Two Bows
Posted by Cat on May 5th 2020
Yang Chengfu’s Ten Essential Principles are a guide to the correct way to practice Tai Chi.
As usual in Tai Chi, it’s not so simple. There is a lot of room for differences of interpretation and translation, and the lessons can be understood differently at different places in your Tai Chi journey.
Lately Grandmaster Yang Jun has distilled the language down for some of these into a primary focus for students to use to understand these Principles. I’m going to attempt to describe my understanding of his teachings here, over the next few blog posts, to help our students better use the principles as a guide in their journey. Of course this is a simplification of a simplification, and any mistakes are mine.
Principle 1-5: Body Shape
The first 5 principles primarily describe how to create the body shape that gives good Tai Chi structure. This can be understood as two “bows” in the body (bow as in bow-and-arrow) that intersect between your shoulder blades.
Bows are made of flexible material that store energy when the opposite ends are pulled by a string, and spring back when the string is released.
In Tai Chi, one “bow” runs vertically from the top of your head to your tailbone, which pull gently away from each other, giving a sense that the spine elongates and stretches. This tends to make you stand taller and raise your spirit.
The other “bow” runs horizontally from one elbow, across the back, to the other elbow. Pull each elbow gently away from the other, causing the shoulder blades to stretch and the back to round.
Notice that these two bows somewhat oppose each other. If you put too much effort into pulling your head and tailbone apart, the chest will puff out and collapse the horizontal bow. If you put too much energy into pulling the elbows apart, your head will be pulled down and your vertical bow will start to lose stretch.
So, try to find a balance between the two bows… keeping a steady stretch between the shoulder blades in all four directions.
How much tension should there be? There’s no specific correct amount, but one way to explore this is to put too much tension into both bows, and notice that you aren’t able to breathe deeply into your abdomen. Then slowly back off the tension until you can breathe freely. That’s the upper bound.