Principle's Principle!

[Path to Mastery 3/5/10 – Wk25 D5 (Str 9.12.09)(Ph2 11.15.09)]

Continuing our Tai-Chi Journey:

So starting today, I will begin our journey on the Tai-Chi principle governing the area of Alignment in our system.

Alignment governs the principles regarding posture.

I will first outline the Alignment Principles below.  These may sound weird.  These are transliterated as much as possible, because in my experience interpretation always leaves out too much information.  Transliteration may not sound pretty, but you will get a better feel of the thinking behind it.  Each word is a Chinese character.  In case I needed to use more words to translate the character, I used colon signs.  In case different words could be used to translate, I put the implied meaning in parenthesis.  This means the Chinese character has both meanings. 

Principles Governing Upper Body:

1.    Empty Spirit Summit Strong

2.    Tail Bone centered and up right

3.    Contain Chest Raise Back

4.    Settle Shoulders Drop Elbow

5.    Squat (settle) wrist open (extend) fingers

Principles Governing Lower Body:

6.    Chi at Dan-Tien

7.    Relax Waist and Squat Crotch

8.    Round Crotch and bend Knee

9.    Insubstantial Substantial Distinguish Clearly

10.    Foot Palm Paste(Stick) Earth

Principle Governing the Whole Body:

1.    Body Body Center Upright

Hope you enjoyed these names!

Now before we dive into these, I need to mention that there is one principle that governs all of these principles.  It is the foundation cornerstone that governs all of the principles.

This principle says:

Shen Yi Chi Xue Li  (Sprint Mind Energy Blood Strength(Muscle))

According to this principles, the spirit leads the mind, the mind leads the energy, the energy leads the blood, and the blood leads the muscles.

For practical purposes, the key thing to remember here for our study is Yi Chi Li.

This basically says that you should use the mind to lead the energy, and then the energy will lead the body.  In short, these principles have little to do with your body.  All the alignment needs to happen in your mind first before the body even moves.

Starting tomorrow, I will show how the principle of Yi Chi Li applies to all these principles.  As we move on in our journey, it’s going to become clearer and clearer.

History of Tai-Chi Journey up to this point:

Before the blog opened to the public, we covered the single person part of the system.

1. Qi-Gong (Taoist Longevity, White Crane Qi-Gong)

2. Standing Meditation

3. Stepping Meditation

4. 7 Basics

5. Basic Form

6. 30 Form

7. 108 Form

Interactive training after we went public with the blog.

1. 8 Type Pushing Hands (Covered from 2/2 ~ 2/11)

2. San-Shou (Covered from 2/12 ~ 2/15)

3. Ba-Gua.(Covering from 2/16 ~ 2/19)

4. Weapons (Covered on 2/23)

5. Healing System (Covered on 2/24)

Non-Structured System:

6. Introduction (Covered 2/25)

7. Free moving – conditioning (Covered 2/26)

8. Free hand pushing hand (Covered 3/1)

9. Free hand (2 person drills and multiple person drills) (Covered 3/2)

10. Free hand weapon (2 person drills and multiple person drills) (Covered 3/3)

Detailed Instructions:

1. Principles (Covered 3/4)

2. Principle of Principles (Covered today)