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There’s a great, great difference between how a “common” Tai Chi practitioner and an advanced practitioner “feels”. You really need to meet people in real life and touch hands with them to understand their level of skill.
When you meet up with common practitioners you won’t feel anything particular when you feel their hands. They feel common, nothing special. That kind of practitioner can probably show different applications or methods, but you will always sense that there’s a technical approach, what they do is mostly based on techniques and not on adapting to a certain body method. Even their push hands feel like nothing special even if they can be sensitive and understand following.
An advanced practitioner should have a developed Shenfa, a body method. What this means is that the practitioner moves, use his balance and body, in a learned manner. What they do is based on many years of experience. Good practitioners step in and out of this body method by will. Even better practitioners have this natural. They don’t even need to think about it, their Shenfa is a natural part of whatever they do. By merely touching an arm or a hand of this kind of practitioner, you will feel something very different compared to a common practitioner. But there’s more to it. All of the great practitioners and “masters”, they all feel different. Their touch is a trademark, it has their own unique characteristics like the unique voice of a singer. Many people have tried to copy the voices of singers like Frank Sinatra or Aretha Franklin. But the brilliance of something that sounds simple and effortless is mostly something unique, something hard to copy and most often impossible to replace. There’s something similar with the touch from someone who has developed a shenfa. You can’t really copy what they do and how, but you can still develop your own signature “voice”.
Some good teachers touch will feel light as a feather, others can be felt heavy and unmovable. Some feel connected, some others don’t. Some great practitioners will constantly change touch, angle and leave you with a feeling of uncertainness or confused. They all feel very different and the only way you are getting to know their own approach to their art, is not about listening to what they say, but about touching their hands. You can learn a whole lot by touching and feeling a great practitioner. Their whole art is summarized in their own Shenfa, in their body method. And the only way to get a sense of how they really use their own bodies is by one way or another touching hands with them.
I remember the first times touching hands with my first Tai Chi teacher in 1987, the teacher which I consider my primary teacher and the one I have spent most time with. His hands and arms felt completely empty. When he evaded or redirected an incoming push or punch, he would not let anyone feel a connection between his limb and the rest of his body. Sometimes he would react very fast with his body and change, but often when you pushed his arms or at his body, he would let you in close before he re-directed you away.
His teacher Bill, who I also studied for periodically didn’t feel empty, instead he would give you a sense of being connected, rooted. He had a certain stretching quality throughout his body, something that was evident in his forms as well. He would let you feel this and he felt solid. Yet he was very light, and as soon as you touched his hand he would change the angle and never let you push directly at his balance. When he issued power, or performed his fajin, he was so connected from the root that it was impossible to direct away his push if you were too late. You would need good timing and evade him early, if he caught your balance you were already lost.
Bill’s teacher, who I also studied for, was very, very different from every other teacher I had met. Mr He was absolutely brilliant, precise and exact in his movements. He felt rather connected and aleays brought strength directly from his back which meant that even a little touch felt strong. When he demonstrated his art, you could see his shoulder blades moving, sometimes sticking right out from his body, as he made subtle adjustments with the smallest leverage. But when you touched hands with him it was not a question of having time to feel his touch or to study his movements. As soon as he touched your arm or hand, you would find yourself on the floor, one way or another. Mostly just by sitting right next to him where he could easily reach your head with his fist. I don’t believe I will ever have the pleasure to meet a practitioner of his magnitude again.
Another teacher that I had in Beijing, Teacher Ding, was a rough or crude looking fellow. He taught painting and calligraphy as well as Tai Chi. He smoked a lot and used to spit on the class room floor. Yet, when he performed his Tai Chi form, he was extremely soft when he moved. All of his body was well coordinated, but he moved very gracefully like a dancer, yet he had a certain power in his movements. Just like with Bill, it was a real pleasure just watching him doing his firm. But Ding Laoshi was much, much softer and felt very soft. His touch was extremely light. When you touch hands with him, you would find yourself stumbling in air.
I might have something to say about a few other teachers and practitioners I have met, but mostly I have nothing special to say. Some of them I appreciate a lot, and even if they might be very good, their approach is very different from mine. But mostly when you touched hands with them they didn’t feel like anything special, they didn’t have a unique signature touch. But so what about me? It’s hard to know how you feel. Maybe halfway through my road up until today, I often tried to shift between solid and insubstantial. One of my friends said that he sometimes thought he had me on the hook, but then I would suddenly empty myself. It felt like like pressing on a door that was closed but suddenly opened up. Back then, I had still a lot to learn and I could still become hard, stiff up and sometimes fell back into using strength. A few years later, I re-discovered “lightness”, the art of being light. It’s a bit peculiar that I hadn’t done so before, but I had very much been focusing on structure and alignment the latest years and I believe that had a negative impact on my progress. But as I had truly understood lightness, I also re-discovered “softness” and learned how to trust in “song” (relaxation/releasing) in a new way, and I also started to understand a deeper meaning of “emptiness”. From that point and onwards, I have always had lightness as my main focus when I touch hands with someone. When I had my own and last Tai Chi group, I always practiced my own lightness and softness in class and tried to promote this as I believe this is much of the essence of this Art. But that was quite some time ago, about ten years ago from today. I seldom teach today, but hopefully it will become more of that in the future. I hope to find people who wants to travel the same kinds of roads. It would be interesting to feel how their touch would change from year to year and to follow their journey.
If this post has interested you, please also read an article in another blog, Adam Mizner’s translation of Li Yaxuan’s text, a description of the different qualities of Fajin by his teachers and friends. I believe you would find it enlightening.
Thoughts On Tai Chi 