Monday Morning Tai Chi Training Tip # 238
Effective Force
Every effective force issued from our body also uses an equal and opposite energy. As we move forward from Sit Stance to Bow Stance, our back foot pushes down from the hip, while our forward foot acts like a brake by pressing backwards connecting back into the front hip to keep from over doing it. Like a ferry boat coming into a dock, it applies reverse thrusters to slow it down.
If the arms are pushing straight ahead, the center of the back pushes backwards. If we push downwards, the top of the head thrusts upward. When kicking, the kicking foot moves outward while the standing leg is pushed down. Think about bouncing a ball. The harder you throw it down, the more it rebounds up. Or look at the front leg of a batter hitting a ball. The front leg is straight back at the moment of contact.
It sounds so complicated, yet this is just the natural way that the body deals with such activities. In Tai Chi and other internal arts, we break movements down until they seem very unnatural in order to understand the dynamics involved, then we put them back together in a natural way, with the possibility we may have corrected any unnatural elements that might have been present before we started our exploration.