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Most Taijiquan(太極拳)practitioners are familiar with Wu Yuxiang’s (武禹襄) writing stating (as translated by Paul Brennan) “Starting from your foot, issue through your leg, directing it at your waist, and expressing it at your fingers. From foot through leg through waist, it must be a fully continuous process…” This indicates that the body leads the hands (or from one’s root in the feet, to the point of application).

This is what we strive for in our solo practice. In a sense, it also applies to partner/opponent interactions because we typically power our applications in a unified manner beginning with our contact with the ground. But when interacting with another person, it is the conditions at the point of contact that determines how we act. Therefore, one could say that when interacting with someone else, it is the hands (or more accurately, the points of contact with an opponent) that lead the body.

As the classic attributed to Wang Zongyue (王宗岳) states (as translated by Paul Brennan), “The basic of basics is to forget about your plans and simply respond to your opponent.” Therefore, if one is responding to the opponent, then their movements, as transmitted through the point(s) of contact with them, dictate our actions. The point(s) of contact moves first, with our body “chasing” the hand in order to support the movements at the point(s) of contact.

Chen Ziming (陳子明) states (as translated by Paul Brennan) that “This art [Taijiquan] is entirely a matter of using your mind to move your hand, using your hand to guide your elbow, using your elbow to guide your shoulder, and using your shoulder to guide your body. In the case of practicing the solo set: the body leads the hand. In the case of partner practice: the hand leads the body.”

Solo forms (where the hand movements should be generated by the body) allow us to practice continuously connecting the segments of our body (from the feet to the hands) during movement. We also practice being relaxed, but not collapsed, in order to avoid having places where the power transmission may be impeded by stiffness or by breaks due to slackness. We try to emphasize “whole-body” in order to increase our effective mass, but we also emphasize “relaxation” because we do not want to be slowed down or inhibited due to tensions.

Some martial art styles practice tensing their bodies briefly at the instant of contact when striking, thus making the body “connected” (or one mass, like a single block) at that instant of contact, and then relaxing the tension immediately afterwards in order to regain their changeability. But it is different in Taijiquan as I understand it. We want to remain relaxed throughout, such that our changeability is maintained, but emphasize alignment in our practice in order to have “whole-body” power, but without the instant of tension that those other styles practice.

The first part of the following video (from the martial art of I Liq Chuan) dramatically shows punching without tensing the hand, since he is holding a raw egg while breaking the boards. It uses proper alignment of the loose body, rather than an instant of tension on impact, to transmit force from the ground, through the body, and into the fist.

An analogy of round beads on a string can illustrate different approaches to the transmission of aligned force. If the beads centers are aligned while touching each other, then one can transmit force from the bead on one end to the last bead on the other end. While this can be done without tension on the string, the beads need to be aligned in order to do so. If the string was tied tightly in order to hold the beads tightly together, then force could also be transmitted from one end to the other; this would be like making connections by using tension.

Without tension, the beads on the string would be free to move in other ways if desired, but if the string holds them tightly together, then the possible movements are greatly restricted. In either case, though, one is able to transmit force from either end. If aligned, then it does not matter if the movement starts from the feet or from the hands, the force can still be transmitted. It is our alignment that allows all parts of our body to move (like all of the beads on the string) when one part moves.

Proper alignment for transmitting force from one segment to the final segment (without the need for tensing everything in order to lock them together at the instant of impact) can also be illustrated by the “Newton’s cradle” toy, or by using billiard balls that are lined up and touching each other, and then striking the first ball with the cue ball, and watching the last ball in the contacting/connected line be sent away. Both of these, like the beads on a string, use aligned but loose balls (not fastened together, or not “tensed”) to transmit the force. This illustrates “whole body” force transmission without requiring tension upon impact.

The body needs to have the proper structure to connect the hands to the feet upon impact/application, for increased power when issuing energy, or to respond to the attacks of one’s partner or opponent when receiving energy. Structural alignment allows for the transmission of force. If the hand starts, then the hand guides the elbow, the elbow guides the shoulder, and the shoulder guides the body, all the way to our feet touching the ground.

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The article “Letting Go” is reprinted on Slanted Flying website with the permission of the author Sam Langley from his personal Blog.

Human beings are industrious creatures. “How are you? Busy? That’s good. “Is It? What is so inherently good about busyness? Obviously, a certain amount of vigilance is required to survive but once your basic needs are met why continue running about like a headless chicken? If there’s a problem we tend to think we need to always ‘DO’ something to fix it. Work, work, work, do, do, do, no wonder everyone’s stressed out.

So if you are stressed out, anxious and restless what can be done? How about nothing? I mean absolutely nothing or as close as you can get. Linguistically speaking, you can’t DO nothing, after all, nothing suggests an absence of doing. So what I mean is, try practicing NOT doing.

The closest you’ll get to not doing is meditating. Of course, once you try to sit there and do nothing you find it’s impossible! You try to calm your mind and it gets busier…..so stop trying and just relax. This is isn’t that easy. How many people do you know that are capable of sitting on a train without looking at their phone? Imagine how it would feel to be happy just sitting there unoccupied.
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In Chen style Tai Chi we practice standing meditation or Zhan Zhuang which translates as ‘standing like a tree’. When I practice standing, my mind is focused in my body. It is an experience of letting go. I find there’s a small amount of tension in my hip and I let go, my mind is full of intrusive thoughts and I let go of that too.

As you practice letting go of physical tension you are increasingly able to let go of unhelpful emotions and you can stop trying to control everything around you. As far as happiness goes it might be the only sensible thing that can be done or rather, not done.

There is a concept in Taoism called Wu wei which translates literally as ‘Without action’ and is commonly understood as the art of not doing or as the philosopher Alan Watts suggests ‘Not forcing’. As Tai Chi has Taoist roots it is a very good way of exploring Wu wei. We don’t force things and we try to be as natural as possible.

As I write this I realise it all sounds contradictory. I have a theory that anyone attempting to make a particular argument will eventually contradict themselves and that’s fine with me. Writing articles is a good way to practice letting go. One could easily cringe at the babblings of their former self but really ……what does it matter? So it could have been written better, I choose to let it go.

Personally, I think we’d all be better off if we stopped trying so hard, to be good, nice, successful or happy. I have whittled my own philosophy down to one word which is simply….relax. If you can do that it’s quite likely that everything else will come to you a lot easier.

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The “unbendable arm” demonstration is commonly used in Aikido (合気道) schools, but it is also used in some Taijiquan (太極拳) schools as shown in the following video:

There is a quality that is somewhere between resisting and collapsing that we strive for in Taijiquan. This is reflected in the admonition to avoid butting against (or resisting) as well as avoiding collapsing (ding bian dui kang 顶匾丢抗). The “unbendable arm” exercise can illustrate this middle approach.

In brief, the “unbendable arm” exercise can be performed as follows (although variations are common):
1) Place the wrist of your extended arm on a partner’s shoulder with the palm up.
2) Have the partner place one or both hands on top of the elbow joint and gradually increase the downward force applied to it, seeking to bend the arm.

There are at least five different ways one can respond to the attempt to bend the arm.

1) Resisting the downward pressure by trying to raise the elbow up. This produces an upward force to counter the partner’s downward force. This raising of the elbow is primarily using the extensor muscles (the triceps) to extend the arm, but since the arm (elbow joint) angle is too poor for this action to be strong, it is very difficult to resist the bending of the arm.

2) Resisting by tensing the arm (isometric tension which tightens both the flexor and extensor muscles) in an attempt to lock the arm in position. This is sometimes accentuated with an accompanying clenching of the fist. The arm angle is again too poor to allow the muscles to produce sufficient force, and this resistance is unlikely to succeed unless one’s strength is significantly greater than that of the partner trying to bend the elbow. This approach is also vulnerable to fairly rapid fatigue.

3) Relax! This approach attempts to avoid tensing any arm muscles. This usually results in collapse and cannot resist the bending of the arm (except when done as in #5 below), although one has little fatigue doing this.

4) Activate the flexor muscles (biceps). This just bends one’s own arm and adds to the bending produced by the partner, and cannot succeed in keeping the arm straight.

5) Visualize qi (氣 energy flow; ki in Japanese) rushing through the arm and shooting out of the fingertips. Some methods accompany this visualization with an extension of the finger(s), but this is not necessary. Even the reference to qi is not necessary since many people without any knowledge or cultivation of qi can successfully do the exercise by visualizing the arm as being like a hose with water surging through it. This method allows one to remain feeling relaxed while being able to maintain the straight arm, preventing the partner from bending it!

The effortlessness of the “unbendable arm” illustrates that we are capable of maintaining our structure without fighting against the incoming force, as well as without collapsing! But how is this done? The following is my examination of this phenomenon, and how it relates to the practice of Taijiquan.

I am unaware of any rigorous scientific studies that explain this exercise, so what follows is merely speculation. An article was published in the Journal of International Society of Life Information Science in 2001 (titled “The Physiological Study of Ki in Ki Aikido (2)” by Machi, et al) that attempted to address this issue, but it only had a sample size of ONE experienced practitioner, and thus was not very rigorous and no valid conclusions can be made, although they did make scientific measurements of various physiological variables.

Several web sources attempt to explain the “unbendable arm”, but often use statements that conflict with others. Note that my explanation is also likely to have errors, although I provide information for practitioners to think about. An explanation that includes an examination the above article is given in the following link:
http://umlud.blogspot.com/2013/08/no-ki-energy-does-not-explain.html

What the “unbendable arm” shows us is that there is some mechanism for maintaining structure that does not rely on tensing (or relaxing) the flexor and/or extensor muscles of the body. There are several things that various people invoke to explain this quality (of not resisting but also not collapsing) that is desired in Taijiquan and other martial arts. The most common explanation is probably qi energy, but others include using tendons and/or ligaments rather than muscles, or using “intent” (用意 yongyi) rather than force or, increasingly popular these days, the properties of the fascia, or the stretch reflex.

I’ll start by examining qi as a possible explanation. The classical belief of qi included nearly everything, but specific understandings were contextual. So, while sunlight, which nourishes and vitalizes plants, would be considered as being qi, this would have nothing to do with the “unbendable arm”.

There are many aspects associated with qi that do concern the human body, like the vitality that we obtain from the air we breath and the food we eat, the energy we get from our parents at conception and our constitutions which protect us from diseases, etc., but these are also unlikely to be what allows the “unbendable arm” to work (except for Popeye when he eats his spinach).

Most explanations using qi are probably thinking that it is a physical substance that is coursing through our acupuncture meridians, and that this movement of an energetic substance through our arm is what prevents it from bending. In the broad sense that we need our living vitality to be able to succeed with the “unbendable arm”, then the qi explanation is correct. If our arm is anesthetized or if we are asleep, then we cannot prevent the arm from bending.

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