Tai Chi:Taoist Approach to Living

Damo Mitchell is the Director of Lotus Nei Gong School of Internal Arts which is based in the UK. He has studied the martial, medical and spiritual arts of Asia since the age of 4 and spends his time training, teaching and writing about the internal arts and Taoism…

Water makes up roughly 70% of an adult person’s body as well as covering the same percentage of the Earth’s surface. It is entirely yielding in nature, changing and adapting to suit the situation and yet at the same time it is capable of dissolving more substances than any other liquid known to man. It is a humble element and yet at the same time, the most powerful. Lao Tzu stated that ‘there is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it’

Tai Chi is the martial art of water. It is a soft art which emphasis yielding and flowing around an aggressive force rather than meeting it with strength. At its highest levels it manifests a hidden power which we know as internal force or ‘Nei Jin’. This force emulates the secret strength of soft flowing water which can erode even the mightiest of rocks given enough time. It is precisely because of these qualities that Tai Chi is such a profound study. Tai Chi can aid in a person’s return to health, give them mental clarity, it can teach how to deal with an attacker using minimal effort and eventually lead a person to spiritual elevation. These were the ideals of the ancients when they developed the style.

In modern times there are many arguments between teachers and practitioners of Tai Chi as to what style is the best or the most correct.  Some teachers say that it is only for health whilst others mock them and state that they teach it for combat.  A third group states that it is a form of ‘moving meditation’ . In truth, all three are partially correct but they are also missing the bigger picture.  Tai Chi does all of these three things.  How? It emulates the element of water.  In order to understand Tai Chi we must look at all three areas of the art: its rejuvenating properties, its martial qualities and its meditative side. By studying these three we may arrive at an understanding of the qualities of water and so see how it may lead us to a higher place.

In life we face difficulties on a daily basis, hour by hour or perhaps even minute to minute. How we react to and deal with these difficulties dictates what sort of an effect they have on us. Do they cause us stress or do we deal with the situation unaffected? For the most part, any problem causes us stress. Stress is reflected in both our mind and our body. One cannot exist without the other. Any stress is reflected within our body as physical tension. This tension is stored in our joints, our muscles, tissues, nervous system and even deeper into our energetic matrix we call the meridian system. As we move through life, this tension increases and spreads. It moves deeper down into us and sits at our very core. Our joints begin to seize up and we tighten. The Tao Te Ching states that to be ‘soft and pliable’ is the way of life, to be ‘stiff and inflexible’ is the way of death.

If our body begins to tighten then so does our mind and vice versa. An inflexible mind is one of the most debilitating sicknesses which may afflict a human being. Why? Because it has prevented us from being like water.

Life is the riverbed which we must flow through, it has branches and forks which lead in different directions but in the end our destination is inevitable. We will reach the great ocean of unity which we call death. Nobody can escape it but we can change the nature of our journey to that place. If life is the riverbed, then we must be like the water which flows through it. Each of the forks and paths on the journey are what the Taoists simply called: Bienhua; change or unpredictability. Taoists recognised that change and unpredictability was an unavoidable part of existence. To help understand the nature of change they devised the I Ching; a text and practice which sought to extract reason from within the chaos of our Ming, our pre-ordained path from birth to death. The I Ching has been studied throughout the ages and used as many things, a philosophical basis for the Eastern arts, a form of psychological health-care and even as a divination tool. Whatever the original reason for the I Ching, one thing is clear from its teaching, change and unpredictability can be dealt with in one of two ways: its can either be met with opposition or it can be yielded to and flowed around. It cannot be ignored or escaped. Whether we oppose or yield and flow is dependent on the ability of our body and mind to be like water.

To Taoists, a tense body and a stiff mind is already dead. If you cannot flow and deal with change then it will kill you. This is the nature of stress, unease and given time, sickness. It is for this reason that Tai Chi is such a marvellous tool for improving and maintaining your health provided it is practised correctly.

Tai Chi, like water, needs fluidity and structure. Water without a structure to flow through will disperse.  Tai Chi without structure is just a mess: your body will not move as a unit, your muscles will work against each other and this will in turn prevent your mind from developing any focus. Step 1 in training a body for Tai Chi training is to soften and relax the mind and body. Step 2 is developing structure.

We are not naturally born with structure, we learn it. We begin to learn how we stand, sit, walk and move when we are a child. We copy our parents, we learn through trial and error and we are affected by early emotional stimuli. For example, a child born into an abusive family may develop a curled up structure which is protective and defensive. This structure will carry on into the rest of our life and affect the nature of our mindset. When we start Tai Chi, a good teacher will be able to tell a great deal about us and our history from our structure, if they are really high level then they will be able to tell even more when they push hands with us. Their intention will probe through our entire form and derive all sorts of information from the various nuances it finds within our posture and stored tensions. To learn Tai Chi we must first learn how to unlearn everything we know about structure. We must de-programme ourselves. This is the main reason why learning the core of Tai Chi takes many years. You simply cannot learn Tai Chi in a short time, there is too much de-programming and re-programming to do.

As our structure changes, so does our mindset. Our physical body is allowed to relax for the first time maybe in years and so can our mind. We return to being like water. Now we may react to and flow with Bienhua rather than clashing with it. Our health improves, our mind achieves a new level of clarity and we may learn to live life to the fullest rather than battling against it.

For some, this is enough. For those who want to attain good health then their journey in Tai Chi may well end here. With regular practice of what they have learnt they may enjoy a full and healthy Ming. For those who wish to increase and test the limits of their connection to water they must go deeper into the study of what Tai Chi is.

Water does not oppose any force, no matter how great. Can we do the same? If not then we have not really achieved the state of water. If we face an increase in difficulty and it causes us to stress then we were kidding ourselves, we had only attained a shadow of the properties of water.  This is the role of martial training.

Tai Chi martial training is an abstract thing.  As a style it does not include a great many punches and kicks. It focuses on yielding to an attack, slipping out of the way of an attacker and avoiding an aggressive force whilst hiding our centre. This is because of the nature of the combat situation it is dealing with.

Tai Chi is not designed to prepare a person for ‘toe-to-toe’ combat with another person. It is not a pugilistic art like boxing, Wing Chun or Hsing I. Tai Chi is developed to help us deal with another person attempting to control us with strength, a situation like a mugging or a person trying to physically control us. The practitioner of Tai Chi presumes that they are fighting from the position of the underdog, the victim who has been attacked, they are fighting from the ‘lower position’. Why? It is because the combat is a metaphor for something bigger. The martial side of Tai Chi is designed to represent a much larger ‘life difficulty’ then we are used to, a larger Bienhua. Exercises such as pushing hands and Quan Fa force us to deal with a powerful, aggressive force whilst remaining calm and soft. It is teaching us to remain like water whilst under pressure. Tai Chi takes for granted that we have already studied a pugilistic art based around striking and that now we are striving to rise above that kind of struggle. We are attempting to attain the ‘fight of no fight’. Many practitioners do not understand this and so they try to turn Tai Chi into a competitive form which usually revolves around lots of sweating and shoving; how is this like water? Competition and yielding are in direct conflict with each other.

What is the point of the martial training? The initial stages of relaxing and structuring serve to help us find the state of water. Martial training helps us to maintain this state under pressure and so integrate the state of water deeper into our  nature whilst conditioning the mind. A relaxed and calm mind which has the state of water at its heart will in turn give birth to a strong and focused mindset which the Chinese call our Yi.

Yi is the tool we need for the third part of our training, the meditative aspect of our study. This type of training is often known as Nei Gong training and represents the highest ideals of the art. It is a side to the training which few even believe in but it was the original focus of the ancients when they created Tai Chi. An art so complex and profound was not simply created for health, Chi Kung is simpler and just as effective. It was not for combat or competition, external arts will provide you with the tools for these. It was for both of these things and then finally for spiritual liberation, hence Tai Chi is sometimes known as: moving meditation.

To liberate the mind through Tai Chi we must begin to work directly with and awaken the various parts of the energetic system which lay within all of us. For this we need a qualified and experienced teacher who is able to guide us through this process. To the Taoist philosophers, intellectual knowing was nothing compared to experiential understanding and Tai Chi was all about this. To elevate ourselves above the mundane difficulties of life we must first understand the nature of existence. We must experience the very nature of change and development taking place within us, the creative force within the microcosm of our consciousness which reflects the creative force of the macrocosm which surrounds us. The name of this great creative force is Tai Chi and so the martial art of water became known as this: Tai Chi Chuan. This is an attainment achievable by all but reached by very few. It takes dedication, relentless study, a pure heart and most importantly the wisdom and nature of water.

More than a health art, a martial art or a meditative art, Tai Chi is a philosophy, a way of living more effectively and a window into the very nature of existence. It is the Taoist approach to living…