Photo: Girl performing Ba Gua Palms at Wudang Mountain
Some people’s Tai Chi is full of grace, like dancing, however fragile, with shaky or floating legs. They look like the injured swan from the ballet. The Chinese would say: ”your form looks beautiful, but it is empty”, in other words: it lacks grounding, root and power. At the other extreme, you can see people who look forceful, aggressive, ego-driven and somehow un-refined. Tai Chi shows a person’s spirit. I would watch a person performing Tai Chi and have a feeling about the person from their form.
The beauty we can see in the Tai Chi form is the beauty of the spirit of the person performing it; a free, pure and concentrated mind radiates through the physical body; the mind and the body become unified. Tai Chi’s beauty is also in being “the way of nature”: it reminds me of the purity in nature, of simply being. Of clouds passing in the sky; of a great river flowing to the ocean. Such a sophisticated art in the simplest expression of form!
Yes I agree with you dear DAN.
ReplyDeleteI am so happy I manage to hear about you after 31 years from our graduation.
Even I do not know too many things - I would want to know more-about Tai Chi, looking on the blog and watching the movie I found that indeed "the beauty we can see in its form is the beauty of the spirit of the person performing it". The beauty and purity seems to be so natural and we can learn so many things from nature and from othe people that had found their strenghts and harmony based on Tai Chi and other spiritual ways of personal development !!!
It's my first time on your blog but I entered in peace, having in my memory one of my darling colegue during our university. Now I will leave in peache wishing you the best !
Kind regards,
Marta-Christina