Breathe Naturally

A lot of the time, I hear or read about people who say that we need to link our actions with our breathing when practising taiji. Inhale when opening, exhale when closing; inhale when drawing in, exhale when pushing out. And so on.

Which may seem to make a lot of sense, since taiji practice is slow. But when you think a bit further, and remember that taiji is not an exercise but actually a martial art, this linking of breathing with action seems to lack a sense of practicality.

My teacher, Mr Kwek, has always told me that in practice, just breathe naturally. Think a bit more and we can see why. In a fight, you need to be able to open and close, draw in or strike out, regardless of whether you are inhaling or exhaling. Things are going to be happening a lot faster than during practice, and there is no way to match your breathing with the speed of actions. Your opponents are not going to wait for you to inhale before they come at you, so you need to be able to punch and strike even when inhaling. Things cannot be inhale (wait), exhale (punch), inhale (wait), exhale (punch)... You need to be able to take the most appropriate action, at the most appropriate time, whether you are inhaling or exhaling.

Another thing is that different people have different lung capacities. By controlling your breathing when practising, you may end up either breathing too fast, or holding your breath in between actions. And holding your breath is especially bad, since it tenses up your body, which is one of the things that you should never do in taiji.

Oh, and in pushing hands, if you link your actions to your breathing, you are giving your opponent an extra source of information to know what you are trying to do.

Learning to be Put in Disadvantageous Positions

Pushing hands is a form of training. And as a form of training, there is no winning or losing. The important thing is to reap the most benefit out of the training, to know what the training is for, and how best to use it.

And pushing hands is about learning how to sense force, and how to use your opponent's force against himself.

So instead of trying to push your opponent, the best way to reap the maximum benefits from pushing hands is to let your opponent push you. This allows you to discover for yourself the limits to which you can and cannot neutralize force. Up till which point can you allow someone to push you and still neutralize his force? Up to which point can you still be able to use your opponent's force back against him? Up to which point will you no longer be able to achieve either?

Use pushing hands as an opportunity to be put into various disadvantageous positions to learn how to get out of them. Because life is not a bed of roses, a real fight may not start equal or fair, and a true martial artists must be able to get out of any sticky situation.

Martial Arts Are Not Sports

Martial arts.

These are arts with roots in the art of killing. Their original aim was to kill another human being, in the most effective and efficient way.

Controlled portions of martial arts training has been adapted for competitive sports, but these are limited to certain aspects of the martial arts that has been adapted, and is not representative of its true potential. For example, boxing is an adaption of bare-handed fighting, with very strict rules on what can be used, and where can be hit. There are similar adaptations, such as in karate, and even in taiji (pushing hands).

But that is what sports is about. You isolate a limited portion of something, and compete in that limited aspect to see who is better. The thing is, it is not a representation of who is better overall, but just in that limited aspect.

Yet the art of killing is not about being limited. It is about being effective and efficient, using all available means. So when martial arts is turned into a competitive sport, we must remember that as a competitive sport, it only represents a limited portion of the original martial art. We are isolating a certain, limited portion just to see who is better in that particular aspect. It does not, however, represent who is the better martial artist, since attempting to compete in such an aspect will most probably lead to fatalities.

In sports, a person trains within certain rules, learns how to excel within those boundaries, and gets better over time with training. That invariably makes him or her better within those rules compared to someone new to the rules. And that is all competitive sports can show: who is better in a certain aspect within the boundary of certain rules.

At the end of the day, martial arts were not developed as systems for sports, but were developed as systems for killing. While adapting martial arts for sports allow us to see who is better in certain aspects under certain rules, it does not guarantee us a way to see who is a better martial artists, since there are no rules in the art of killing.