Words & The Long & Short Of TCC

Some years ago at a health symposium, I was able to speak with a doctor following his talk on joint and bone health. At that time, I was intrigued by Justin Stone’s words, “the waist turns and the hips swivel” in the side-to-side movements. So I asked this medical doctor whether a male and female would feel this differently. He replied that men and women’s joints are constructed very differently in the pelvic area, so that men and women would not feel pelvic “turn and swivel” in the same way.

This behooved me to explore how different body types might also feel the movements in their own way. A short and stout person and a tall and lanky person must each adjust their size of step and depth of sinking down according to their body type and to what feels comfortable (hence allowing “the effort of no effort”).

In the New Mexico T’ai Chi Chih News (January 2009), Justin emphasizes the importance of yinning and yanging. He describes the weight as being “completely shifted” only in the forward and backward movements. He stated that in side-to-side movements “weight is transferred, but not drastically. That is not possible.”

How could this be? I had always strived to convey in my teaching the need to complete the weight shift in side-to-side movements. Since then, I have gradually learned that, as a very tall person, I need to be conscious of not over-extending my leg out to the side when I place the heel – to do so causes stiffness in the joints and restricts what I feel as the waist turns and hips swivel. In fact, a slightly more relaxed stance (feet not so wide apart) feels softer and more fluid, and avoids focusing so much on a one hundred percent weight shift. But significantly less tall teachers and students seem not to have this issue. The leg seems to indeed straighten more, while I feel some slack in the unweighted leg when my weight shift has finished to the side.

Justin also was a quite tall person. I was always impressed by how explicitly the forward and back weight shift was expressed as he moved, and also by how soft and fluid his pelvic area was while moving side-to-side. Perhaps these thoughts will open up some new explorations in your practice.