Tai Chi PENG Root Power Rising by Scott Meredith

Author:Scott Meredith [Meredith, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-03-03T23:00:00+00:00

Figure 12: Raise Arms

Wardoff

掤 (péng) Resting

Now we move to a different class of pose. The first example is Wardoff (the Chinese name is peng, a terminology coincidence that has given rise to the misunderstanding about PENG energy that I discussed earlier). This is an example of the front-weighted 70/30 weight distribution, the most common type of pose in the ZMQ37 system, and the most difficult to understand.

Figure 13: Wardoff

Before I get to the subtleties of weight distribution, I’ll cover a few basic physical points. First is front knee over toe. This refers to the front leg. The knee is aligned directly over the front toe. Not to exceed it going forward, nor to the rear. Neither to left nor right. Then, the waist is kept strictly facing forward, you can think of it as navel facing front. The waist does not angle to the open side as in the front stance of many other styles. The inguinal crease is bent, to keep the front thigh, if not actually quite parallel to the floor, then at least “seeking parallelism”. It’s like sitting in a folding chair – body upright, legs well bent. The rear foot is flat and the rear knee bends gently in natural conformance with the low height requirement.

The key thing is the relative weighting between front and rear legs. The several back weighted postures above are fundamentally Zero, in that the weak leg bears no weight at all in the most basic style of those poses. However, I also introduced the Resting mode as an alternative practice for those poses. That meant the leg bore only its own weight. This wasn’t so terribly hard to understand for the back weighted poses already given. Now we apply the Resting concept to this front-weighted pose, Wardoff, where it seems a bit trickier at first.

This kind of posture almost invites double weighting. It’s certainly very difficult to get 100% of our weight onto the front leg without leaning the upper body, but we don’t need to get 100% to the front, only 70%. But we need to be really strict about that 70%. It’s easy to fool ourselves with this one, and become subtly double-weighted. Practice feeling the strength of your forward leg and the relative ease of the rear leg. Or even try imagining that, due to a cactus spine under your rear foot, you don’t dare to put any more weight on it than strictly necessary. I will discuss further technical details relating to the 70/30 weight distribution in the next section.

Single Whip

單鞭 (dānbiān) Resting

Single Whip is an iconic Tai Chi pose. Like Downward Dog in yoga, it’s often used as a visual shorthand for the entire art. They say in yoga that sirsasana or headstand is the king of asana (posture practice) because of its comprehensive benefits. Likewise, for Tai Chi, Single Whip does it all. We again begin with the 70/30 front weighting, everything as for Wardoff above: front knee over toe, rear foot flat, rear knee naturally aligning with rear foot, waist facing front, bend the inguinal crease.

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