What Makes Tai Chi Different: Intention, Sinking and Spiraling

As a tai chi teacher, for every new student's first class, I always try to show them how tai chi is different from other forms of movement practices. Not all students stick around of course, but I want everyone that steps foot in the room to get a good flavour of what tai chi is really like so even if they never do it again, they have a better idea what it actually is and why people spend a lifetime doing it.

I explain three tai chi concepts and principles to them and if I have time I tell them what happens when you combine all three. Since tai chi is so touch based, I always pair up my explanations with physical demonstrations.

Since I am currently writing this and you are currently reading, that's not really possible but I'll try to describe it all in words. These concepts and principles can be read about and you'll get an intellectual understanding but to truly understand you must be in physical contact with a knowledgeable teacher.

How do you know a tai chi posture is correct? You test it. So let's look at what we test for.

1. Intention

In tai chi, you move with intention. All your movements have purpose so you move with purpose. Your mind leads and then your body follows. Intention is not just in tai chi, it's in all kinds of sports, movement practices, and exercises. In basketball, the guy wants to basket the ball, the weightlifter visualises the weights going up and down for that sweet mind muscle connection, the dancer leads their dance partner so they are perfectly in sync and it all looks effortless. Intention is everywhere and without it, things don't work or it lacks a special something you can't put your finger on.

In tai chi, to increase your intention you look at your tester. You stare at them. Intention is projected through your eyes. Your eyes are open and focused, not glazed over and listless. You stare through them. You stare through and out to the back of the room or, if outside, the horizon as far as you can imagine. When your intention is strong, you have a much greater chance to overcome obstacles. You will not be pushed over. You will relax into their force and move with purpose. You shift the weight from your back foot to your front foot and that's it. Your movements become stronger and not from a muscle brute force kind of way but in a mindset kind of way.

Intention is the first concept you learn about and it's a concept you keep working on as you progress. It can only get stronger and stronger. "More intention" or "more yi" is a common phrase heard in class if you keep going (yi means intention in Chinese).

As you do the tai chi movements, also known as the form, you imagine there is someone in front of you testing each and every one of your movements. You do this to stay rooted and strong. A gentle breeze will not blow you over since you are a little tree with your roots connected to the ground and your branches connected to the sky and then, after all the mind focusing, your intention becomes your reality. You are now as sturdy as a little tree.

2. Sinking

In tai chi, you are always sinking downwards. You do this by relaxing your whole body. You drop your shoulders, your elbows, you bend your knees. The more you relax, the more you sink into the floor. You are letting your skeletal structure hold you up. Aim for zero tension in the body. Of course there's going to be a little bit since muscles engage to hold you up but you strive for as little as possible. Your upper body should feel light while your lower body feels rooted into the ground.

To show beginners sinking, I hold up my hands with my elbows out and tell them to cup my elbows and hold them up. I ask them to gently try to lift my elbows up and as they lift up, I relax more to make my arms heavier. It's like I'm resting my elbows on a table. There's a tendency to push down your elbows in this scenario which we can't do since that creates tension by using our muscles and that's not what we are trying to achieve, that isn't tai chi.

This is where it can get challenging. It's hard to relax when you're by yourself sometimes. Now try to relax with someone pushing your elbows up! It's very normal to tense up when someone tests you which is why we test very lightly at the start. Beginners don't walk into a gym, pick up a barbell and load it up with all the plates they can see. The equivalent in tai chi is someone shoving you really hard when they test you. We always start off light. The testee needs light but constant pressure. The tester is a form of resistance for the testee. And for the testee to relax enough, you must start light and with consistent pressure. Tai chi is the art of relaxing.

3. Spiralling

This one is the hardest one to explain in writing. The best way to explain it is for someone to physically feel it. The test for this is for the testee to stick out their arm and the tester, the one that wants to feel the spiral, pushes into the testee's shoulder socket. For a curious onlooker it may look like nothing is happening but if you look closer you may see the testee slightly rotating their whole arm just a little bit to the right (it could be to the left as well but it's one or the other). When the testee does this slight rotation, the arm feels stronger and more resistant to pushes.

I'm sure the rotation can be explained as recruiting whole arm muscle activation but I like to think of it as multi directional force. If you meet their force head on, one force against one force, you butt heads. But add a spiral and you are now going in two directions at once. Two forces beat one. Tai chi is multi directional. In time you will see it isn't even just two directions but many more, but for now two beats one.

All Together Now: Connection

If I have time or usually in the next lesson, I tell the new student to combine all three concepts they just learned and together it makes this thing called connection. Tai chi connection is a little like real life connection. Some people are hard to connect to – they're grumpy, a bit closed off, a recluse. Some people are easy to connect to – friendly, open, social and talkative. It's the same in tai chi. It may be harder or easier to connect to people, all kinds of people. One person may be easy to connect to for you but hard for another.

An analogy that I was told is that you are a key and everyone else is a lock and you must adapt your key to unlock as many locks as possible. When you can unlock a lock that means you can connect to them. Some people's lock may be familiar to you and that's why it's good to train with many different kinds of people since different people test differently.

But what does it mean to be connected to someone? It's like you are reaching for their centre of gravity, also known as the dantian (three finger lengths below your navel). You need to be connected to someone to move them efficiently. Otherwise you are using too much muscular force and if you are doing that you aren't doing tai chi properly.

A common pitfall with connection is that the person trying to connect falls into the gap. "Mind the gap" as they say in the London Underground. Very applicable to tai chi. The gap is anywhere that isn't the person you are trying to connect to. Most of the time you are just sinking into yourself or you sink in front of the person but not into them. Intention and spiralling helps here. Visualise sinking into them, spiralling into them, intending to move them. When you are connected the person moves with ease. Tai chi done right feels effortless.

Another common pitfall is that you connect well but as soon as you move with your connection, it breaks. You have to keep your connection points constant. It should feel the same for you and your partner. If they change, you change. You can't just keep doing the same thing and expect it to work. Change is always a constant. Tai chi doesn't fight change, it moves with it. Very Daoist.

When we are trying to connect with our partner, you have to meet them where they are. Feel the connection points on your body and work through them. When we work in pairs we try to help each other out with feedback. When your partner improves, you will inevitably improve too. A rising tide lifts all ships. The holy grail of tai chi is to instantly connect with anyone even resisting opponents. It is a martial art after all but this takes many years of training to achieve.^*

End of Our Written Class

So we've covered three concepts that are fundamental to doing tai chi. There are other concepts that I haven't mentioned but I always mention these three when we first start to give someone a good flavour of what tai chi is like. If I listed every single concept and principle the first day the new student may just get a headache or they never come back since I just hit them with a giant list of things they have to do!

As students get better and better, you as the tester can push a bit harder and harder. The tester is almost like a living breathing weights machine. The tester is also learning tai chi too. They are learning to listen. In time they can feel someone's intention before they've even acted on it. That's where tai chi gets strange in a good way.

When testing, there is right and there is wrong. Repelling force by following tai chi principles — right. Using brute force to shove a poor old lady — wrong. But there are degrees of rightness (which kind of implies degrees of wrongness but let's not go there). You could be right right now but there are levels to this game. Perhaps if they pushed a little harder you can't take it, perhaps you can do it more efficiently by relaxing your right shoulder just one more millimetre down. Whatever it is, tai chi is a lifelong art. You are always practising to do better. You are always striving for perfection. You'll never get there but through the striving you learn a lot about yourself and even other people.

A slow art that can never be perfect may be a nightmare for some but is truly amazing for others since it has endless depth. One day you're just doing tai chi. The next day, you aren't just doing tai chi. Tai chi is actively shaping your life.

^*If you're looking to train a martial art and be fight ready in six months, forget about tai chi... It's probably the most inefficient martial art to learn how to fight. Magical things happen if you get really really good but for the vast majority of people, it just won't happen. Most people learn tai chi for health anyway and there are numerous health benefits of course. There's something very Daoist about tai chi being able to be used as a martial art but only after you do it for a long long time...

Written 15th March 2026