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

I can feel something. A kind of fullness. As I move, the feeling changes. It almost feels as if something is moving me. I hear my daughter crying and it’s gone.

Qi is like a badger, it’s very shy.

If you look too hard it seems to evaporate. It is something that can be felt but not measured which leads materialists to conclude that it doesn’t exist.

Often disagreements come down to semantics. What do you think Qi is?

Qi in the context of martial arts or Chinese medicine is merely a convenient label for a phenomenon that can be felt. If you have acupuncture you’ll probably experience strong feelings of energy coursing through your body. Western Science doesn’t seem to provide a satisfactory explanation for what’s going on here and so we call it Qi.

What animates your body? What is life or consciousness? Within the current scientific paradigm, these are difficult questions to answer. If all matter is essentially dead stuff then how is anything living? Taoist philosophers described the life force that permeates the universe as Qi.

It’s understandable that people are sceptical. Qi is a much-abused word. So many Tai Chi teachers play up the magical, ethereal and intangible aspects of the art which gives the majority of people a very mistaken impression of what it’s all about.

In my experience people often fall into two camps: Those that think any talk of internal energy is bullshit and those that can see, feel and exchange Qi with trees, the universe and extraterrestrials with little or no practice.

But whilst Qi itself might be elusive it is possible to scientifically test the effects of Acupuncture, Qigong and Tai Chi on a person’s health. There are numerous studies showing that Qi practices are very effective for many different problems and it is widely accepted that they work. Is there a materialist explanation of WHY they work? Maybe but it’s probably deeply unsatisfactory.

The Chinese are practical people and have been historically less concerned with WHY things work than IF they work. Meanwhile, in the West we have been steadily dissecting, reducing and questioning everything. Scepticism is healthy, in my opinion, but if something is proven to work and WHY it works doesn’t fit into your model of reality then it could be that your model needs to change.

I can feel something. Is it Qi? I’ll say…..yes I’m happy with that term because I can’t find a better one.

Sword (劍 jian, double-edged straight sword) is perhaps the most popular weapon in Taijiquan (太極拳) practice, even though it is more difficult to use properly than the saber (刀 dao, sometimes called a “broadsword” and refers to the single edged sword), the other classical short weapon. This may be due to the circularity inherent in the way the jian is supposed to be used, like a flying phoenix or like a swimming dragon (both of which are said to move in spirals).

While made of metal, the jian has the quality of water when associated with the wuxing (五行 five phases), whereas the dao is associated with metal. The dao is more direct and uses many powerful techniques, whereas the jian is more fluid and yielding, and is more subtle and uses more agility and precision than the dao’s techniques (i.e., more finesse than power). The jian is said to be the “king” of short weapons, and is considered to be a master’s or gentleman’s weapon.

Unfortunately, many of the practice jian manufactured today have greatly altered characteristics from historic weapons, in order to make them easier to use in solo performance, resulting in modern swords that are typically handled improperly when compared to how historically accurate weapons are handled.

Historic swords needed a sufficient mass (typically 600-900 grams) to resist easy defensive deflections away from the intended target, and the point of balance needed to be far enough out beyond the handle and hand guard (typically 6-8 inches beyond where the handle meets the guard) to facilitate pivoting the weapon around an opponent’s weapon, as well as to resist deflections and help the sword to remain on target. The mass and point of balance of historic swords also helps one to properly control the opponent’s weapon when utilizing deflections and other techniques that occur when weapons contact each other.

Conversely for performance, with no consideration for combat functionality, one would want a sword that is as light as possible and with a point of balance closer to the hand. This would make the sword-like object easier (and faster) to move and would be able to be manipulated in a dramatic fashion with a mere flick of one’s wrist. These characteristics produced the floppy-bladed wushu (武术) performance jian that got so extreme that competition rules had to be made requiring the blade to be able to support the weight of the jian when balanced on its tip.

Unfortunately, the way that manufacturers met this requirement was to merely stiffen the spine of the blade without adding significant weight to the jian. These revised performance jian appear less comical, but the performers did not need to alter their habitual ways of handling the jian. The jian were used merely as stage props that allowed quick and flashy movements that looked impressive, but were without realistic function and would be wrong in combat. Wushu swordsmanship became merely dancing with stage props, however flashy and impressive that dancing was.

Training with unrealistic weapons generally leads to unrealistic movements for controlling the actions of the jian, and typically leads to a misunderstanding of the characteristics of the weapon and the movements and purpose of one’s forms.

A jian should have four points that one pivots around; the tip, at points about one third and about two thirds of the length of the blade, and the hand/wrist/root of the sword blade. Only the last is facilitated by a balance point close to the guard, but at the expense of the other three.

Pivoting around the tip is often used to maintain the weapon pointing towards the opponent while changing the angle of the potential attack. Pivoting around the point about a third of the blade length from the tip is often used to change from a thrust with the tip to a cut with the end third of the blade, as well as situations where light contact with the opponent’s weapon is used in order to exploit an opening to attack through. Pivoting around the point about two thirds of the blade length from the tip of the blade is frequently used when deflecting and controlling an opponent’s attack, and setting up a counterattack.

The pivot at the hand/wrist/blade root is where most of the potential problems occur, and is often where those using unrealistically light jian tend to move the most. Too often those using a light weapon flip their wrist around like they are using a flywhisk!

We do not want too firm of a grip such that the sword becomes primarily just an extension of the forearm (like when using a club or a bat), but we also do not want a too loose grip where the sword can be easily knocked off target or even knocked out of one’s grip. We want a mobile “joint” that is neither excessive nor deficient.

Different schools have slightly different recommendations regarding gripping the sword, but most have the thumb and index and/or middle fingers doing most of the gripping, with the ring and little fingers mainly aiding in controlling and directing the sword. The sword’s handle should be movable enough in one’s grip that it can break contact with the palm and/or heel of the hand, but one should still maintain sufficient control of the handle that an opponent cannot adversely affect one’s grip just by bumping into your sword.

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

During standing practice, something occurred to me: Awareness is the first and most important principle in Tai Chi. It sounds obvious now but when it hit me I had to go and write it down.

Most of us are a bit stiff, holding tension in much of the body and we need to work out how to let it go. This requires paying attention. I can only relax my chest when I perceive the tension and the same goes for my lower back and my hips.

We also want to improve our posture, not for aesthetic reasons but to enable deeper relaxation and develop whole body connection. Again, we need to be aware of our body to straighten up and balance properly.

Mindfulness is a word that is, perhaps, a little overused these days and as such is starting to lose its meaning. Tai Chi, however, is in part a mindfulness practice. You can’t learn Tai Chi unless you pay attention and you’re not really practicing it if you’re not paying attention.
It’s interesting to me that Tai Chi requires you to concentrate but also improves your ability to do so. Maybe it’s enough to simply practice regularly and your awareness will grow naturally all on its own? Or perhaps not. If you take a look around any Tai Chi class you’ll see that some people are paying more attention than others. 

My advice is: When you practice Tai Chi don’t add any distractions, just practice. I used to have a student that watched films whilst doing standing qigong which is definitely not paying full attention! So no films and I would also say no music.

It may come down to the strength of your intention. People with a passion for something tend to really concentrate on it. Those with the highest level of skill in Tai Chi very often have had health problems. As a last resort, they turn to Tai Chi to heal themselves and give it everything they’ve got.

It goes without saying that in the modern world there’s not enough awareness. When I cycle down Gloucester road I can count on one hand the number of people not staring at their phones and even those who aren’t are probably, invisibly, listening to them.

Any practice that improves your awareness is an important one. I’ve found that practicing Tai Chi improves my self awareness and as my self awareness grows so does my awareness of the world around me. I feel more present when talking to others and more aware of the effect of my actions.