On Centre Line and Central Equilibrium

Extracts of discussions in the e-group at taichichen.com

By Tu-Ky Lam

I am thrilled with everyone's responses. The reason I ask these questions is that I notice some masters could not distinguish one (CL) from the other (CE) . Then there is not much information on central equilibrium.

There are no definite answers to these questions. For people who want a quick and sharp answer, I think Judith's answer is enlightening. ML Foo's reply is similar to Judith's but goes into much greater depth.

In my opinion, the center line is the vertical line that divides our body into halves. One way of doing this is by body weight. If we use this criterion, then our center line changes with our stances. In a horse stance or small horse stance as in the "Preparing form," the center line "runs down the center of the body, aligned with my nose" (Judith's words). In a bow stance where our weight is more on the front leg, the center line shifts slightly to the front (some masters say to the back, confusing eh!). In a reverse bow stance where the weight is more on the rear leg, the center line shifts slightly to the back (some say to the front because we should attack this part of the body).

We use our center line as a guide in our practice. Wu Yu-xiang style Taijiquan emphasizes that our right hand should not move over the center line to the left of our body. This rule applies to the left hand as well. And as Judith's teacher said our hands sometimes line up with our nose. For people whose body tends to till forwards, using the back of the center line (the spine) as a guide to their body alignment can help correct the problem. When our head and our spine are aligned properly, we have an upright posture and our qi can move up from our spine to our head top easily.

The center line helps to maintain our balance. In push-hands, we try to defend our center line and upset the opponent's center line. For example, if you and your opponent stand with your right foot in front, (your right hand is in contact with his right hand and your left hand is in contact with his left elbow - just a normal push-hands setup) and his weight is more on the front leg (%60) then you should not push the right side of his chest as his balance is the most stable in there. (You need to be very strong to be able to throw him off balance if you push in there. In this case, you are using force, not complying with Taiji principles.) If you push the left side of his chest, he can be sent off balance very easily. (This may have given rise to theory that the center line in a bow stance is closer to the back leg - about %60 from the front leg). On the other hand, if his weight is more on the back foot, then it will be easier to push him off balance if you push the right side (near the center) of his chest. Get a partner to experiment with this theory to see it is correct.

As for central equilibrium, I quite like Judith's explanation too: "a state of being, a condition of the body, where I am aligned top to bottom around central core…left to right." ML Foo made it clearer. "it is a skill that can be developed… we try to attain, and sustain at all time."

Our central equilibrium is right next to the center line and include the center line - in a bow stance it is from the head to the front foot, and in the reverse bow stance from the top of the head to the back foot. If you have the central equilibrium established, you can feel a column develop between the top of your head and your main foot. This can only be achieved through correct and diligent training by always lifting up our head top, and pressing our feet into the ground. The central equilibrium strengthens our center line by giving it a lot of strength. A center line without the strength of central equilibrium is vulnerable to our opponent's attack. He/She can throw us off our balance very easily. With good central equilibrium, we can absorb or redirect the incoming force, and retaliate quickly. In short, our defence or attack will be much more efficient if we have strong central equilibrium.

Our central equilibrium is developed by constantly practicing with our head going up and our feet going down. What is the quickest way of developing our CE? How to go about it? You may possibly think about the following questions before answering this one.

From my own observation, I notice most practitioners do not lift up their head-top properly during their practice although they are very sure they do. What is your experience of lifting up your head-top during your practice? How do you know you have done it correctly? How can you prove it?

Taijiquan is never a one-way street. If our head goes up, our feet must go down. What do we do to have ourselves connected to the ground and make the energy in our feet go down? (This is related to Ed's last question.) How can we tell that we have got it right?

Ed and Mark have told us how to lift up our head top. Marco and Chris have very good examples. Thank you all. Below is my experience.

We know it is important that we pull in our chin and lift our head top up during every single second of our practice. But to put it into practice appears to be extremely difficult for many practitioners. Most people are just too scared of stiffness or causing tension in their neck and end up not lifting up their head top at all. And they do not know they do not lift their head-top up properly, but instead firmly believe they have done it properly. Their misconception is very hard to expel.

I require my students to pull in their chins and lift their head top up as much as possible so that their face and torso are straight and their necks and spines are lengthened. I tell them to ignore the stiffness or tension in their neck. When they have difficulties lengthening their torso I will ask them to lift up the top of their back and it helps. I have been taught this way and I am teaching likewise.

It takes time (2 to 5 years) to achieve all these. If we lift up our head top properly it will certainly happen.

You may ask why not try to reduce tension in the neck. I think there is no need to do so. It will disappear after one year of constant practice in this manner. Tension is unavoidable at the beginning stage. If you are afraid of tension then you are not doing it. This is the main reason why people are not lifting up their head-top.

Relaxation and tension are a pair of Ying and Yang. They are the roots of each other and balance each other out. They exist at the same time in our practice. How do they do this? During our training, our head goes up, our feet go down, and our arms should be stretched, which will make our neck, torso and all the joints in our body longer. People all acknowledge this is good, but do not know this is a very good example of tension at work. But then our muscles have to be relaxed at the same time. So relaxation and tension happen at the same time during our practice. (Our skeleton stays upright while our muscles sink.) Relaxation is for nourishing our body to improve health and fitness; stretching our joints (a form of tension) is for the improvement of our qi and internal strength while tension such as in power discharge is the expression or application of our strength. So tension and relaxation are both indispensable in our practice. Taijiquan is about how to work on tension and relaxation: know how, when and where to relax; and how, when and where to tense up.

Another example: we all know we should use mind and not force. So softness is good. But we do not realize in this case our mind is tense and our physical body is relaxed to produce power. In the "Embrace a tree" back-weighted stance, when we imagine we push the tree forward or backward, pull it up or plunge it down, we use our mind, (which is tense), and not force. Our physical body should be relaxed. Tension in our mind and relaxation in our body produce explosive force(, which is tension again). Tension alone or relaxation alone cannot do the job.

In short, this is about lifting up the head top and the relationship between tension and relaxation. Will write about "Feet go down" and "quickest way to develop CE" later.

Last week I wrote about how to lift up our head top. Now I would like to talk about how to be connected to the ground, something many Taiji practitioners have ignored for a long time.

The reason why we need to be grounded is because we want our weight and energy to sink into the ground to help us better maintain our balance and give us more power.

To be connected to the ground involves more than just pressing our feet hard into the ground. We need to sit on our leg(s) first. Our legs should be firm and strong like the piles of a house (look at the posts that support a wooden wharf if you live in high rising buildings) so that they can properly support our torso and give us power. If we know how to sit on our leg(s) - a technique we need to learn, then our weight and qi will sink naturally and smoothly to our feet. Then and only then can our feet press hard into the ground to maximize the effect.

How to sit on our legs? Not as easy as most people would think, and requires a lot of practice to make it into a habit. In a word: bend your knees and flex your hip joints so that you feel your legs are firm (will get stronger and stronger with constant practice) and your torso is sitting on your legs.

When we do the "Embrace a balloon" standing exercise, we need to bend our knees and flex our hip joints (keep our torso very straight as well). When we feel our legs are firm and are supporting our torso, we are half way there. Lift up our head top more (and also the top of our back) and more so that our buttocks will pull in (Note I do not recommend people to pull in their buttocks deliberately or directly. Just to lift up the head to make the buttocks pull in - we pull in the buttocks indirectly), and we can feel our weight from our shoulders sink down to our hips and then to our feet. Now we are sitting properly on our legs. The next process of getting grounded is to make our toes gently cling to the floor, feet press into the ground, and use our mind to make our energy sink further down into the ground.

The same principle applies to the "Embrace a tree" back weighted stance, where we sit more on our back leg. Here our buttocks (do this by lifting the head top) still have to pull in to connect or hold our torso firmly to our legs.

In our Taiji routines, our stances change all the time: mainly from back weighted stance (reverse bow stance) to front weighted stance (bow stance) and vice versa. This affects the way we press our feet into the ground. From the reverse bow stance to bow stance, our back foot presses (backward) to send our back leg forward, but our front foot presses downward to stop the forward movement of the back leg. (In the bow stance we sit more on the front leg.) Reverse the process when we change from bow stance to reverse bow stance.

In short, sitting on our legs and press our feet into the ground during our practice is the only way to prevent us from having spaghetti legs. Yiquan, Xingyi quan, and Baguazhang pay a lot of attention on their footwork to increase their power. Only we, Taiji practitioners, hiding behind the name of relaxation, still ignore it.

Many people complain that their practice does not go anywhere after practicing for ten or twenty years only because they do not lift their head top up properly and they do not sit on their legs and press their feet hard into the ground. (I found another reason for their non-improvement as well - in those 20 years they hardly practice Taijiauan. If they do, it will be only half an hour one week, not one hour every day.) If they do this and train one hour a day, they will find they improve each time they practice. In fact, my teacher told me this: practicing Taijiquan is practicing the torso methods of which the two most important ones are "head go up" and "feet go down" - a recipe for improving our skill. Without doing this we are just wasting our time.

So much for now. Will write about the quickest way to establish our CE next week.

This is the final part of our discussion of central equilibrium. The question is: how long does it take to establish our central equilibrium? If we practice the Taiji routines half an hour a day without doing zhan-zhuang, it will take fifteen to twenty years. Doubting this? You can find out the correctness of this statement from people who have practiced Taijiquan (half an hour a day) for twenty years. Some people will never get there.

If we practice the form and do zhan-zhuang, we can get there a lot quicker. If we do zhan-zhuang half an hour a day, it will take only two to three years. Zhan-zhuang does speed things up. Here I will try to explain how it works.

When we do "Embrace a Balloon" where our body weight is evenly distributed between two legs, imagine we want to push open a door with our right shoulder. Now our head has to go up (more) and our right foot press down (harder). We sit more on our right leg. When we do this move, our shoulder move only very slightly to the right, about 5 millimeters.

After this, we want to push another door open with our left shoulder, so we repeat the same drill to the left. And then right, left, right, left...

The force from our shoulder to the door is not from the shoulder itself. It comes from our foot pressing down and our head going up. And slowly it forms the central equilibrium between our head and our right or left leg. (We can actually feel a "column" is formed between our head and our foot, which gives us strength. Our strength can increase with our practice.) People who just start doing zhan-zhuang cannot do the back-weighted stance, so this exercise is good for zhan-zhuang beginners.

To go up to another level, we need to do "Embrace a Tree" back-weighted stance. We have to imagine, and our mind must have the intention to pull a tree up. We can sit in two different positions: more on the back leg or more on the front leg. When we sit more on our front leg. Then our front foot presses hard into the ground and our head top goes up more to do our job: pulling up a tree. Remember we move very little, only sit more on one leg. Our body moves only two or three millimeters forward, and our arms hardly move up. We can pull up a tree once, twice, three times…and then relax. Then we plunge a tree down. Now we sit more on our back leg (with our front knee moving very slightly forward. Just imagine a piece of string is pulling our front knee).We plunge the tree down for several times and then pull it up for several times again. The force we use to pull up a tree or plunge it down comes from our head going up and foot going down, but not from the arms.

Pushing the tree forward and bringing it backward is also very helpful in establishing our central equilibrium. The stance in pushing the tree forward is bow stance and pulling it back is reverse bow stance. Apply the footwork discussed in the part on "Feet go down".

When we do these exercises, it is important that we use our mind and not force. If we use force, we can get internal injury. In these exercises, our mind is tense but our body relaxed. Our bones and tendons are stretched (tense) but our muscles sink (relaxed). If you can pull, push, or plunge a tree for 20 minutes or half an hour without feeling tired, then you are not using force. If you feel very tired after ten minutes, it is a sign you are using force. Stop immediately. But try again the next day, using less force or little force. Beginners normally do not last more than 5 minutes before they feel tired.

Why does it take only two or three years for these standing exercise to build up our central equilibrium while it takes almost ten times longer for the Taiji form to establish our central equilibrium? It is because these exercises provide us with optimal conditions for us to lift our head up and press our feet down. (Our only task is to lift our head up and press our feet down to pull or push a tree half an hour a day.) The movements in the Taiji form are too complicate and too difficult to do. Each time we move our body is out of line. We try to remember the movements and forget to lift our head up and press our feet down. We end up not lifting up our head and pressing down our feet. So it is understandable why some people still cannot establish their central equilibrium after practicing Taijiquan for 20 or 30 years.

Once we have established our central equilibrium from doing these standing exercises, it will show up in our Taiji form and our skill will improve with our practice. Hope this explanation helps.