The door to Tai Chi: Stages and Steps of Learning Tai Chi

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - Lao Tzu
but how? and where should we start in the world of Tai Chi?

When I give lectures and seminars, I often hear students saying they have already learned Tai Chi or have been doing it a long time. Most of them have only reached the first or second stage of the following four stages: Xing/Shape, Sheng/Feel, Yi/Meaning, and Jue/Song. The students have not really completed all four stages.

Yang Cheng Fu (the founder of Yang style Tai Chi) wrote a book whose full title is The Complete Body and Usage Book of Yang Style Tai Chi. It is divided into two parts; one is for your own body, to understand if your body can adapt to the tai chi forms, the other is for usage, to understand how to apply the forms to others. Shape and Feel are part of the body; Meaning and Song are part of the usage.

Shape(Xing): Includes understanding the basic principles, movements and positions, and the transitions between them. Are you familiar with all of the movements and can you do them yourself? 

Feel(Sheng): Coordinating the whole body with proper weight transitions. Are you able to move smoothly and feel relaxed during each movement? Moving through the forms should ultimately be automatic, without thinking. 

Meaning(Yi): Understanding what each movement is for. What is the martial application for each movement? Are you able to apply the form for self-defense against different types of opponents?

Song(Jue): Synthesizing, understanding, and applying the written, philosophical, and martial material that prior and current Tai Chi Masters have offered. 

"In the Song Dynasty, there was a farmer who thought his crops grew too slow. He went and pulled up all the crops, just a little bit. After a day, he found all the crops were dead. This is a famous story that everyone in China knows. It tells us we have to realize our goals step-by-step, not in a hurry." 

“Follow in order and advance step-by-step; advance gradually in due order; follow in proper sequence and make steady progress.” – Zhu Xi’s (famous comment on Confucius’ book)

Here I list the steps to practice the above four stages:

Preparing and Opening Forms

Prepare your Tai Chi and understand balance while in a still position.

Brush Peacock’s Tail

Understand the four major movements of Tai Chi; Peng, Lu, Ji, and An.

Post Standing

Practice a steady form for the various stances, e.g., Horse Stance, Bow Stance, and Empty Stance.

Practicing the Steps

Practice your footwork for the various stances, e.g., Advancing Steps, Retreating Steps, and Side Steps.

Practicing Single Form

Practice the major forms individually, e.g., Single Whip, Knee Brush, Waving Hands Like Clouds, and Jade Lady Moves the Shuttles.

Practicing Whole Form

Go through the whole form smoothly.

Push Hands, Basic Forms - Steady

Understand the basic forms of push hands while not moving your feet.

Push Hands, Basic Forms - Walking

Understand the basic forms of push hands while walking.

Push Hands - Feeding and Understanding Energy

Learn to identify your own energy as well as the energy of a partner.

Push Hands - Applying the Forms You Have Learned

Apply the Tai Chi forms you have learned in during push hands.

Applying Each Form

Understand how to apply each form not just during formal push hands, but in informal martial arts applications.

Wisdom from the Oil Salesman

Ouyang Xiu (歐陽修) was a Chinese statesman, historian, essayist and poet of the Song Dynasty. I have read many of his literature. When Ouyang was a little kid, his family was very poor. He couldn’t afford school supply. He used tree branch as a pen to write on the sand. I have read many his literature a long time ago but I still have memory of his work on “Regarding the Pavilion of The Old Drunkard” and “Old Oil Salesman”.

Kang Su Gong was the most famous archer in Northern Song Dynasty. He was practicing shooting in his front yard one day. Many people went watching him. There was an Old cooking oil salesman had two buckets of oil with him. He left two buckets of oil on ground, taking a rest and watching Kang Su Gong. Kang Su Gong has missed only one shot out of ten. Every one started to cheer, but the salesman only nodded his head.

Kang Su Gong saw that, not very pleased.
“ Do you know archery? How do you think my skill?”
“Not very special, just because you have done it for a while” Salesman said.
Kang Su Gong become very angry, “How can you put me down like this?”
Salesman said, “I can show you by pouring my oil.”

He placed a calabash on the ground, then placed a small Tong Qian(Traditional Chinese money with a square hole in the middle) on top of the mouth of the calabash. He took a big spoon and scooped some oil out from the buckets. He then poured the oil into the calabash. You can see the oil formed a long string and went into the calabash through the small hole of the Tong Qian. He was very steady, so you couldn’t see any oil left on the Tong Qian.
After the salesman has done this, he said, “It’s not a big deal I did this, I have done that easily just because I have practiced a lot.” Kang Su Gong smiled and politely sent him away.

We are not only learned that practice make you good from this story, but also found that being humble can prepare you better from learning new skill, because there are always some oil salesmen around whom has unique techniques to show you.

Do you still have your vase?

After the strong wind and shower two days ago, my peony is falling apart in backyard.
I need to use string to pull them together. After done some yard work this morning,
cutting some flowers and putting them in to my vase, I remembered the vase story I have heard.

A war general was cleaning his desk. He accidently knocked off his favorite vase. Just right before the vase touch the ground, he caught with his quick hand. He realized he was sweating at the moment. “Why?” he asked himself. “ While I was in the battlefield, fighting with the enemies, I never sweat. Why today, why now. I could lose my life then during the battle but this is just a vase.” After he thought it over, He broke his vase.

I always tell myself, I don’t have any thing when I was first born, and I will not bring any thing with me after I die. Anything I have here are some thing I gained. I should be happy on what I have. Sometimes, arguments and conflict came because something you never had and will not bring to your coffin. I wanted to lose all my vases as well. What about you? After you read this, Do you still have your vase?

Are we really all going to Heaven?

What a beautiful sunny weekend we had! I did some gardening and then joined my friend Teresa’s BBQ at rooftop. If you read our website, you saw we auctioned one of our classes to support woman who had Aids, that’s where Teresa use to work. Teresa is only visiting Boston this weekend because she accepted a job in NC a year ago. She love the food and entertainment here and she had a good job here in Cambridge, but she took that job anyway because she think people need more help there.

Here is a Buddhism story,

Once, a person asked the Buddha,

“Where will you go after you die.”
“Hell, of course!”
“Why hell, you suppose to go to heaven, right?”
“If I don’t go to Hell, who is going to teach these people in hell being a good human?”

I didn’t try to imply that NC is hell, of course not. I am trying to say that some time the most wonderful decision ( good for you) is not the most wise decision( good for the world), so before you make the decision, think three times and choose wisely.

Viewing Self-Defense in different ways

I will give a Seminar on Self-defense tomorrow. When people think about self-defense, they will think about how the opponent attack you, and then how you going to attack back or escape. That’s not really self-defense is about, that’s is only a part of it. This is the procedure during the self-defense. There is before and after. In tomorrow’s seminar, I will show how can you prepare yourself before the attack or even prevent the attack, and what if it happens, how you deal with it and how you wrap up. Grandmaster Cai use to teach some of the techniques to the secret police force for the Chinese government. They can use the minimum energy to defeat the enemy with maximum power. I think it will be very exciting for most of my students, since we only discussed about Tai Chi in our public class. It will be some new knowledge for them.

All about Drawing

Tomorrow will be a busy day for me. I will have four meetings and a Tai Chi class. I am writing tomorrow’s paragraph today to keep my promise of posting the tulip picture on the blog. I went to MFA after work today for the Wednesday night drawing. I have done a lot of figure drawings while I was learning martial arts to help my self remember the movements, but I am still a beginner on drawing. I am still at the level of filling the blank with shadows. Today’s drawing is to pick an object and draw. I picked a painting and tried to draw the human figure that painting has. It took me an hour and I am still not very satisfied on what I have. I have few phone calls to make tonight, so I need to get home soon. On my way out, I saw few people also doing drawing and they have a teacher. The teacher was showing some of the techniques. Just few simple lines made the figure so alive. It’s almost like Martial arts. It’s all about practice and technique. Once your technique is mature, you can simply draw any thing with simple lines. When we have computers, no one practice their hand writing any more. When we have digital cameras, less people interested in drawing. These are some really good things we need to keep.Because an drawing and handwriting tell people your view of life and your personality, that makes you unique. Will life be bored that every one’s letter is typed in times new roman?

Daily Tai Chi Meditation

When I first asked my students when we were having class, “Did you do your Tai Chi every day last week?” Only few people raised their hands. I kept asking once a while and I found the numbers has been increasing. That’s a good start!

I remembered that one time a student asked me. “ How many hours I should spend on Tai Chi every day. Do you think I had enough each day?”

I mentioned to her. “Well, you need at least one hour of Tai Chi to help you remember the movements since you are a beginner. Two hours or more if you want an improvement. Now, you spend 8 hours at work, 2 hours on the road from and back to work or walking on the street, to your apartment or to supermarket. 2 hours for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and 8 hours sleeping. That’s total of 20 hrs already, if you spend 2 hrs watching TV or chat on the phone with friends. You only have 2 hours left for Tai Chi. You can tell me if you have enough time for Tai Chi or not.”

She smiled and said, “ Now I finally understand, as much time as possible is the answer!”

This Article is copyrighted By Huan’s Tai Chi