T'ai Chi and Aikido

Oct. 28, 1991

Mark J. Norton


Charlie Card started a class in T'ai Chi Push Hands last Saturday. It was a good opportunity for me to refresh my own experiences with T'ai Chi Chuan. Push Hands techniques are a set of Ki exercises (or Chi as the Chinese would have it) done by two people in ai-hanmi touching hand to hand. The idea is to get a feel for contact, sensing when the other is pushing or yielding, when to push and when to yield. With eyes closed, you should be able to sense where a person's center is, since this whole exercise is oriented around the center.

Charlie was somewhat uneasy about teaching, I think this is his first class. He admitted that his main purpose was to provide himself with practice partners, which is not an unreasonable motive at all. Charlie understands these things better than he lets on. Hopefully regular teaching will give him a little more confidence in expressing what is an admittedly difficult thing to explain.

I was paired with Rosemary Bray. Rosemary is a second kyu Aikidoist, but has actually been practicing for many years (almost as long as I have). While her technique is acceptable, she has little understanding of the inner aspects of Aikido. This showed very much in Push Hands. I could move her or unbalance her with little effort. In return, she had trouble with me. This is not to say that I was being resistive or nasty. I was trying to gauge her understanding. When this turned out to be slight, I attempted to explain it to her. I fear that I did no better than Charlie, though I did present the classic yin/yang analogies that the Tai Chi masters use.

T'ai Chi Chuan has great application to Aikido. It is a very good way to develop inner sensativity. It promotes control, balance, rootedness, centering, extension and many other principles central to Aikido. I find it very relaxing, and yet revealing at the same time. Charlie also senses the worth of these exercises, which is why he has organized these sessions. I suspect that Charlie and I could get the most benefit of this by praticing together. I will have to contrive to get this to happen.