Aikitaiji Online Training

Basic rules for performing tai chi form

• Keep suspended head top, stringing the whole body together so that when one part moves, all parts move.

• Keep your ribs lifted away from your hips by relaxing the abdominal muscles that cause you to slump. The slumping muscles are the ones to relax so that you can stand fully upright. Firm up the core muscles in the waist that keep your spine from bending backward at the waist. They’re deeper in the abdomen, and are developed by such exercises as the “plank” from the curriculum.

• Feel the ribs in your back (as well as the front ribs) expand when you breathe. A firm but relaxed waist (considered above) also regulates the breathing. If the posture (legs and waist) is right, then the breath is right. Form and breath work cooperatively.

• Your weight falls through the bubbling well point of the weighted foot and bubbles up into the other foot at the same time.

• Gaze with soft focus on the horizon and your mind will also go into a soft gaze. Keep your mind empty of distracting thoughts by focusing on your breathing.

• Keep your armpits open like you’re holding an egg in them.

• Don’t lean backward at the waist. Incline the body as you would if you were jumping over a ditch. A ki test will verify this.

• Keep the elbows in front of the plane of the body to maintain power. Give a ki test on the front 70- 30 postures.

• Don’t cross the centerline of your body with your hands. This principle is backed up by a ki test.

• Keep your thigh pointing in the same direction that the foot points.

• Let your weight drop to tan tien or hara and feel the spirit rise up the spine and out of the crown of your head.

• Pivot on the heel, not the toes.

• Extend ki from your hands (finger tips, heart of the palm or heel of the hand). When the weight is in the left leg, then the ki usually extends out of the right hand and vice versa.

• Be sure that your weight is 100% in the supportive leg before you step. Check this by lifting your leg without shifting your head backward. Yang Cheng Fu said that the “differentiation of substantial and insub-stantial is the first thing of all in Tai Chi Chuan.”

• Don’t lean backward. If you do, you have to make a major movement to get to the place that a movement is initiated from. You can check this by performing a small hop forward without moving your head be-forehand.

• The feet are like the terminals of a battery that have to maintain tight contact for the energy to be useful.

• While standing in the back leg don’t lift the toes of your front foot. Keep the toes and bubbling well point of the front foot on the floor to maintain the circuit of chi. The empty front foot’s bubbling well point is so extremely yin that is has a mental- energetic suction that helps keep it rooted to the ground. The front foot’s root helps to prevent you from toppling over backward when pushed. Ki test this.