Ben Lo described learning Tai Chi as eighty percent physical and twenty percent mental when you start, but eighty percent mental and twenty percent physical later on. I believe a key part of transitioning from one to the other comes from letting go of fear.

Practicing Tai Chi requires us to invest considerable time learning the form and holding postures to build endurance. And then we have to cultivate a regular daily practice where we work on better embodying the principles each day. These are significant accomplishments, and for many people it is too much; they give up. It is a wonderful thing to overcome these challenges.

So how can it be that someone who has done all of that can still have fear of the art they clearly love? For many practitioners it’s there, hiding behind an alias: ‘tension’. Tension is a consequence of fear. It may be habitual, a learned way of carrying ourselves due to past experiences. Or it may be more direct, such as tensing up unconsciously (or even consciously) as we prepare to practice because we know how hard our legs will be working. Cheng Man-ch’ing described this fear and the importance of letting it go when he wrote “Do not fear bitter work. If you do you will never progress.”¹

This bitter work is crucial to becoming relaxed, our most important principle. As Cheng explained when he wrote “If you can relax completely, then the rest is easy. […] Relax means to soften the tendons and blood vessels of the whole body. You cannot permit even a little tension.”² Here the term ‘tendons’ really refers to muscles, ligaments, tendons, and fascia (the Chinese character means any or all of them, and a translator generally picks one English word that seems to work best in context).

Letting go of tension is an iterative process. Each time we discover and release some unneeded tension, we make progress in relaxing, becoming more sung/sōng^†. Then, after more practice, we discover we can relax more. Cheng describes one way to make progress:

The Taichi Classics say that the proper root is in the foot. A beginner can develop a root by simply spending three to five minutes, morning and night, standing fully on a single leg. Alternate legs and gradually increase the time while you sink lower. This bitter work not only develops a root, it stimulates the cardiovascular system, which benefits the brain.³

Building endurance in our legs lets us become more relaxed, which allows us (among other things) to ‘sit down’ more, thus better suspending the headtop. But the process is arduous. This unfortunately results in many people becoming ‘stuck’. At a certain point (sometimes near the very beginning), they are unwilling to continue the bitter work. The burning of their legs is something they can’t get past. When they go to practice they know at least unconsciously if they practice their best and relax as much as possible their legs will have to work much harder and burn more quickly and more fiercely. This fear of truly relaxing and the consequent burning in our legs leads to tension before we even start our practice.

To make progress we must acknowledge this fear and learn to let go of it. For some this is easy, but for many of us it is not. For myself, I only became ‘unstuck’ when I accepted I had unconscious fear holding me back and reinforcing bad habits. I was finally able to embrace the work, accepting that practicing for a shorter time without fear would benefit me more than struggling to practice for longer with tension. It was difficult at first, requiring I self-assess every time I went into a Tai Chi posture and with every transition I made. And it suddenly seemed like I was doing everything wrong all the time. But as I kept at it the fear started to fade. This led to better practice, which led to more relaxation. And gradually my fear kept fading, replaced by a growing desire to find and eliminate all tension despite the hard work.

This process takes perseverance, and it’s easy to give up. But it can work for anyone who applies themselves and trusts that it is the correct path. If it’s not already part of your practice, I hope you will start the journey of seeking out and letting go of your tension. If you’re unsure, just remember Cheng’s words: “Do not fear bitter work. If you do you will never progress.”

1 Master Cheng's New Method of Taichi Ch'uan Self-Cultivation; page 11
2 Cheng Tzu's Thirteen Treatises on T'ai Chi Ch'uan; page 88
3, 4 Master Cheng's New Method of Taichi Ch'uan Self-Cultivation; page 11
† If you have questions about Chinese terms used, you may find About Chinese Terms helpful.