The relationship between yoga and tai chi

Yoga and Tai Chi are neither "twin brothers" with the same origin as Oriental practices, nor are they two unrelated independent movements. They are essentially two physical and mental cultivation paths born in the ancient Indian Brahmin practice system and the Chinese Taoist cultural soil. The core appeal is to achieve a healthy state of "body and mind unity", but the underlying logic of cultural cores, movement logic, and practice goals are very different. At the practical level, they cannot be confused at will, and there is a lot of room for complementarity.

Last week, I finished a flow yoga class at the gym. Aunt Zhang, who has been practicing Chen-style Tai Chi for 8 years, came over to chat with me. She said that she recently tried to add Ujjayi breathing to the yoga postures. Her knees were so sore after standing for 20 minutes, but now they can relax after standing for half an hour. At the end, she asked me: "Do you think these two are the same thing?" ”

There are quite a few people with this misunderstanding. In the past two years, I saw a blogger saying that "Yoga is a variant of Tai Chi that Bodhidharma brought to India from China." This is purely unfounded unfounded history, so don't believe it. The written records of yoga in ancient India can be traced back to the "Rig Veda" in 1500 BC. It was first used by practitioners to break through physical limitations and achieve the "unity of Brahman and self" as a spiritual practice method. ； The well-documented history of Tai Chi is much later. It took shape in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The core is the Taoist concept of "Yin and Yang complement each other, and heaven and man correspond." It was originally developed independently by two civilizations and is fundamentally different.

But why do you think so many people feel similar when practicing? I have been practicing yoga for 10 years, and I have also learned Yang-style Tai Chi from my master for 3 years. I understand it when I get to the bottom of it: They are different from exercises such as weightlifting and running that "train the body but not the mind". They require you to anchor your attention on the linkage between breathing and body throughout the process, and prevent your mind from wandering around. Just like the child's pose in yoga, you have to slowly relax your waist and abdomen with your breathing, and don't press down hard. ； When practicing Tai Chi, Yun Shou also has to follow the rhythm of his breathing and move his waist. He cannot just swing his arms. The core idea is "don't compete with your body."

But if you really dig into the details, the logic of their actions is not even the slightest bit different. Let's talk about the order of exerting force. Tai Chi emphasizes "starting from the feet, issuing from the waist, and reaching the tips." If you hold the sparrow's tail, the force from the feet without pushing the ground will be transmitted up. No matter how standard you are with your bare hands, it is useless. The force is from the bottom up. ； The logic of yoga postures is to first find the correct position. For example, in the standing mountain pose, you must first align the ankles, knees, and hips, and then adjust the spine, shoulders, and head and neck upwards. This is to establish the framework first and then find the feeling of exerting force. There is also breathing. What Tai Chi talks about as "qi sinking in the Dantian" is natural and relaxed abdominal breathing. You don't deliberately control the respiratory tract. When you punch and breathe smoothly, you will sink naturally. ； The Ujjayi breathing commonly used in yoga requires deliberately tightening the semi-occlusive muscles of the throat to make a sound similar to the ocean tide, which is used to focus on breathing. The method is fundamentally different.

"Tai Chi yoga" fusion classes are now very popular on the market, and there are quite a lot of differences in this matter in the industry. An inheritor of traditional Chen-style Tai Chi I know is particularly opposed to it, saying that the "qi" of Tai Chi travels through the meridian system of traditional Chinese medicine, while the "energy" of yoga corresponds to the seven chakras. The two theoretical systems are completely incompatible, and it is easy for novices to confuse logic. Either they pursue too much stretching when practicing Tai Chi and injure their knees, or they use waist strength to injure their lumbar vertebrae when practicing yoga. But there are also many ordinary practitioners like me who think it is very good. I once had a student whose shoulders and neck were still as stiff as rocks after practicing yoga for two years. No matter how much she adjusted the poses, it was useless. So I asked her to spend 10 minutes every day practicing cloud hands. She didn’t need to pursue the standard posture, but just found the feeling of "moving the arms with the belt". After only three weeks, she told me that her shoulders no longer compete with each other in downward dog pose.

To put it bluntly, whether it is yoga or Tai Chi, it ultimately serves people. If you just want to move your body and feel comfortable practicing together, then how can you be happy? ； If you really want to practice cultivation in depth, you must first understand the underlying logic of each, and don't just mess around. Now I stand on the Wuji Pose for 15 minutes every morning to relax, and then practice basic yoga postures for 20 minutes to open my shoulders. I don’t pursue difficult postures, nor do I pursue standard boxing. After practicing, I can feel refreshed all day long. Isn’t this enough?