An Easy Way To Breathe In Taijiquan Form
A question I get asked a lot in class is how to breathe whilst you're doing your Taiji form. It's difficult to answer it because how you go about learning breathing in your Taijiquan form isn't intuitive. You can't just give a student a pattern to breathe to as it's a sure way to see someone go blue in the face as they try to do the form with the "correct" breathing.
You can always spot someone who's trying to breathe to a pattern, because they're usually the ones holding their breath. A posture that takes a bit longer than normal to complete means they'll have to exhale for a lot longer, but because they're not so good at it yet, they exhale almost completely by the time they're 2/3 of the way through the posture and then hold their breath for the rest. This makes them hold tension and is a little self-defeating. They're putting a lot of effort into relaxing themselves off, only to have their breathing pattern tense them up again.
Practising form for long periods breathing like this isn't good because the body will, eventually pick up on that habit of holding the breath and start doing it, which means more tension.
It just isn't Taiji as there's no continuous change in the breath.
If you let your body do the breathing by itself, you will automatically do the "right" breathing, i.e. the breathing that does not make you tense but is still synchronised with the movement, regardless of the state you're in.
One of the ways to get around this is to teach the body to coordinate breathing with movement. This way, whatever your internal state, your body will just start to regulate and synchronise whatever breathing pattern is most appropriate and most relaxing with your movement. It is, however somewhat unintuitive as it doesn't use your conscious mind. Just try it out and see how it works, even if you don't believe me.
Here are 4 tips to practise with walking:
- Breathe in for 4 steps, and our for 4 steps. Increase the number of steps per in and out breath to a maximum of 10.
- Find your maximum. If you're trying to do eight steps per in/out breath, and you finish breathing by the 5th step, that's your limit. Practise until you're comfortable with it, then increase it.
- Try not to hold your breath at any point
- Do not force the breath Forcing = tension and that is the enemy. Do not force the breath to fit the steps.
So, the next time you're walking along to get somewhere, breathe in for four steps, and out for four steps. As you walk along, gradually increase the length of the breath to ten steps in and ten steps out. Try not to hold your breath in or out at any point. If you're trying to take ten steps and you run out of breath by eight, then that's your limit for that moment in time. Don't try to force it, we don't want anyone going blue in the face. You need to practise long and short breaths, as there are long and short movements in the form. Go as high as you can without tensing up or holding your breath and do this often, try it out when you next walk to the shops or when you're in the gym.
If you do this often enough, your body will get the idea of co-ordinating movement with breathing and it will automatically start do regulate your breathing during your form practise.
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Chen Xianglin, a taijiquan teacher since 2001 specialising in back and joint problems. To find out more, please visit www.taijipedia.net