We use a lot of pictures and metaphors when we describe movements or principles in Tai Chi: stroking the mane of the horse, grasping the bird’s tail, the white crane spreads its wings, open and close like a flower, grow roots into the ground,… and I could go on forever.

Why do we do this?

Pictures help us to simplify complex combinations of movements, engaging numerous separate muscle groups and our breathing. If we wanted to keep tabs on each of those and every detail to coordinate the muscles properly, we would quickly overload our brain.

That’s why learning to drive is so hard in the beginning: we dont’ have the picture yet as to what it means to start driving again after you stopped on a steep hill in a stick-shift car. That’s why the first weeks are so hard for a new Tai Chi student, as they still try to make sense and coordinate arms and legs.

If we think about metaphors and pictures rather than describing the physics and physiology of a given movement, we take away the task from our conscious brain and give it to our subconscious brain. Our conscious brain is a great single-tasker. It’s overloaded quickly with complex problems. Our subconscious brain marvels at complex interwoven systems and tasks. It does that all the time. That’s how our organs, breathing and everything vital are kept going. That’s what keeps us alive.

If we were to talk to our conscious mind, we would have to say something like this: “Please extend your forearm while also extending you upper arm, twist you elbow and wrist and open the fingers a little bit. Not too much though. Do it all at the same time. Don’t forget to breathe! Have we talked about your ankle, knee and hip yet? Please extend them also at the same time. Don’t lift your toes though. By the way, are you all relaxed, joints and all?” (And this is a drastically simplified version.)

That’s what beginners in Tai Chi struggle with. As we get more familiar with the basic movements, we don’t give our conscious mind these instructions anymore. Rather we tell the conscious mind to imagine ‘stroking the mane of a horse’ or to ‘spread the wings like a crane’ and the conscious brain takes that at face value and delegates the complex execution of the details to the subconscious brain, moving on to just enjoy the ride.

Simplify the complex movements for your brain. Keep your conscious mind focused on the big picture and let your subconscious brain deal with the details.

The Chinese are great system thinkers and observers, looking at the big picture and how complex systems work together overall. That’s the core of Chinese medicine and that’s also how they approached martial arts. In the West, we got a little distracted by Democritus and Descartes who focused us on atomism and reductionism. That has its own benefits and led to huge advancements in science and medicine. It’s not the right answer to everything though and for sure it’s not the only answer out there (which is how we often treat it these days). Let’s learn a little from the Chinese and look at the big picture.

In Tai Chi, as well as in martial arts generally, we use spiral movements and energies. Rather than bluntly trying to push through linearly, we use advanced mechanics and drill in like a corkscrew.

We all start with linear energy

The most common energy (and thinking) is simple and linear. To get from A to B, we draw a mental line and go straight. To punch, we make a fist and then extend our arm in a straight line. That creates linear kinetic energy that is very much defined and constrained by the strengths in our arms and the velocity in which we can engage our muscles.

Layer another type of energy on top

In Tai Chi we don’t stop with the simple linear energy. Rather than being constrained by the ability to add more velocity and strength to our arms, we layer a whole different type of energy on top of the movement: spin energy.

As we push out our arm, we also turn it. We add spin to our shoulder, elbow and wrist joints. That does not take away from the linear energy, nor does it extend the length of the movement and thus make it less efficient. It simply layers another type of energy on top of the movement we are already executing. We create a spiral.

Spirals intertwined with spirals

We don’t stop there though. As we execute the movement, we also turn our hip, adding another spin to the movement. We extend our back leg and push our hip forward, creating a linear movement. So there is a second spiral on top (or rather below) the one we discussed before. They are also orthogonal, if we want to get into the details of physics, adding further structure and energy dimensions to our movement.

We are creating a system of intertwined and connected layered spirals. We are layering different types of energy on top of each other, thus going way beyond what our arms could ever achieve in isolation.

If you go deeper and look at more details you will discover more spirals throughout. You will discover them in what we are doing with our hands, fingers, core, breathing, feet (as we drill into the earth) and many more.

Tai Chi and martial arts leverages a complex set of efficient spirals in its movements.

Spirals are everywhere

Spirals are efficient, which is why we can find them everywhere in mechanics and nature.

If we want to free our hand from a grip we don’t just pull, we turn, twist and wiggle. Even little kids learn that pretty quickly.

In a rifle we have the spiral rifling which adds spin to a bullet to stabilize it and keep it on track (and help it penetrate deeper). likewise in many sports, we add spin to balls to stabilize them on their trajectory (or make a curve ball if we try to be mean).

In mechanics a screw creates unbelievable linear energy and pull by leveraging spin to create lateral movement.

And lastly nature gives us endless examples where spirals are used to increase stability and strength of structures and movements. The closest to our heart is probably the very essence of our physical being: the double helix of our DNA.