Being Song (loosely: relax) is the first gate into the world of Tai Chi. 祝大彤 Zhu Datong, a student of the famous Yang Yuting and Wu Tunan, wrote in his book 太極內功解秘 “Tai Chi Nei Gong Secrets) that Song / Soft is the first stage, followed by 空 Empty, and then 無 Nothing. In this post, I will talk about Song a little.
Master Zhu says, to practice Song, is to change your original body: you must open up your joints, from the 9 major joints of your body, to all the little joints in the fingers and toes. With correct and prolonged practices, your joints open up as in a pipe (also see previous post on “Fascia, the Qi substrate”). Your muscles and skin must also be relaxed and cannot be stiff or tight. As the Tai Chi manuals say, to relax, start from the hair to the skin, then to the muscle, tendons, to the bones, and then from the bones, tendons, muscles, skin back out to the hair again. When your whole body is Song, your hair may stand on their ends even during the hot Summer. When you are Song, you can neutralize all the attacks… When you are Song, then you are ready to enter the next stage of “Understanding Jin.” (*)
In most classes, students are often told to relax their shoulders. While correct, as the shoulders are probably the most difficult part to relax, master Zhu says that one should relax the feet, the legs, and work the way up to the shoulders. If one relaxes the shoulders first, then the shoulders are “mobile,” but not truly Song
(*) Subject of yet another post (they sure pile up…).
Opening the joints is key. It strikes me as an iterative process relax/Song allows you to open the joints, opening the joints allows ou to be more relaxed/Song.