Sink, Relax

It's the constant exhortation from the teacher of almost any T'ai Chi school, whatever style. It is repeated in the T'ai Chi Classics. I have been told by Yang, Chen and Sun style teachers, in English and in Chinese, and also by the univeral language of being corrected with hands-on. We know well that to relax and yet remain perfectly responsive is a lifetime's work, and extraordinarily beneficial on so many levels. Recently, I have been trying to think of a walk of life, or task at hand, that would not benefit from this lively relaxation... happily I have failed. As I said to the beginners last night, after asking them to 'relax' again: Even fighting for one's life would not be helped by excess tension.