While you are following the instructions as set out in the previous chapters, you may not be able to acquire the feeling as described immediately or within a short time of your practice. It does take time for people to develop the skills and gradually the feeling will come naturally. It is important to remember not to try to chase the feeling and forget about the method, which should be followed stage by stage. What is more important is that do not interfere with the force of gravity. There is no shortcut to it – the only shortcut is to increase the dose of your practice. While I try to find time to practise taijiquan for at least one hour every day, my teacher, Master WANG, used to spend several hours every day to practise not only taijiquan but also several other schools of ‘internal forms of martial arts’.
I have said in previous chapters that while you are doing taijiquan, you should convert your whole body mass to a soft rubber or vinyl bag filled up with water so that you feel that you are bouncy and elastic. Apart from imagining that the water inside your body is flowing in a direction of your choice, you should also imagine that your body and limbs are moving like water. For example, when you move your arms forward to push your opponent, you should imagine that the water near you is flowing from your chest to the front and that your arms are just like a ridge of water surging to the front. Treat your body and your arms as part of the wave. After your arms have reached the limit in the front, you should imagine that the wave in front of you has hit the shore and either flows sideways or is being bounced back.
As I have said many times before, you should not use muscular power to play taijiquan. Therefore when you cannot push your opponent away with your arms because he stands very firmly, you should not continue the push but instead you should:
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sink the weight of your body thus floating up your arms which should then be placed on your opponent’s body; at the same time, imagine that the water surrounding you is flowing towards and then behind your opponent, bringing along your arms and water pressure with it. Your opponent will find it difficult to resist this kind of pressure and will be moved by you. OR
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make use of the resistance from your opponent and transfer the resistance through your arms, shoulders, body, pelvis joints, legs and then to your feet. In the course of the transition, the resistance can be combined with your body weight so that when your body weight reaches the ground, it bounces back to your legs and through your body and shoulders to your arms. When this flow of weight reaches your opponent, he will be pushed back.
To reiterate what has just been said, when practising taijiquan, all your movements should resemble the tidal waves of water which is on the one hand one of the weakest substances in the world but on the other one of the most unyielding and strongest substances. The use of water as an imaginary substitute for your body and limbs will both increase your flexibility and also enhance your power.
When playing taijiquan, it is also important that you should feel tall and high spirited, and that there is momentum in all your movements. The momentum is generated by the force of gravity which bounces your body weight upwards whenever you place your body weight on the ground. Old taijiquan masters have said that our movements should be just like the flow of a river which never ends.
When you play taijiquan, you should float your head upwards and at the same time, sink your body weight to your dantian, that is, the pressure point three inches below your navel. In your taijiquan movements, you sometimes extend your arms outwards to cover a wider area and sometimes bring your arms close to your body. The taijiquan term for the former movement is ‘open’ and that for the latter movement is ‘enclose’. When you ‘open’, you should feel that the lifting force from the floating of your head upwards is stronger than the sinking force of your body weight. On the other hand, when you ‘enclose’, you should feel that the sinking effect of your body weight is stronger than the floating effect of your head. This in fact is very logical because when you try to sink your body weight to your dantian and then to your feet in order to ‘enclose’, the bouncing effect of the force of gravity will enable you to expand your body and therefore ‘open’, making you feel that your head is ‘lighter’.
When you ‘open’ or ‘enclose’, you are bound to move your legs and arms. In doing so, you should circle your joints to produce a reeling or rotating effect on your arms and legs. When you move your arms, you should start circling your shoulders first, and then elbows and then wrists. When doing the circles, you should bear in mind the following:
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do not use any muscular power to do the circles, and
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you should circle your shoulders, elbows and wrists or wrists, elbows and then shoulders in these orders. Do not move the whole arms at the same time.
- when you move the three joints, you should imagine that you are circling the joints in the opposite direction first before you actually circle them in the direction you want. For example, if you wish to circle your shoulder joints outwards, that is, your right shoulder joint in a clockwise direction and your left shoulder joint in an anti-clockwise direction, you should imagine that you are circling your right shoulder joint in an anti-clockwise direction first and similarly your left shoulder joint in a clockwise direction first before you actually circle them in the direction you want. The same applied to your elbows and wrists, and of course your pelvis joints, your knees and your ankles.
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