Shopping For T'ai Chi Ch'uan
by Robert Amacker
T’ai Chi Ch’uan is today an apparently universally popular study. Advertisements frequently assert that it is, in fact, the most popular exercise in the world. It is the state-approved morning practice of the Earth’s most populated country, one apparently anointed with New Age benedictions, its yin-yang symbol hanging about in almost every yoga school, health food store, and aromatherapy shop on the planet. There are T’ai Chi TV shows, instructional videos and, at last count, over five thousand web sites and even chat rooms on the internet devoted to its dissemination. It has received approval from both esoteric and exoteric medical traditions, survived rigid scientific examinations of its efficacy in countless healing scenarios, and improved the performance of world-class athletes.
All of this seemingly unqualified cheerleading has, unfortunately, the effect of planting certain assumptions in the mind of any prospective student, assumptions that can be quite confusing. The first and most obvious of these, of course, is that something so popular must be well understood. There are, after all, whole magazines devoted to T’ai Chi Ch’uan, and a myriad of associations and organizations with important sounding names purporting to “regulate” it, and to “certify” instructors. This is conveniently supported by a second assumption, which is that it has a history of evolution and dissemination similar to that of Indian Yoga, to wit, the benefit of long experimentation and examination by entire divergent schools, and a moral and spiritual directive to educate the masses. Accordingly, many people also assume that its highest aspect is some sort of spiritual enlightenment, with practices consciously directed toward that end. Another frequent assumption is that, if something is so popular, it can’t be that hard to do.
First of all, one should realize that for something to be popular, it requires not necessarily that one understand it, but only that one know how to sell it. Cars are popular, but certainly not understood by everyone. The theory of relativity is so “popular” that it is the foundation of the arms race, and is understood by almost no one. What one is selling is results, not understanding, and if results are produced, there will be a market for them. In the case of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, we have a large and profound art that has as its fundamental practices many elements that are, even in complete isolation, quite capable of producing salutary results. The average student is quite satisfied with these results, but they are not in themselves definitive of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, and may be understood even if their position in the ultimate realization of the art is not.
As far as its history is concerned, while T’ai Chi Ch’uan is based upon some quite ancient practices, these are again not definitive of the art. Its conscious and deliberate evolution was confined almost completely within one province, indeed, within one family, and its secrets guarded with the same fervor that today surrounds a country’s nuclear weapons program. While acknowledging the conundrum that spiritual enlightenment is the highest aspect of any art, it must be understood that the pragmatic test of T’ai Chi Ch’uan’s evolution was not the production of enlightened wisdom, but boxing skill.
It is quite possible, in fact, that its very obscurity is responsible for much of its popularity. As long as one sticks to the visible skeleton of the art, repeated countless times in an endless stream of “introductory” books and self-serving helpful websites, he can teach almost anything without fear that any well-known standards will contradict it. What is this visible skeleton?: a thin veneer of Ch'i Gung (of which T’ai Chi Ch’uan is considered the highest expression), lots of talk about relaxation and meditation, and a few basic formal guidelines masquerading as “principles” of the art. Much is made also of the intriguing and appealingly new-age concept of “yielding,” quite a simple idea in itself, while very little is said about adherence, the explanation of which would require real understanding of the art.
I should make it clear that insofar as these creative distortions of the art do produce results, I have nothing against them. But the beginner must be warned that true instruction in T’ai Chi Ch’uan is very rare, even to meeting the barest standard of definition. I will make this definition clear a little later on. But first, it is fair to ask, if these truncated or mutated versions of the art produce results, who cares what the “real thing” is? There are two answers to this. One is that the upper levels of boxing skill and the practice that these levels afford are not simply icing on the cake of health and longevity that T’ai Chi Ch’uan promotes. They are in fact the ultimate expression of Ch’i Gung practice, and cannot be simply ignored or excised from it. This is because Ch’i Gung, in its elementary form, carries with it the same danger as elementary yoga, that is, a profoundly mechanistic and narcissistic self-absorption. At some point one’s awareness must transcend oneself. The energetic reflexes that are trained into the body must be capable of activation by the outside world. This external activation, when something outside of ourselves, without any conscious inward direction, causes our energy to flow, and constitutes effectively a raising of the spirit, is called love. It is in this sense that martial artists speak about “loving” their opponent, and it is this, truly that is the real goal of all martial pursuit.
The other answer, and one of equal importance, is simply the incredible wit and sophistication that is represented by the boxing art itself. Even were it to have no health benefits at all, even to the point of being dangerous for health, it would deserve to be preserved, just for its utter cleverness and intrinsic beauty.
There are said to be three major stages of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, coordination with oneself, coordination with the opponent, and coordination with the Universe. The final stage, of course, should be approached with due caution and in due time, but the first two must be understood to be essential to the practice. Indeed, the art as it is defined does not exist without the concept of combat, and the beginner should not be beguiled by any amount of new-age conundrums to the contrary. The execution of the form does not allow for the practice of anything regarding the fundamental principle of the art, at least in any literal form, but amounts to a preparation for actually putting the principle into action against an opponent.
All this talk of opponents should not make the reader presume that any real school is filled with guys slugging it out in the corner or has some sort of aggressive boxing school atmosphere. The “opponent” for all of one’s initial practice and for ninety per cent of the time afterwards is more of a partner than an opponent, and the most important form of “sparring” is a slow and measured exchange of soft techniques with the feet in completely fixed positions. The task of actually putting the principle into action is challenging enough as a cooperative effort to prevent all but a few from graduating from this level to anything resembling real combat. The situation is slightly similar in tennis, where millions volley the ball about to salutary effect, but few ever reach real competitive levels. The saving grace of T’ai Chi Ch’uan is that the mere pursuit of high technique will bring about great benefits to health, even if such levels are never reached.
So, again, one could say that since the average practitioner never reaches the levels of sophistication that are possible in the art, why should he care if the instructor couldn’t take him there? He should care, in this case, because only knowledge of the higher levels will generate the correct technique on the lower ones, and this correctness has a value all unto itself.
The fact is that most instructors never at any time fully encompass even the most fundamental definition of the art. To do so, they must cover in their instruction at least those elements that are included in the very symbol of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, that is, the yin-yang symbol surrounded by the eight trigrams. This means, first of all, that they must clearly demonstrate and explain the literal use of the (yin-yang) principle in connecting two opponents, and that furthermore they demonstrate this in regard to eight specific techniques, both in their individual application and in their transformations from one to another. Four of these techniques are designed to be studied in the context of the aforementioned fixed step practice, while the other four are formally studied in the context of actively stepping. These are the so-called eight trigram postures, and in fact all must be employed eventually with steps, as dictated by the additional five element postures (not included in the T’ai Chi Ch’uan symbol, but part of Chang San-feng’s original definition).
The problem for the beginner, of course, is that only some acquaintance with the art can provide any basis for a judgment concerning its execution. He can at least, however, be forewarned against any assumptions that large enrollment, official looking certifications, or fancy costumes are any guarantee of authenticity. I would hope that this writing would serve as such a caution.
Here are some other signs of good or bad technique. First, in the matter of form. Don’t look for the teacher whose movements look the most “beautiful” or “natural” to you. In physical arts, such judgments are the province of an educated and sophisticated eye. I have a book that contains photographs of Yang, Cheng-fu and his student Chen, Wei-ming doing the formal movements. I enjoy showing this book to beginners, and asking them who is the teacher and who the student. They invariably get it reversed, and are just as invariably puzzled when finding out the truth. Sometimes I demonstrate the “fault of floating” to my students, and there are always a couple who tell me “you mean that isn’t right? But it looks much better than what you usually do.” When I give demonstrations designed to attract students, I cannot allow myself to show the practice as I actually do it, which would impress only experts, but leave others profoundly nonplussed. In spite of these inconsistencies, however, real technique, when fully employed in high level exchanges (as opposed to formal solo demonstrations), is aesthetically very appealing, and one should never allow themselves into being duped into thinking that someone who moves in a way that is obviously clumsy and out of shape is actually concealing some profound “inner” grace and power. In other words, beautiful is not always beautiful, but ugly is always ugly.
But behind this aesthetic confusion lies a rather profound truth about T’ai Chi Ch’uan, connected with its Taoist philosophical roots. At the pinnacle of technique, one’s actual mental (and, in relation to the opponent, physical as well) condition is quite different from what is generally assumed and desired by the aspiring student. A beginner’s fantasy about what it is like to be a master of the martial arts, and particularly this martial art, has little in common with reality. Generally it involves some fantasy about security, which, in somatic terms, is very connected with stability. T’ai Chi students talk a lot about being “balanced,” but very few seem to understand what this term really means. Without thinking much about it, they are unconsciously defining the condition of balance as one in which a person does not feel imbalanced. After all, if you’re not imbalanced, then you must be balanced, right? Wrong. This is fuzzy thinking. What the average T’ai Chi student calls balance is actually and definitively, in fact, double-weightedness. When one is effectively trapped in a position by two or more forces, of course one does not feel imbalanced. Of course one feels secure and stable, but this is not a condition of balance any more than is sitting in a theater seat for two hours. Real balance is a dynamic condition, defined by constant changes to preserve it, and the desired condition of T’ai Chi Ch’uan is similarly dynamic. The balance sought after never gives one the feeling of security that double-weightedness affords.
Philosophically, this means simply that people do not instinctively want the condition that T’ai Chi Ch’uan produces, which, in actual use, is something like a combination of complete powerlessness with walking on the edge of a cliff. This is Taoist condition, and believe me, nobody wants it. Anyone who says that they do is lying. People want POWER and SECURITY, and they will instinctively feel some attraction to somatic states that seem to imply either or both. Many hard martial arts, especially those that purport to be the most “practical” and “realistic,” are really based on movements that satisfy this primitive instinctive desire for security and power. Wide, powerfully double-weighted stances make one feel completely secure while repeated thrusts by arms or legs make one feel powerful. They can get away with their claims of realism and practicality because their techniques resonate very deeply with what the average person would imagine to be realistic and practical. This problem continues into advanced levels, until a kind of fundamental change in the student is produced. I have very advanced students who, when confronted with a difficult new movement, cannot get it, not because they are physically incapable, but because they cannot accept that such a precarious position and series of positions could be correct, and keep trying to unconsciously make themselves feel more “secure.” From the teacher’s point of view it begins to seem that people are afraid of life, due to its dynamic nature, and unconsciously strive for a kind of security that implies no further need for change; in other words, death.
In light of this, it is easy to see why the annals of T’ai Chi Ch’uan are full of admonitions to give up strength, accept the effective physical domination of others (yielding), and learn by losing. As much as T’ai Chi students mouth the philosophy of Taoism, they cannot be expected, except after a long and arduous study, to seriously believe it. It is simply against human nature. Nearly all philosophical systems are ultimately motivated by a desire to control the universe, including Taoism, which simply says “control by not controlling.” I know lots of students who are very aggressive in t’ui-shou, and are very aware of this idea of learning through loss. They just figure they’ve been there, done that, know all about the losing thing, and are ready for the other side now, the winning part.
Which brings us to the really difficult element of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, t’ui-shou, or hand pushing. All sparring practices are, to one degree or another, abstractions of fighting, but t’ui-shou is probably the most abstract of any of them. The actual skills intended to be developed by the practice are quite subtle, and really amount to both parties playing according to a very large and complex set of rules, the maintenance of which is the whole point of the game. When a beginner sees a t’ui-shou “contest,” it is completely unreasonable to assume that he will have any awareness of how well these rules are being followed, and interpret the game intuitively, from what he sees. It is the job of the teacher to make sure that this simple-minded interpretation is not shared by those students actually doing t’ui-shou, and it is a job at which most teachers fail. Instead of correcting these misapprehensions, they cater to them, and consciously or unconsciously begin to instruct their students in how to win the game that it appears that they are playing, rather than understand the game they should be playing.
Aided by the apparent authority imparted by the T’ai Chi “tournament” system, these teachers frequently succeed in teaching whatever it is they are doing very, very well, even if it is not T’ai Chi Ch’uan. By whatever rules and standards are imposed, these skills can succeed in “winning” contests, and give both participants and observers the impression that something has actually been accomplished. In truth, the conversion of sparring in any martial art into a way of testing the skills of the opponents is a corruption of its true purpose, which is to establish a condition in which one may acquire certain skills. In some martial arts this corruption is relatively small; the line between playing and going for the win is relatively easy to cross. But T’ai Chi Ch’uan is somewhat unique in that it has a level of sparring that resembles that of other martial arts (san shou), and which, remember, is still an abstraction of fighting, but also a secondary level, an abstraction of an abstraction, one might say, and this is t’ui-shou. The only thing comparable in other martial arts are blocking exercises and the one-punch kumite of Karate, all relatively simple, but suitable for a revealing comparison.
No one would think it clever in the slightest if a student, in the middle of a blocking exercise for punches to the head, suddenly kicked his opponent in the groin and announced that he had “won.” He would not get points for intelligence for assuming that any opportunity to see his opponent on the floor would constitute success in that day’s particular drill. But in T’ai Chi Ch’uan the intelligence factor is a little more critical. This is not aided by the fact that most modern teachers stupidly allow a simplistic definition of “victory” in t’ui-shou to utterly corrupt their students’ practices. This is the idea that whoever takes the first step or moves his feet in any way is the loser, or variations of it, such as whoever takes the first backward step, or two steps, etc., etc. It is not that this idea is fundamentally wrong or an unimportant factor, but simply that it cannot be taken out of context with the myriad of other factors pertinent to who wins and who loses a fight, and remember, all abstractions must answer ultimately to their point of origin.
When the players are acutely conscious of all of these factors, and clear that no other rules of engagement have been violated, then the applicability of one in particular to a judgment of who wins and who loses may be valid, even if such a judgment itself is unimportant. Not taking a step is definitive of t’ui-shou, so naturally it is not allowed as an option; but there are a lot of other things that, while not definitive, are still not options. Violation of any of them in a real fight would get you killed as quickly as taking an unnecessary step, sometimes a lot quicker, and our abstraction was never intended to lose sight of this fact. This is, by the way, somewhat definitive of art as opposed to sport. Art is abstraction, whereas sport defines its own reality and considers no other. From this reasoning, one could say that everything that is happening in T’ai Chi Ch’uan today is simply part of its evolution from art to sport. Instead of agonizing over all of these other subtle “rules,” which are actually the keys to the acquisition of skill, just forget about them, define victory as simplistically as you want, and announce a new Olympic sport.
From the beginning observers’ point of view, seduced, in watching t’ui-shou as in the form, by a natural tendency to equate power and stability with correct practice, anything that impresses is probably wrong. Not necessarily in observing the performance of the teacher, but almost certainly in the practice of the average student. I have seen schools full of students who justify their powerful struggles as the only realistic way to test their “internal force,” or “balance,” when they have exactly zero internal force, and their whole idea of balance ends in a contest in who is more double-weighted. But I can hardly blame them if their teacher has given them, as their only alternative, a meandering sensitivity exercise. If their practice is completely simplistic, and they have been doing it a long time, it is only natural that they should feel it’s about time to test it out.
On the other hand, catching students in the act of doing something right is considerably more subtle, and no novice should be expected to be able to do it. This means that while I can caution you against being falsely impressed, I can give you few guidelines for what should impress you, short of an absence of what is obviously wrong. This, by the way, is only true of t’ui-shou. The very condition of not moving one’s feet conceals a multitude of sins. If revealing errors were the best way to correct them (as is actually true in simpler martial arts), then t’ui-shou would not be an important practice. It is taking steps that reveals errors instantly, but unfortunately it invariably reveals too many at once. Even were it to somehow politely point to one clear error at a time, a repetition and attempt to correct this revealing moment and movement would not be the best way to attack the fundamental flaw involved. All errors in stepping find there counterpart, if in a more subtle form, in t’ui-shou, and it is there that they can be best corrected.
But in san shou there is no way to conceal clumsiness, and this is almost as apparent to the novice as to the expert. The fact is, if someone looks clumsy when they move, they are. I say when they move because I do not mean a clumsy looking person. I have met martial artists who look like they couldn’t cross a street with a green light, but can move like Fred Astaire. When they weigh over three hundred pounds, it’s a definite problem. But there are very few schools in which one can find anyone advanced enough for real san shou, and among the few that are some of them (stupidly, I think) ban observers from these very classes, the only ones from which the observers could make any meaningful judgment. They are also, by the way, the only ones from which any novice observer could obtain any entertainment value. T’ai Chi Ch’uan practice is, I think, insufferably boring to watch, a fact born out by the fact that no child can watch it for more than five seconds.
But do not underestimate its difficulty. Certainly do not blame any of the awkward characatures of movement to be observed in the students automatically on the teacher. When I was teaching in San Francisco, a woman observed the class one night and appeared to be very impressed. When the class was over, she approached me and said that I had a wonderful art, and was a wonderful teacher, and that she wanted to join the school. “Fine,” I said, “just take one of those forms at the desk.”
She hesitated. “Well,” she said finally, “I suppose that before I join, I should see a class for normal people.”
“What do you mean,” I said, “normal people?”
“Ah, these people, well – they’re from some sort of institution, aren’t they?”
By this time, the people were putting on their clothes and leaving, an awesomely normal looking bunch. I gestured at them. “These people?”
She looked confused. “You mean they’re not -?”
“Crazy, drug-addicted, or retarded?” I said.
She didn’t say anything, just left and never came back. But her logic was easily followed. Instead of a kind, patient and loving minister of physical therapy to the afflicted, returning their twisted minds and bodies to some semblance of human dignity, I was somehow diabolically inspired to seduce perfectly normal people into twisting their innocent minds and bodies into the most horribly undignified shapes that this woman had probably ever seen, short of style show runway models. Though the result of T’ai Chi Ch’uan is grace and elegance, the process can be pretty threatening. One professional dancer threatened to sue me because I must have “done something” that made her, a dancer capable of picking up the most complicated choreography right the first time, and at full tempo, somehow unable to learn or remember what to her were idiotically simple looking movements, done with mind-numbing slowness.
Which is also a good tip – never fall for any teacher that tells you that T’ai Chi is simple, or that he has a special simplified form. Likewise, never be taken in by statements that T’ai Chi is “natural” movement. Though a technically true statement, it is a completely deceiving one. It is natural movement – but not for people. It is also technically simple, but in fact simplifying one’s movement in a consistent way is a monumental act of discipline. The result is simple – the process is not.
I have touched upon the subject of lineage and pedigree, but let me make it clear. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for choosing a teacher, no matter how impressive it may seem. Some of the most direct lineages, in both heredity and instruction, have produced some of the greatest idiots. T’ai Chi Ch’uan is learned through a series of progressive techniques and stages, but their only outward evidence is a series of physical forms, the mere execution of which proves nothing.