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This is a compilation of a series of columns dedicated to answering questions about T’ai Chi Ch’uan, qigong and internal arts. 

	What Are the T'ai Chi Classics?
	Can you tell me what qi (ch’i) is?
	What is the proper way to breathe while practicing T’ai Chi Ch’uan?
	What is the Dantian?
	What Does Relax Mean in T'ai Chi Ch'uan? How Can I Relax.

One of the distinguishing features of T’ai Chi Ch’uan is the richness of its theoretical foundation. These theories are at once the guide to improving one’s practice and the measure of one’s progress. 
Although many of the theories seem obvious, they are not. Many seem incredibly difficult to understand, and they are.
T’ai Chi Ch’uan practice often starts from the outside in—from the body to the energy and mind. Later it requires going from the inside out—from the mind and energy to the body. The process involved in this development depends largely on the individual’s effort, which in turn produces insight. 

Sometimes the physical effort produces insight. Sometimes there is an insight that occurs through a shift in understanding that can be applied to physical practice.

The classics are generally referred to as: The Theory of T’ai Chi Ch’uan by Chang San Feng (Zhangsanfeng), The Classics of T’ai Chi Ch’uan by Wong Tsung Yueh (Wangzongyue), An Internal Explanation of the Practice of the 13 Postures by Wu Yusiang (Wu Yu Xiang), The Five Words Secrets by Li Yi Yu (Li yiyu), and Summary of the Practice of T’ai Chi Ch’uan and Push Hands by Li Yi Yu.

Additionally, there are songs, or poems, about T’ai Chi Ch’uan, which give important suggestions about practice. Over time, highly accomplished masters have contributed their own insights. For instance, Yang Cheng-fu’s 10 important points are regularly quoted. And each of the founders of major styles have left writings which have special significance.

The significance of these classic writings is evidenced in Wang Tsung Yueh’s manual. It refers to keeping the neck erect and to pushing upward with the top of the head, while sinking the qi to the dantian. 

Keeping the neck straight and pushing upward with the top of the head sounds like easy and insignificant things to do. But at another level, it refers to the internal energy moving upward while at the same time the energy is sinking to the dantian, or lower abdomen. 

When one is practicing correctly without blockages, this is how the energy flows in the body. And this is how energy is created. But until sufficient internal energy accumulates, it is necessary to follow these prescriptions.

Another saying: “Do not lean nor incline. Manifest suddenly and conceal suddenly.” Not to lean nor incline has to do with maintaining proper balance and central equilibrium, but it also refers to keeping one’s intentions hidden. Leaning or inclining can reveal one intentions. 

Martial arts are based in large part on surprise, so one must conceal one’s intention and reveal them unexpectedly when it is too late for the opponent to respond effectively. 

This is repeated in the saying: “Others do not know me. I alone know others. A hero is undefeated because he is a master of these principles.” 

Some T’ai Chi masters are famous for being able to throw an attacker to the floor or many feet away with the attacker or spectators unable to clearly see what he did. His movements use internal energy and movements too subtle for most people to observe. 
This is reflected in, “Four ounces can deflect a thousand pounds.” At this  high level of skill,  a defender can use a small amount of energy to neutralize the far greater external force of an attacker.

Basic writings about structural alignment are easier to understand at a beginning level. 

Yang Cheng-fu’s “10 Essential Points,” lists the following: Keep the head upright, as if suspended from above, depress the chest and raise the upper back, loosen the waist, distinguish between substantial and insubstantial, sink the shoulders and elbows, use your mind and not your force, co-ordinate the upper and lower body movements, unify internal and external movements, maintain continuity of movements, and seek stillness in movement. 

Some of these are easy superficially. For instance, sink the shoulders, lower the elbows, relax the waist, depress the chest, and round the back. However, even these guidelines have an inner meaning. 

For the beginner, these are rules for proper execution of movements. When practiced conscientiously, over a long period of time, they help to induce internal energy, which then requires and reinforces sinking the shoulders, lowering the elbows, relaxing the waist, etc. 

Some classic writings are difficult to understand and apply. Loosening the waist is more than being able to turn the waist freely. It involves relaxing the small of the back when exerting energy, and to do this there must be a pulling upward and a sinking down. 

This is related to the principle of distinguishing between Yin and Yang, or between substantial and insubstantial, which is at the core of T’ai Chi Ch’uan practice.

According to one author, once one really understands Yin and Yang in one’s practice, “one’s skill would progress with the days and soon, one’s skill would be as good as one could wish.”

One of the keys to this kind of understanding is to get past the idea of the concepts as static ideas. For instance, to have one foot empty and one foot substantial is easy to express and understand, but it is a static view of the process. 

All the classic writings have to be understood as dynamic interactions between all the different parts of the body, as well as with the qi and the mind.

Therefore, it is important not to dismiss even simple suggestions such as to suspend the head from a string and to always try to refresh one’s understanding of the T’ai Chi classics based on the progress one makes in practice. 

Not all interpretations of the classics are alike. And some of the highest level masters may not put their thoughts into writing.  Many of these concepts are very difficult to express in words in any language. 

Also, translations from the Chinese are often inaccurate and incomplete, sometimes depending on the translator’s own level of practice. 

In one case where the Chinese version and its English translation were included in the same book, the English translation did not have certain key words that were in the Chinese, seriously affecting the meaning. 

There are relatively few translations of the T’ai Chi classics in English but that will change, as there is more interest and skill. 

The key is always in the way that one practices. It is not enough to just reinforce one’s understanding while practicing. For instance, one does not want to just try to get stronger or softer. 

One needs to have a continuing inquiry to seek what changes will produce a better result, combining strength and softness, Yin and Yang, internal and external, mind and qi, and qi and body.• -- Marvin Smalheiser

Qi is a widely used word in China that has many meanings.

The Chinese written character for qi is very old and the ancient meaning was grain offered to guests. It is easy to see from the meaning of the elements (radicals) of the character.

The inner radical with the crossed lines and small lines in the diagonals means rice.The covering line that moves from horizontal to a downward arc represents a lid, as a lid covering a pot. The lines above the lid represent steam coming from under the lid.

Basically, qi means energy and in terms of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, it commonly refers to intrinsic energy that flows through the body, often in association with the flow of blood. Everyone has qi. When they die, it leaves the body. There is Yin qi and Yang qi.

In general terms, qi is often referred to as air, gas and vapor, or the breath. It can also mean spirit, character or influence and bearing. When a person has a certain style in what they do, it is said they have a particular kind of qi. An artist, such as a calligrapher, is said to express a certain kind of qi in his work.

There are many different kinds of qi. We are born with what is called original qi, which we get from our parents. This is the qi that resides primarily in our dantian. The qi that we accumulate during our daily life comes from air we breathe and food we eat. It is said to be cultivated qi. Since the original qi tends to be used up, it is important to replenish it. This can be done with breathing exercises such as qigong, meditation, and T’ai Chi Ch’uan.

In T’ai Chi Ch’uan, some of the goals are to increase the amount of qi, to improve the quality of qi, to ensure that it flows freely and is not blocked. The goal is also to achieve a balanced Yin and Yang qi.

Qi can be experienced in many ways. Most commonly, it is through warmth in the hands and feet or an itchy feeling in the hands. At different times in one’s practice, it is felt in different ways. But the goal in T’ai Chi Ch’uan is not to feel the qi, but to make sure it is not blocked and to be able to direct it by one’s intention.

It is commonly said that one should sink the qi to the dantian, which is an energy center in the lower abdomen. One of the reasons for this is so the energy cannot get stuck in the upper torso or the head.
Because of the need to deal with intellectual and emotional problems in daily life, the qi rises to the head and does not circulate freely through the rest of the body. This produces an imbalance that can produce fatigue, anger, depression, and conflict.

Sinking the qi helps to reassert the healthy flow of qi through the meridians, or pathways, that are the basis for acupuncture treatments. In T’ai Chi Ch’uan, one of the goals is to be able to gather the qi in the dantian and from there distribute it to the legs and the rest of the body during practice of the form and self-defense applications, as well as during daily life.

At higher levels, qi is transmuted into shen, or spirit. And for health and in the martial arts, it is used to produce jin, or internal strength. Qi, itself, is said to come from jing, or the generative energy. Together, the jing, qi, and shen are sometimes referred to as the Three Treasures.

The process of working with the qi involves a mindfulness that helps to amplify the qi and the development of intention that can guide your effort and the qi, itself.•—Marvin Smalheiser

What is the proper way to breathe while practicing T’ai Chi Ch’uan?

There are many different methods. From the outset, you have to understand there is no one correct way, no “only” way.
Some people will teach you to breathe in and out with each movement. Others will say just breathe as you would while walking.

While almost everyone agrees that breathing abdominally is most beneficial, there is more than one way to do this. One method is to expand the abdomen as you breathe in and contract the abdomen as you breathe out. This is sometimes called natural breathing or Buddhist breathing. 

Another way is to contract the abdomen as you breathe in and expand the abdomen (sink the qi into it) as you breathe out. This is sometimes called Taoist breathing, reverse breathing, or natural breathing.
Sometimes a combination of the two is used. There are different benefits from each method. The only wrong method is to force the method you are using.

A student should understand that a teacher has to guide a student according to what is correct for them at their stage of development. The instructor may feel a student has enough to learn at the beginning, without struggling with intricate breathing instructions.

Another factor is that through long practice, qi builds up in the lower abdomen, and this changes the dynamics of breathing so that the so-called reverse breathing is more natural.
It is also important to understand that T’ai Chi Ch’uan was not constructed as a breathing exercise. Breathing should support the function of your body and mind as you do T’ai Chi Ch’uan.

When you reach a certain level of accomplishment, breathing can be integrated into movements in a natural way. But this is often the result of breakthroughs in developing internal energy. It is then sometimes referred to as the whole body breathing. Then the breath and energy can go through the body in a palpable way.
Another factor is that the goal of practice is to be calm and even-minded. In sitting and standing meditative practice, the breath is useful to smooth the flow of thought because it is tranquil movement against the background of stillness.

In T’ai Chi Ch’uan, you try to achieve a balanced stillness in your mind in the midst of the movement of the body. The breath does not serve the same function until such a time when the movement is so integrated with the mind that it is experienced as stillness.
So when you practice, do not worry about breath control. Don’t try to match an inhale and exhale with a particular movement, becoming tense in the process. You would be superimposing breathing on a pattern of movement that does not lend itself to such a method.

 Instead, just breathe naturally. If you feel a strong need to focus on your breath, use sitting or standing meditation to do this.—Marvin Smalheiser

There are numerous references to the dantian in T’ai Chi Ch’uan practice, as well as in other martial arts and in Chinese methods of meditation and self-cultivation. In Japanese practices, it is referred to as the hara.
The word dantian, also written as tan t’ien, usually refers to the general area in the lower abdomen, beneath the navel and about one-third of the way in the abdominal cavity.

It is sometimes associated with the acupuncture point Guanyuan, Origin Pass, conception vessel 4. The dantian is also sometimes associated with conception vessel 6, qi hai, sea of qi or ocean of breath.

The word dantian translates as cinnabar fields, or elixir field. Alchemists in ancient China, as in the West, were interested in transmuting base metals into gold. Others were interested in transforming the base materials of life into a golden elixir for immortality or long life. Others sought higher stages of illumination or to create a soul. Another use is to transmute the qi in the dantian into spirit, or shen.

For the average practitioner, it involves improving health and reinvigorating internal organs. Sometimes massaging the dantian helps to stabilize one’s emotions or to improve internal organ function. A famous Japanese healer diagnoses diseases using the patient’s dantian.
Since the dantian is so fundamental to the culture, there are many uses and locations described. There are three primary dantian. One is in the abdomen, one in the heart, area and the upper one in the location of the third eye, or brain.

Sometimes one of the dantians is described as being at the top of the head, at the Bahui acupuncture point, a second at the navel, and a third at the Huiyin acupuncture point at the bottom of the torso between the legs.
The dantian at the navel, or in the lower abdomen, is sometimes described as including the important mingmen area at the back, between the kidneys, roughly opposite the navel.
The dantian in the lower abdomen is said to be the residence of primordial qi, or the yuan qi, the energy that each person receives from their parents.

This inheritance is the foundation of life, and as one matures, it is consumed as people use it in daily life. People learn to get other energy from food, air, and their environment for daily life.
T’ai Chi Ch’uan and meditation are said to be two methods of replenishing this original qi. During daily life, energy from the dantian is drawn upward and used by intellectual activity. If properly used, some of the energy re-circulates throughout the body, returning to the abdomen.

Too often it remains in the head, causing distress or disease. Often, when people get emotionally upset, it can mean that their qi has risen to their emotional or mental centers, where it stagnates.
In T’ai Chi Ch’uan and meditation, one tries to "sink" the qi, or energy, into the lower abdomen. Of course, one cannot sink all of the qi. The idea is to help recirculate the qi through the dantian.

For most beginners, there is no specific feeling in the dantian and no feeling of energy there. So, it is hard for them to comprehend. The practitioner may be told to put their mind in their lower abdomen. This also is not that easy to do for a beginner, or even an advanced practitioner. But it is easy to say.

It sometimes helps to be aware of the abdominal wall moving out and in as you breathe. This awareness helps to give a focus point. But don’t make a judgement whether it is too little or too much.There are many ways to work with the dantian, including rotating it and coordinating the rotation with movements as practiced in the Chen style. There are many variations on this.Most styles just let the energy sink to the dantian. Then the movements will naturally activate and massage the dantian.

The important thing is not to try to force the energy or the mind. The first principle is relaxed awareness. Even awareness of one’s own body will help to release qi and let it gently return to the lower abdomen.
Over time, one may experience some fullness or heat in the lower abdomen, but this is not a measure of success or failure. With reasonably good practice over time, qi will accumulate in the dantian.
The abdomen should always be kept relaxed, but as qi accumulates from daily practice, it does become "strong," like a drum during movement.

This condition may exist even in a relaxed state. But it is self-defeating to try to create this artificially by force or try to make it become strong.

Keep in mind that teachers are often limited in what they can say about this and other complex practices because they are often talking to beginners and people they do not know well. So, they can only speak in the simplest terms lest the students try too hard, do the wrong thing, and injure themselves because they are inexperienced.
So, the beginner should listen with this in mind and continue practice with common sense. Later, they can ask for clarification based on their experience.

Like all internal practices, this is not a procedure where day by day you get better and better in a linear fashion. It is an organic process with delays and errors and gradual development. Your development depends on your own abilities and efforts, like everything else. You cannot expect a teacher to always want to or be able to tell you what to do next in this process, since you are dealing with yourself in a global perspective.

Even more important than the teacher or the result is training yourself to consistently search for insight and to always keep trying. Proper humility helps to preempt impatience.•—Marvin Smalheiser

To relax in T’ai Chi is more than just what people commonly think of when they use the word relax. To relax is our natural inheritance. We are born with the ability to relax. But we often leave it behind early in life, in our pursuit of other personal needs or cravings.

At a basic level, we do not relax because we strive for food, safety or social acceptance, or the need to be as good as or better than others. After we achieve these, we often tell ourselves we will be able to relax.

In T’ai Chi, relaxation is more than the relaxation that people may choose when they sit on a sofa watching television. It involves the mind, emotions, and body in different ways, and requires a certain degree of reconciliation of inner contradictions, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

To understand relaxation in the T’ai Chi Ch’uan sense, it helps to ask yourself why is it so important to T’ai Chi and what function it serves in martial arts, health, fitness, or self-cultivation.

T’ai Chi’s first function is as a martial art. The relaxation is essential for a martial artist to be more flexible and more powerful. Being relaxed makes the muscles and joints and mind freer and more adaptable. When they are relaxed, the muscles and joints do not work against each other and can be mobilized to act in concert. The whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.

One of the goals in T’ai Chi Ch’uan is to link one’s internal strength from the torso to the extremities and from the feet to the top of the head and out to the fingers. This is achieved in part by a wave-like or pulsing of relaxation. It is not just stretching an arm or a leg or a joint, but the entire body.

Some refer to the body being like a bow, even five bows represented by the two arms, two legs and the torso. Some refer to there being many more bows throughout the body that are activated in T’ai Chi practice.
In drawing a bow, there is a stretching that requires relaxing and at the same time a tension. When the arrow is released, the bow and the bowstring are released and lose a certain vibrancy.

The stretching and relaxing in T’ai Chi Ch’uan occurs vertically, horizontally, and circularly. For instance, in the torso there is a pulling upward by the lifting of the top of the head and lifting the back.

At the same time, there is a pulling downward at the base of the spine, which creates traction for a healthy and flexible back. When the arm is extended, it stretches outward, but by sinking the elbow and settling the shoulders, there is a counter stretch.

This kind of stretching is increased by silk reeling action, which involves a spiral twisting in the arms, legs, and torso by "relaxed," positive, counter stretches that feel like squeezes. The stretches are the Yang counterpoint of the Yin relaxation.

This stretching opens up the body, improves circulation, and massages the nervous system. It also helps to generate energy, or qi, which is created by the interaction of Yin and Yang.

These same functions apply for other uses of T’ai Chi Ch’uan for health, fitness, and self-cultivation.
A good way to get the idea of the kind of relaxed that T’ai Chi Ch’uan uses is to think of the relaxed nature of water. It is soft, changeable, and also powerful. Its power is derived in part from the way it is contained, for example, by a dam or the banks of a river.

If you can envision a sealed plastic bag filled with water, you can see the fluidity of the water and how it reacts when it is squeezed, trying to move to another location, with force when the force is strong. Yet it is always true to its relaxed nature.

As human beings, we are filled with fluids and energy, and as we walk or exercise, we are exerting a certain amount of force on the fluids and energy in our bodies.

In T’ai Chi Ch’uan, we are creating energy and redistributing it just as we squeeze and press the blood and other fluids in our body. This can create a lot of energy that we can exert.

However, if we are tense in many local places, this limits the flow of energy and the way it is massaged. This in turn limits the force that we can exert.

The practice of T’ai Chi Ch’uan helps to unblock these local tensions. In fact, the goal of T’ai Chi can be said to unblock these tensions and their mental and emotional sources.

Of course, this process is not easy and as complex human beings, we have many subtle tensions and contradictions to overcome day by day and even hour by hour. There are even multiple layers of tension that we can shed, some of which we have to keep shedding for a long period of time, or what sometimes feels like forever. Some lessons we have to keep relearning.

The key to accomplishing this relaxation, and reclaiming our natural inheritance, is our ability to be aware. In order to relax, we first have to be aware of the tension and what we are doing.

One technique is to poll the body for tension and when you find any, just be aware of it without trying to relax it. After a short period of time, you may find there is a disconnection between that tension and whatever was going on in your mind to cause the tension.

The tension no longer has a present reason to be tense. The tension feels disconnected or suspended. Still, just be aware of it for a while and it will be possible to easily release it. If you try to relax the tension too quickly, it can be a case of using force against force. In other words, making yourself relax can be an extension of your tension.

One of the reasons that people feel so good when they are doing T’ai Chi Ch’uan is that the movements are relaxing, even if not done very correctly. This is because the nature of the movements tends to naturally stretch the muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

Lots of other activities give the benefits of stretching, but none do it exactly like T’ai Chi Ch’uan because in T’ai Chi, it involves the entire body, not just arms or limbs or other segments. The more a practitioner can connect the whole body in his or her practice, the more relaxation can be implemented.

This a continuing process. In the beginning, small steps can be made. But in the course of one’s practice, one finds that one can eventually make long strides. There is no end to one’s progress.—Marvin Smalheiser•