Enjoying Taiji

Previously, I wrote about enjoying taiji and also about adding meaning to my moves. Today, after seeing my teacher perform a small part of Chen style taijiquan, I realised what he meant when he told me to enjoy practising taiji.

The key to adding soul and spirit (aka shen 神) is not in adding meaning to your moves, but in enjoying practising taiji. Taiji is about opposites: yes and no, have and have not, explicit and implicit, etc. So while it is good to show the meaning of each move, it must not be too explicit, else it is no longer taiji (since it no longer has the two sides of yin and yang).

You need to show each move, yet hide it so that it is obvious only when you want to use it. When performing your set, it seems as if there is some meaning behind each move, yet that meaning is not immediately obvious. For example, the move may be using the shoulder to hit, but you move in such a way that the shoulder knock is not immediately obvious, yet you are always able to do a shoulder knock.

And how do you do that? First, you must understand how to use each movement. Then, you need to relax and enjoy practising taiji, such that each movement is not an explicit show of application, but just a moving of the body, with the implicit knowledge that should you need to apply that movement, you know exactly how to use it.