Some of my students will soon be entering the next phase of their training and the concept we will be focusing on will be - developing their root.

Most Tai Chi players understand the concept of rooting as fixing your stance so that you have a solid foundation through the feet and legs in order to be balanced while performing the forms or even perhaps execute a taijiquan technique against an opponent. While these points are true, I’d like to expound on the concept of root in a little more detail.

Root is much more than just a proper stance and dropping your “sea bottom”.

Root begins with the spirit and manifests in the physical.

This is an example I use in class. Take the smallest person in the class and the two largest. Have the large “guys” stand on either side of the small person and then get them to lift him/her (usually using an underarm/shoulder technique). Odds are that they won’t have any trouble lifting the little one. In fact they usually laugh and bounce them around a bit.

Now have the little one engage their mind and entice him/her to feel as heavy a as block of lead that is anchored deep into the ground. Then ask the two “guys” to pick the little one up again and watch.

The same three people are doing the exact same exercise but the little one WILL be much more difficult to lift. No extra mass was added to make the little one heavier and it’s highly unlikely that the large “guys” lost their strength within a two-minute period. So what happened?

If you analyse the exercise as I have, there’s only two possible conclusions.

One – the larger guys have been psychologically manipulated into thinking that they will have a hard time lifting the little one the second time, or
Two – the mind and intent of the little one has entered into the equation and has somehow affected the outcome of the situation.

I have had enough personal experiences to convince me of the second probability.

The mind (Yi) entering into the physical equation is exactly what is talked about in the classics when they refer to the mind leading the qi. If you stop to think about it, nothing happens in the human world without someone first thinking about it. It is “thought” that is the creative force. The physical only manifests after the spirit has informed the energy of what its purpose is.

Spirit then energy then matter.
Shen then Qi then Jing (the three treasures).

This is the foundational understanding that is required to truly develop your root.

Peace
Rod