Master Tse’s Taijifist #20

Up and Down Movements are Continuous, Internal and External Movements are Related上下相隨，內外相合

Chen Xin陳鑫 continues to describe Taijiquan, “Up and down movements are continuous. Internal and external movements are related.” This describes how we should practice Taijiquan. Taiji means one (one thing), inside this one are two opposing energies. Up and down are opposite, internal and external are also opposite so we have Yin and also Yang. In a Taijiquan form we can see high positions and also very low positions. We also have medium high or medium low positions. This also follows the Taijiquan principles, if we have high positions we must have low positions as this is balance. So you can see we do not practise Taijiquan on one level, the position and height should change.

In every movement we should also see the external body move, for example the arms and legs moving forwards and backwards, but these movements are not just limited to what we see, they also move internally. Again this is the principle of Taijiquan. Moving internally will enable us to develop Qi and this will help to make us healthy and strong. So we must not move just externally, we must move from the inside out, internally as this is Taijiquan.

Michael Tse