Too tired to film and edit, but here is the script for Lesson Zero of my planned Empty Step™ Remote course.

Warning

Before we start, for your safety, I need to warn you about tai chi. 

While I am at it, I will demonstrate what you will learn to do over the next few months.

[demo]

Tai chi is famous for being slow, graceful, and gentle. Wrong. Slow and graceful yes, but gentle no. We stand on one leg, turn sometimes to unusual angles, and can easily lose our balance. If we are generally healthy we will be fine, but if our bone density or joint health is compromised, or balance at first is shaky, performing tai chi could lead to injury or falls.

If you have any doubts, ask your doctor if it is OK to try tai chi and, if so, what precautions you should take.

Our advice is simple: do not attempt any movement that makes you nervous. The good news is that you can modify or omit movements and still benefit from tai chi. And maybe soon those movements will look easy.

Learning tai chi

With our warning in mind, let us start moving.

When the teacher does something, try to copy them by watching closely. Your eyes can learn faster than your ears. Imagine what they are feeling, and then move in a way that creates the same feeling in you.

Listen also to the teacher’s verbal instruction, and use that to help you copy them.

When the teacher uses metaphor to convey a movement, or explicitly asks you to use your imagination to execute a movement, fire up your imagination. Often we teach and learn tai chi through what we already know.

Warm-up

We are doing Master Chen’s warm-up of choice, used before every class from tai chi form to push hands sparring and boxing. He would lead us in this for just a minute, then for the fighting classes continue the warm-up with the full form.

Just stand normally with your feet as wide as your shoulders and start turning back and forth, letting the arms flop up against your core without controlling them. Kind of a qi gong organ massage.

If you like, try playing with an advanced concept conceived by Master Chen. Imagine each foot is anchored to the floor by three nails along the inside of each foot. Now imagine a hydraulic pump on the inside of each knee, taking its power from the hip adductor muscles forming our inner thigh.

The anchored foot is our fixed fulcrum, our inner thigh generates power, our inner knee gives direction to the result.

But if you just want to turn and flop, that is a good start, too.

Posture

I wanted us to get moving so I skipped the most important element, our stationary posture. Let’s take a break and explore that now.

The lower back

You know how they always say “lift with your legs”? I never understood that. Of course I am lifting with my legs: I am standing! 

What they mean to say is, lift with a straight spine, because a curve in any structure weakens it, and the spine does not have the supporting muscles to hold a curved shape. But once we straighten the spine, we feel its burden on the legs, so we say to lift with the legs!

• Stand with your feet shoulder width and parallel, not splayed in the usual V-shape.
• Now imagine sitting on a window sill just a few inches down, bending your knees.
• Do this by rotating the pelvis, not by arching your lower back. Imagine doing a standing abdominal crunch, but only with the rotation, no abdominal strain.
• Your spine should now be rising straight up from your pelvis, without the usual curve caused by arching the lower back.

If done correctly, you will now feel a nice relaxation in the spine, and serious effort in the thigh and buttocks. That is good. We have moved the strain of standing from our small lower back muscles to our larger leg and butts muscles, which you will quickly notice getting stronger as you practice tai chi.

The upper back

That takes care of our lower back. Now for the upper back. Our goal is a straight, vertical stack of vertebrae from our tailbone up to and thru the large occipital plate forming the back of our skull.

This will take some practice, but we want to consciously raise the crown of our heads by projecting the back of the head as high as possible, without straining, and while keeping the chin down. Imagine you are trying to see as far as possible, without exposing the chin to a strike.

Back to moving: Cloud Hands

Let us start moving again, this time with my favorite warm-up, Cloud Hands.

Follow:

• counting cloud hands
  • everything starts and ends together
  • turn with hips, not back or arms
  • emphasize steady height
  • emphasize steady speed
  • emphasize precision
• lose the counting
  • keep the precision while smoothing
  • emphasize mighty river continuous motion
  • now slow to proper speed
• start stepping
  • step at same speed
  • use toe for balance if needed
  • step backwards
• make it look easy–smile

Practice

Knowing tai chi does nothing. Doing tai chi imprecisely does little. More left as exercise.