Walk the Line: On Structure, Balance, and the First Twelve Principles
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
“不偏不倚 Bu Pian Bu Yi” - Part two
WEN-WU FIELD NOTES
Issue 5
by Prof. Dr. Dan Vercammen
In my previous post, I introduced you to the twenty-two principles of Yang Style taijiquan. Now we’ll look into the actual meaning of the first twelve principles, and in the third part we’ll be looking into the second part of the principles and also investigate how the “bu pian bu yi” principle fits in.
Let me remind you that we apply these and other principles in our own practice and explain them in our online and live courses.
The first principle: Empty the neck and push the energy up
This is what I call a yinyang principle, meaning that the two actions are mutually interdependent (they can’t do without one another). Without relaxing the neck muscles, the rising energy is blocked and can’t reach the crown of the head, and without elongating the back of the neck, relaxing the front causes this area to collapse.
The idea is to create space in your entire backbone, and this principle takes care of the upper end, whereas the 7th and 8th principles take care of the lower end.
The second principle: Keep your eyes focused
When practicing, many people don’t focus and their eyes look all over the place. This indicates that the person is thinking and is not paying attention to what is going on inside the body, where the energies are going, and what the practitioner is doing to the (imaginary or real) opponent.
It’s what we call “empty form,” and it is a serious problem.
Focus, focus, focus!
The third principle: Contain the chest and elongate the back
Another yinyang principle. You can’t elongate your back if you don’t relax your chest. However, containing the chest doesn’t mean it collapses: it doesn’t stick forward but is not tense.
The elongating of the back supports the first and 7th and 8th principles. Making the back as long as possible creates room for movement in the back and prevents back issues.
Don’t use force to do this. Try to drop the basin and keep the crown high, and the backbone will become longer.
I learned to apply this in the right way in China in 1985, and after a few months of practicing I was three centimeters taller than before I left for China.
The fourth principle: Let the shoulders sink and drop the elbows
Also a yinyang principle: pulling up the shoulders raises the elbows and vice versa.
This principle is important for enabling the third principle and for giving room to the lungs and your breathing. Without this you can’t create abdominal breathing and let the qi move freely. It is therefore supporting the 15th principle.
Not many practitioners understand this, and not dropping elbows and shoulders is a common error in taijiquan practice.
The fifth principle: Bend the wrists and extend the fingers
There are very few instances in taijiquan when the wrists are not bent; in fact, they move and turn all the time, following the rest of the body’s movements.
Be careful not to bend them too much, as this causes too much tension in the hands and arms and causes blockage of qi and energies.
Extending the fingers doesn’t mean that you should stretch them to the extreme, but you do need some tension to elongate them and create action in the entire hand.
Try to create space from within the joints, not by stretching your finger muscles forcefully.
The sixth principle: The body is centered and upright
Keep the basin in a central position and upright, and this will help with the relaxation of the chest region, the sinking of the breath, the grounding of your feet, and the rising and descending of the energies.
Don’t collapse!
The seventh principle: Keep weilü tucked in
Weilü refers to the lower part of your back. In neidan (Taoist alchemy), it is called a “pass,” an important area through which the refined qi needs to rise (the term has a mythological and cosmological origin; more information in our courses on the Taoist body).
Make sure that your basin can drop by never stretching your legs and bending your groin, and keep your sacrum perpendicular to the floor.
In that way you keep the lower end of your backbone under control and can elongate your back.
The eighth principle: Loosen the yao and kua
Again a yinyang principle: you cannot loosen the one without the other.
What is yao? It’s the part of your body below the ribs and above the legs — roughly the belly, abdomen, and lower back (often interpreted as the waist). Kua refers to the hips and groin.
The 7th principle demands the tucking in of the weilü, but this is not by force but by a relaxed hanging.
It is as if the crown of your head is suspended from the sky and your backbone is a plumb line, with the basin being the plumb bob.
To achieve this you need to bend the knees and “fold” the groin. We call this action “sinking.”
The ninth principle: The knees seem loosened but aren’t
In order to enable the 8th principle, you need to bend the knees.
Relax them to do this, but take care not to collapse (you see many taijiquan practitioners collapsing the knees, i.e. they drop inward, which causes knee and other leg-related issues).
Also don’t push your knees out. Keep hips, knees, and feet aligned.
The tenth principle: The soles of the feet stick to the floor
If you perform the previous four principles correctly, your feet should stick to the floor.
However, this only applies in standing, not in moving. Moving about should be light yet balanced, but as soon as you touch the floor after moving, you should be sunken.
Keep your feet relaxed so that they can touch as much of the floor as possible.
Be like a gecko, if you like.
The eleventh principle: Clearly distinguish empty and full
In taijiquan terminology, empty and full refer to several things.
The best known is the reference to weight. Full is carrying weight and empty is without weight.
But there is no yin without yang and therefore nothing can be completely empty, and complete fullness doesn’t exist.
So, one leg can have more weight than the other and therefore be fuller.
Even in a so-called “empty stance” (like dingbu or nail stance in taijiquan, where most of the weight is on the hind leg and only the weight of the front leg rests on the middle toe of the front leg), the “empty” leg is not really empty.
Double weightiness (shuang zhong) is considered an error in the practice of taijiquan.
You are double weighted when both legs in bow (gongbu), seven-stars (qixingbu), and nail (dingbu) stances carry equal weight.
Equal weight is normal in a figure-of-eight stance (babu) and a horse stance (mabu), but these are not much used in Yang Style taijiquan.
Empty and full also refer to “in use” (full) and “at rest” (empty).
The twelfth principle: Above and below follow each other, consistent all over the body
(As soon as you move, there is no place where you don’t move, and as soon as you rest, there is no place that doesn’t rest.)
This is what differentiates taijiquan from many other martial arts.
Start moving and everything moves at the same time. Everything starts to move at the same time and stops moving at the same time.
Unfortunately, this is one of the principles that is least understood, and so we see so-called masters move their arms and legs a lot while the rest of the body doesn’t move in co-ordination.
The main reasons for this problem are not understanding the workings of the body and the inability to experience the dantian and move from the yao.
In the next post, we’ll interpret the rest of the principles.
To be continued ...
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