Emphasizing Yinning & Yanning

At a recent T’ai Chi Chih retreat I attended, I noticed that the attendees, both teachers and students, were not performing the necessary yinning and yanning correctly. Therefore, I suggest that teachers do the following:

Tell students that TCC is performed primarily below the waist. Practically all beginning students concentrate on what their arms and hands are doing. Once they have learned how to flow softly, attention should be paid to shifting their weight to bent knees, while stiffening the other leg at the same time. The shifting of the weight is one of the most important points of TCC.

Another point to make has to do with spreading the fingers: students should not press their fingers together.

In Carry the Ball to the Side and several other movements, the emphasis is on the wrists and fingers, which are very loose. It is a wrist and finger movement, not a rigid arm movement.

These are just a few of the important points that must be emphasized with beginning students. They are also good for teachers to know for their own practice.

Good teachers make these points very early in the game. It is necessary that the students are taught the above very quickly.