Recently, the question of “should I rotate my spine in Tai Chi” has come up frequently and led to a lot of confusion with some of our students. We are told to maintain the “Four Points” - a sort of internal frame that runs between the shoulders and the hips, forming a box that keeps the spine from rotating or side bending while you practice Tai Chi. Some people hear this rule and think, “
The meaning of relaxation in a Tai Chi context is often confused with the same kind of limp, collapsed, let-go feeling you get from flopping on to the couch after a long day. In fact, there’s a very different sense of “song” or relaxation in Tai Chi, which is at once easy and loose, but also energized and alert. In his translator’s introduction to Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan, Louis Swaim nails the nuance of the concept.
Every six months or so, one of our Senior Instructors at Brookline Tai Chi tells me that he’s had an amazing revelation about how to do the kwa squat. The kwa squat is one of the very first things we teach, he’s been doing Tai Chi for 40 years, and he gets new insight into it all the time. Amazing, right? Tai Chi and Back Pain One of the reasons we get so interested in this exercise is its power to relieve pressure on the spine and open up important joints of the body.
In this “office hours” post, Nate asked me about kwa work in Tai Chi. Specifically, we were looking at movements where you squat in a front stance. The question is figuring out how low to go and why. In Tai Chi, you use your kwa to control your movements. At first, think of your kwa as simply the fold in your hip joint. In the following video, though, I explain how your understanding, and use, of the kwa changes as you learn to work deeper into the body.
