What is T'ai-Chi Ch'uan?

What is T'ai-Chi Ch'aun? I have been practicing now for almost 20 years, and it is still revealing itself to me. What is it? What does it do? Some of the benefits of practicing T'ai-Chi are well-known: reduced blood pressure, stronger back and legs, better balance, good bone density etc. But I don't practice T'ai-Chi with these very sensible facts in the front of my mind. I practice T'ai-Chi because I enjoy it, and because it keeps me sane.

The world we live in is complicated. As human beings trying to lead our lives in a demanding and competitive world, the struggle to keep things together can be overwhelming. I know I need a means to give me support through the complications, worries and fears of this short life-span. T'ai-Chi offers me help with all that.

One translation of T'ai-Chi Ch'uan is 'Ultimate, Supreme of Boxing'. It is the most subtle of the martial arts. But I knew nothing about this when I started learning T'ai-Chi. All I knew was that it was slow and that there was something else about it that I had not encountered in other forms of physical exercise.

In 1986 I enrolled on a beginners' course at John Kells' studio. I rolled up full of energy and eagerness. The first few classes were puzzling, and very packed. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't get it. Although it was a physical training, the class structure and the manner of teaching was very different to what I was accustomed to in my dancing life. I was a bit disappointed. I am not sure what I expected, but these slow, puzzling sessions weren't it. I stuck it out as I had paid for a course of ten classes up front. Being a very broke professional dancer, I was going to get my money's worth. Yet this was too, too strange for me initially. But then during the fifth class I got hooked. I had an 'Ah-ha' moment. I saw how I had been presenting myself as a target to the world. No wonder I used to get so much flack from here, there and everywhere! Working with the posture and the energy flow of the form helped me to understand this. And become less of a target too. Then the class started to thin out - a lot of my fellow beginners gave up. They found it too slow, too difficult, too boring, too different - I don't know, but at that stage of the initial course, it seemed that only the inspired, determined and dedicated carried on.

At first I was not interested at all in the martial art aspect of T'ai-Chi, I was more interested in the meditation, healing and postural aspects of it. But this glimpse into understanding the energy and its self-defense use during that evening class in a bare and cold studio in Upper Wimpole Street changed my attitude towards learning this physical philosophy utterly. Now my fascination with T'ai-Chi kicked in.

Gradually I started to work with the being weak and soft. Of getting back to the posture of a child. That four ounces can overcome ten thousand pounds. Yielding. Sticking. T'ai-Chi was different to all other forms of movement I had studied. In my ignorance and through habit, I applied my dancer's way of learning to T'ai-Chi: through practice. I did not read a book about T'ai-Chi until about two years into my training. I didn't think to. All my dance skills had been handed to me from other practitioners, not from books. I now see that this was a gift. I was not cluttered with the weight of what great T'ai-Chi practitioners had written but relied on my teacher, John Kells, to pass on the practice on as and when we, the students, were ready. I learnt about T'ai-Chi through watching and listening to John and his advanced students. Indeed, it was these people who had practiced with John for years who kept me going during some periods of dullness in my training. They had a certain luminosity about them, and I wanted some of that. I was savvy enough to know that this would not arise overnight, but gradually through practice.

Over the years my understanding has deepened, an understanding that arose, and continues to arise, from a language of inner, emotional feelings and physically, in the body, not in spoken words. Apart from limited conversations with my fellow students I did not speak about T'ai-Chi until I began teaching it. I had not wanted to teach it, this was my practice, something for myself. But when I was asked to teach in 1990, I got on with it. And that is where my true education of T'ai-Chi began. The questions that students have asked, and continue to ask, demanded that I reflect more deeply on the practice. The simple question 'What is T'ai-Chi?' can have a simple answer. Or the search for an answer can lead to a life-long exploration of this complex and profound technique. As we practice we start to get a feel of what is T'ai-Chi. By practicing regularly it seeps into everyday life. Gradually it helps to bring about positive and life-enhancing changes. A luminosity of being.

T'ai-Chi is many things: balance, health, freedom, protection, strength, softness, loss, awareness. The form is itself a metaphor for our journey through life. It begins in simplicity, in 'Attention', then progresses, like life, into complications. Towards the end, after 'Bending the Bow to Shoot the Tiger', the form returns to simplicity - a metaphor for our preparation for death. Birth, life, death, this is T'ai-Chi.

Waterless swimming, this is T'ai-Chi. Balancing ying and yang, this is T'ai-Chi. Living in a state of ease and poise, this is T'ai-Chi. Listening to and living by the messages of the heart, this is T'ai-Chi. Developing a soft and open heart filled with compassion for ourselves and others, this is T'ai-Chi. T'ai-Chi is a warrior's path, a quiet path that cultivates fearlessness and compassion. The Ultimate and Supreme form of Boxing.