The first video contain instruction similar to how this tai chi form is taught during my classes, the 2nd video is of all the movements joined together filmed from front and back to make it easier for you to learn.
21. Slanting Flying Posture - shift left, elbow in, turn on heal, step out left, watch low right hand22. Raising Hands Step up - right hand up, left hand down23. White Crane Spreads its Wing
Rotating the hips and turning your tail bone under can be best understood like this, stand with one leg in front of the other, make sure that your feet are shoulder width apart measured from front to back and side to side, shift your weight into your front leg. The front leg is bent at the knee and back leg is straight, this stance is called pilar and post, in the same way that a post is braced at a farm gate, your bent leg is the post and diagonal leg the pillar (brace). Article Continued Below
While in this stance turn your tail bone under pushing it forward, you do this by tightening your lower pelvic floor muscles (lower abdominal), this makes the inside of your buttocks cheeks rotate in and press forward. Do this without lowering your buttocks as if you are sitting down, instead you will have a pushing forward and up feeling. Keep this as relaxed as possible and don’t over push. To check if you have done it correctly try to rotate your lower spine separate from your hips, try this while you are holding this posture and also when you release it. When released the spine and hips can rotate separately, when the posture is engaged the hips and spine can only move as one. The 2nd check is to let the posture out and notice how you can shift your knee over your front toe, now rotate your tail bone up and under as above and then try to shift your knee over your toe, if done correctly it will be impossible for your knee to overextend.
Once your hips have been rotated under in the correct manner you will notice some effects on body mechanics. The first will be that your point of balance will change, to understand this you must think of your body and its relationship to gravity. The pull of gravity wants your body to be flat on the ground, this pull is happening all the time and the very act of standing up is fighting against it. All points on your body are being pulled downwards; this also goes for your opponent’s body whose balance you can come to understand through pushing hands practice.
If you hold one arm out to the side of your body you can imagine imaginary weights hanging from it, at any point parallel to the ground gravity is pulling down. Understanding this we need to adjust our centre of balance in tai chi so that it is always in-between our feet as they are our point of contact with the ground. Normally for most of us our buttocks is backwards creating an unstable balance point. Rotating our hips turns our buttocks under shifting our centre of balance forward and between our feet, this makes us more stable regardless of our posture and also makes it easier to sink our weight down. Article Continued Next Lesson
© Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved
This article was written by Stephen Procter, instructor from Tai Chi Health for Life, Australian College of Tai Chi & Qi Gong and Meditation Instructor from Meditation in the Shire, Kirrawee NSW, Australia. If you wish to post this article on another website or in a publication please respect the author and reference / link back to this website, thank you
