TAI CHI HEALING AND THE
YIN OR YANG STATES

By Erle Montaigue

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There are three areas of Tai Chi healing. The first area is that of healing oneself. Here, we use the postures from the Tai Chi form as a qigong exercise. The ancients who invented the postures of what is today known as Tai Chi had an in-depth knowledge of what movements caused what meridians and hence what organs to be worked thus sending life-giving and Tai Chi healing Qi to that particular part of the body.

 

The movements were based upon martial arts as China's history is steeped in the wushu or 'war arts'. So they worked out what movements caused Qi to be sent to the area that was doing the work and through which organs etc. So a movement such as "Brush Knee and Twist Step" sent the Qi through the heart in order to do that kind of work dictated by the application of the movement. Hence it is very important to also know about the martial applications of the form so that the mind is able to visualize these applications thus fooling the subconscious into sending Qi to these areas to do that kind of work.

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The second area of Tai Chi Healing is that of teaching others to do the moments so that they are able to gain the Tai Chi healing benefits from the postures. So the Tai Chi 'doctor' would send his patient home with a posture to perform, as well as some herbs to take to enhance the movement.

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The last area is that of 'Medical Tai Chi' where the 'doctor' actually performs the martial arts applications (in a soft, healing manner) on the patient. Another important reason to know the martial applications.

You cannot divorce the martial from the healing, to do so you are not performing real Tai Chi.

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This section deals with the T'ai chi self healing and what it means. It's not just a matter of doing the form and hoping for the best! And it is also not a matter of just doing the postures and knowing what each posture is meant for. There are also secondary postures to use along with the major postures when the opposite condition applies, for instance if we are using a heart posture for a heart ailment which is yin in aspect, then we would use this posture only if we were treating a yang state i.e.; too much yang, too much sexual urge or pre ejaculation etc. If however we were treating a state that required less Yin, is the case of not enough sexual urge etc., then we would also use the small intestine qigong which is yang. The small intestine is the heart's opposite organ, they work together and must be kept in a state of balanced yin and yang. For this we have a number of Qi massage routines that will balance out the Qi in the six main pairs of meridians. We also have specific self qigong methods that will do the same when a qigong doctor is not available.

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In my book series, "Internal Gung-fu, the Complete Story", I will be covering all of the Tai Chi healing methods in the three areas.

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