The images above come to us from the author of the “Brisbane Chen Tai Chi” blog. It’s a great resource no matter which style of tai chi you do:
https://brisbanechentaichi.weebly.com/skill-knowledge.html
More than once, my students have complained that at times their feet feel like
they’re sliding out from under them.
This has happened in nearly every class I’ve taught except my first; and
the only reason it didn’t happen there was because there were mats everywhere
and you couldn’t slide your feet without considerable difficulty. The school was set up for karate and while
this was ideal for training karate, it was less so for tai chi.
We ought to become comfortable performing the art anywhere we are. I’ve done the forms on everything from tile,
mats and carpets while indoors, to grass, gravel, stairs, hills and ice. Each of these presents its own challenges and
each will provide instant feedback to the player on whether she or he is truly rooted
and centered, which is the heart of this post and which we'll get to presently.
When we’re first learning, however, a smooth tile or wood floor is a nearly
ideal surface. It has no obstructions or
rough surface to catch the foot or turn an ankle, it provides a smooth plane to practice rooting but isn’t as slick as ice, and it doesn’t “lock” the foot
into position like a martial arts mat so we can move with lightness and
agility. Smooth floors are an ideal
“laboratory” to test out our stance and our movement. The shoes which the Yang family recommends
(the same ones I recommend) are the kind that are flat so as to allow us to
feel the floor, interact meaningfully with its surface and exercise the muscles
in our feet.
"Rooting" is the feeling that our feet are solidly attached to the ground. It’s a feeling best described by comparison
with its absence. We’ve all walked on
ice before, and we know that there’s a sort of “sweet spot” where your feet
don’t feel like they’re going to slide out from under you with each step. That’s what “rootedness” feels like, and it’s
enhanced with continual practice in tai chi.
You can get the feeling that your feet are not only solidly planted on the ground, but almost as though they are rooted inside it somehow.
This of course takes a bit of imagination and a certain “willing suspension of
disbelief.” The studio we used to practice in was
in an older commercial building with a basement. You may find yourself wondering how on earth
you could possibly be “rooted” to a bunch of boards with nothing but joists and
empty space underneath. My advice to you
is the same advice I gave myself when I was learning – don’t torture the
metaphor. The feeling is real and has
little to do with what’s below the surface you’re standing on.
Centering builds on rooting and is more “inside of us.” It’s a feeling of stability, combined with
agility.
This second part is important. We can
feel stable while standing firmly planted on two feet, with our weight evenly
distributed between them. But if we are
not agile, we can easily be pushed over.
I’ve demonstrated this in class many times and I think we’ve all felt
it. I think of such stances as "rigid" and "brittle." The Grandmasters have a different name for
this – they call it “being double-weighted” and it’s something we work to
correct.
One way to think of "double-weightedness" is to imagine the door to the cellar of an older house. My house was built in 1893. It has a small pantry off the kitchen, whose floor is in fact a door to the basement. You lift up this door and latch it against the wall in order to go downstairs. The door of course opens on two strap hinges. It's solid enough to bear my weight when I stand on it, but when it's lifted perfectly vertical, it takes no effort at all to push it one way or another - the effort is to keep the heavy door from slamming shut!
So it is with "double-weightedness." Being double-weighted is like being attached to two hinges screwed to the floor, just like my cellar door. When a tai chi player "finds my center;" that is, when he or she finds out which way I'm "hinged," it's the easiest thing in the world to push me over. Everyone reading this has felt it when I demonstrated it to them.
You've also felt the difference when I make it harder for you to "find my center." I don't know how you felt when this ability was first presented to you. When I first felt this in a good push-hands player, it felt mysterious, disorienting and (the first time) slightly nauseating - I had a rush of vertigo as if I was the one about to fall over! You may well imagine the degree to which I was at the mercy of such an accomplished partner.
You've all discovered there's nothing magic to it - it's a skill like
any other. We spend a lot of time in the form with most of our weight on one leg or the
other. Centeredness allows us to feel
stable while at the same time being flexible enough to interact with incoming
forces (or our own outgoing force) without toppling over. We achieve “centeredness” by starting with
“rootedness,” then lowering our center-of-gravity – “sinking the qi to the
dantien” – and keeping our waist & lower back relaxed & flexible.
With form work, exercises like Yang Jwing-Ming's "Bullseye"
game and Scott Rodell's "Willow Bends," we learn that centeredness is
"rootedness combined with agility" and now it's our turn to make someone
like "25-year-old Me" green in the gills!
These feelings take time to first become familiar with, and then to achieve
them at will. It’s like all the other myriad
parts of tai chi – it’ll come to us when we’re ready for it.
