All That Looks Easy — Ain’t

One of the common statement that I used to hear during my demo classes was that Tai Chi looked very easy and non-rigorous. And immediately, on the heels of this was the question — “How would it help in achieving fitness?” These, btw, would be from my young students. The older students would get happy with the seemingly non-rigorous, uncomplicated steps of the ‘exercise’.

As a newly trained teacher, I would verbally try and clarify this notion of it being easy. I would educate them on how even a millimetre mattered and how it was difficult, at least initially, to try and relax the various body parts. But they would just scoff at my words.

So later, taking a page off my sir’s technique of teaching, I stopped trying to verbally correct them and let them experience it all on their own. And Boy! Were those first classes enlightening or what! As I keep expounding, the correct distance between the feet, the conscious relaxation of the shoulders, the unlocking of the knee joints, the body awareness needed to move only at the necessary joint and not the other parts, the breathing technique, the position of the arms, all these matter in order to achieve the maximum benefits of Tai Chi forms.

In fact, as a self-defence art, the rooting of the feet is important in order to hold oneself steady during an attack. Even the art of being alert while keeping the body relaxed and not tense is a necessary lesson learnt in Tai chi. And both of these are achieved with the correct positioning of the feet. Even a millimetre here or there and the body disbalances and the battle is lost even before the first move is made.

And so, as I teach my students their very first lesson — finding their perfect feet distance, I have seen their faces change from that of smirk that comes from the thought that it would be a cakewalk, to an intense concentration as they search for that perfect distance, to finally the wonderment on finding their perfection.

And always, without fail, at that moment, they take back their words and exclaim — “O Boy! I never realised it’s this hard!”