The "Secret" of Tai Chi Chuan is Ma Bu

The main goal of Tai Chi Chuan training for most people is to achieve a consistent level of tranquility and to balance once mind and body. This tranquility and balance can be found on three levels both in daily life and Tai Ci Chuan practice. Level 1 is in stillness: sleep and meditation. Level 2 is in movement: work at home or office and practicing forms. Level 3 is in interaction: interpersonal communication and pushing hands or self-defense.

To achieve tranquility, don’t skip Ma Bu in your training routine. Ma Bu is the “secret”. I cannot emphasize this enough. I learned this the hard way. You will only make progress in your Tai Chi Chuan training and, more importantly, outside of your training, if Ma Bu is a central part of your training. Ma Bu is also called Zhang Zhuang (standing meditation) or Zhang Zhong (standing pose).

By training Ma Bu you will be able to relax better. Learn how to put all your weight onto your feet. If your body structure is not aligned then there will be a lot of stress in your body and you won’t be able to relax. Be aware of your body alignment during Ma Bu. In the beginning, you will need to make large adjustments. Over time the adjustments will become smaller and smaller.

Move from a place of calmness (Yin/Yang). You need to be rooted" first before you move. Ma Bu training will help you find a sense of having roots (“rooting”).

To illustrate this better see the six figures below from the skill knowledge page of Brisbane Chen Tai Chi. This is an excellent resource with amazing infographics.

11 Tips For Your Tai Chi Chuan Training

1. Find the Yin Yang duality in your movements: Up/Down, Forward/Backward, Left/Right, Heavy/Light, Contract/Relax, Open/Close, Movement/No Movement, Mind/Body.

2. Relax first before you move. Align your body structure and move from a stable position.

3. Start from the legs, turn your waist, and finish the movements all the way to the fingertips. This ensures that you are relaxed and your energy flows smoothly.

4. Focus on being light and connected. Stay upright, have a strong base or root, stack your spine and float your head.

5. Find the circles and move as one. Hands correspond to feet. Knees correspond to elbows. Hips correspond to shoulders.

6. Keep things simple. Focus first on big movements. Details of the smaller movements will come naturally through long-term practice.

7. Focus on your breathing. Time your breathing based on your movements. Keep your mind in the lower dan tian.

8. Be in the present and move with intent. Visualize your opponent (self-defense) and energy flow.

9. Take care of your knees. Don’t let your knees collapse over your knees.

10. Don’t worry about what it looks like. Take your time and focus on how it feels.

11. Have fun, don’t take it too seriously. Enjoy every step along the journey.

Being the Flame, Being the Hand

Effortless interactions by first observing and listening

A very effective strategy for self-improvement and spiritual development is to apply concepts and philosophies of martial arts in your daily life. 

I learned this from Joseph Cardillo’s book “Be Like Water”. This great little book explains how to use martial arts principles not just on the mats, but more importantly off the mats.

I serendipitously found this book over 12 years ago when I started my PhD in bioengineering and it was also the spark of my journey into Tai Chi Chuan.  

When the student is ready, the book will appear.

Thought experiment

Imagine you have a candle with a long flame and start circling your hand around the flame. Get closer or farther, speed up or slow down. The aim is to make the flame follow your hand without getting burned.

The flame will react to you and you will react to the flame until you reach a state of natural spontaneous movement.

You are the hand and the flame.

Principle

Interact with others by first taking the time to observe and listen to others.

Adjust your actions and energy level to your opponent. 

Synchronise and share the same “orbit”.

On the mats

Unless you are bigger and stronger than everyone else, you need to observe and listen to your opponent. If both of you are at the same skill level, then the one with the best sensitivity and timing will most likely win.

Pushing hands (or Tui Shou) is a two-persons exercise in Tai Chi Chuan training that teaches to sense your opponent’s intention, to understand his power, neutralize it and then counterattack. To defend yourself you first become the flame and the hand, which gives you the option to strike if you so choose.

With just one hand on my arm, my Tai Chi Master can sense in seconds where I’m more tense or less balanced. This is all it takes to defeat me.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) matches are very intense, both physically and mentally. Your aim is to submit your opponent either by a choke or joint lock. Your opponent will try to do the same to you. You constantly have to observe and listen carefully in order to neutralize the attacks. 

Marcello Garcia, a world-class BJJ competitor and teacher, is well known for his amazing skill of constantly transitioning from one technique to the next, which is only possible by carefully feeling his opponent intent in the present moment. He is very relaxed on the mat and intuitively adjusts to the flow of his opponent’s energy by becoming the hand and flame.

In one short match you can learn more about what someone truly thinks and feels than through many long conversations.  By becoming the hand and flame, you may quickly determine how to interact effortlessly.

Off the mats

At work, you might have to go to many meetings, receptions or even negotiations. If you have a good relationship with all involved then the meeting might go quite effortlessly. But what if you don’t know anyone? Becoming the hand and flame quickly in any interaction is a valuable skill.

Public speaking can be very stressful if you don’t know the audience or if the audience is very critical. How can you quickly apply the hand and flame principles to improve the interaction with the audience?

Take your time to observe and listen. Feel the room, watch people’s faces and body language, listen to the sounds, put yourself in their shoes to understand their perspective and see if they become more relaxed or more tense.

Being the hand and flame means that you first adjust to the way others talk and behave. If they talk slowly and are relaxed, then so are you. If they speak very quickly and are very serious, then so are you. If they are nervous, then put yourself in their shoes to understand why.

First you synchronise your mind and body with the one person or audience in front of you. Once you’re in sync you act. You smile, you open up your body language, you speak at your preferred speed, you say what you want to say. 

Success is when others start to change their attitude and the mood in the room starts to change. Often the change is temporarily, so you have to synchronise again. 

The path to effortless interactions is an iterative process of constantly making small adjustments until it becomes intuitive.

Take-home message

All interactions in any context will become much easier once we take our time to observe and listen to others.

Or let’s use the mental model of inversion, i.e. finding a solution by thinking how not to solve the problem. The best way to lose a fight is to strike or kick with all your power without knowing the intent of your opponent. The best way to make every meeting awkward and difficult is to start talking first and imposing all your ideas and wishes without knowing the interests of your colleagues.

This approach can be especially relevant for people with a strong type A personality that are known to be ambitious, impatient and can come across as aggressive.

Taking your time to synchronise and become the flame and the hand doesn’t mean that you should change your personality. If anything, this approach might help you to act more authentically as you take your time to express yourself in the present moment.

4 Habits to Truly Master Your Art. Become a Jedi!

There are no secrets, except maybe a few.

I’ve been training Tai Chi Chuan for over 12 years now. I’ve also practiced Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Judo and Aikido for several years. Like every martial art student, I want to become a Master. But how does one achieve mastery level? How does one become great at their art?

People start a martial art for all sorts of reasons. But why have so few the discipline to train for over a decade and make this part of their life? Three reasons: we don’t have the patience, we don’t know what great looks like and we don’t really know how.

Training hard is important. Many train obsessively the first few years, progress rapidly in their skills but eventually reach a plateau. As planning a breakthrough is impossible, we can either be patient and pray for a breakthrough or we build in key habits that guarantee continuous progress in our training.

4 key habits have helped me tremendously over many years to make continuous progress in both my martial art training and professional life.

Don’t just do something, sit there.

Meditation

All traditional martial arts have some kind of meditation practice in their training routine. — This is not a coincidence. — Whereas modern martial arts, with a focus on competition, often skip this. However, looking at top athletes, meditation in one form or another is almost always part of their training. As most top performers are very similar in their physical and technical skills, the only way to be even better, to find that edge, is by training the mind

Any form of meditation consists of 4 parts. First, relax your body with proper posture (legs crossed to stay stable, back straight and chin down). Second, focus, keep your mind alert (a relaxed mind would be sleeping) while keeping the inner dialogue to an absolute minimum. It’s impossible not to think but we can try to observe our inner or outer world without judging. Third, if your mind is wandering, bring it back into the present. Fourth, let everything else go. There are as many ways to meditate as there are ways to focus and keep an alert mind.

A solid meditation habit will not only improve your health; it will provide you with a stable mind. In order to be great at your art, you need an unshakeable mind that no longer doubts, expects, compares, judges and plans. Everything just works out much better if you stop everything and focus on the now.

Be aware. Know what is happening.

Mindfulness

Being mindful is not the same as meditation. Mindfulness is the mental process of being in the present moment avoid of judgment. However, meditation helps to develop this skill.

Everyone is occupied with so much “stuff”. We are so busy. We do so much. And yet this multitasking makes us very inefficient.

A habit of practicing mindfulness can be very powerful. As a martial artist, you are aware of your surroundings, the environment, other people and especially yourself, i.e. body and mind. As a corporate employee, you are aware of everyone in meetings, the bigger picture, and especially yourself.

By being more mindful you are more self-aware, more open minded and more creative using the many skills you already have.

Try to consistently ask yourself if your body and mind is relaxed? If you are tense, try to relax. If you relax your body, it will be much easier to relax your mind and improve your self-awareness.

The time is Now. Not tomorrow or 10 years from now. This is it!

We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, but fall to the level of our training. (Archilocus)

Focussed training

The more you train and learn, the more you know. But how well do you really know it?

Knowing more might help you to solve more problems that you may encounter in life, i.e. assuming you’ve mastered what you’ve learned. It’s this assumption that is the problem. Mastery takes time so you just cannot be great at everything.

Coming back to the basics, over and over again, is the only way to understand the more “advanced” techniques or principles. That is why teaching others is key in your path to mastery. By explaining what you know, you will find gaps in your knowledge and skills.

Train smart. Find your weaknesses and become obsessive in improving them. There is a lot of wisdom in Bruce Lee’s statement not to fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but to fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Ma Bu

Ma Bu means Horse Stance in Chinese. It is one of the most fundamental stances in Chinese martial arts and resembles a posture of a horseman sitting on a horse back. No matter what martial art or sport you practice, training Ma Bu consistently has tremendous benefits. In my experience, Ma Bu is absolutely critical to progress in your art.

Simply stand with your feet shoulder width apart, feet pointing in the same direction (parallel), bend your knees slightly (no need to go as low as 90 degrees like Shaolin monks in the movies), tuck your pelvis in slightly until your lower back is straight, tuck your chin so you lengthen your neck, raise your arms as if you’re hugging an imaginary ball, fingers pointing to each other and transfer your weight evenly on both feet. Next? Relax!

Standing in Ma Bu, you constantly try to relax more and more, while keeping your posture and alignment. In the beginning you release the superficial tension in your muscles and joints. Over time you relax the deeper muscles, tendons, and ligaments. The purpose, besides relaxation, is to strengthen your legs and develop a strong sense of roots.

It may seem very simple but there are many invisible details that you will discover over time. It may all sound rather hippie-dippie, however, feeling is understanding. The results are real.

Take-home message

The best secrets are those that are in plain sight. Practicing Ma Bu regularly is such a secret, because it is the fastest way to center and relax both body and mind. It is meditation, mindfulness, and focussed training all in one.

(Link to medium article)