The Effort of No Effort in Perpetual Motion Taffy

While Perpetual Motion Taffy has become a favorite movement, it was one of the last T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) movements to fall securely and comfortably into place for me. For many years, it was challenging and uncomfortable; I felt wobbly, off balance, leaning to finish each weight shift, with my timing off. I eventually asked my body: What’s the problem here? 

Examining the “flow from the center” principle, I discovered that I was not completing my weight shifts. So, I focused on what I was feeling: the inability to gracefully and effortlessly lift the opposite foot without compromising my posture (alignment).

I then asked myself to examine and compare what I felt (or how I moved) in Carry the Ball to the Side or in Passing Clouds. I observed that the transitions (reversals in direction) in Perpetual Motion Taffy were causing me to stop short in my weight shift — of finishing my knee bend — thus preventing my pelvis from gliding all the way over until situated solidly over the weight-bearing foot. As a result, at the end of the waist turn, I was attempting to complete the weight shift with my shoulders, causing my body to lean to the side. (This is taboo in TCC; Justin taught that the movements are done “from the waist down.”)

Since coming into this awareness, I’ve been carefully watching my students for this, and have observed the same symptoms in many. I help students correct this by bringing their awareness to feeling their lower body. To become conscious, at the end of the weight shift and waist turn, of the knee continuing to soften (and move out to the side), and of the hip coming all the way to the side until they feel the pelvic girdle resting directly over the foot (without letting the hip protrude to the side).

At the same time that the weight shift and waist turn is completing, the taffy pull with the hands has already begun to transition to the reverse position. Only when having reached the reversed position of the hands, does the unweighted foot lift gracefully off the ground. If the weight has been committed, solidly and fully, to the weight-bearing foot, one will find that the unweighted foot can easily be picked up, slightly, by gently lifting the knee.

In working this way, my heels gradually became situated a bit closer together. I was placing the heel too far out to the side in the first place, making a graceful and complete weight shift impossible, and disrupting the continuity and flow of the transitions.

I also discovered that if one is certain, in preparing the movement initially, to turn the pelvis to the opposite side (to the side of the weight bearing foot), and then hold that turn while the opposite heel is placed to the side, it is impossible to set the foot too far out to the side. That error can only happen if we allow the turn of the waist to (incorrectly) release as we set out the heel, or if we allow the pelvis to move from its position over the weight-bearing foot a bit out to the side, following the foot as it is set out (thereby placing the foot out with the weight of the body already partially on it). 

It is key when setting up the movement that the heel is always placed last, with almost no weight on it.

While we don’t want our minds too wrapped up in body mechanics, we must be aware of what the body is doing in order to flow from the center. When we feel that, everything else falls into place; the movement flows gracefully and effortlessly. Awareness is the root of TCC.

I would be remiss not to reiterate key reminders from Justin Stone (in my own words): 

• Sink low to begin and stay down throughout the movement, so as to get an alternating knee bend (but not so low as to cause undue knee discomfort). 
• Start each taffy pull with a good amount of overlap of the arms so as to initiate a long taffy pull of the hands.
• The most important part of the movement is feeling the polarity between the palms as they pass (over and under one another) in the middle of the weight shift. 
• Feel the palm down hand as the substantial hand at the end of every weight shift. (The palm up hand is insubstantial.)

I now find Perpetual Motion Taffy a beautifully flowing, elegant, and powerful movement. But it took some effort to get to “the effort of no effort.”