Burner” doesn’t appear on any x-ray. Ask any group of surgeons, and they will tell you they’ve never seen a “Triple Burner” organ inside any patient.

But the “Triple Burner” is an important organ in TCM. It’s so important, we actually mention the “Triple Burner” in the first lesson of our advanced training. While not a “physical organ” by Western standards, the “Triple Burner” represents parts of three important bodily processes: respiration, digestion, and elimination.

So concentrate on thinking of organs as representing the “processes” in your body rather than the “objects” in your body. When a Tai Chi or Qigong master say “lungs”, think of breathing. When we say “stomach”, think of digestion. When we say “heart”, think of blood circulation.

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This blog you are reading is “new” and something I’ve just recently started, But actually, I’ve been “blogging” about Tai Chi now for nearly 13 years. Of course, back when I started, the term “blogging” wasn’t well-known. It was just a website and an email newsletter where I talked about myself and my students, and what we were learning and exploring.

Every once in a while, I go back and look at some of those old blogs, websites, and emails. A lot of it is no longer relevant to what I do, but every once in a while, I come across a gem that seems even more true today than when I wrote.

Here’s one of those gems, from over a decade ago. Funny thing though, I don’t even remember writing it. But to me, it reflects how I think of my students, both then and now. Many of them have had to take a “leap of faith” to study with me. Because of my “unorthodox” teaching methods, many have had to overcome their past conditioning about what Tai Chi “is” or “isn’t”, and about how to Tai Chi should be learned and practiced, to join me.

I really appreciate my students, and the personal courage it takes for them to join me. This is just as true today as it was when I wrote it ten years ago.

There are two basic choices in Tai Chi class, as in life. You can expand your awareness to embrace what’s new and unknown, or you can contract and isolate yourself.

The Chinese character for “tai” (as in “Tai Chi”) depicts a person with open arms, expanding. That’s our preference: to embrace the new, to expand and grow beyond ourselves.

Thank you to all of my students who have expanded and embraced Tai Chi with me.

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Have you heard of the Tai Chi “Classics”? The Tai Chi Classics are a series of writings in Chinese about Tai Chi by past masters of the arts. Though often attributed to mythical Tai Chi masters from the 14th to the 18th century, they appear to have been written down much later, though the exact authorship and dates of the writings seems to be unknown.

Most of the writings are in poetic forms that condense a number of ideas into short sayings or statements. Most of the statements in the Classics cover four main areas: (1) ideas on how the body should move within Tai Chi, (2) ideas on how chi works, (3) fighting and martial strategies, and (4) mental and emotional reactions during Tai Chi.

Often times, these ideas are expressed using imagery and technical terms (words that appear to have common meanings in English but have more specific meanings in Chinese). About 12 years ago, I began translating selected portions of the Chinese myself to explore this imagery and these technical terms. My exploration lead to nearly three years of email discussions with Louis Swaim, translator of Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan from whom I learned quite a bit about translating the classics.

Translation issues aside, just like almost everything in the energy arts, how you learn, practice, and teach Tai Chi in general often influences how you approach the Tai Chi classics in specific.

Overall, we’ve found three ways people approach Tai Chi:

1. Tai Chi as a set of movements. We call this the “Exercise” method.
2. Tai Chi as a set of principles. We call this the “Explanation” method.
3. Tai Chi as a set of skills and experiments. We call this the “Experience” method.

And these three ways correspond to how teachers and students approach the classics.

Tai Chi Classics in the Exercise Method

Teachers who use the “Exercise” method of instruction primarily teach Tai Chi as movements to be learned and practiced. Students are expected to learn and, with practice, be able to duplicate the movements shown to them. Student accomplishment is measured by the number of movements or sets (groups of movements) they can perform.

In many cases, an Exercise method instructor may never mention the Tai Chi Classics, or mention them only in passing. This has certainly been the “norm” with the Exercise method instructors I’ve known.

If they do mention the Classics, often they emphasize the ideas on how the body should move within Tai Chi, to help their students remember the movements they are teaching. Many Exercise instructors ignore the martial, mental, and chi aspects of the Classics.

The problem with the Exercise method in general is that real benefits for health, stress relief, and vitality often take quite some time. Students often have to learn and memorize a large number of movements before they see tangible benefits. So while references to the Classics in the Exercise method may help you learn more movements more quickly, it won’t necessarily improve the level of benefits in your practice. That’s because “more” in Tai Chi and Qigong does not always translate to “better”.

Tai Chi Classics in the Explanation Method

Teachers who use the “Explanation” method of instruction primarily teach Tai Chi and Qigong as sets of principles to be explained, understood, and demonstrated. Movements are taught, but students are expected to learn not just movements, but the principles behind the movements as the teacher explains them. Student accomplishment is measured by the number of principles they are able to either verbalize or demonstrate in their movements.

Explanation method instructors often mention the Classics frequently in their teaching. They tend to draw from all four areas (physical, mental, marital, and energetic) mentioned in the Classics as they demonstrate and teach the principles behind the movements.

Most Explanation method instructors apply the Classics from the “outside in”. In other words, they use the Classics to judge your Tai Chi practice from observation on the outside.

While this works for some of the ideas in the classics, most of the ideas are descriptions of internal processes of how chi functions, and of the descriptions of mental/emotional effects of practice. They were not meant to be taken literally, but as a general guide to experience.

The general problem with the Explanation method is that being able to “understand” principles and/or “demonstrate” them in your movements does not mean that your internal experience is identical to someone else who also “understands” and “demonstrates” the same principles.

Hence, results in health, stress relief, and chi experiences may not be consistent from student to student. This method may also give students a “false” sense of understanding. It’s false in the sense that real Tai Chi and Qigong breakthroughs, like those described in the Classics, are related to increased internal awareness and sensitivity, not to understanding or demonstrating principles.

Tai Chi Classics in the Experience Method

Teachers who use the “Experience” method of instruction primarily teach Tai Chi and Qigong as a series of “experiences” to go through and/or “experiments” to try. Movements and principles may be taught, but students are expected to perform personal experiments to check the results – positive or negative – of these principles and movements. Student accomplishment is measured by their attempts at the experiences and their personal results.

Teachers of this method work to ensure that the students don’t just outwardly mimic the teacher, but that the movements “feel” the same way to the students as they do to the teacher.

Ironically, Experience method instructors may hardly ever mention the Classics, just like Exercise instructors – but for quite different reasons.

Experience method instructors try to bypass all the “verbalizing” and “intellectualizing” about Classics, and give you practices that will move you to a direct, immediate experience of the descriptions in the Classics.

Unlike Explanation method instructors who apply the Classics from the “outside in”, Experience method instructors apply them from the “inside out”. Whereas it’s fairly common for an Explanation instructor to say to a student, “You are violating one of the Classics”, it’s rare to hear an Experience method instructor say that.

Instead, the Experience method instructor treats the Classics as descriptions of common “internal” experiences from the masters, not as 100% iron-clad, rules. And she will ask you to check your experience against those descriptions. She will ask you – not tell you – if your experience matches what the Classic says.

And more importantly, the Experience method instructor will know when a Classical description might apply – and when it might not! By the way, the idea that a “principle” from the Classics might not apply in a given situation is nearly blasphemy to some Explanation instructors. But to the Experience method instructor, the experience – unfiltered by preconceptions – is the driving force.

As you probably know, the greatest strength of the Experience approach is that it is the most effective method we’ve found for gaining real benefits in health, stress relief, vitality, and Chi awareness. This method produces a whole level of Tai Chi and Qigong beyond what most students experience. “So this is what Tai Chi is supposed to feel like” is an often-heard comment. That is why we chose to organize our ChiFusion courses around the approach.

“Experiencing” the Classics

Getting back to translation issues, translators of the Classics often introduce “interpretations” based on their approaches to Tai Chi.

For the most part, the translations I’ve seen are by Explanation method instructors, and their “Tai Chi as principles” approach colors their translations. On the one hand, this “coloring” makes the Classics much more readable, since the text by itself is very terse. Unfortunately though, this coloring may limit the translation’s value for Experience method student

For ChiFusion student interested in the Tai Chi Classics, I highly recommend that you find as literal translation of the classics as you can. I highly recommend the translation by Louis Swaim, author of Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan .

Of course, I may be biased here, since you’ll read about my contributions to this book and the Classics translation in the book’s Acknowledgements. However, as you’ll also read in the translators notes to the Classics, Louis made a particular effort not to impose his ideas upon the translation, and to (in his words) “render as close to the bone as possible, without adding any verbiage that is not support in the original …”

Once you have a literal translation of the Classics, you can begin to look at the translation as “descriptions of experiences” and match those descriptions against the internal experiences you are receiving from your ChiFusion courses. Especially the work in Levels 3 and 4 of our advanced training should parallel closely with the descriptions you are reading.

Of course, what is always primary in our courses is the “Experience” of Tai Chi as a set of skills and experiments. Though not necessary, reading the Classics may add another dimension to the experiments you are trying.

Whether you read the Classics or not, you’ll find that your ChiFusion courses help you “embody” (put in your body) and “em-mind” (put in your mind) much of what the Classics describe.

A few people have asked me about the Complete Chi Health webinars (online seminars) I’ve been holding.

The theme of this webinar is “Five Steps To Reaching the Highest Levels of Health, Stress Relief, and Chi Development through Advanced Training in Tai Chi and Qigong.”

In this special, 1-hour webinar, I will be escorting you behind the scenes and showing you the inner workings of “advanced training” in Tai Chi and Qigong.

You’re going to see exactly how advanced Tai Chi training will:

…. Jump-start your Chi Health with a Two-Step Process to connect your Chi Meridians and “Chi Vessels”

…. Use Tai Chi to connect your “Managing Chi” with your “Guardian Chi”

…. Develop “Energy Threading” to help you find Chi Blockages and Energy System problems.

…. The Four Primary Types of “Directed Chi” that cover just about every physical, mental, and emotional situation you can think of!

You’ll also see:

…. A Qigong for “sleep” and migraines
…. What I learned from a 95-year-old Chinese master
…. A Qigong that “wrings” stress from your body
…. Passive vs. active Tai Chi “rooting”
…. “Tai Chi Jin” and directed “chi”
…. A Qigong to harmonize your five energy centers

…. and a whole lot more!

There will also be a Q&A session for you to get your own questions answered!

Invitations to next week’s webinar go out on Monday. The easiest way to get your invitation to our webinar is to sign-up for my mini-course (click here). And yes, both the mini-course and the webinar are free.