Peace

Principle: "Gondola Effect": Connecting the upper and lower

Sifi Chen never placed his students in the lotus position to meditate. We stood instead. He reasoned that standing posture benefits the upper and lower centerlines by actively connecting them. He used gears in a car as an analogy. The gears had the mesh at the correct time and speed to create the proper movement. It is similar in Chen's Taiji.

Listening to Chen's Taiji wasn't passive; it involved actively seeking the "links" between joints by pushing the legs into the ground. The spine found stability as the feet, ankles, knees, legs, and hips found coordination, enabling the upper limbs and neck to coordinate and interlink. This full-body assembly of interlinked joints created a unique spiral wave-like movement pattern that appeared to come from the ground and move through the body.

A secondary whip-like push-hand movement pattern, what Sifu termed "crack the whip," also emerges, which is covered later.