What is a Martial Art?

When someone asks me "what is a martial art?" I generally wax on about the spiritual benefits of a sustained discipline aimed at excellence:  kung fu. But in this post I want to talk specifically about the practical, self-defense element. This is a very small part of why anyone should pursue a martial art---the health and spiritual gains are far, far more important. But I do think that it is useful to think about self-defense, primarily because it is a way of understanding a little more about what life is all about. If nothing else, I'd like to try and "push back" against some of the silly notions I routinely hear expressed.

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The first thing people should get rid of is the notion that self-defense oriented schools of martial arts should be about training people to become all-powerful super ninja soldiers. (Or at least, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) champions.) This is nonsense. The real background of martial arts for self-defense is about giving weak, relatively soft, moderately wealthy people an "edge" in confrontations with lower class ruffians.

Consider the following scenario. An 18th century fop bumps into a street thug while brothel crawling in England. The thug is a lot tougher and stronger than the fop, and he carries a strong oak cudgel. All the fop has is a small-sword that looks like a toy---plus the fencing lessons his wealthy dad insisted that he take when he was a teen. The thug assumes that his greater strength and experience brawling, plus the longer reach of the cudgel gives him an edge. And it might, if he had ever taken the lessons that the fop has. 

An 18th Century Small Sword of the Sort that Fops wore

But he hasn't. He tries to hit the fop, over-extends, and the fop curls around him, moves in close, and drives his small sword into his heart, killing him. The fop used terrible technique, and if the thug had ever practiced against someone using this move, it would never have worked. But the move is totally new to the thug, and he will never have a chance to learn how to counteract it because he is dead. The fop now vomits into the gutter, runs home, changes his clothes, and tries to sleep. The next day he hires the fencing master to learn new lessons and also to teach his son---whom he now absolutely insists on taking these lessons seriously. Moreover, in conversations with friends and family, he convinces a couple others to also hire the fencing master too.

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(I suppose I should put a disclaimer in here. Some people automatically think "Eastern" when the phrase "martial arts" comes up. This is nonsense. Europe and other parts of the world all have martial arts traditions of one sort or another. Sword fighting is sword fighting, stick fighting is stick fighting, etc, and once they advance beyond mere thrashing around, intense competition will create cultural systems that fine tune people's abilities to a very fine level. That's what a martial art is, whether it's fencing, boxing, or, taijiquan.)

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The thing to understand about this situation is that fights are often games of "rock, paper, scissors". People talk about about winning fights as being a question of being better than the other guy. But the real way to win a fight is to pit your strengths against the other guy's weakness. In the case of the fop versus the thug, the fop had two strengths that he could pit against the thug's weaknesses. The thug was poor, so he had never been able to train with a fancy fencing coach. Moreover, he was uneducated and low class, so he'd never actually seen how fencing works or been exposed to its theory (like I'm explaining in this blog post.) The fop, on the other hand, was well aware of the fact that he was nowhere near as strong as the thug---and that in an equal, "fair" fight he was doomed. So he played rock to the thug's scissors, or, he played his strengths against the thug's weakness.

In the above clip Butch Cassidy isn't playing any specific fighting skill against the thug's inherent strength and supposed superior knife-fighting skill. But he was playing superior tactical skill against the thug. He first gained the support of the on-lookers by asking about rules and got the thug to accept the lack of them. This means that if he bested the thug he would have settled the larger political issue (ie: "who's the boss of the gang?") and wouldn't have to return to the issue because people carped that "you didn't fight fair". Then, he used a superior knowledge of what chess and martial arts call "tempo" in order to get the first punch in, which created a position of superiority and never allowed the thug to recover from it.

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Now I use the terms "soft" and "rich" above in a very limited sense. I don't mean that it is a good thing in the martial arts to be "soft" (in the sense of being physically weak.) Nor do I suggest that only the super rich could learn them either. But I am saying that martial arts are very useful for people who aren't really strong to begin with---even though strength does help you if you want to get good at martial arts. And wealth is only an issue up to the point where you are wealthy enough to be able to pay for lessons and have enough leisure to practice. Really poor people---no matter how strong---often simply don't have the time to be able to practice, even if they could find someone to teach them. 

The sort of guys who taught me taijiquan---Daoshi---and Shaolin monks are not, strictly speaking "soft", "wealthy" people. But they aren't hardened, poverty-stricken peasants, either. They specifically had educational opportunities and leisure time that allowed them to learn things that peasants would never have learned. Of course, not all Buddhist monks or Daoshi learn martial arts, but enough of them did in old China that ruffians would probably think twice before they attacked them. (Their general poverty also made them somewhat not worth the effort, which was probably more important.)

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Years ago I used to write lots of free copy for very profitable newspapers in the belief that it was just enough to see my words in print. I know realize that I was doing a disservice to the reporters who were working hard to dig up news. I still write mostly for free, but now I usually put a note in the text reminding people that we really do need to come up with a mechanism for rewarding "creatives" for the work they do. I get a few dollars now and then, pretty much all of which ends up being spent to support other creatives that I support. And I don't mind if people who cannot afford to help out read for free. But if you do have extra money jingling in your pocket, think about making a donation or buying a book.  

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Another issue that I should probably deal with comes from the relationship between the martial arts and the military. In modern times hand-to-hand fighting is pretty much irrelevant for most soldiers. Modern weapons ensure that most battles are settled long before people get close enough to throw a punch. You cannot dodge or deflect a bullet, bomb or IED.

Having said that, many people believe that ancient battles were different. If you watch a lot of movies you would be excused for thinking that a battle simply involved a lot of people fighting one-on-one from one side to another. Surely martial arts would help with that? Not really. From ancient to modern times soldiers didn't fight one-on-one, but rather as units. One popular drama that does understand this point to some extent is "Game of Thrones". (I've never seen it, but I have heard others talk about this on YouTube.) Take a look at this video that explains something called the "battle of the bastards". 

You can have all the grooviest martial moves in the planet, but if your general orders you into a cauldron and then the other guy shoots huge numbers of arrows at you, you are going to die. And, if you get stuck in the middle of a bunch of guys with big shields, heavy armor, and, spears, and you have none of these things, you are toast too. Moreover, if in the middle of all this insanity a bunch of heavy cavalry show up from nowhere and attack you in the rear while you are busy slaughtering their friends---you are toast too. (Not to mention if you manage to get into a castle and a giant arrives to smash in the doors.)

This "fantasy" tv show is probably the most accurate vision of ancient battle that I have ever seen anywhere, and it clearly illustrates that soldiers are not martial artists. Instead, they are just cogs in a giant machine who have almost no control at all about whether they live or die. All they can do is what they are told and hope for the best. So let's just discard the idea that soldiers have anything at all to do with martial arts.

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In terms of taijiquan---the martial art I know a little about---the "strength" that a person with some training brings to a fight is the insight that being relaxed can be a good defense against some attacks. There is also the point that if you get in close to someone a lot of strikes (punches and kicks) become harder to land. And, if you know a little bit about how to lock someone's joints and where the balance points in the body are, you can move around people that might even be a lot stronger than you. If the other guy has never come across anyone who knows about these things, it might give you a momentary advantage in a fight---just like the fop with his small sword. Obviously, the more and better you train in these techniques, the better you will be. But you don't have to be "Yang the Invincible" to get value from the art, simply because the person you get into a fight with is probably not going to be terribly good at fighting either. 

More importantly, by thinking about the Dao and the subtle ways in which the world operates, you will gain greater insight into all the different ways in which delusion colours and distorts our understanding of the world around us---including self-defense. This will help you in ways that go far beyond the outside chance of meeting someone in a dark alley who wishes to do you harm. (More likely, it will keep you out of that dark alley in the first place.)

How Realistic is Your Taiji Sword Form?

I've done the Government of China official short Yang form of taiji sword for quite a few years, but I've recently become somewhat frustrated with it. I learned from a pretty good source, a woman who was on a provincial wushu team from the People's Republic, so I cannot find fault with her expertise. It's just that I've spent a bit of time learning about swords from people on-line who discuss the European tradition, and I simply cannot believe that wushu sword techniques are realistic. Let me explain why.

How could I possibly suggest that wushu sword forms aren't realistic?
photo by "Wushu One Family", c/o Wiki Commons

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Using a sword is a complex issue because it involves a lot of different physics problems. Consider, for example, the issue of "cutting". This is not as simple as you might think, because it involves applies two directions of force at the same time. To illustrate this point consider the following YouTube video.

This is what my the fellow who initiated me into Daoism used to call a "circus trick". It looks impressive, but it's really based on simple physics. The point is that the sword hammers down onto the fellow's abdomen without importing any sliding movement. This means that when the sword goes through the watermelon and meets the towel, it just bounces off instead of cutting.

A water melon has very different qualities than human skin and cloth. It is rigid and has almost no tensile strength. This means it splits very easily. In contrast, skin and cloth have much greater tensile strength, so they are very difficult to split. Moreover, there is an added complication: skin slices very easily---cloth not so much. If the guy with the sword had tried to slice or saw through the watermelon, it would have taken some effort and the sword might very well have gotten stuck. So what the sword hit what is in effect a laminate consisting of watermelon, a towel, and, the karate teacher's abdomen---all three of which react to cutting in very different ways.

So the key to the trick is the sword splits the watermelon, then bounces off the towel. If the towel wasn't there, then there might have been a little bit of residual sideways, slicing motion from the cut, which might have cut the sensei's abdomen (note that the fellow wielding the sword cut his hand while cleaning the blade.)

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The sword splits the watermelon only because it is rigid. If it wasn't, the sword would bend around after it hit the watermelon, which would probably cause it to bind and stick. To understand this point. Let's look at another circus trick, this one done by people who perform as Buddhist martial monks. (They may actually be Shaolin Temple monks---but I'm told that a lot of the guys who perform for tourists are just acrobats and not real monks.)

The secret to this trick is that penetration---like from the tip of a spear---can only happen if the force is directed at right angles to the body. If there is even a slight bend in the "spear"---and the "spear" has enough flexibility---the harder you push on it, the more the spear bends, and the more it bends, the more the force comes from the side of the spear blade and the less it comes from the point. If you look carefully, those "wax wood" spears don't act anything like a real one. First, they have a pre-set bend in them, which the two helpers aim towards the floor. Secondly, after the demonstration is over, they hold a very definite, much greater bend after the fact. This shows that the spear shafts are not made of a really strong, mostly rigid, and, only slightly springy material (like real wax wood.) Instead, I suspect that what they really are are thin, easily bent, mild steel rods with something over top that makes them look like wax wood. 

This is an issue not only with spears, but also with swords. If the fellow slicing the watermelon had been using one of those floppy wushu jians, the blade would have deformed when it hit the fruit and bounced around inside the fruit---not neatly splitting it, but probably getting stuck. 

This isn't the most floppy wushu/taiji jian I've ever seen, either.
Photo from the "Wudang Store"

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There's a third issue at play here. That's the shape of the sword. A straight sword acts very differently from a curved one. A curved blade imparts slicing motion with just about every move it makes, simply because of its shape. This makes it much more effective in cutting. In fact, the shape and movement of the blade is so important to the way a sword cuts that the edge can sometimes almost seem irrelevant. I found this out once when I was "fooling around" in my taiji club with a blunt, aluminum "willow leaf sabre".

A willow leaf sabre,
original art by Nazanian, c/o Wiki Commons

I saw a small poster tacked up on the bulletin board that was supporting a group that I knew was a bit of a religious cult. So I stabbed the poster with the tip of the sabre, pulled it off the board, tossed it up in the air, and, did a draw cut (from my taiji sabre form) on it in mid-air---which neatly cut it into two pieces, which then lazily fell to the floor.

(I'm not trying blow my own horn here. There is no way I could do this on command, but it was an amazing example of Zhuangzi's idea that there is tremendous power in spontaneous action.)

A more prosaic way of understanding this point involves thinking about what happens when you suffer a paper cut. No one could ever use a piece of paper to cut anything, but we all have experience of quite painful cuts from drawing the edge of a sheet across our skin "in just the right way". Exactly the same issues are at play when it comes to swords.

  

If you look at the above drawing of the willow leaf sabre, you will see that between the curve of the blade and the handle, there is a complex "S" curve to the whole sword. This means that when you thrust the blade forward, draw it back back, or, chop from top to down, you are always going to be imparting some sort of slicing motion to the edge. That's the whole point of the shape. It would be a bad idea to try to do the watermelon trick using a willow leaf sabre. It might still work OK, but it's best to no take any risks.

If you look at the sword used to cut the watermelon, it is a straight "ninja" type sword. This is the absolute best type of sword to use in for this trick, as the straighter the sword, the easier it is to us it in a straight chopping motion with minimal slicing action.

A "ninja-type" sword,
From a commercial website

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What this means is that for a sword to "work" it simply cannot be floppy. And it is more work for a straight blade to cut than it is for a curved one. And cutting is more difficult than people think, because of the issue of armor and clothing. This again has something to do with the watermelon trick---that little towel on the skin actually acted like a piece of armor.

Most people don't understand this, but for millennia the most basic type of armor wasn't plate, chain mail, or, even leather---it was quilted cloth. Here are three types, from three different times and cultures. 

The Ancient Greek Linothorax

A Medieval European Gambeson
Photo from  Centraal Museum Utrecht, c/o Wiki Commons

Aztec quilted cotton armor, the Ichcahuipilli
From Mexicolore

This issue goes beyond just quilted armor and circus tricks involving watermelons. That's because it turns out that it was often quite difficult for a person wielding a sword to cut through just the clothing that an opponent was wearing. To explain this point, here's a video by the excellent Matt Easton explaining the issues.

With this thought in mind, consider the clothing that the Mandarin in the picture below is wearing. He has a fur lined robe plus layers of clothing below that (cold climate plus no central heating!) Think about how hard these layers of cloth would be to either cut or penetrate in a sword fight. No floppy modern wushu blade would be able to do it.

This guy might as well be wearing armor!

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There are other issues beyond the ability to cut. For example, a sword has to have a certain "heft" or mass to be able to parry blows from another weapon. A really light, floppy blade won't be able to force another weapon out of the way. If the blade doesn't just bend around the other sword, staff, spear, or, whatever, the lack of weight will simply overwhelm the arm and push it out of the way.

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In addition, we also need to understand how jians were actually made in pre-modern times. Most people are aware of how Japanese swords are made from layers of folded metal---with a soft, resilient core holding a hard, yet somewhat brittle edge. What this means is that compared to modern, European swords Japanese swords are actually really heavy. That's because the folded metal, lamination technique requires a significant cross section. Jians were traditionally made the same way. (Unfortunately, the best illustrations of this were all labelled in either Russian or Japanese, but hopefully the casual reader can get the point. The different coloured sections have different degrees of hardness and resilience.) The consensus among scholars is that the Japanese sword making techniques used to make katanas were copied off Chinese techniques used to make jians. This means that a historically accurate jian would have to have a similarly quite large cross-section. This would add dramatically to the weight of the sword.

Illustration by Tosaka, c/o Wiki Commons

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Years ago, I went to a workshop led by a leading light on the Canadian taiji sword team and in the intermission I asked about whether she ever trained with a "real sword". She gave the standard "I'm far too evolved to do such a thing. Are you planning to go out and kill people?" response. I thought that that was kinda lame, but she was the teacher, so I just accepted it as her point of view and finished the workshop.

I kept thinking about the subject, and did a little research on the Internet. Eventually, I found a source in China that said they sold real jians---ones that were modern copies of old ones that were actually used in combat. It cost a few bucks (but of course it would) but it has a real high-carbon steel blade, etc. When it arrived, I was really surprised. First of all, it weighs three pounds. This causes all sorts of problems in the Yang taiji jian set. I'm a big strong guy, but the first part of the set where the sword is held in the left hand is a total killer. It takes a lot of strength to hold that three pound sword balanced by the force of one or two fingers as you hold it backwards in the left hand.

After that, the exquisite, slow motion control that this woman exhibits is simply impossible with that monstrous, three pound chunk of high-carbon steel that I own. 

This raises the question, was I "ripped off" by that company in China? Actually, I don't think so. To understand this point, consider the hand grip on the sword. Almost every modern taiji jian you can buy has the hilt of the sword pointing forwards---just like on a Western sword.  

Here's your standard type of "guard", on a oak practice Jian
Photo from the Sei Do Kai Supplies website

But this "traditional" jian has them pointing backwards. Why?

Here's the "backwards" sword guard.
(I added the cord wrapping onto the wooden handle.)

I came across a book by a martial arts teacher who said that modern jians all have their guard facing the wrong way because there was a period in modern China where the government confiscated and destroyed all the real swords. When martial arts were brought back into favour, anyone setting out to make new swords was stuck copying weapons from opera companies, which were not much more than toys. Probably they were influenced by Western swords, which have a solid hilt whose purpose is to catch a sword blade and protect the hands. The guy who wrote the book then went on to say that the backwards hilt is no good because if you trap a sword blade in it, you can easily have your sword ripped from your hands.

This last bit of the argument seemed bogus at the time, and I could never figure out exactly what he was talking about. I have an alternative hypothesis, one that seems to make a lot more sense to me. In Western martial arts, there were always schools that taught a person to hold their sword with a finger on the hilt. In fact, this became so popular that there are a great many surviving Western swords that have a special "finger ring" on the hilt to protect that digit.

Here's a reproduction of a late medieval Milan sword with a finger ring.
Photo from the Deepeeka Wiki

When I learned about this totally practical European adaptation to heavy swords, I tried to do the same thing with my heavy jian and found out that the "reversed hilt" on it was absolutely ideal for this.

My improved grip on the heavy jian.
Author's photo

IMHO, what this means to me is that what we see as a "hilt" to protect the hand of the person holding the sword was really more about giving the hand more purchase to hold and control a very heavy blade that was designed to chop through and penetrate layers of armor and/or heavy clothing.

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I think that this has profound implications about how we should do the taiji jian form. First of all, some of the moves are simply impossible to do safely with a heavy, long sword. Moves that involve flamboyant over-the-top moves with maximum wrist flexibility are just asking to damage the tendons in the arm. As well, moves that are effective and useful when done at speed become dangerous if not impossible when done very slow. That's because the "heft" or mass of the sword works with the taiji player at speed whereas it works against them when done very slowly. It seems clear to me that the modern taiji jian forms were heavily influenced by the use of totally impractical, floppy wushu swords. That means that when people are doing them they are not actually practicing a martial art, but rather a type of dance or gymnastics. 

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Many people have no problem with this. They are just jocks or jockettes---like that woman on the Canadian taiji team---but if you want to do taiji as a spiritual practice you have to work within the limitations of the art. And the most important limitation is that it has to actually work. I'm not saying this because I intend to go out and get into sword fights, but because I want to avoid fooling myself about what I am doing. Our biggest problem as human beings is our almost infinite capacity for delusion. Most of us bumble and stumble through life with all sorts of goofy ideas about ourselves and the world around us that create lots and lots of unnecessary problems. 

Modern militaries understand this point, and a lot of boot camp is designed to deal with a small set of delusions that make modern people into terrible soldiers.

One of the delusions is that people cannot do very much. By early adulthood most people have been

The "Inverse Tower", an
Outward Bound Singapore training obstacle.
Photo by Chen Siyuan, c/o Wiki Commons

conditioned to avoid unnecessary risks---to the point where they won't try anything that pushes their envelope a bit. Boot camps force people to do some things that are fundamentally worthless from a military perspective, but which look spectacular and teach people to trust the orders of their superiors and their own ability to do the difficult. Modern training seminars for managers do exactly the same thing, which they often put people through zip lines or fire walking. "Outward bound" style schools do the same thing for young people.

There are other delusions too. The idea that each person is an individual and we don't need each other is a big one. So is the idea that we don't have to really pay attention to what we are doing. My wife, who was in the National Guard during the First Gulf War, told me a story from her training. They were finally issued rifles, but a "sad sack" in her unit simply couldn't remember the stern admonition that no one should ever point a gun at anyone unless they wanted to kill him. (Something that my family pounded into my head when I was allowed access to a "22" as a child.) That woman "disappeared" and was never seen again. She was discharged and served as an example to everyone else in my wife's unit. The lesson was "guns, grenades, etc, are totally unforgiving and require a totally different mindset to handle safely---civilian-style thinking will not be tolerated".

Martial arts, like taiji jian, are only worthwhile---IMHO---if we use them to cut through delusions. And I don't see how we can use them for that purpose if we labour under delusions in their practice. The weight of your sword has a profound effect on the form. And if you train with a flyweight, floppy sword you are going to be practicing moves that would be are either worthless in a fight and/or damaging to your body if you ever attempted to practice them with a real sword. My concern isn't with what this would do for you if you ever had to fight against the Mongol hordes---it's about what the effect of this sort of training will have on your mind as you navigate the world outside of the studio. Can you afford to allow any easily avoided delusions into your consciousness?

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So what're the lessons learned?

The first one is that I'm going to force myself to totally rethink my taiji jian set and change it so it will "work" with a real jian. That probably means doing it at a proper speed so the weight of the blade ceases to be a liability and instead becomes an asset. At the same time, I'm going to have think about various moves where I will incorporate a double-hand grip. The set obviously already has some of these, but with a flyweight sword it is really easy to "fudge" them. Finally, some moves are simply going to have to be dropped or modified as they aren't viable with a full weight weapon.

The second one is to remember to "hold onto the One". Being a Daoist means looking deeply and objectively at every aspect of my life so I can understand the subtle laws that are what the Dao is all about. At the same time, I have to remind myself that it is only through engagement with the Dao that life ultimately has meaning. We only get out of life what we put into it. "Holding onto the One" means that by putting our full attention, effort, and, creativity into everything we do we can be renewed and inspired by the amazing universe that we are all a part of.

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If you found this essay useful, please consider tossing something in the tip jar. Or you might consider buying one of my books. If nothing else, share it through social media. Obviously, I don't do this blog for the money, but dollars buy convenience, and if I can afford to spend a little more coin instead of sweat in my life, it gives me more time to spend on my real loves: Daoism, taiji, and, writing.

Milestones in the Practice of Taijiquan

People who practice the Japanese martial arts have a ranking system that gives them some sort of feel for their progress in learning the system. Taijiquan is different. Most practitioners are not interested in learning how we compare to other people but how what we are now compared to how we once were.



The loss of muscle definition:

When I took my first taijiquan class I was probably in the best “shape” I'd ever been in my life. I had just finished a very intensive self-imposed exercise regime in an unsuccessful attempt to qualify for a career in the armed forces. I had built myself up to the point where I could run three miles every day, could do seventy-five “marine style” push-ups (you bounce up off the floor and clap your hands together in mid-air) at a time, was doing regular laps in a swimming pool, etc. I have never been an athlete, but for once I had some of the attributes including significant muscle “definition” on my arms.

When I began taijiquan I focused on my arms because even though I though I was in pretty good shape I found some of what looked like some “easy” exercises maddeningly difficult. In particular, I found it very hard to do one that involved simply holding my hands up and rotating them and my fore-arm back and forth 180 degrees back and forth on the the axis that extends from my elbow to the tip of my middle finger. So I set myself a goal of doing this one for fifteen minutes a day---even if I had to do it in fifteen one minute increments. Eventually I was able to do the whole time at one go but in doing so I noticed a very significant change. I had lost all the muscle definition in my arms!

This experience puzzled me for years until I heard that there are two different types of muscle fibers: “long-twitch” and “short-twitch”. Reading up on these two different types of muscles, it became clear that “long-twitch” muscles are the ones we use for taijiquan whereas “short-twitch” ones are those used by weight lifters. The transition from one type to another may explain the difference in look. Moreover, this decline in definition explains the reason why people often suggest that men who practice taijiquan develop a “feminine” look. They lose their muscle definition which smooths-out the lines on their body---not because of the woman's thin layer of fat that they naturally carry under the skin, but because the skeletal muscles on the man are less well-defined. I believe that it is also partly the basis of the claims that someone who practices internal alchemy is able to reverse the process of aging and develop some of the physical attributes of a baby.


The Beginners Plateau:

The second real milestone was the fact that after some very significant physical changes in my body while I was first learning the gross movements of the open hand set, I stopped seeing any results from continued practice. I had “learned” the set, and now all I seemed to be doing was going through the motions. Being an obstinate sort of person, I stuck with my practice even though it seemed to be going nowhere. Whenever possible I tried to augment my practice by doing things like learning weapons forms, push hands, tumbling, more and more warm-up exercises, meditation, and even some sorts of odd variants in practice such as doing the set on the side of steep hills, backwards or in “mirror image”.

This “dry spell” went on for years and years until I decided to actually give up doing taijiquan as a New Years resolution. When I stopped, however, I found that I started getting migraine headaches again. I had had these on and off for years before I started my regular practice but they almost completely disappeared when I began to regularly do taijiquan and I'd forgotten about them. But with the prospect of their return, I went back to regular practice. This brought back a saying that had been common in the club where I learned the art: “the only people who stick with taijiquan are the sick ones”.

Eventually I realized that the practice of taijiquan is not about constant dramatic improvement, but more about living a specific type of life. The school of Soto Zen suggests that the meditation is itself enlightenment. In the same way, the goal of taijiquan is itself taijiquan. And once I began to chip away at the goal-oriented attitude that I had brought to the art, I began to realize that there were subtle changes taking place in me that I had been too obtuse to notice. Eventually I realized that taijiquan is not just about changing the body, but it is also about changing the mind. And part of that change is learning to be much more sensitive to the nuances of being a human being. Once I came to this realization, I could see that I had been making progress all along.


Strange Body Sounds:

There came a time in my practice when I started to get weird sounds in various parts of my body. For example, for about a month or two I noticed that I when I flexed my chest it created very loud “crunching” sounds. They were very noticeable to those around me and sounded like someone breaking a bundle of dry sticks over their knee. Eventually it went away. For another period of time my hip started making an odd “clunk” whenever I did a “separation kick” or a “snake creeps down”. Eventually that too went away. And twice I had a very odd feeling at the very base of my spine that felt and sounded like something in my tail-bone was breaking loose.

I believe that the traditional Daoist terms for what was happening is “tendon changing” and “marrow washing”. In modern medical language, I theorize that what was happening was that by specific exercises I was reversing the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle.

My family has a disposition towards a stooped posture which Daoists have traditionally identified as “the scholar's hump”. In my case the title is well-deserved as it was made worse by years of sitting at a desk (this was before computers.) My brother actually has the condition worse that I ever did, and he probably gets it from his work repairing sewing machines. The loud “cracking” sound, therefore, was the loosening up of long-tight muscles and tendons in my chest.

With regard to my hips, I noticed that as my exercise progressed I was changing the way I worked. I used my back less and less to do things like pick up heavy objects and instead used my legs. Moreover, I found that when doing things like breaking concrete with a sledge-hammer I used my legs and the weight of the hammer instead of my upper body. I started paying more attention to the way people use their bodies and noticed that most people have lost a large amount of flexibility in their hips which they compensated for by using their backs. This means that all the accident prevention instruction that people receive at work (i.e. life with your legs, not your back) is pretty much useless unless they also start working on opening up their hips. The conclusion I came to was that from lack of use my hips had lost a great deal of mobility. The “clunking” was the ball and socket joint working beyond the limited area of movement I had previously used.

Finally, I have been told that the snapping sound in my tail-bone (or “coccyx”) was two segments that had been fused together snapping apart. My quick searches on the Internet would seem to indicate that this might not be totally correct. Contrary to old opinions, it appears that for most people the tail-bone doesn't actually fuse together. Nor does it seem to be a useless appendage. Instead it serves a very useful purpose in anchoring a wide variety of muscles in our abdomens and legs. It is also supposed to be very important to the process of sitting and squatting, which means that it too is important to opening up the hips. Whether or not some of the segments in my coccyx had fused, the process of doing taijiquan had loosened it up and the result was a lot more mobility.

Moments of Grace:

Several times in my life I have experienced what could only be called incidents of “grace” in my taijiquan. By this, I mean that spontaneously I have been able to do things that seemed totally remarkable and seem to validate the “wild history” that people talk about kung-fu masters. For example, once I was clowning around in my school with a practice sabre in my hands. I noticed a poster on the wall of the club for an organization that I don't like so I stabbed it with the tip of my sabre, tore it off the bulletin board, tossed it in the air and sliced it into two pieces in mid air as it floated down---all this with a totally blunt aluminum sabre. Another time I was demonstrating “live” push hands with another fellow for a visitor to the club. At one point I spontaneously grabbed onto the other fellow's arms and executed a back roll. He tumbled over on top of me and he ended up on his back with me sitting on his chest with both his arms pinned.

The important thing to understand was that these maneuvers were totally spontaneous---if my life depended on it I couldn't recreate them. It was if taijiquan was doing me rather than I was doing taijiquan. I don't like the word or idea of “master”, but I think that this is the sort of thing that lies at the root of the notion. I suspect that someone like Yang the Invincible was able to manifest this sort of state very often, which would explain the extra-ordinary feats attributed to him. Moreover, I have met people from other traditions who have said that they have had similar experiences.


Dropping the Chest and Finding the Bubbling Well Springs:

The latest milestone is finally being able to achieve something that I was told in the first year of practice---over 30 years ago. I have always been told that my weight should be on the entire sole of my foot instead of concentrated on the heel or ball. No matter how much I tried to figure out how to do this, it always seemed beyond my ability. A year or so ago I started saying a rosary while doing walking meditation most mornings. (Primarily, I was using reverse breathing techniques in order to cure constipation.) It did this, but I also noticed other significant mental and physical advantages, so I have stuck with the practice.

As almost a side benefit, I noticed that in doing so I made a significant change in my posture while doing the taijiquan set. I was in a totally vertical posture, but because of the concentrated experience in reverse breathing, I'd gotten into the habit of sinking my rib cage at the same time. This allowed me to drop my buttocks while being totally vertical, which in turn allowed me to put all my weight onto the entire sole of my foot. I had finally found out how to access the “bubbling wellsprings” in my feet! This has totally changed my practice and allows me a whole new level of control and balance in my form.


These milestones are my own personal ones. I could have mentioned others, but they were the ones that came to mind as I was writing this essay. I suspect that others could have written a different set because they have had different experiences. But I have heard other people who practice either taijiquan or other forms of kung-fu say similar things.

Kung Fu and Brain Plasticity

One of the reasons that I have devoted so much of my life to the study Daoism is because I think of it as a rare and endangered part of our cultural heritage. I first saw this issue articulated by a Bill Moyer's clip on television where he showed a young Shaolin monk training in a open hand routine. Moyer's said that this was "the cultural equivalent of a giant sequoia tree". The point he was making was that our ancient cultures have things that can only exist by the lifetime work of individuals assimilating the knowledge that has been gained in previous generations. And just like species of plants and animals, once this intergenerational transmission of information ends, the result is permanent extinction.

I heard an interview on the CBC the other day that has also stuck with me and got me thinking that our civilisation might soon be more willing to put energy into this process of cultural preservation. Unfortunately, I forget the name of the person being interviewed (I was doing stretches at the time), but the point he was making was that our society has laboured under an inappropriate metaphor when it comes to understanding the way our brains operate. The metaphor is that of a machine.

The problem with that image is that machines are static and unchanging---except by outside interference. And this metaphor has framed our discussion about what it means to be a human being. People talk about our personality and who we are as being the result of either our genetics, or our past history, or some combination of the both. Left out of the discussion, however, is any idea of how a human being is self-created by the individual decisions that she makes moment by moment, day by day.

The point this author was making is that this image of the brain has been proved to be factually untrue. Our brains are plastic. That is to say that they constantly change as a result of both the events we experience and the choices we make in how we live our lives. If we decide to do a specific thing---such as learn a new language---then the actions we follow in doing so actually change the way our brain is organised.

What this means for people who pursue spiritual practices, or to use the Chinese term: "kung fu", is that they are involved in a day-to-day process of changing the way their brains are organised. And when someone chooses to pursue a specific path, such as the life of a Daoist initiate, they are following an age-old process of reorganising their brain functions to operate in a way that is significantly different from those of the general public. If there is any value in doing this sort of thing, then seeking to preserve this specific cultural "evolutionary branch" is a pretty important thing to do.

I had this issue illustrated for me recently by one of my co-workers. She is a nice person, but she has absolutely no structure at all to her intellectual life. She just flits from one interest to another as her fancy strikes her. (The internet can be an addictive drug for people who are like this.) Indeed, she can see absolutely no reason why anyone would seek this sort of structure if they don't have to. But she complains about an inability to sleep and I asked her what her problem is. She said that "her mind just keeps buzzing with different thoughts". I would suggest that she the endless flitting around following one interest to another for so long has led to that "buzzing" phenomenon.

In contrast, I usually sleep like a log. But I do spend a great many hours every day in one form of practice or another---saying my rosary, doing taijiquan, introspective contemplation, and wrestling with ideas (like I am doing right now.) Part of this process is constantly forcing myself to get some sort of control over the chaotic elements of my consciousness so they follow the path that I have chosen to follow. As I have said before, the "watercourse way" of Daoism does follow the principle of Wu-wei, but it only does so if one follows the hard work (e.g. "kung fu") of internal alchemy (e.g "neidan".)

Traditional Chinese Medicine

I sometimes hear from people who assume that because I am a Daoist that I am a fan of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). I suspect that the hidden assumption is that TCM must be grounded in Daoism, so anyone who studies the Dao should have some affinity to it. While I will admit that I haven't done a lot of study of TCM, but that doesn't mean that I don't have a negative opinion about it.

The first thing that I think people should understand is that not everything that comes from Chinese culture is "Daoist". Both Roman Catholicism and Western medicine have their origins in Europe, yet we would never assume that Roman Catholicism would have anything to do with Western medicine, or vice-versa, would we?

More importantly, I think we need to understand that TCM comes from a pre-scientific tradition. That means that none of it has fallen under the careful, collective scrutiny that our Western medicine has. Some parts of it probably works, but most of it is probably about as effective as medieval European medicine was. Lest people take issue with this, I would direct their attention to the following URLs.

The first, "Be Wary of Acupuncture, Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine", comes from the excellent medical website known as "quackwatch" and gives a very good overview of TCM. The next two come from the excellent publication known as the "Skeptical Inquirer", and are titled "Traditional Medicine and Pseudo-Science in China" , and a second part article in another issue. At least from these three essays, it seems that there are very good reasons to suspect that a large amount of TCM is worthless or worse.

Some folks might be scandalized to hear someone who calls himself a Daoist---and a religious Daoist at that---being so dismissive of this sort of thing. I would argue, however, that this is because so many people have fallen for the fallacious idea that the age of an idea gives it merit. "Ancient Chinese wisdom" is probably the phrase that comes to mind. But the fact of the matter is that this appeal to age is not much more than an old-fashioned appeal to authority. And Daoists have always been notorious for deflating appeals to authority.

The other thing to remember is that contrary to what people might think, Daoism is not really that ancient. Confucianism---which really is a faith that revers the old---existed long before Daoism. And its real claim to fame (i.e. as "the school of Ru", or "rujia"----which is the better way of describing Confucians---is based upon their knowledge of ancient esoterica, most notably the rites and rituals of the Zhou and Shang.) In fact the rujia existed before there was, by definition, any sort of "Ancient Chinese Wisdom" simply because it was only later, after the ascendency of the Chin empire, that the word "China" came to describe the area and civilization complex.

And if we are going to be totally honest, China is not even the oldest civilisation on Earth. That honour goes to Europe, which can trace its written history back to the Egyptians and Sumerians---both of which have literature that exists to this day because our scholars have learned how to read both some types of cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. People who might balk at this assertion have to realise that "China" has gone through as many dramatic changes as Europe has. The geography has changed back and forth (hence the debate about whether or not Tibet is part of "China".) Its written language has changed so much that modern Chinese readers have about as much hope of understanding Zhuangzi in the original text as I had in reading "Beowulf" when I was at university.

In the face of this extensive history, "Daoism" only stretches back a small way. For example, tradition gives the dates for Laozi in the 6th century BC---about four hundred years after the founding of the Zhou dynasty and over a thousand after the founding of the Shang. Moreover, the founder of the Celestial Master movement, Zhang Daoling, was extant in the second century of the present era---which makes the religion slightly younger than Christianity and only slightly older than Islam.

Moreover, the Immortal most associated with the development of internal alchemy, Zhang Sanfeng, and the legendary creator of taijiquan, is said to have been born as either as early as 960 or as late as 1279 AD. By definition, this makes him not an "ancient", but rather a "medieval". In effect, the founder of neidan was a contemporary of Saint Boniface, Thomas Aquinas or someone who lived between them.

In contrast, if we were to look at the roots of "traditional Western Medicine" (if such a thing existed), we would probably go back to people like Hippocrates (460-370 BC), who coined the oath that Western doctors take to this day. We should also include rationalists like Socrates (469-399 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC), who are often called the inventors of the scientific method. So if age is the only criteria to use for accepting something, then "Ancient European wisdom" has as much right to our allegiance as "Ancient Chinese wisdom". And given the choice, I'll opt for double-blind studies over the Yellow Emperor's Classic.


The thing to remember is that Daoism is not about preserving tradition. Instead, it is about finding the truth.

Meditation and Fear

People often have a shaky understanding about the relationship between meditation and the martial arts. They understand that people who meditate are almost invariably men of peace---yet people who are understood as great warriors are supposed to highly value the practice.

Part of it has to do with discipline and learning the "internals" of our mind and body, but probably the greatest element has to do with learning how to deal with our fears. There is a story about the Mongols invading a Chinese Zen Temple and an officer raging into the meditation hall where he met the Master sitting in a lotus posture. When he simply sat without showing any signs of fear, the warrior yelled at him "Don't you know that before you is a man who could kill you without blinking an eye?" The Master's response was "Don't you know that before you is a man you could kill without him blinking an eye?" Since the officer valued courage, he decided to spare the monk's life and left the hall.

Zhuangzi makes a similar point in several places. For example, he describes an archer who is capable of always hitting the target until he is standing on the edge of a cliff at which point his fear of falling destroys his aim. He also makes the point that the secret of learning how to be good with a boat is to become a good swimmer---at which point the boatman no longer fears falling in the water.

For most people fear is an existential issue. But for soldiers it is a very practical problem. Most people probably don't realize this, but for most of human history courage has tended to be one of the most powerful weapon in a soldier's arsenal. That is, all other things being equal (which, admittedly, they often are not), the most brave side almost always won the battle.

This was because a man who is running from battle is a lot easier to kill than one who is facing you head on. And a body of men who is standing shoulder to shoulder can count on each other to guard their flank. Men who cannot trust that their neighbour will protect them, cannot focus completely on their enemy and will be easier to kill. Indeed, in most ancient battles where great slaughter occurred, it did not happen when both sides were facing each other in battle but after one side had turned tail and was trying to run away.

So the practical paradox of warfare is that the man who is least afraid of dying often has the best chance of not dying at all.

There is a story in Japan that the leader of the military force that repulsed the Mongol invasion, Hōjō Tokimune, meditated to overcome his fear in order to lead the battle.

Tokimune was overcome with fear when the invasion finally came, and wanted to defeat cowardice, so he asked Bukko (his Zen master) for advice. Bukko replied he had to sit in meditation to find the source of his cowardice in himself. Tokimune went to Bukko and said: "Finally there is the greatest happening of my life." Bukko asked, "How do you plan to face it?" Tokimune screamed "Katsu!" ("Victory!") as if he wanted to scare all the enemies in front of him. Bukko responded with satisfaction: "It is true that the son of a lion roars as a lion!" Since that time, Tokimune became instrumental in the spreading of Zen Buddhism and Bushido in Japan among the samurai. (Wikipedia)

Warfare has changed dramatically since the age of Samurai, but the control of fear has continued to be a significant issue in warfare. The modern approach is to use intense training experiences (i.e. "boot camp") to raise recruit's confidence level both in themselves and their group, which in turn develops a sense of group identity and loyalty to the regiment. This trains men to put the good of the group ahead of the individual. The result is very different from Zen meditation, which is very-much focused on individual insight. But it is something that can be mass-produced and which produces very predictable results. It doesn't create "realized men", but the sense of solidarity continues long after military service has ended---which is what sustains veterans associations.

Where meditation's work with fear can still be of value, however, is in helping people deal with the terrors of everyday life.

And I use the term "terror" advisedly. Our modern lives are so complex and unpredictable that many of us find it pretty much impossible to maintain any sense of "comfort" for any length of time. People who are losing their jobs; who have to constantly adapt and retrain in order to stay employed; who live from contract to contract; who live in rough neighbourhoods; who have loved ones falling on hard times; who's life is dependent on complex, constantly changing, poorly understood technology; the complex interpersonal dynamics of the workplace----all of these can create the same sort of "organized chaos" that soldiers experience on a battlefield. Add to this a never-ending sense of impending social collapse due to things like global warming, peak oil or the economic collapse we are currently living through.

While the intensity of this stress is less than that experienced by soldiers, it's duration goes far longer. And just like soldiers, ordinary people only have a limited supply of courage to draw upon. Take too much out of the reserve, and even the most stoic will eventually collapse into quivering blobs of terror---sometimes for seemingly very trivial reasons.

I remember seeing a couple aquainences who had lost their last reserve of courage. These were both men who were extremely "macho" and who took great pride in living very independent lives and doing extreme work. Ordinarily, I suspect that they would be considered extremely brave men. They undertook to grow a large amount of marihuana to sell for easy money. Unfortunately, things didn't work our well and one of them was arrested and the other was terrified that he would be too. They both totally "lost it". Every last scrap of stoicism disappeared and they both descended into absolute terror. In a sense, I was watching the civilian equivalent of "battle fatigue".

And I have to admit that I too fall prey to the terror of modern life. It isn't so much that I am facing huge stressors (I've been pretty good at protecting myself), but the day-to-day struggle of having to constantly be at the mercy of other people and technology I don't understand sometimes wears me down and fills me with a vague, unending, existential dread.

And the only thing that I've found that can sustain me is to sit on the pillows and meditate---just like Hōjō Tokimune when he faced the immense might of the Emperor Kublai Khan. I may not have faith in myself anymore, or the world around me, but at least I still have some faith in the practice of meditation. I hope that this life-raft will take me past this current existential problem and carry me forward into some better place.

Taijiquan, Mediation and Breathing

A lot of people are quite confused about the role of breathing in the Neidan practices. (I know that I was for a long, long time.) That is because there are a lot of contradictory things said about the practice by people who have only partial truths. My understanding has been won by a couple decades of practice, and is always open to revision, but once one begins to understand how all the contradictions begin to fit together into a whole, there is a very good chance that you are beginning to really understand the concept. (Much like the parable of the blind men and the elephant.) In order to help others learn faster than I have, I thought I'd share my understanding.

First, the questions that plagued me as a student and the answers I have found---.

All teachers and all books say that same thing: "Keep your back straight!" The problem with this is that the back is a very complex thing that is far from straight. The spine is an very complex "S Curve" that curves back and forth all through its length, so it can never, strictly speaking, be perfectly straight. Eventually, I just discarded this concept as something that is a short-form for something that is a lot more complex.

Most teachers tell us to keep a vertical back, although I have had others strongly emphasize the need to bend forward and stretch the lower back. I have come to the conclusion that the vertical back is the best posture from a martial arts point of view and as a way to practice the art. My suspicion is that the people who advise an extreme stretching posture are either doing so for a very specific health reason (perhaps to help people with very stiff lower backs) or are simply passing on this lesson in a "monkey see, monkey do" manner without understanding what it does to the body. Either way, once one has advanced in their practice where their tailbone has unfused (you'll know when it happens because it breaks with a loud "snap"), I can't see any more reason for heroic efforts on the lower back and very good ones to stop the practice.

Many taijiquan teachers suggest that people do the set while practicing what is called "reverse breathing". It is called "reverse" primarily because it is the opposite of "Buddha Breathing", which is commonly taught by meditation teachers. Some teachers suggest that "reverse breathing" is dangerous and suggest that people instead breath "naturally". Take a look at the following diagrams to understand the difference between the two and what is at issue.

Buddha Breathing (in breath)


The important issues to remember are that in Buddha breathing, the air is pushed down into the tan t'ien ("hara" in Japanese), instead of the lungs. While this happens, the front of the hips pivot downwards and the rear pivots upward (as the monks say, "the anus looks to the moon".) This is the posture that Buddhists adopt while meditating and it gives a very solid, "locked" feeling when one is sitting in a lotus posture.


In contrast, reverse breathing---as the name suggests---turns this on its head.

Reverse Breathing (in breath)

In reverse breathing the air is pushed up into the chest cavity and the tan t'ien sucks inward. The hips inward, which pushes the genitals up and the anus turns away from the moon and looks to the earth. This has a profound impact on a person's taijiquan because as the hips tuck under, one is able to sink physically downwards through the hip joint while keeping vertical. (My tajiquan teacher called this "sitting like in a chair", which meant absolutely nothing to me and left me completely flummoxed about what he meant.) The act of sucking in the tan t'ien and expanding the chest makes this quite complicated and not terribly easy movement a lot easier. The value from martial power is that as the hips roll under, very strong tendons in the back are stretched like springs, which stores power that can be unleashed at a later time. This is where the idea comes from that in taijiquan one attacks with an out-breath and retreats with an in-breath. When one understands the importance of reverse breathing in taijiquan, one eventually moves towards a pace where each move takes one long, calm breath.

The reason why people suggest that reverse breathing is dangerous is because it does seem to have bad effects if you try to force it or do it all the time. At one time I tried to do it while meditating and did try to force it. I stopped doing this when I had a blood vessel explode in my left eye while meditating. I have heard examples of practitioners who were stricken blind or who suffered from severe high-blood pressure from too much reverse-breathing. As a result, teachers who do not really know what they are doing, or have to run a lot of students through their halls in order to the pay the rent are probably better off simply saying that it is dangerous and tell people not to do it.

But life is dangerous and the greatest risk in life is to take no risks at all! The taijiquan sets that I have learned all begin and end with three slow, quiet breaths. My suspicion is that the initial three breaths are supposed to be reverse breathing in order to prepare for the taijiquan. The last three should be Buddha breathing in order to bring the body out of the habit of reverse breathing. I also think that the reason why people are supposed to study meditation once they get to a certain level in taijiquan is to learn about things like Buddha breathing and reverse breathing in order to advance their forms practice; and then to settle down into serious Buddha breathing to act as a prophylactic to prevent the practitioner from damaging herself. (There are also many good reasons for doing Buddha breathing, of course, for example, I have found it a good thing to do to keep warm on my cold walks home from work.)


Of course, the overwhelming majority of people who do taijiquan simply want some non-stressful exercise and would find all of this quite bizarre. The biggest problems arise from people with bad judgement who obsess about this sort of thing and don't use their common sense in practice. But if someone remembers to be a "light unto themselves" and to tread the path of moderation, these practices can be of value for that vanishingly small part of the population that seeks to follow the same path as I.

Kungfu

I've just started learning the taiji spear form. It's been a long process just to get to the "starting point". First of all, there are no teachers that I know of anywhere near my neighbourhood---let alone any who would like to teach me. This means I had to find a teaching DVD, and it had to be got over the internet. It also took me a fair amount of time to find a real spear, which like the DVD, came over the internet. That was not the "begining" but to paraphrase Churchill "it was just the begining of the begining". ;-) Because at that point I realized that I simply did not have enough time to take on a new learning task. It took me about two years to divest myself from enough commitments to have the time.

It is not going to be easy. I couldn't find an English language DVD, and I don't speak or read Chinese, which means that I'm stuck watching frame by frame while listening to an explanation that I simply cannot understand. Moreover, I don't have access to a gymnasium, which means that I can only practice in my living room or the patio. This means that I have to be very careful not to "ding" my furniture, the ceiling or my walls as long as it is too cold to practice outside. (Luckily I own a 100 year old home, which means that I at least have 9 foot ceilings.)

Why in heaven's name would someone put themselves through this exercise in masochism?

The first thing is that every form I have learned has come through a similar nightmare.

When I went to my first taijiquan workshop my legs were so stiff from the "post lifting" exercises that I had crawl up the stairs to apartment on my hands and knees. Not only that, but I was such a disaster as a student (even though I practiced probably more than anyone else in the class) that I had to take three beginners classes one after the other before I learned the gross moves of the open hand set.

When I learned the sabre form I didn't have a car and was working at a minimum wage job as a janitor. I signed up for a class over two weekends at a retreat centre that I had to spend hours on a bus just to get to. The cost was $600 over two weeks (a huge amount of my very limited disposable income at the time.) When I got there for the first weekend, the teacher had gotten very drunk the night before and the one other student and I had to drag him out of bed and force him to teach us even though he had a terrible hangover.

When I learned the straight sword I couldn't find any teachers at all in my area, so I got a video tape and learned the form from it (after a fashion) over two years. Luckily, after a while I heard about a local woman who had moved into the area from China and had been on a provincial wushu team. It turned out that she was teaching a class on the sword. All that work with the video meant that I was able to absorb a lot from her two hour, Saturday morning classes---even though her English was pretty bad.

So my experience has been that if you make the effort, it will eventually pay off. Actually, this is a key principle of religious Daoism. Sincere effort will bring results. Moreover, that is pretty much what the word "kung fu" means: hard work over time. The point is the personal investment, not what particular thing you invest in.

When I was living at a Daoist retreat centre I had this pointed out to me by one of the cooks. Ming was an apprentice chef who had been brought over from the mother Temple to work in the kitchen. He spoke pretty good English so I asked him one day why I never saw him doing any taijiquan. He said "I do all my taiji in the kitchen".

This idea of taiji as kungfu as work pretty much goes against what a lot of "groovy" people think of when they talk about taijiquan. In fact, a lot of people specifically talk about taiji as "play". There is a way in which this makes sense, but that isn't the sense in which these folks mean it . Taiji isn't "fooling around", it is hard work!