The lure of anticipation

It's quite common for me to anticipate the next move when doing Tai Chi, be it the form itself, or when doing push hands. Sometimes, you don't even anticipate the next move, you anticipate what's on TV tonight, and what's for dinner tonight, especially when doing Tai Ji!

Although it's not quite obvious why anticipating is bad for us, it's directly detrimental when doing push hands. You see, one of the big “no no” in push hands is to anticipate the next move, because once you anticipate, you’ll lose the moment and if the next action is not as anticipated, then you’ll be in a disadvantageous position. That’s why we are trained to “listen” to the opponent’s movement rather than anticipate.

With all the thinking going on in my head, no wonder my teacher says that those who think too much, can’t progress much in Tai Ji. We cannot be in that moment. We cannot be present to the moment. Always thinking about the next move, possibly thinking about what’s for dinner as well.

So, note to self (and to you fellow students as well), do not anticipate. Be as present as you can. No past, no future, just the present moment. You'll be surprised by the qualitative difference of this to your Tai Ji. There was once when I saw this Tai Ji practitioner doing the form, it was as though he was playing with the space around him. How's that for "in the moment"!

p/s: For a more general view of The Lure of Anticipation, you might want to read this article.

Learning less everyday

My Tai Ji teacher recently highlighted that (in general), people who needs to think a lot at work are normally those who progressed slowly in Tai Chi. I casually mentioned that I also fall into that category.... and then there was silence.... and then we laughed! :D

I think (yikes!) the "thinking" which is restricting growth is normally the conscious thinking that we do. Conscious learning cannot be applied at will. You can only hold so much thought at any one time. To react to an ever changing situation, conscious thinking is a poor processor. You need a processor which is much more intuitive and with potentially limitless capacity to adapt to our ever changing environment. I think we need to "push" conscious learning to the other-than-conscious mind. To learn less consciously and learn more intuitively.

I hope to use this philosophy - learning less everyday - when learning Tai Chi. Let's see where this will take us.

p/s: this reminds me very much of Yoda - unlearn what you have learnt. :)

Why train tai ji in the morning

Practising tai ji is hard. But that's not an excuse to not practise. However, the "hard" part seems to nag louder than the "I want to practise" part. So I've rephrased the question to "how can I create the time to practise". I have tried night time, I have tried day time. I have tried weekends. I have tried anytime. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. I have finally settled on mornings. Here's why.

1. Less distractions

There aren't much thoughts in the mornings, for me anyway. I just wake up and go to work. Everything in between is normally a blur. I would have brushed my teeth, had my breakfast, and changed into my work clothes. However, they are all part of a routine so much so that I wouldn't even think of them. The ultimate aim would be to incorporate training as part of this normal routine. The immediate aim of course, is just to do it in the morning, before the work piles up, before questions start flowing in, before problems start erupting at work or at home, before the day even starts!

2. Less guilt

If i've promised myself to practise everyday, I'll feel very guilty to break that promise. If I am suppose to practise at night, come night time, I will have plenty of excuses not to e.g. too hungry, too tired, something's on TV, worked late etc (see this post). However, if I have practised in the morning, not practising at night is "ok" because I have already done so in the morning. If I do practise again at night, it'll be a bonus!

3. Less stressful

I don't have to rush home after work. Work nowadays are normally unpredictable. It can drag on. Working late will provide a very strong disincentive to train (my top 10 excuses). Working late actually attracts all other excuses like too hungry, too tired, a lot in the mind etc.

4. Habit is stronger than motivation

A regular time slot for tai ji actually works better than coming up with motivation every time I want to practise. As mentioned in (1), the ideal will be to incorporate it as part of a routine. While aiming for that ideal, we can always "just do it" for now.

5. Good atmosphere

The morning air has a certain quality and calmness. It's like the world has fallen asleep and had a good rest. And my tai ji is trying to stir it into motion again.

Next action

I have been trying to maintain this "morning routine" for the past 1 month. I have failed on average about 2 days a week, which is still a good achievement for now. Some failed days are normally my "class" days. So it's not all bad. :) My next goal will be to maintain the same quality of mind from start of a form to the end of a form. Most of the time, I might start out good, but later in the form I'll be more tensed because of lack of concentration, legs giving way, distracted, too hot etc. Care to join me? It's always good to know someone else is training as well.

Top 10 excuses for not training

There's a challenge over at Cook Ding's to dedicate just over a month to train/learn something you've been wanting to. The challenge read as follows:

... from Ash Wednesday (tomorrow) until Easter (April 8), train every day, without fail, no excuses. It's not as easy as it sounds. Some days, you might only be able to get a few minutes of training in; but the point is to do it everyday, no matter what.

I've been wanting to do this regardless of the challenge, but somehow there are always excuses. So i intend to list out my top excuses and hopefully, we can recognise these as excuses and don't use them!

My top 10 excuses (in no particular order) for not training tai ji everyday are:

1. not enough sleep


2. too tired


3. too hungry


4. need to go out later


5. need to do a lot of washing


6. no time/place to shower after training


7. a lot in the mind


8. need to spend time with family/friends


9. work


10. errands to run

I have purposely left out "no time" because I can't justify that as an excuse any longer. It hit me one day that there is always time, just have to decide how to spend it.

So what are your excuses? Please share and let us recognise them to remind ourselves that they are just excuses. :)

In the mood for learning

Learning tai ji is hard work. I guess that's true with learning anything! The more common excuse for procastination (to learn) is that "I'm not in the mood". Taking tai ji as an example, it's highly dependent on the internal state of mind on what you actually learn in a training session.

When i'm not in a good mood, the training session feels wasted because I rushed the training, not appreciating the lessons i can gather from each move. This will actually make me feel less wanting to train and the initial thought of training for at least 1 hour will be shortened to 30 minutes, or less as i leave in a huff... ;) When I'm in a good mood, I feel that i've learnt so much that it's difficult to contain the joy of that learning experience!

Good mood breeds good learning. Bad mood breeds bad learning.

So how do you make sure you do "good learning" all the time? I believe the key is to move from bad mood to good mood whenever you are learning. Even when you are NOT learning, moving from bad mood to good mood is always a good thing!

There are several methods people use to move from bad mood to good mood. Some people prefer breathing exercises, slowing the rhythm of the breath seems to help them. Some likes listening to music. I find doing the form itself a good method to ease you into a good mood. Of course, you can always try alcohol, cigarettes, drugs... One of my teachers actually proposed a bit of alcohol before doing the form! (drunken tai chi anyone?) I personally don't do any of those but that's a choice on my part.

As I peel through these methods, somehow, "having fun" seems to underlie all of them! It's a useful gauge of your mood, and it's also a useful method to employ so that you are learning. With all the complexities of learning, having fun seems to be a simple rule to remember while you are learning!

So the next time you are trying to learn, try to remember to have fun. That way, your learning experience will be enhanced and you'll be having more fun. :D

Choosing a tai chi style that suits you

There was a comment over at wuijimon's on how different tai chi style may suit different kinds of people. This may be caused by different character, different body structure, different goals etc. I'm bow-legged and so I can't exactly keep the knees directly on top of the toes. It'll will always be leaning inwards, but it feels right because the kua is relaxed (read Tai Ji is a pain in the knee) and the posture feels strong. The direction of the knee is still in the direction of the toes.

So different body structure may merit different styles, but probably more so on personalised ways of doing the same style. Tai Ji is an internal martial art after all, so although the expression can be different, the inner quality is the same - relax, relax, relax!

However, instead of looking for a style that suits me, I find myself enjoying each style depending on the inner state of mind! When feeling more energetic, Chen style. When feeling more graceful, Yang style. When feeling very calm, Sun style. It also works the other way, i.e. different style will make me FEEL differently. I hope this is not a case of multiple personality disorder! :D

I guess what I'm tying to say is not to be fixated on any styles. Certain style will suit you at certain point in your life. And certain styles are only available to you at certain point in life! This is certainly the case for me where I didn't exactly choose which style to start off tai chi with, but just joined a local class and learnt whatever the teacher was teaching at that time (which happened to be Wu style for my introduction into Tai Ji!).

Just keep an open mind. A particular Tai Chi style may choose you instead of you choosing a Tai Chi style!

Taiji figure 8 training

The figure 8 training method is to draw a figure 8 on a horizontal plane while you're in a horse stance, using your body as the pencil, and the butt as the pencil tip (or more precisely, the bottom of the vertical axis running through your body as the pencil tip). Please let me know if you have a good picture to illustrate this. My drawing skills are somewhat limited bordering on non-existent!

Anyway, my previous encounter with this training method was just to draw this figure 8, to train the legs and to train turning the body. Recently, I was asked to revisit this method again, but this time the kua should not protrude. This criteria was not previously included. By including this criteria alone, the intensity of the training is so great that I can't last more than 1 minute of it!

The protrusion of the kua was something recent to me. It is whenever the kua is not relaxed that there will be some protrusion, i.e. some tension at the kua. To resolve this, my current teacher suggests (among other things!) to try out this figure 8 training method.

If you have tried this before, or even if you haven't, please let me know if you are having similar experience. Just be careful about the knees, as the training may seem like drawing circles with the knees.

What does relax mean in tai chi?

I didn't think relaxing can be confusing. We know how it feels, and yet, different people can interpret it differently. I was chatting away with a another tai ji student and I told him about how difficult it was to relax into the form. I told him to actually use Tai Chi as a martial art, you'll have to be able to achieve the relaxed state of mind in the heat of the battle! He said how difficult can relaxing be? And he showed me a limped hand gesture...

I think we all know what does relaxing feel like. It's a state of mind which is free from worry, free from stress. But when translated to the body, somehow asking the hand to relax is another ball game altogether. We know a tense shoulder is not relaxed, that's where the massuer comes in. So what does relax actually mean in the context of tai chi?

Being relaxed is a conscious effort. It requires your attention and will power to actually want to relax. Relaxing without being mindful about it is not relaxing, it's being lazy. A limped hand is not relaxed. However, if you have the intention to "limp" it, that is relaxed. The qualitative difference is quite startling. It is the difference between doing Tai Ji and being a zombie. Afterall, anything worth your attention would definitely merit your intention as well!*

So the next time you are trying to relax into your form, don't forget to be mindful about it. Of course, to concentrate to relax is actually counter-productive to achieving the state of relaxation! Just be aware of the need to relax. Coax the body into the state of relaxation. But let the body do the rest. You can't force it, but you can definitely tempt it and hopefully, it'll sway in your favour. As Oscar Wilde put it, "I can resist anything but temptation". The body would probably do the same. :)

* This was actually paraphrased from David Allen's Getting Things Done, thanks to the recommendation from wujimon. I think there will be more about this in time to come.

Lesson update - relax kua technique

It's been a while since i've last written about my private tai chi lesson. I've finished the Sun style form some weeks ago, and now i suppose it's fine tuning. The usual suspects are still there - relax, relax, relax! Such a simple word and yet the permutations of body parts that can be relaxed is just too many! So i'm just going to highlight the one that I'm finding most difficult - the kua!

I guess many has written about the kua. I've linked it with why we have knee problems when doing tai ji. Just when I thought I was making some in roads, my push hands classes tell me otherwise. The message is always the same - the kua is not "loose" enough. Going through this with my teacher, he came up with a simple technique which I hope will help you too.

First, let's start with a test of loose kua. Do a horse stance. Turn your upper body to one side while in that stance. Both your knees should stay where they are. If they're following your movement, your kua is not loose.

To do this in a horse stance is difficult. So what he advised was to do it in a higher horse stance. Let the focus be on loosening the kua rather than do a "pretty" horse stance. Give the knees a rest. In fact, try to avoid bending the knees further in an attempt to loosen the kua. The knees are still kept bent though.

I find that this technique actually helps narrow the focus on relaxing the kua. It shuts out distractions from all the other body parts. Please let me know if this helps you, or if I've made this clear enough.

Tai ji is a pain in the knee!

Knee pains are really common in Tai Chi. I remembered my first time (!) when I had a knee pain from doing tai ji training. It was quite frustrating especially when I asked the teacher and all the teacher said was... "yes, there must be something wrong with your stance". The teacher might have good intentions by wanting me to find out on my own, but I wasn't buying it. After that remark, I stopped going to his class completely...

It was not until 2 years later did I find the real reason for the pain in the knee. I must be really unlucky or did not have much fate in meeting teachers. I wonder if this is one of those things you hear about that "when the student is ready the teacher will appear"! I guess I wasn't ready for a long time.

Anyway, just to hope that you don't fall into this trap as well, I hope I can share a bit of my thoughts here on knee pain.

A popular correction for knee pain is that "your knee should point in the direction of your toes". I've tried this for ages, and everytime I find my knee not pointing in that direction, I literally move the knee into that direction. This works for a while, but it's difficult to see where the knee is in some postures (unless you have a mirror or an experienced person who can spot these things!). By the time your head moved round to see where your knee is, you would have moved your knee, thus invalidating your observation. Remember Schrodinger's cat from your physics days? (I can't claim I could, but visually, this theory is easy to remember just because there's a cat involved.) So, what do you do in such a situation?

The answer to this is a seemingly unrelated aspect, SONG KUA! A lot of body pains can be related to this "song kua" but we'll focus on the knee in this article. It's not the knee which is pointing the wrong direction, it's the kua that's not relaxed enough resulting in a wrongly pointed knee! (This was such an epiphany for me at that time!) By relaxing your kua, your knee is automatically allowed to move wherever feels natural, and the natural position is the same direction as the toes! Correcting the knee itself is actually the wrong approach to solving the knee problem. Relaxing the kua is. But correcting the knee is easier to understand and teach. Because, how would you explain what the kua is? Maybe this post might help.

Another common thing I do during training is to "bounce" up and down to test whether I'm in the correct position, and whether the kua is relaxed enough. This, as I've just found today, is very bad for the knee! The knee is already under a lot of pressure, and you're still adding more stress to it! When in the form, just move on, and don't try dance half-way doing the form.

Let me know if these techniques help.

How to train longer?

I've been trying to train a bit longer now that I have more time in my hands. It's not going as planned. With all the good intentions of training longer every time i stepped out the door, always end up coming back earlier than intended. Today, i tried training the very basics of standing with "song kua". I didn't even try a very low stance. It's as high as you can get but to make sure the kua is really open. Apparently, as I found out today, it's when you place your finger at your kua, you can't actually feel any tension!...

I just stood there in a meditational posture, remembering also to keep the back straight. It was really tiring and when i opened my eyes (i.e. i couldn't take it any longer), it was just over 5 minutes! My goodness... And then, the rest of the form training was more difficult because of that. Legs were just like jelly.

Sometimes, just before coming back, i'll ask myself "can i stand the pain a bit longer"? And then the counter in the head would be "i won't be doing any quality training because i couldn't concentrate on being relaxed when the legs are shaking". And then if i do come back from training.. "i could have trained a bit longer"...

All the battle of thoughts, and I've come to one conclusion inspired by the form itself. What do you do when you train with the form? Do you try to correct every bit with the principles as you go through it? Or do you try to go with the flow?

I find that correcting bits when going through the form very tiring. It's like checking the dictionary for every word you don't understand! I've actually tried doing this once, but you just lose interest in the whole story. After that, I end up just checking one or two words that interest me, and try to fully understand those words.

Similarly, when going through the form, you can just pick and choose a section that you want to work on and practise that section separately, trying to fully understand it. Keep the section you're trying to practice as short as possible so that you get maximum focus.

When doing the form itself, try to remember the corrections when going through the form. But when you passed that bit that you've just remembered you've done wrongly, don't go back. You end up losing the flow and ultimately lose interest. Force yourself to carry on. And accept that you've made a mistake. At least you've spotted it and is conscious of it. Find some way to remember it so that you can do it the next time. I find blogging helps!

So when you come back from training and feel that you should have done longer, force yourself to carry on and accept that you've given up that chance to do longer. At least you've spotted it and is conscious of it. Find a way to remind yourself that you'll do longer the next time. Any suggestions warmly welcomed!