The relationship between yoga and Tai Chi

Yoga and Tai Chi are two independent physical and mental training systems that originated from the ancient Indian civilization and the Chinese farming civilization respectively. The core training logics are essentially different. The two have no conclusive cultural heritage connection, nor are they completely mutually exclusive parallel projects. The commonality in practical aspects such as body control and breathing regulation is essentially the result of different civilizations’ convergence in exploring the laws of human body and mind.

A few years ago, I practiced Ashtanga so hard that I tore the ligaments in my left ankle. The doctor didn’t allow me to run or jump or do extensive stretching. So my friend dragged me to a community park near my home to practice Chen-style Tai Chi. At first, I secretly thought, isn’t this just slow-motion yoga stretching? Later, after standing there for three months, I realized that it was completely different.

Nowadays, this topic is hotly debated on the Internet, with the two schools of thought going to extremes: one group of fitness bloggers like to say that "Tai Chi is the Chinese version of yoga," and even refer to the old saying of Bodhidharma, implying that Tai Chi is a localized variation of yoga from Buddhism. Every time this kind of statement is released, people in the traditional martial arts circle are chasing after and scolding it. A Chen-style Tai Chi successor I followed before published a long article, saying that Tai Chi was originally a killing technique derived from battlefield techniques, and it is not at all the same as yoga, which was originally used as a religious practice tool. Those who said this were all laymen who had no experience in it.

Judging from the available historical data, this "same origin theory" is indeed untenable: the earliest prototype of yoga appeared on the stone carvings of the Indus Valley Civilization site around 2500 BC. It was originally a practice tool of Brahmanism. The hard training of the body has reached the state of connection with "Brahma"; and the currently recognized testable origin of Tai Chi is Chen Wangting in Wen County, Henan Province in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. It was created by combining the techniques of Qi Jia Quan in the Ming Dynasty and Taoist breathing techniques. The earliest core function is martial arts. There is a difference of nearly four thousand years between the births of the two, and there is no clear evidence of cross-civilization exchanges of fitness techniques between their birthplaces. There is really no basis for them to be related.

But if you say that the two have nothing to do with each other, I don’t agree with it as someone who has practiced both. When I practiced yoga before, I couldn't find the feeling of "loose but not slumped." When doing the warrior pose, I couldn't help but slump my waist and press my hips. After standing on the Tai Chi pose for three months, I went back to do this posture. I could naturally tighten my core, my hips sank, and I no longer had to push my waist hard. There is also breathing. The Ujjayi breathing of yoga requires the throat to be slightly closed, and the breath is long and even. It is almost exactly the same as the "qi sinking in the Dantian, neither floating nor impetuous" required by Tai Chi. Last time I taught Master Chen, who taught me Tai Chi, how to do yoga baby poses. After doing a set of fists, his back was sore. After doing it for five minutes, he said he felt comfortable and said it was much more effective than the habitual swinging of waists with arms akimbo. To put it bluntly, both are exploring how to use the least amount of force to adjust the body's state to the most comfortable level. A crash is too normal - just like people all over the world know how to boil water to 100 degrees, you can't say who copied whom.

But the difference at the core is unavoidable: when I practice yoga, the teacher always asks me to "stretch a little more and feel the stretch of the muscles", pursuing the expansion of the body's boundaries; but the Tai Chi teacher always tells me "stop exerting force, relax, and go to the soles of the feet", pursuing the transmission of power. Even now both are moving in the direction of mass fitness. Yoga is more aimed at relaxing and strengthening muscles and fascia, while Tai Chi pays more attention to overall coordination and the integration of core strength. The logic is fundamentally different.

What’s interesting is that there have been more and more integrations between the two sides in the past two years. There is a yoga studio near my home that offers “Tai Chi yoga” classes. It combines Tai Chi stances, cloud hands and yoga stretching movements. It is mainly used to adjust shoulders, necks and waist protrusions for office workers. It sells particularly well. Of course, there are many people who criticize it. Some people in the yoga circle think that it is a blind change that destroys the inheritance of yoga. Some people in the Tai Chi circle think that the essence of Tai Chi has been changed and it has become a mere charade. But I tried it twice. For someone like me who sits in front of the computer every day, it is indeed faster than simply practicing yoga or Tai Chi.

In fact, to put it bluntly, for ordinary practitioners like us who just want to move around and make our bodies more comfortable, there is no need to worry about the relationship between the two. There is no need to argue about who is the ancestor of whom, and who is more advanced than whom. They are like two trees growing at opposite ends of the Eurasian continent. They have different soils and different varieties, but the leaves they grow can shade the sun, and the fruits they produce can quench your thirst. They can be used to solve your own problems. They are better than anything else.