Strength in softness...

In addition to Tai Chi, I also teach the martial arts of Ba Gua Zhang (Eight Diagram Palm) and Xing Yi Quan (Mind Shape Fist.) Sometimes people look at me and say "That's a lot, how could you have learned all that?"

The answer lies in the fact that I studied Sun Style Tai Chi. Sun Style was created in the early 20th century by Grandmaster Sun Lu Tang. His style of Tai Chi is a result of blending Hao style Tai Chi with Xing Yi and Ba Gua, he was a master of both styles and quite adept at them. Master Sun was a genius and as geniuses often do, he found something startling. He found that these three arts, what the Chinese often call the Nei Jia or Internal Schools, all share the same principles.

This is a very interesting idea because Ba Gua and Xing Yi often look nothing like each other and not at all like Tai Chi but the principles of rooting, relaxation (song in Chinese), and the use of yi or mind to lead the chi run throughout them. Armed with this knowledge Grandmaster Sun took his knowledge and created his own Tai Chi form using the best techniques of the three styles that he knew.

This is the key difference in the way a really good teacher teaches martial arts and the way a mediocre teacher imparts his knowledge is this. The good teacher focuses on the principles that allow you to understand why the forms are as they are. The mediocre teacher focuses on the forms and their shape, never the why and how the forms work as they are supposed to work.

Many of my students are advanced martial artists with many years of training under their belts. However, when they get to my class and I invite them to show me how their techniques work I am always able to get free or to simulate hitting them very quickly. The answer lies in softness and relaxation. In internal kung fu we never want to match force against force. We want to skillfully blend with an attack and then use our own force sensibly and directly to end the altercation as quickly as possible.

Herein lies the heart of the matter. In Kung Fu, as in life, if we meet an obstacle and seek to batter ourselves against it and resist then we may succeed in getting through it or we may not. If we do wonderful, if we do not we become frustrated and depressed. The key here is softness... to relax and flow around the obstruction and then with seemingly little effort uproot it wherever it is weakest.

Always remember that when you interact with a person, a place, or a thing you cannot control that thing. However you can control your response to it and that means that even a small change on your part changes the relationship. We will discuss this more next time when I talk about the move "Too Lazy to Tie Coat."