Familiar Tai Chi Chuan Ideas

Tai Chi Chuan Practice and Training

Common Themes, Topics, Ideas, Suggestions, Principles, Concepts, Tips

One Sentence Taijiquan Notes by Mike Garofalo

Lift the head, tuck the chin, extend the neck, feel upright and rising.
Stand strong and balanced, then move slowly and gracefully.
Imagine resistance, water boxing, dealing with an opponent, Da Lu, pushing hands, sensing incoming energies, feeling the Other.
Be loose and relaxed, avoid over-exertion, use coiling energy.
Keep moving, flowing, shaping yourself in body-mind.
Shoulders down, gentle breathing, energized back, dignified bearing.
Be more stylish, artistic, beautiful, sensuous, dancing, formal.
Yin more than Yang, soft over hard, water over stone, gentle over muscular.
Follow the Teacher, coordinate, create unity, move together, act as one.
Act from the center, find the Dan Tien, Centering, secure internal energy.
You are responsible for your own self-defense, safety and fitness.
Develop and maintain the Inner Smile, positive disposition, enthusiasm.
Work within one's steady breathing, learn different breath/movements.
Enhance and maintain one's potential energy reserves for power.
Keep the knees over the feet, and don't over-extend in lunges.
Taijiquan, Tai Chi Chuan, Shadow Boxing, Grand Ultimate Boxing, Cotton Fist, At the Edge Fist, Mind/Fist Arts, .... whatever.
Differentiate between solo and group practices and training.
Learn the names of each numbered movement sequence.
Learn offense and/or defensive applications for each named movement.
Daily practice, review, and repetitions are essential to progress.
Distinguish substantial from unsubstantial, weighted from empty, rooted from moving, stable from unstable.
Be delicate, be gentle, be refined, be fluid, be slow.
Concentrate, remember, embody the patterns, display the Form.
Strengthen the glutes, quads, calves, ankles, and feet; Legs Powers, Thigh Chi.
Stay level, avoid to much bobbing up and down, smooth level movement. 
There is a natural automatic discomfort with falling, we wanting to stay standing and moving upright, we want to work effectively with the forces of gravity.
Working within and slowly out from your current limitations, injuries, mental or physical health problems, or other obstacles. 
Appropriate music might make your Taijiquan practice enjoyable in new ways.
Inhale while pulling in and gathering, exhale while pushing or striking out or blocking; sometimes holding breath; sometimes the opposites. 
If your huffing and puffing, breathing to fast, then you are out of shape but persist after resting and slowing down some; vary and improve your workouts. 
Think process, think evolving, think changing, think becoming; then stop thinking.
Keep a Beginner's Mind, Learn Something, relish the experiences.  



Repost from July of 2020


Tai Chi Chuan Website

Yang Style of Tai Chi Chuan 24 Short Form

Yang Style of Tai Chi Chuan 108 Long Form

Tai Chi Chuan Quotations and Classics

Kenneth Rexroth on Chinese Classics

"In the Confucian writings Tao usually means either a road or a way of life. It means that in the opening verse of the Tao Te Ching, “The way that can be followed (or the road that can be traced or charted) is not the true way. The word that can be spoken is not the true word.” Very quickly the text drives home the numinous significance of both Tao and Te. Tao is described by paradox and contradiction — the Absolute in a worldview where absolutes are impossible, the ultimate reality which is neither being nor not being, the hidden meaning behind all meaning, the pure act which acts without action and yet the reason and order of the simplest physical occurrence.

It is quite possible — in fact Joseph Needham in his great Science and Civilization in China does so — to interpret the Tao Te Ching as a treatise of elementary primitive scientific empiricism; certainly it is that. Over and over it says, “learn the way of nature”; “do not try to overcome the forces of nature but use them.” On the other hand, Fr. Leo Weiger, S.J., called the Tao Te Ching a restatement of the philosophy of the Upanishads in Chinese terms. Buddhists, especially Zen Buddhists in Japan and America, have understood and translated the book as a pure statement of Zen doctrine. Even more remarkable, contemporary Chinese, and not all of them Marxists, have interpreted it as an attack on private property and feudal oppression, and as propaganda for communist anarchism. Others have interpreted it as a cryptic work of erotic mysticism and yoga exercises. It is all of these things and more, and not just because of the ambiguity of the ideograms in a highly compressed classical Chinese text; it really is many things to many men — like the Tao itself.

Perhaps the best way to get at the foundations of the philosophy of the Tao Te Ching is by means of a historical, anthropological approach which in itself may be mythical. There is little doubt that the organized Taoist religion, which came long after the Tao Te Ching but which still was based on it, swept up into an occultist system much of the folk religion of the Chinese culture area, much as Japanese Shinto (which means the Tao of the Gods) did in Japan. If the later complicated Taoist religion developed from the local cults, ceremonies and superstitions of the precivilized folk religion, how could it also develop from the Tao Te Ching or from the early Taoist philosophers whose works are collected under the names of Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu and who are about as unsuperstitious and antiritualistic as any thinkers in history? The connection is to be found I feel in the shamans and shamanesses of a pan-Asiatic culture which stretches from the Baltic far into America, and to the forest philosophers and hermits who appear at the beginnings of history and literature in both India and China and whose prehistoric existence is testified by the yogi in the lotus position on a Mohenjo-Daro seal. The Tao Te Ching describes the experiential or existential core of the transcendental experience shared by the visionaries of primitive cultures. The informants of Paul Radin’s classic Primitive Man as Philosopher say much the same things. It is this which gives it its air of immemorial wisdom, although many passages are demonstrably later than Confucius, and may be later than the “later” Taoists, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu.

There are two kinds of esotericism in Oriental religion: the proliferation of spells, chants, rituals, mystical diagrams, cosmologies and cosmogonies, trials of the soul, number mysticism, astrology, and alchemy, all of which go to form the corpus of a kind of pan-Gnosticism. Its remarkable similarities are shared by early Christian heretics, Jewish Kabbalists, Tantric worshipers of Shiva, Japanese Shingon Buddhists, and Tibetan lamas. The other occultism (held strangely enough by the most highly developed minds amongst some people) is the exact opposite, a stark religious empiricism shorn of all dogma or cult, an attitude toward life based upon realization of the unqualified religious experience as such. What does the contemplator contemplate? What does the life of illumination illuminate? To these questions there can be no answer — the experience is beyond qualification. So say the Zen documents, a form of late Buddhism originating in China, but so say the Hinayana texts, which are assumed to be as near as we can get to the utterances of the historic Buddha Sakyamuni, but so say also the Upanishads — “not this, not this, not that, not that,” but so also say some of the highly literate and sophisticated technical philosophers (in our sense of the word) of Sung Dynasty Neo-Confucianism. So says the Tao Te Ching.

In terms of Western epistemology, a subject Classical Chinese thought does not even grant existence, the beginning and end of knowledge are the same thing — the intuitive apprehension of reality as a totality, before and behind the data of sense or the constructions of experience and reason. The Tao Te Ching insists over and over that this is both a personal, psychological and a social, moral, even political first principle. At the core of life is a tiny, steady flame of contemplation. If this goes out the person perishes, although the body and its brain may stumble on, and civilization goes rapidly to ruin. The source of life, the source of the order of nature, the source of knowledge, and the source of social order are all identical — the immediate comprehension of the reality beyond being and not being; existence and essence; being and becoming. Contact with this reality is the only kind of power there is. Against that effortless power all self-willed acts and violent attempts to rule self, man, or natural process are delusion and end only in disaster.

The lesson is simple, and once learned, easy to paraphrase. The Tao is like water. Striving is like smoke. The forces of Nature are infinitely more powerful than the strength of men. Toil to the top of the highest peak and you will be swept away in the first storm. Seek the lowest possible point and eventually the whole mountain will descend to you. There are two ways of knowing, under standing and over bearing. The first is called wisdom. The second is called winning arguments. Being, as power, comes from the still void behind being and not being. The enduring and effective power of the individual, whether hermit or king or householder, comes from the still void at the heart of the contemplative. The wise statesman conquers by the quiet use of his opponents’ violence, like the judo and jujitsu experts.

The Tao Te Ching is a most remarkable document, but the most remarkable thing about it is that it has not long since converted all men to its self-evident philosophy. It was called mysterious at the beginning of this essay. It is really simple and obvious; what is mysterious is the complex ignorance and complicated morality of mankind that reject its wisdom.

-  Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited, 1968

Taijiquan Treatise

The Taijiquan Lun (Treatise, Theory, Discussion, Thesis)

"English Translation of "The Taijiquan Lun," with extensive and good commentary, by Yonatan Vexler, Qufu Teacher's University, Shandong, China

Published in "Qi: The Journal of Traditional Eastern Health and Fitness," Volume 27, No. 1, Spring 2017, pp. 38-51.

This Treatise is sometimes attributed to Wang Zongyue.

"Taiji (complementary duality) originates from wuji (non-polarity).  It is the process of motion and stillness, also known as the creator of contrast (the yin and yang).  Motion causes separation, while stillness leads to unity.  I allow opponents to advance, and I advance when they recoil.  When my opponents are hard and I am soft it is to flow, successfully following their motions is to stick.  When they move fast, I quickly react, and when they move slowly, I slowly follow.  There can be a thousand scenarios, but the one principle applies to all.  Engrain this principle in practice to understand force, understanding force will lead to higher levels of advancement.  Without a long time of serious practice, one cannot advance.

Emptiness leads power up, while breath sinks down the dantian.  Don't lean, and don't bend.  Able to become shadow and suddenly materialize, if opponents go left, nothing will be there, of opponents go right, let them be led to the right.  If opponents look up, let them go up, and if opponents lean down, let them go lower.  If they go forward, let them have to go more forward, and if they go back, let them have to go even further back.  A feather's weight can't be added, sensitive even to a fly landing on one's skin.  They cannot follow me, only I can follow them.  To be a hero that encounters now opposition, this is what one must do.

Many schools try to mimic this.  There are many different methods, but most emphasize the strong defeating the weak and the slow yielding to the quick.  When the strong beat the weak and the slow yield to the quick, it is only natural ability, and has no relation to the power that comes from learning and wisdom.  Consider the phrase, "four ounces overcoming a thousand pounds", and it obviously cannot be done with brute strength.  Consider the old man who can fend off a gang of attackers; is this outcome determined by sheer speed?

Stand like a balanced level, and be as dynamic as a cartwheel can spin.  Shift weight as needed to be lively, for being uncoordinated stagnates the flow.  If you see one practicing for years without advancing, being controlled by the opponent, it's because one has not heard of the fault of being uncoordinated.  To avoid this fault, one must know about yin and yang.  To stick is to flow, to flow is to stick, yang is within the yin, and yin is within the yang.  They (the passive and the active) compliment each other, so one can understand force.  Identify different forces to advance your training.  Carefully study this knowledge, put it to practice, and you will be able to do anything.

The most basic idea is to follow your opponent.  Many make the mistake of planning ahead.  As the saying goes, "off by an inch, off by a mile", so a student must be able to clearly distinguish!  Hence, there is this treatise."

-  English Translation of The Tijiquan Lun by Yonatan Vexler, 2017

Tai Chi Chuan Classics 

Cloud Hands Taijiquan   

Chang San Feng

Thirteen Postures of Tai Chi Chuan

The above four webpages were prepared by Mike Garofalo

My Current Reading List

“Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”
-  Epictetus, The Art of Living 

My current reading list includes the following:

Stoicism and the Art of Happiness.  By Donald Robertson.  New York, McGraw Hill, 2013, 2015.  Index, bibliography, notes, 245 pages.  Series: Teach Yourself: Philosophy and Religion.  ISBN: 139781444187106.  VSCL.  

Meditations.  By Marcus Aurelius.  Translated by Martin Hammond.  Illustrated by Coralie Bickford-Smith.  Introduction by Diskin Clay.  Hardcover Classics.  New York, Penguin Classics, Reissue Edition, 2015.  416 pages.  ISBN: 978-0141395869.  VSCL.

Stoicism Today: Selected Writings.  By Patrick Ussher.  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.  202 pages.  Volume 1.  ISBN: 978-1502401922.  VSCL.  

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present.  By Professor Jacques Barzun.  New York, Harper Perennial, 2001.  912 pages.  ISBN: 978-0060928834.  VSCL.   

Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault  By Pierre Hadot.  Edited with an introduction by Arnold Davidson.  Wiley-Blackwell, 1995.  320 pages.  ISBN: 978-0631180333.  VSCL.  

I am going to participate in the Stoic Week online workshop from November 2nd to November 8th, 2015.  You can sign up for the free workshop starting on October 26th.  The theme of the Stoic Week workshop for 2015 is: Modern-Day Meditations on Marcus Aurelius.  


How to Live a Good Life

Notebooks of an Old Philosopher 

Virtues 

  

Tao Te Ching Chapter Index

Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) by Lao Tzu (Laozi)

Concordance
Chapter Index
Detailed Terms Index for Each Chapter in English and Spanish
Selected Translations into English (16) and Spanish (2) for each Chapter
Chinese Characters for Each Chapter
Wade-Giles and Hanyu Pinyin Romanizations of Chinese Words for Each Chapter
Bibliography, Recommend Readings, References, Links

Tao Te Ching  Chapter Number Index Standard Traditional Chapter Arrangement of the Daodejing Chapter Order in Wang Bi's Daodejing Commentary in 246 CE Chart by Mike Garofalo Index
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40
41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50
51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60
61	62	63	64	65	66	67	68	69	70
71	72	73	74	75	76	77	78	79	80
81

Ladders to Heaven

Bai Zi Bei
The Hundred Character Tablet

By Lu Dongbin
Translated by Jill Gonet, MFA
Qi Magazine, 2017, Volume 27, No. 3, p.44-51
"Guidance and Instruction on Internal Cultivation by Lu Donbin"

"To nourish the vital breath, keep watch in silence;
In order to subdue the mind, act with non-action.
Of movement and stillness, be aware of their origin;
There is no work to do, much less someone to seek.
The true and consistent must respond to phenomena;
Responding to phenomenon, you must be unconfused.
When unconfused, the nature will stabilize by itself;
When the nature stabilizes, energy returns by itself.
When energy returns, the elixir crystallizes by itself;
Within the pot, the trigrams of water and fire are joined.
Yin and yang arise, alternating over and over again;
Every transformation comes like a clap of thunder.
White clouds form and com to assemble at the peak;
Sweet nectar sprinkles down Mount Sumeru.
Swallowing for yourself this wine of immortality,
You wander so freely - who is able to know you?
Sit and listen to the tune played without strings,
Clearly understanding the mechanism of creation.
It comes entirely from these twenty lines;
A true ladder going straight to Heaven!"



"Nurturing energy, forget words and guard it.
Conquer the mind, do non-doing.
In activity and quietude, know the source progenitor.
There is no thing; whom else do you seek?
Real constancy should respond to people;
In responding to people, it is essential not to get confused.
When you don't get confused, your nature is naturally stable;
When your nature is stable, energy naturally returns.
When energy returns, Elixir spontaneously crystallizes,
In the pot pairing water and fire.
Yin and yang arise, alternating over and over again,
Everywhere producing the sound of thunder.
White clouds assemble on the summit,
Sweet dew bathes the polar mountain.
Having drunk the wine of longevity,
You wander free; who can know you?
You sit and listen to the stringless tune,
You clearly understand the mechanism of creation.
The whole of these twenty verses
is a ladder straight to heaven."
- Master Chang San-Feng
  100 Character Tablet, Translated by Thomas Cleary