Tai Chi Technique
Perfect Posture

Tai Chi Perfect Posture Index

• Your Body – Your Way
• The Tai Chi Way
• One Thing at a Time
• Patience
• Respect your Limitations

Your Body – Your Way

Before we get into the ins and outs of the correct posture for Tai Chi exercises we’d like you to take a couple of moments to think about how you use your body now.

You might be asking yourself ‘what kind of a stupid question is that?’. But it’s not as silly as it sounds.

Did you ever think about how you learned to walk or sit or even just stand? It’s a bit of a trial and error process – you keep going till you can get where you want to go – anyway you can make it work!

But if you think about it - did you ever have a professional movement coach tell you the best way to walk or sit so that the muscles and joints were properly used.

No? Neither did we.

And that’s strange – you get tennis coaches, ice skating coaches, ballet teachers – all these people teach you how to move properly and to get the best use out of your body.

Its very odd that everyone seems to think that there is nothing difficult about walking and sitting and nothing dangerous about getting it wrong.

Were you aware that incorrect use of muscles and joints, and not just when you exercise, but just in everyday regular use, could give you problems? Lower back pain, migraines, poor circulation to mention but a few.

So how do you walk, stand and sit and how do you get out of deep chairs? Whatever way you do it now is probably the result of trial and error and it’s a habit for you.

After all you’ve been doing what you’re doing for your whole life.

If you’re anything like us, you might find that you’ve picked up some bad habits over the years.

Do any of these sound familiar? You slump over your desk or to eat. You hunch your shoulders or slouch when you walk – you might even lean forward as though walking against the wind. You clamp a phone between your ear and your shoulder?

Or do you do the traditional military thing – head up, chin out, chest out, arms back? Or have you worn high heels for years? Do you spend most of your day sitting down?

If any of these are true there is a good chance that you have picked up some bad muscle habits – and you probably don’t even notice them.

You’re probably wondering why we’re going on about this. Qi Gong and Tai Chi exercises – especially Tai Chi Chuan put a lot of emphasis on the correct posture and body alignment.

And however you do it now – however good or bad - your muscles are accustomed to doing it that way – it feels right. So if you have bad muscle habits now the correct posture is going to feel odd and even unnatural.

You might even be tempted to give up altogether or try to do Tai Chi exercises without paying attention to the posture.

Our advice is ‘stay with it’ good posture comes with practice and the time will come when your new good and healthy muscle habits replace your old unhelpful ones.

And, if you’ve already got good posture? – that’s great – you’ve got a head start for the perfect tai chi posture.

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In Tai Chi instruction advice is often included in the form of The 10 Essentials or The 10 Essences attributed to Yang Chen Fu and developed to help his students understand the movements of the modern Tai Chi form.

The 10 Essences also cover the mind body link, co-ordination and harmonization of movement that we cover in the Principles of Movement section. So here we only focus on the first four Essences:

• Lift the head to raise the spirit


• Lower the shoulders to sink the elbows


• Curve the back and soften the chest


• Loosen the waist and relax the hips



These Essences are a valuable aid to learning and improving your Tai Chi exercises and when you fully understand them you will use them automatically to define how your body moves in harmony.

Applying these tai chi principles helps align and balance your whole body with the way that gravity works on it and has the effect of making you feel lighter and a smoother mover. In Tai Chi when your weight is equally distributed over both feet it is called perfect balance between the Heaven and Earth forces.

We’ll go into what the Essences mean in a lot more detail and try and explain how to translate the words into actions you can take when you do your Tai Chi exercises.

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One Thing at a Time

There can be a lot of things to think about in terms of posture and you might find it easier to focus on one tai chi principle at a time.

So what you could do, is to do the Qi Gong exercise or the Tai Chi form several times. First time through concentrate on your neck and spine. Next time through, focus on the alignment of your hips, next time think about the breathing.

That way you’ll see a little improvement every time you do your tai chi practice. And gradually, as you increase your awareness of all the different elements of the Tai Chi exercises, it will all come together.

If you are mostly doing Qi Gong exercises you will find that the posture elements are a lot easier to focus on because each exercise is repeated several times in succession. Another benefit is that Qi Gong exercises tend not to involve complex walking moves.

So there are plenty of opportunities to focus on individual improvements in your tai chi performance.

Tai Chi Chuan is a different matter – good structural alignment is essential for power and stability in self defence and two person exercises and you will find that classes spend a lot of time ensuring that balance and tai chi stances are correct.

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Patience

Tai Chi looks so easy, just a few flowing moves. And really it is – once you get used to it.

At first, if our experience is anything to go by, you are going to feel like an elephant on ice. And that’s on a good day!

Things that look so simple, when your tai chi instructor does it, are going to seem impossible – you might even think that there are far too many things to remember all at once. Then out of the blue it will ‘click’ and the tai chi movements will become part of your muscle memory - and you’ll wonder how you ever thought it difficult.

Try and cast your mind back to learning to ride a bike, or drive a car, or skate – lots of different things to co-ordinate and remember. And then one day – you just get it!

Tai Chi has many elements in common with other physical activities that have lots of things to co-ordinate and remember. And like them Tai Chi too will come - we promise!.

The key to success is to keep going. It's better to practice a little Tai Chi every day than do a couple of big sessions twice a week.

So. Relax, enjoy yourself knowing that your Tai Chi is getting better every day.

And if you don’t reach Olympic standard? That’s OK too.

Relaxing and doing the Tai Chi exercises that you can do, and enjoy doing, is still far, far, better for you than sitting doing nothing!.

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Respect your limitations.

The movements of Tai Chi exercises appear easy to perform and can look effortless – no huffing, no puffing or panting – just like we promised!.

Don’t be deceived into thinking that nothing is happening – your muscles are getting a thorough work out. So, if you start to feel discomfort – take a break from your Tai chi exercises.

Some of the discomfort may be from correcting poor posture – and this will ease with time as your body adjusts.

Other discomfort may be from injuries old and more recent. Often when we recover from injury there is a tendency to overcompensate using other parts of the body – what you could be experiencing is an imbalance between stronger and weaker muscles – again – stop and take a break - think about the way you are holding yourself when you are performing the tai chi movements. You can also ask your tai chi teacher or even simply check your posture in a mirror.

You are the best judge of what you can and cannot do.

When you work within your limitations you get gradual and safe improvement in your Tai Chi performance.

As always, consult your health care provider before starting any new program of Tai Chi exercise.

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