Tai Chi Practice: Holding Postures-- March 2008

For each and every posture, concentrate your mind and consider the meaning.You will not get it without consciously expending a great deal of time and effort.” So says an ancient tai chi classic, Song of the 13 Postures. Here is a different dimension that most students who practice a tai chi form as continuous movement don’t take time to do. But, says BTC director Dan Kleiman, “You’ll get a much higher rate of return on the time you invest in tai chi if you make holding postures another element in your routine.” BTC Short Form instructor Derek Fulker compares postures(16 in the Short Form, 108 in the Long Form) to gates on a slalom ski course. “No matter how gracefully you go down the slope, or with how much agility and speed, you still have to go around each gate.” This sophisticated, advanced method is the focus of a weekend workshop May 3-4 , the culmination of the Wu tai chi immersion week, co-taught by three senior instructors. The idea is to take any posture—Single Whip, Ji, Crane Spreads Wings, or Needle at the Sea Bottom, for
instance—and stand in it for, say, 15, 20, even 30 minutes.

The exercise may sound tiring, even daunting. But without the external movements you find a clearer sense of your internal alignments, and you dissolve areas of discomfort from the inside. This practice allows you to stretch the body out and deeply relax. The standing postures then become a reference point for the moving practice. When you link posture to posture in the tai chi form, your body remembers the deep relaxation and openness it found in each posture and these feelings begin to permeate the entire sequence. “Our students already take a long-term view to wellness,” says Dan Kleiman. “This is one more slow practice that you trust to have eventual big rewards.”