Moving Together Revisited

While on of the basics of taiji is to move the whole body together, which is usually best seen in the timing of the movement of the upper body tied in with the movement of the lower body, I think that is not enough. When I first started learning taiji, I was told that my hand and my leg must reach together. Once the leg stops moving, the hand must stop moving too. Once the leg changes direction, the hand must change direction too.

The aim of moving together is so that the force generated is the sum total of all the force generated by all the moving parts of your body, rather than just being limited to that force generated at a local part of your body. Which means that the force generated is the sum of the force generated by your legs, waist and arms, rather than just your arms.

However, even though my hand and leg reaches together, I still feel that my upper body and lower body are disjointed, that even though the appearance is that they are moving together, in actuality, they are not. I think the problem is because I have not been paying attention to how I can move my body together as a whole to generate the force that I need. The outer appearance is for hand and leg to reach at the same time. But the way to practise is to pay attention on how to channel the force generated by the different parts of the body towards a single point. I guess this will be something to work on in the practices ahead.