In practicing Tai Chi seek your center through circles. We start practice with circular exercises to begin feeling and visualizing both our own physical circles and the circles that make up so many systems in our universe. Circles characterize systems from small to large, atoms to galaxies. They define the circulatory system of our blood, moving away from and toward our heart, an insistent pumping of constant circular motion.
Circles Everywhere
Circles are so prevalent that they often go unrecognized, like the water cycle, circling from ocean to sky. When you look at a river, it may seem more linear than circular, charting a course along a riverbed – the name implies something more rectangular than circular. But within that river flow, the water circles over, under and around obstacles. And from a larger perspective, water is a huge circle, flowing from ocean to sky, nourishing the whole world as it returns to its source through lakes, rivers and streams.
Tai Chi uses circles because they move most naturally from our center and generate whole being power through joining every fiber of our being into a focused expression. Wang Tsung-yueh in his Tai Chi Chuan Method recommends ‘standing like a balance and rotate actively like a wheel.’
Tai Chi Circles
We evoke circles from the ground up. Our stance is shoulder width with our feet arcing out gently. Imagine a ball (more circles) resting between your feet. Our knees are slightly bent, helping us feel grounded and expressing an arc. Moving to our physical center just below our navel, our Dan Tien in Chinese, we feel all of our moves, both upper and lower body as growing from and expressing from our center. Our chests are ‘Sung’ in Chinese. The translation is imperfect so it can be considered ‘sunk’ but ‘relaxed’ gets more to the essence of the posture. We have a very distinctly circular arm posture. Think of Single Whip, and remember that this is the foundation move that all other moves grow from. Our arms are raised to just below shoulder height, so they are within the circle of our Dan Tien, the core of our body. Our shoulders curve slightly forward from our chests; our elbows are slightly bent, pointing at the horizon; our wrists are angled in; our hands are in tiger mouth – the palming the ball posture – with our fingers gently curved in an open expressive manner. All of this, from the ground up, promotes the sense of circles.
Centered within Your Self
All the moves of the Sun Style of Tai Chi Chuan apply this principle of circular motion, of gently curving from your center. Whether it is ward off, curving up from below your waist to chest height, a backhand punch from your chest outward, the moves describe circles in all their curved restraint and power. Your moves always stay within themselves, stay within your own circle, moving along the axis of your being so you retain your balance and flexibility while concentrating the power of your essential being.
Through increasing connection to your own circular nature, you come to better understand your connection with the vast circles of our home the universe.