Sep 27 Tai Chi – Contagious via Touch

There are many contagious things in life, some are nasty things like Chicken pox and measles and some are slightly more pleasant, like laughter, harmony, happiness and even yawning if you particularly enjoy it. If you’d indulge me, I’d like add Tai Chi to the list, once you’ve contracted it, and I mean really contracted it, it’ll bury its way to the deepest recesses of your existence.

Recently I’ve had a few of conversations where people have asked for video clips showing what makes Tai Chi so special in my eyes and there have been more than a few frustrated responses when I’ve declined saying that there really isn’t any point. My reason for saying it’s pointless is that with Tai Chi it’s not what you see that’s important, it’s what you feel. I used to find this stance to be purposefully elusive and secretive, but it’s not, it’s just the truth. To ‘catch’ and understand it, you need to be ‘touched’ by it – and more importantly touched by someone who really has it. You can’t get it from a video clip, nor a webpage and most definitely not by reading a simple magazine article. Anything other than direct contact is like trying to catch Measles whilst watching it on T.V; it just isn’t going to happen. The other side to the story is that in order to ‘get it’ you have to be willing and open to actually ‘catch’ it in the first place.

The best way to describe it is to talk about how I ‘caught’ it, which was not done intentionally. At the time I was heavily into my ‘reality’ training and like many other Martial Artists working the Door at the time I was using the ‘fence’. I was interested in Steve’s concept of the ‘Wedge’ seeing how similar, at least I thought at the time, it was to what I was working on with the ‘fence’. I ended up discussing it with Steve via his internet forum and later privately via email. After a while, I came to the conclusion that we were talking about the same thing and I remarked to him that I thought he was arguing semantics and to which he politely said he wasn’t. This back and forth discussion continued and in the end Steve suggested that if I was really interested it might be worth my while booking a lesson so he could show me exactly what he was talking about, arguing that it was a very different approach that really needed to be felt in order to be understood. It sounded like a good idea, so I booked the day off work and popped over to Kent for the lesson.

If I’m honest I had my reservations. I’d been working the Doors for a few years, I’d used my ‘fence’ with a good degree of success and to be honest never really bought into the fantastic tales of Tai Chi ‘Masters’ who sent people flying with a mere flick of their wrists. My experience up until then was to the contrary, the few Tai Chi people who’d attended my seminars were the ones who bounced off the walls. But I’ve always tried to approach my training with an open heart and Steve had peaked my interest, so I was looking forward to the lesson whichever way it went, little did I know the impact that first lesson was going to have on my whole outlook on Martial Arts.

Steve was pleasant and welcoming when I met him. After exchanging pleasantries we got down to business and started to discuss the ‘fence’ and ‘wedge’. I showed Steve how I trained the idea, provided a few practical examples from the Door and Steve listened with interest. Once I’d finished buzzing all over the place (a characteristic of mine that Steve would eventually christen ‘fizzing’) I got about a two or three sentence explanation of the ‘Wedge’ and then was asked to throw an attack. I threw a punch and found myself skimming across the dojo floor, butt first. I looked up at Steve with a beaming smile and slightly confused eyes and just thought ‘damn that was cool!’

It’s tricky to explain what had happened. I hadn’t been hurt and I don’t really remember how Steve actually put me on floor all I knew was that I was sitting down and he was standing. That was the very instance I ‘caught’ Tai Chi. Admittedly it sounds fantastic but that’s exactly how I ‘received’ Tai Chi and I was immediately hooked. There is nothing Steve could have said to me, or a video he could have shown me that would of conveyed what it felt like to be so sat firmly, yet politely on my butt – and there is nothing that could prepare me for the insights into my entire life through the Tai Chi Steve would give me after that initial lesson. I’d immediately become a convert and I’m so grateful that I took the opportunity to actually experience Tai Chi first hand, otherwise I can easily see that I’d still be arguing that the ideas are just ‘semantics’.

I won’t say that my path into Tai Chi has been an easy one because when it takes a hold of you it’ll challenge everything you do. It grabs you both physically and mentally, forcing you to become aware of every dark little corner of your being, but the awareness although sometimes unpleasant, later become illuminating. I feel it was a life changing experience, I’m stronger, more confident and more aware than I ever have been in my life. Given the opportunity, Tai Chi will seep through your life lightening and freeing everything you allow it to touch, I suppose that will be the sticking point for many, actually allowing the process to happen. Steve often says that Tai Chi is about letting go, and you wouldn’t believe what an excruciatingly painful thing that can be – and something that I think many will find impossible.

In tandem with my Tai Chi studies I was also running my own club which involved a lot of heavy training; boxing, clinching, wrestling and groundwork. Gradually as the Tai Chi started to take a hold of me I began to loose faith in what I was teaching was the best way to produce the ‘goods’. I found that I was beginning to slip more and more Tai Chi into the classes, the trouble being that I was giving the guys the result without the means and this caused me to loose faith even more quickly.

For those reading my write up of the Jizerka 2008 week will probably have realised how deeply the experience affected me, returning to the UK I simply didn’t want to do anything apart from Tai Chi again. After discussing how I felt with Steve, he said in his usual direct manner, “Then you’re going to have to teach Tai Chi aren’t you?” and just like that we were now a Tai Chi school!

To my surprise, when I mentioned to the guys about the change over, all apart from one were absolutely ‘stoked’. They said that for ages they’d wanted to do Tai Chi because of the little bits and pieces I showed them and the tales of my great lessons with Steve. The exception, our resident Kick Boxing Champ Dave, bleated on to high heaven about just wanting to be a ‘fighter’ – arguing that he just didn’t want to do Tai Chi. After a lengthy discussion I convinced him to give it ago and finally the whole club was moving in the same direction. To give Dave credit, during the first lesson he was enthusiastic, but I still don’t think he was fully convinced. For the second lesson we were lucky enough to have Steve pop in to watch. After this experience Dave was buzzing, he’d ‘caught’ Tai Chi. What’s really funny about it is that Steve didn’t even lay a finger on Dave, instead Dave had been convinced by the ease Steve was throwing me round like a rag doll. Steve had given Tai Chi to Dave without even touching him and now only a couple of weeks later Dave is probably more of a fan than I am. In fact all of my guys, none of whom have ever done any traditional Martial Arts, are not only buzzing about their training, but actually saying how much stronger they are feeling because of it, that is the real effect of being touch by Tai Chi.

I think Steve was very deliberate in the way that he ‘gave’ me Tai Chi. By arranging a lesson we got round all of the ego issues of me trying to prove that my stuff was better. It would have been very easy for me to go into Steve and attempt to validate my argument and turn it into more of a challenge match. Luckily I’ve always been a bit of a floozy when it came to martial arts that worked, and don’t really have an ego attachment to my training, so I can drop old ideas fairly easily. Had I gone to challenge Steve I don’t think I’d have actually ‘caught’ Tai Chi as it is the difference in our initial debate that brought us together, and that difference was subtle but absolutely fundamental. It would have been so easy for me to just strike it off as getting my behind handed to me and miss the importance of the lesson. In this vein I think its also important to understand that ‘catching’ Tai Chi is also dependent on the spirit with which you approach it, I think some people will never get it no matter how hard they are bounced off the floor.

What I’m saying is that real Tai Chi is a totally tactile experience and it’s so easy to dismiss it as elusive esoteric nonsense, but it is only through direct experience that you’ll ever understand it. But it’s more than just that, it’s not just the touch that is important, it’s ‘catching’ Tai Chi that matters and letting it ‘infect’ you that’s important. Without allowing the infection to take hold, you’ll never get it.

Gavin King

Gavin King is a Shiatsu practitioner, writer and Martial Arts instructor from Essex in the United Kingdom. He runs a full time Martial Arts centre in Hockley, Essex teaching Tai Chi and Kung Fu. You can contact him via Facebook or Twitter!

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