Spiritual vs. Martial Tai Chi: Is there a difference?

https://healingtaousa.com/articles/primordial-tai-chi-book-one-introduction/

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Dear Lovers of Tai Chi,

Tai Chi (taiji in pinyin) is a phrase taken from Taoist cosmology. It means “Great Ultimate Pole”, used to describe the cosmic spiral of Yin Qi and Yang Qi around the neutral central axis of Heaven-Earth. Think of it as a cosmic “barbershop pole” – as it turns, Qi flows in spirals from Origin, radiating outwards in pulsing Yin-Yang waves to become what we call Nature (patterns of manifest Qi). When you add the word “chuan/quan” to make Tai Chi Chuan, it means the manifesting Qi is in the form of a fist, implying martial skill in applying internal Qi to an external situation/opponent.

The HISTORY of Tai Chi Chuan is very controversial. In discussions between different lineages, you have to treat it gingerly, as if discussing someone’s personal religion. Best to respect others beliefs while not surrendering your own. It brings up the old Tai Chi joke: How many tai chi players does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: 100. One player to change the bulb, and 99 players to tell you how their school does it better. We’re talking about some highly competitive folks.

But one thing is clear: what we now call “Qigong” and “Tai Chi” originated from “yangsheng” (Nurturing Life) or “Dao Yin” (stretching & breathing exercises) in ancient times. These non-martial forms of medical and spiritual cultivation historically were the Mother of all modern Tai Chi schools and styles. The ancient principles (yin-yang, five phase, 8 trigrams) evolved in medieval and modern times into longer Tai Chi forms with sophisticated applications of self-defense. But many martial tai chi players feel they are simultaneously evolving spiritually at the same time by employing these ancient principles.

Perhaps the most CONTROVERSIAL CHARACTER is Chang  (or Zhang) San Feng, a 13th century master famed for internal alchemy who lived for a while on Mt. Wudang. There are multiple claims in multiple centuries that he appeared for over 400 years after his death. (There are scholars who will claim Chang never existed, just as scholars claim Lao Tzu never existed, but I’m not going to debate them here).

He is credited with creating two styles, one a 13 movement martial form that Taoist monks could use for self-defense without killing the many bandits that threatened local folks. The other was a softer-looking tai chi form for spiritual development, today known both as Primordial Qigong or Primordial Tai Chi. It also had 13 movements: a 12-movement Earth Cycle and a 13th Heaven Cycle, a single movment repeatd 50 times. It’s Chinese name is Wu Ji Gong.The first time I saw it performed, I was frankly appalled. I called it “tofu tai chi”, and ridiculed it as TOO SOFT to have any internal power. I said to myself,”I will never practice that form.”

Zhu: “Primordial taiji moves Qi from outside the body to inside the body. Almost every one of the Wu Ji Gong movements gathers the Qi from outside to flow inside the body. Martial taiji is the opposite. It directs Qi from inside the body to move outside, for purpose of self-defense or deflecting an opponent’s Qi”.

This is not to put down the value of improving the flow of Post-natal Qi. During my martial style practice, I feel post-natal earth Qi get pumped through my body, and radiate out into my aura and the space all around me. I get totally present to my IMMEDIATE space, the space of manifestation. My dantian is pulsing like a pussycat when I’m done. My 12 ordinary meridians are full. I love it.

2. Primordial Cultivates Pre-natal Qi (left side) vs. Post-natal Qi (right side).

Zhu: “The Qi in the right core channel of our body is post-natal or manifest Qi. The left core channel carries pre-natal or unmanifest Qi. These are also known in Taoist cosmology as post-birth energy of Later Heaven (on right), and pre-birth energy of Early Heaven (on left). The Qi in al taijiquan is flowing towards the manifest side. This cultivates our acquired Qi, the energy we gather after we are born. Its applications are designed to be martial. So its medical and spiritual benefits are less significant than in the Wu Ji form.”

The Wuji gong form always leads from the right side to the left, moving Qi from manifest state into un-manifest. The entire form spirals to the left. This is one of many ways it helps us cultivate a feeling of Return to Origin. This counter-clockwise movement is also said to reverse the flow of linear time. This gradually spirals the adept into a more formless space, some might call it mystical. Afterwards, you easily forget your name, who you are, where you are. It’s blissful.

This doesn’t mean that people don’t have cosmic experiences doing martial styles of Tai Chi. You can have a cosmic experience doing anything – brushing your teeth. It’s just that styles designed for fighting are not targeting cosmic experience, they are targeting self-defense. Anything else is accidental or secondary benefit. In spiritual tai chi, it’s the primary benefit.

3. Round vs. Angular Movements.

Zhu: “Most of the Wu Ji Gong movements are round, like the movements of a snake, and the shape of the form follows the roundness of a turtle shell. Martial Tai Chi has many more angular movements, strikes, kicks, etc. Its overall form tends to be more square or rectangular”.

I do a martial Wu style regularly, and love it because the “angular movements” works my body and joints in different ways.  I allow the experience to be one of my Qi flowing as deeply as possible. But martial tai chi simply isn’t designed to communicate with the spirits of heaven. It’s an earth-centered science and art. When I want the “roundness” of heavenly Qi flow, and its causal power, I do Primordial Tai Chi.

4. No Imaginary Opponent in Primordial Tai Chi.

When I do martial forms,I imagine a shadow opponent invisibly sparring with me, who absorbs my kicks and is deflected by my Qi. Martial taijiquan (and support practices like Push-Hands) is designed to create and play with energetic boundaries for the purpose of self-defense and developing one’s root. Physical rooting is different from “spiritual rooting”.  Primordial Tai Chi offers fantastic spiritual grounding, and its hundreds of weight shifts support physical rooting as well.

One never imagines in Primordial Tai Chi there is an opponent trying to penetrate your wei Qi (defensive energy field). There is not a single movement designed for fighting or self-defense.  It takes a cosmic, more inclusive, less combative approach to self-cultivation.  If you expand your Energy Body to include the entirety of the cosmos, there is no opponent. All “opposing” Yin-Yang polarities are gathered within you. It is a more powerful way to communicate with the universe. The ritual partner here is not an opponent, but rather is the whole Cosmic Being or Nature (choose the language that suits you). The “opposing challenge” is how to internalize its cosmic vastness, to embrace its innate wholeness within one’s body and life. How do we put to use ritual movements to shape one’s personal destiny and “de” integrity that has been given to us by the Tao so we can live and contribute our part to the greater whole?

There is nothing to defend or fight against when I’m doing Wu Ji Gong. I dissolve all boundary, standing in the center of an open circle that extends out to infinity. I open different centers in my body to receive the flow of Pre-Natal Qi from Heaven’s sphere in the shape of a Torus (donut) flow.

The strategy in Primordial Tai Chi is to condense the vast cosmos down into a Pearl within our dantian. To do that, you ritually dance the patterns of Time and Space – the 12 Earthly Branches, the 10 Heavenly Stems (both from Chinese calendar), gather the Qi from the cardinal directions and the 8 Trigram forces. All the major patterns of Taoist cosmology, rolled into one ball of Qi, a.k.a. the Elixir.

5. Primordial Tai Chi Supports a Loving Intent.

Wu Ji Gong, or Primoridal Tai Chi, is a way to link our heart and the heart of the Cosmos.

I tried doing my martial Northern Wu style taijiquan holding the intent of expressing Pure Love radiating from Origin. The martial design of the form resisted this quality of Love Qi from flowing easily. How do you love an imaginary opponent while you are blocking, kicking, and striking him/her?

Using martial tai chi to create defensive boundaries can be said to be compassionate, in a kind of tough love way: “I’m kicking you because you deserve and need it.” Instead of going into rage that someone has violated my space and killing them, I’m neutrally and calmly deflecting them, setting them on a different path that doesn’t interfere with my own. But this feels like a kind of conditional love between two personalities; it’s not Pure Love that I easily invoke while doing Primordial Tai Chi. There are tai chi players who ignore the martial design of the form and focus their imagination on poetic images. But are they dissociating their mind from what their body is actually doing?

I reframe my martial form practice as “loving my body” and dissolving internal boundaries between my body and mind (even as I’m creating boundary with my imaginary opponent). It feels loving to open up my body, work all my joints, test my balance during kicks, and track my ability to stay present as eyes, limbs, breath, and torso turn, expand, defend, listen, adhere, all as one smooth process.

Tai Chi for Enlightened Self-Love is designed to bring Pure (divine) Love from source into our stressed and contracted human body. It gathers Qi inward from the four directions and heaven and earth in graceful spirals. It is designed to embrace all Beings, all energies from all dimensions, all situations, even the dark forces attacking us. The ceremony, by being all-inclusive, brings our shadow dark side into balance with our conscious  light side. It feeds our soul by grounding the Original Breath of the cosmos into our body with its ordinary post-natal breath..

I do Wu Ji Gong/ Tai Chi for Enlightened Self-Love by gathering Qi inside me for a specific intent, that I set at the beginning of the ceremony. I know and trust the design of the sacred movement dance will support any intnet I choose. I may do the ceremony with my wife or friends or students to create greater harmony, love, and balance with the cosmos. I invoke all my spirit Teachers, including the Tao Immortals, and ask for their support in manifesting my intent.

6. Primordial Tai Chi is perfect movement partner with Internal Alchemy.

Wu Ji Gong strengthens my ability to focus Qi. I internally practice various levels of One Cloud’s alchemical meditation practices while I do the form. Each level of “Kan & Li “ or water & fire alchemy produces a unique effect in synergy with the form. The form and its lineage immortals are alive and co-creating with me every time I do the ceremony. This is a deep topic hard to describe to those not initiated to inner alchemy.

The story that is more easily grasped is that the form allows the adept to “absorb and transform” the local Qi field of the space where the ceremony is performed. I’ve done it in the Forbidden City at the spot the Emperor read his declarations to the thousands in the square below – and felt I was guided to resolve issues in the collective political psyche of China. I did it in Tiger Leaping gorge of the headwaters of the Yangtse River. I absorbed so much water Qi that I felt heavy and could hardly walk away afterwards.

7. Wu Ji Gong Stationary Pole vs. Martial Moving Pole.

Taiji pole between Heaven & Earth has three forces held in equilibrium: still force (yuan qi) in the center, and yin and yang Qi rotating around it.

In Wu Ji Gong, the adept stands in one spot and never leaves it, even as one spirals. The adept’s body BECOMES a stationary-yet-spiralling-taiji pole. The continuous spinning pole concentrates the Yin-Yang Qi from the external Qi field into a still point along the axis between heaven and earth. The arms reach out from the adept’s permanently rooted position in the center, and gather in the Qi of the Six Directions, or playfully spin the Qi ball or Pearl through the 12-branch and 10-stem cycles of the Chinese calendar.

Even in the midst of all these arm movements, the core channel of the Wu Ji adept never loses its commanding position. The central axis is held steady, as s/he turns eight times around that axis as they “dance the labyrinth” of the eight trigram cycles of the I Ching mandala. Primordial Tai Chi can be called a form of “jailhouse tai chi” because it can be done in the space of tiny jail cell. In fact, I myself have done it in a tiny Japanese “businessman hotel” in Tokyo, because the form only need four square feet.

By contrast, martial taiji forms generally have a “runway” that moves back and forth along a line that is about ten feet long. This means the central pole of the martial tai chi player’s core channel constantly changes position in space. It’s a choreographed “dance-fight”. The martial player’s feet necessarily advances and retreats, moves left and right, as one’s “fist” deflects or manages the Qi of one’s imaginary opponent in many directions.

This moving center is the very virtue of martial tai chi that I love most. It trains us to stay centered as we move through life’s struggles and its battles and victories. It’s about life as a moveable battle and/or feast. That is why it looks dramatic and is enjoyable to watch at a public demonstration – there is visible action in its display of what is popularly known as “shadow boxing”. The movements are stimulating, thus makes for good theatre.

By contrast, when I do Primordial Tai Chi in public spaces, it has a pacifying, relaxing, mesmerizing effect. I often do the form in airports before boarding a long flight, to harmonize my Energy Body as it travels through changing time zones and vertical shifts. It puts the people around me into a kind of a peaceful trance.

33 Primordial Tai Chi adepts atop the Great Wall on 2016 China Dream Trip. We’re about to begin the form, but first are attuning to the Dragon ley line flowing within the Great Wall. This form has the power to capture Dragon Qi internally.

In summary, Primordial Tai Chi is an especially powerful kind of sacred movement. I call it a “cosmological qigong” form. It cultivates a more multi-dimensional Qi than martial or medical forms. That is built into its design. Even if you are a total beginner and are completely oblivious to what you are invoking, the form works its magic. Read the amazing testimonials below, some from accomplished martial artists.

ASHEVILLE WORKSHOP.

There’s still space at my workshop in Asheville on Nov. 17-18 (details below). There is a powerful transmission that happens when we practice it together, and I cover many aspects not in the DVD.This live training  doubles as a Certification Training for those who have been practicing from the video. You’ll get a special certificate form Healing Tao  USA. It also counts towards Healing Tao Instructor certification.

If you cannot attend the workshop, consider getting the Advanced Training DVD + Audio package:

https://healingtaousa.com/taichi/