Sunday, May 11, 2014

Inkling: Keep Moving, Don't Stop

One of the principles of taiji is to keep moving. Each movement is supposed to flow into the other. I think I have an idea of what that means. It is like the taiji circle, yin flows into yang, yang flows into yin, there is no end, the end of yin is the start of yang, the end of yang is the start of yin. Just like the end of a peng (ward off) could well be the start of ji (squeeze), the end of ji is then the start of lu (roll back), the end of lu is then the start of peng, and so on. Each movement flows into the other, there is no end.

Something that came up during pushing hands, but which sparked me into thinking about something that my teacher was telling me. He told me that my movements have breaks in them, and I didn't understand before. I thought my movements did not stop, I always kept moving when I am practising. Now I think I know what he meant. He is not talking about the physical movements, but rather the intent of those movements. They need to flow from one to the other. This is something that I will keep in mind for my practices.

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