Honor The Stillness (November 2021)

Reprinted from August 2008, at Sandy’s request

T’ai Chi Chih’s uniqueness and power comes from its combination of movement and stillness. Repetitions of a movement followed by stillness set TCC apart from other forms.

The ultimate goal of TCC practice is to balance our life force or Chi. The concept of balance is played out in several ways in our practice. One’s physical balance may improve through regular practice. Most movements are balanced by performing them on the left and then on the right. A most important concept to embrace is that the moving part of TCC is balanced with stillness. Movement and stillness are intertwined and dependent on one another in TCC; without the stillness TCC is diminished.

When teaching TCC it is important to impress upon the student the value of stillness –resting between movements. As we move, the Chi is stimulated and circulates through the body. As it circulates the two aspects of Chi, the yin Chi and yang Chi, separate. In concluding a set of repetitions of a movement, we come into the rest position. While in this stillness the two aspects of Chi blend back together.

It is like the process of making bread. Kneading and working the dough is equivalent to circulating the Chi in our practice during our movements. With each repetition we knead and work and move the Chi. When the dough sits to rise, that is akin to us resting in stillness during our graceful conclusion at the end of each movement. As the dough sits, a chemical interaction takes place in that stillness, and the dough rises. As we come into stillness, the flow of Chi settles down, and the yin Chi and yang Chi reintegrate. Without the rest or stillness between movements our TCC practice would fall flat.

As we are fully present with our movements, so we are fully present with the stillness. “Holding fast and letting go” are words from a meditation Justin Stone teaches, and they can be applied to the stillness in TCC practice. The stillness is solid, spacious, palpable, empty, and freeing. Freeing from thought of past and future. And when the fully present, empty feeling of stillness is grasped, and held fast long enough to feel to the core of one’s being, then it is time to let go. Release the stillness and move again.

Only by honoring the stillness, by giving it our full attention, being patient to linger in its fullness, can we plumb the depths of TCC.