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Let no one esteem lightly the Thirteen Movements
But bear in mind that your consciousness of them commences in the waist,
In performance, care must be exercised regarding your transposition
from one stance to another,
the twists and turns in each movement, and the distribution of blanks and
substantives in a given movement,
While keeping the chi freely circulating throughout your whole body.
All changes and motions are conceived and touched off in the stillness of absolute quietude,
Hence motion and action are kindred to rest and inaction, in other words, ultimately
indistinguishable from each other.
Likewise, the mystery of Tai-Chi Chuan is that
It is your opponent's movements that condition your own as adapted by nature
to his own undoing.
Remember to be mindful of every single move by trying to feel its meaning,
And you will eventually come into possession of the art's secrets without conscious effort.
Rivet your attention, without even a moment's interruption, onto the waist interval, and
Keep your abdomen free from tension due to food or impurities, so that
Your vitality flux (chi) may, as it were, boil and rise like steam.
Keep the lowest segments of your vertebrae central in relation to gravitation all the while,
when
Your limbs and body are gyrating with effortless nimbleness, and your head is held
buoyant as if suspended from above.
Carefully observe and investigate and convince yourself that
Your way of bending or straightening, your closing-in or throwing open should never
be as you will them to be, but as Nature wills.
A novice will require verbal instruction during the initial stages.
But practice will steer its own course and bring about its own perfection.
As to the theory and practice, i.e., the constituents and functioning of Tai-Chi Chuan,
The spirit is sovereign and the body its servant,
The end purpose of these exercises is to prolong life and endow it with the youth of eternal
spring.
Oh, sing! Oh, sing! Sing this short song of 144 Chinese characters;
Commit every single word of it to memory without exception.
Enquiries and researches that deviate from this approach
Only waste time and leave behind regrets and sighings.
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