Tai Chi students are endlessly told to relax. “Relax your arms”, or “relax your back”, even “relax your entire body”. Unsurprisingly, this can soon start to grate if you haven’t been practising long. “I am relaxed” you say to yourself, yet over and over you are continually told that you need to be even more relaxed.
The issue here is that a teacher’s idea of what it means to be relaxed and a student’s are often different, and often radically so. People equate being “relaxed” with lying down, or loafing on their sofa watching TV. That isn’t what the teacher means.
Let’s think about it: “relax” comes from “re-lax”, or to make lax again. What does “lax” mean? Well, for our purposes, it means loose or slack, or to look at it in the negative, not tense or rigid. When you’re asked to relax by a teacher, you’re being asked to let go of tension and rigidity, and become loose and flexible again. Many times when somebody comes to Tai Chi practice for the first time, they carry tension in some part or parts of their body without realising it. They don’t realise that it’s a problem, but it’s so tiring to be tense all the time, and it’s bad for their health. This tension is revealed to them through ongoing practice, and they gradually become looser; they become “relaxed”. We often find in Daoist and Tai Chi literature a comparison to children, who are naturally very limber, soft and loose. This is a state we usually lose as we grow up, and particularly as we grow old. Tai Chi says we can initiate a return towards this state.
So, what can you do when practising and you are told for the hundredth time to “relax”? Scan your body, slowly, carefully, diligently, and ask yourself: where am I holding tension? Can I hold this position using less effort? Now even less? Is there tension somewhere else that is preventing me from relaxing in this part of my body? Investigate! You must come to know your body well.
As an aside, not all Tai Chi students are too tense. Some are in fact too relaxed. How can this be? In this case, they are like a building that is on the brink of collapsing – it’s standing, but only just. Their posture is weak, and they can’t withstand or absorb any pressure or force, nor can they hold their posture and control how they redirect force. These students actually need to use more strength, but this needs to be “correct” strength, as is trained in Tai Chi.
In conclusion, you are not asked to become limp and useless during Tai Chi practice. This is important. You are being asked to give up all unnecessary effort and allow yourself to move naturally, which turns out to be quite tricky. Tai Chi was conceived first and foremost as a martial art, so clearly it would have been counter-productive to turn students into feeble weaklings. Relax your outer strength first, then start to learn refined strength from the inside.
