Levels of achievement in Yang Family Tai Chi Chuan

Good afternoon. I want to talk a little bit about achievement of skill or gong in Yang family Tai Chi Chuan. Um in Tai Chi Chuan in general, if you go through the Song Shu Ming lineage, he talks about levels and goes through explaining different levels. The levels we're going to talk about here were adopted from Song Shu Ming by Cheng Man Ching. And um you'll also find these in different orders if you go back historically, but essentially breaking achievement into heaven, man, earth with heaven being the highest achievement and earth being the lowest achievement.

So, within that, one of the most important achievements in the art of Tai Chi Chuan is what's called Bu Dui Bu Ding, which I apologize for my pronunciation, but it it translates to uh Bu Dui is like do not separate or retreat away from something. Bu Ding is to not stay fixed, so not to like resist something that's applying force on you. You don't try to like just stay fixed. And um but what Bu Dui Bu Ding really is is an achievement where your control of your subconscious is such that you don't engage tendons.

You actively control what is released and when. So, the first achievement of Bu Dui Bu Ding, which Dr. Tao would translate as don't insist, don't resist, is in the arms. That achievement develops via standing training. By a sincere and consistent standing training. And like doing longer periods of time in the beginning. You want to fatigue your mind and body to where it collapses into its near center so that you can actually find the center.

Um The second level of achievement is in the legs. So, when someone pushes or do you push back with your legs? Do you brace? Or you just stand on your legs and they're loose? Right, when people are pushing on me, I'll often wiggle my legs to show them I'm not bracing. The second I brace, my tendons engage and they can get to my feet and I will slide on the ground. Absolutely at the very minimal. The third level is Bu Dui Bu Ding in the spine.

So, when someone pushes on your spine, do you collapse or do you try to hold it firm and resist? Now, all of these things are reliant on your control of your mental activity relative to the areas being released or the Dantian you're working with. So, you have to learn to feel these things and control them actively. And when you do, that's when you'll start to see that you don't need strength. Um your body actually is a kinetic playground and essentially when people put force on it, you just reroute their force and direct it back at them.

And you can add to it, also, but that's essentially what we're doing. But if I resist, I engage those tendons, the joints close, and there's no buffer system. You know, every time you throw a punch or a block or a diversion, whatever you want to label these things as, you have the force that you're expressing outward, and then you have the resisting force of the object that you hit, based on its mass and momentums and yeah, all these things will basically cause a re- a reactive force to come back at you and destabilize you.

But when your joints are open, you don't get the reactive force. You don't get the recoil. You just transfer the energy. You really should try to experience this level because once you get through those levels of training, you're going to find that the thing that they are always pushing on is your pride.

>> When you figure that out, you'll grow. Thanks for your time. And I hope you have a great day.