There really is a lot of seemingly nonsensical sayings in taiji that sifu’s seem to delight in repeating over, and over, and over.... “The head should be erect, ‘as if suspended from Heaven’...” Sifu said as he tipped my chin whilst kind of pulling the back of my head up which straightened out the back of my neck. If you picture someone with a ponytail having it yanked upwards and the effect that would have on their posture, you’d be pretty close to how I looked. With my head ‘suspended’ I moved through a sequence called ‘repulse monkey’. This part of the form has a tricky back step that is preceded with a downward strike with the forearm called p'eng. To achieve this we do what in taiji we call ‘softening’. Well when I say ‘we’ I mean those that can actually do taiji, with me well I don’t really ‘soften’ as I was about to find out,

“I feel like I’m going backwards Sifu!” I confessed, “Every lesson I feel like we spend more time correcting the bad habits I’ve practised myself into rather than covering new material.” “That’s because we are.”  Sifu said softly but directly. “But I am practising.  I’m up at the crack of dawn everyday working on the principles we cover in my lessons.” I replied dejectedly. “That much is obvious, but you’re overtraining every single principle to the point where it becomes out of balance with the rest of your body.  In truth you’re having too much time between lessons to ‘train’ yourself into bad habits and you desperately need more regular tuition.” “What can I do though Sifu?  I’m already using all my spare holiday allowance just to make it to my lessons…”

“To be honest Sifu I’m not really interested in teaching ‘Health Tai Chi’!  I’d really like to have an authentic Kwoon for Tai Chi ‘fighters’.” I commented over a cup of tea with Sifu before my lesson discussing a new class that I was planning to opening and how best to promote it. “There really isn’t any difference if Tai Chi is practiced properly.  In fact, if you are studying ‘real’ Tai Chi you can’t possibly begin to use it as a martial art until you understand the importance of its ‘health’ aspects.  Without your ‘health’ you’ll never stand a chance of being able to apply Tai Chi as a martial art, so I guess which ever way you look at it, everyone has to do ‘health Tai Chi’ whether they want to or not!”  He responded gesturing every inverted comma with his fingers.“So what you are saying is that whether they are studying Tai chi for ‘health’ or ‘fighting’ they’re still learning….”