How Do You Add Softness to Your Form?

[chi-ca]

Here is a beautiful example of "softness" within Chen style Taiji performed by Kelly McLean. I first became aware of Kelly when I saw her performing 48 step in a Liang Shou-Yu video some years ago.

Very best wishes

Thanks you did my homework for me.

Watching Kelly I was also thinking about Qi_Man's comment about strength, flexibility & control. Achieving control goes back to the Three Rings and the 10 Essences...and of course practice, practice, practice.

 

[chi-ca]

Here is an article written by my teacher a few years ago that found its way to Tai Chi magazine... hope it helps~

http://silvertigertaichi.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=42&Itemid=59

Thanks, Pete. It's an interesting article, very visual, and works well with a lot of the other information in this thread

 

[ggg214]

softness, in my understanding, is cotton with a needle hidden in it (棉里&#38024.
it means when you touch it, you feel it soft, but when you hit it, you feel it hard.
it also comply with the concept of Yin and yang, no single yin, neither single yang.
there is always yin in heart of yang, and yang in heart of yin.
taiji is soft in body, but hard in its structure!

 

[East Winds]

chi-ca,
"
Watching Kelly I was also thinking about Qi_Man's comment about strength, flexibility & control. Achieving control goes back to the Three Rings and the 10 Essences...and of course practice, practice, practice".

Yep, you got it!!

Now you are thinking the right way.

Very best wishes

 

[kaizasosei]

softness for fighting, i define as the ability to remain relaxed and actively use relaxation to counter conventional force. flawless external technique can even be softness at some level.

softness in essence i define as the ability to sense and manipulate the inner pathways of energy within the body so as to attain physical and mental power.

so then what would hardness be?? mmnnn

hardness i define as the outer and inner position of the body that one cannot hide. in essence hardness is not moving-does not need to move.
hardness is not only expressed in violent action, hardness is the impact itself.
as many external ma will say, there is no soft power or reason for practicing or focusing on the soft arts because it is a waste of time, in the same way, one could say that hardness does not exist because there is hardness without softness(or relatively little) but there cannot be softness without hardness.

do not pull up the knee at the same time as the rest, but rather play with it. the movements should come out of nowhere and be able to change in any direction like the wind. cohesive and yet completely fragmented- on average, how many parts of body moving can a human brain manage at the same time??? i dunno, but i think that's a big part of the exercises that move slower than time seems to
whilts the movements are free and independant of positive and negative, at the core, the movements translate to truths or physical and mental .
states of being

 

[charyuop]

Softness is practice...nothing that you will ever be able to find in written words or nice videos (BTW, East Wings, I really loved that video...it mesmerized me! Long time that a Taiji video didn't have this effect on me).

Practice your form an reach softness there and then practice with a partner and lose all the softness...no surprises there, we all do. Constantly I got stop during a technique (after over 3 years training) and get a nice hard patting on my shoulders along with the phrase "go ahead, you can get them tighter, try, try harder".
You said there is a secret? Well, there is actually and it is called trust! The day you will be confident in your techniques and so you will trust them and yourself, you will be able to actually face an opponent without facing him. What I mean is that you will be no longer applying a technique using certain steps, certain movement of the arms, relaxing these parts of the body, bending the knees and other...doing all this so that the technique works. When you will be beyond all this process (that you might not be aware of it, but it is in your head), you will start simply moving in a way that has become natural to you, so you will trust your movements to be effective (and so your techniques).

I will give you an example. If you stand with your back against the wall and I tell you to walk to the opposite wall avoiding the things lying on the floor you will do it easily. No tension will be there because you are not focusing on anything, just doing what you have been doing for years.
Now I turn off the light and change position to the obstacles. Your walking will be different, alot of tension will be present and yes, maybe even easier to lose balance. Why? Coz now you no longer trust you walk, you started focusing on your movements and the floor.
The same thing is with Taiji. You don't do what is natural (and maybe it is not yet that natural to you), but you trying to do. You focus on certain things coz you are not trusting them to come out correctly or not to be effective...you are just not aware of the fact that this wanting it to work, actually won't make it work.

 

[Ninebird8]

I feel your tenseness...LOL! In all seriousness, I did not start Yang tai chi long form, gim sword, saber, two person set, etc. until almost 12 years ago after already 20 years of kung fu training. It was very difficult for me, at first, to go slow much less learn how to be soft and flowing. Over the years, I have found really concentrating on each move, then the next, while relaxing and rooting, then incorporating the connectivity with the breathing (qigong, embryotic/reverse breathing, etc.)are essential in learning the softness. There is another great treatise written by Yang Chen Fu where he describes the tai chi movements in poetry called Yang Style Transmissions. I have the book and it is incredible. I also found, to probably no one else's surprise here, that after about 5-7 years of tai chi practice, it naturally started invading my long time kung fu practice and through it I learned to incorporate both softness and fa jing into my kung fu until now both are the same. Softness is NOT limpiness, as each move should fill the peng. Speaking of that, if you slowly practice the peng liu chi on movements many times, you will also understand the softness intended. Softness is no more than two things to me: incorporation and completeness of the yin/yang with the yin now in balance with the yang, and filling each movement with peng. One other thing that will help you.....begin now with your sifu, if you have not already, doing push hands and investing in loss!!! This is the greatest immediate feedback to understanding whether you have achieved softness in your tai chi!!! In my opinion!! And, if you do kung fu as well, you will see great results once the softness grows. Just my humble advice to a fellow traveler!!

 

[Ninebird8]

Chary brings up a great point: stop worrying about the technique of the movement and understand the naturalness of it!! That is a great step toward softness!!

 

[kaizasosei]

great comparison with the walk in the dark... i really like that. i will have to remember that one.

rereading my own writings, i found what i wrote to be somewhat contradicting...but somehow still ok...-whatever, i think i should be silent and continue stretching in a corner somewhere..

j

 

[East Winds]

Ninebird8,

That's a pretty good summing up. As you rightly say, softness has nothing whatever to do with limpness. The main energy of Yang Taiji is Peng. If you have Peng in your form, you cannot be limp. Floppy limpness is New Age crap with no understanding of Taiji's energies. However, learning the energies of Taiji is no easy matter and the greatest difficulty is distinguishing between stiffness and true Peng energy.

Very best wishes

 

[kaizasosei]

yeah, i was thinking pretty much similar stuff. i mean, the main functions that going slow has are to capture the conciousness of the observer as well as maybe try to push oneself to the limits of ones own conciousness. (sure it looks cool)
but other than than, it doesnt really matter the speed i think...
i personally need lots of stiff jerking movements to retain my forms

j

 

[Ninebird8]

One other hint: remember that the movements start at the feet, move through the legs to the waist, from the waist to the shoulders, and expressed out through the hands. In other words, two points: in tai ji, the root is always commencing from the ground up, not from the shoulders down, and secondly, something my tai chi master taught me: the hands are the result of everything, the cause of nothing!! Also, let me draw another analogy: in kung fu, like tai chi, a distinction is made between power and strength, relaxed jing and tense power. Power does not emanate from big muscles or a tense face, but rather a flow of energy through the entire body to the point of exit penetrating into an opponent. Softness is not anything magical, and I am postulating that the Chinese word for this term does not exactly equate to the word softness (to our Chinese speaking brethern, is this true?). The word Yin is opposite of the word Yang, but completes the circle. That leads me to my last point: relaxation is on both sides of the circle, but the term softness should be taken into the context of completeness of the total yin/yang structure, not unto itself. Softness completes the movement within the tai ji form, but also helps connect to the next movement. Again, doing stationary or moving push hands will point this out more than anything, and without softness fa jing, silk reeling, peng, or appropriate stepping and feigning cannot occur, and sensitivity will never happen!