Why Tai Chi Increases Your Ability To Defend Yourself

I have heard arguments in the past that Tai Chi isn’t a very effective fighting art. To be honest with you the first time I tried learning Tai Chi was 20 years ago. The first few years of my Kung Fu training I avoided learning Tai Chi it was to slow and to much remember. My A.D.D. kicked in big time. It wasn’t till I was training for about 8 years that I felt like I couldn’t increase my skill anymore.

In fact I was spiralling into deep depression. Interestingly enough it wasn’t because I was losing to my opponents when I sparred or lost my to my Chi Sao partners.  I was getting depressed because I felt like I had to use muscle to win.

Anyone who understands internal martial arts understands that skill trumps muscle every time. So as you can imagine not being able to stop using my muscle was really beginning to piss me off. Notice I used the phrase “piss me off”. What I didn’t know at the time was that even getting angry caused me to muscle. It was terrible actually constantly forcing , muscling and straining and not being able to control it.

Like the majority of people in the martial arts community when I first tried learning Tai Chi I didn’t see how it could help my fighting ability.

Even still, eventually I got to a point in my training where enough was enough, either I was going to get this or I was just going to give up. I am not a quitter so I persevered.

It took me a full year to learn the entire Yang Style Tai Chi Form and it took me another year of corrections to start actually looking like I could do the form with some level of competency.

At first by the 3rd year I was just doing the form. One day I was doing my form. Nothing special I wasn’t focused on anything. I was just relaxing my mind and body and feeling the energy flowing from movement to movement.

I closed my form, and decided I was going to do one more time. It usually takes me 10 to 15 minutes to go through the whole form depending on the speed I decide to move at.

Well I did the opening part of the form and stopped. I stopped in the first position because something strange was happening to me. I felt my heart pulsing in my wrist, inner thighs and ankles…

As I stood there rooted to the ground I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want the feeling to go away. After some time of just standing their letting the sensation take over my body I moved to the next position. Again for the first time in my entire life I felt every joint move together in unison. Unlike anything I have ever experienced before. I had thought I knew what it meant to be connected..

But for the first time I REALLY knew what it meant to be connected. I felt every fiber of my body move, every ligament, every tendon, everything! I literally felt everything move together.

I stopped instantly doing what I was doing. I started hitting my muk jong as well as doing my other martial art forms.. Everything connected. I couldn’t believe how it felt.

The next day I went to a hands class. This is a class where we would spar and play chi sao to test our progression against real resistance. Over night my skill felt like it jumped up 90%. Everyone I touched hands with was shocked, including myself.

That was many moons ago when that experience happened to me. But it was a life changing experiences. One of those times when Change really does happen in an instant. It wasn’t because of the push ups or sit ups or sparring that increased my martial arts ability.

It was actually letting go of myself, my ego and my pride and allowing my body to take over. I suppose you could say once I let nature take it’s course, I finally got on course.

Just something to think about….

If you study any form of martial arts and you are not incorporating internal martial arts into your training you are only getting half of what you need to improve your skill.

It’s true to use Tai Chi by itself to learn self defense can take years of training. You can learn decent self defense quicker by learning something like Wing Chun, Jujitsu or even boxing. The reason is because in the beginning it’s easier to learn how to punch, kick & wrestle than it is to learn patience and calmness. It takes many years of training to become an effective internal martial artist.

On the flip side of that though, including internal martial arts into your training will increase your skill dramatically almost overnight. The reason is because softness will always beat hardness……

It is better to yield than it is to force. Understanding the balance between hard and soft is the key to unlocking amazing martial arts potential…………