The Shamanic Origins of Tai Chi Chuan

Description

There’s a story I like to tell about where Tai Chi “really comes from.” Not the historical record, the mythic origins of tai chi. As Joseph Campbell used to say, a myth is an untrue story that’s truer than life.

Here’s the story.

Once, in a land of lakes, mountains, forests, and rivers, there lived one of the first primordial tribes. Among them were the shamans, each attuned to a different animal spirit. A snake shaman. A tiger shaman. A rooster shaman. A crane master by the lake. Others who worked with cloud hands and weather. Each lived in the terrain that matched their nature. The tiger master up in the mountains. The crane master down by the water.

Four times a year, at every solstice and equinox, the shamans gathered to talk about how to help the tribe.

Each had their own medicine.

If your aging parents had hip trouble, or a child’s energy felt stuck, you sent them to the snake master by the river. The snake master taught people how to move energy through their joints, the hips, the shoulders, wherever things had gone stiff.

The tiger master taught something different, agility and strength. “Taming the tiger, high and low,” still hidden in the Tai Chi form today. And the rooster taught balance, raising energy up one side of the body while grounding it down the other. This isn’t unique to Tai Chi. You see the same principle in Indian breathing practices, energy moving up one nostril and down the other. The rooster’s lesson was simple. If you’re going to rise, don’t let it go to your head. Come back down. Keep one foot turned at 45 degrees, and you’ve got your balance.

One day, the shamans were talking, and someone raised a hard question. What happens if we’re invaded? What happens to everything we know?

The tiger master brushed it off. Let anyone come. I have power enough to protect us all. But the crane master, with more wisdom than pride, spoke up. You never know what life will bring. The forces of nature and the universe hold more surprises than any of us can outmatch.

She won the argument.

So the shamans decided to combine their knowledge, just in case. In winter, and summer, season after season, they pooled what they knew and began passing it down as one unified practice to their students, folding every master’s teaching into a single form.

Not long after, the Mongolians invaded. The tiger master went out to defend the village. Someone had a gun. One shot, and the tiger master was gone.

But the set survived.

That set is called Taijiquan.

Inside it, the animals are still there. Their names remain. Snake Creeps Low. The postures meanings are still in the set. But it’s not just choreography. underneath the form is a whole world of shamanic practice, snake medicine, rooster medicine, crane medicine, tiger medicine, each with its own dimension of purpose.

Once you see the form this way, as an alphabet rather than a routine, you start to become a poet in the language. Snake Creeps Down stops being a name and starts being an invitation to visit the snake master again, to loosen your lower back, to bring fresh circulation into stiff joints.

Practicing with experiencing the animal forms hidden in tai chi helps to cultivate your primordial self. It adds meaning to the movements, there are many meanings that practitioners can discover. Each of us puts our own intention into the tai chi practice or better put intention arises while doing the tai chi practice.

If you want to hear me tell the story

click here for the audio/visual.

The Bodymind healing Qigong tradition that I’ve developed from 40 years of training with some of the most respected masters of tai chi emphasizes the meanings of the movements. One of the major meanings I like to work with is how tai chi helps to work through psychological energy blocks, I call this the soul of tai chi. If you want to know more about this please check out my website bodymindhealing-taichiqigong.com

Michael Mayer, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist, and Qigong/Tai Chi teacher who specializes in giving his patients self-healing methods for health problems. He pioneered the integration of Tai Chi/Qigong and psychotherapy, and presents his approach to bodymind healing at professional conferences, national/international workshops, universities, and hospitals; and he is a keynote speaker. Michael is certified as a master Tai Chi instructor by the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association.