15 Minutes of Tai Chi Daily: Persistence Reveals the Underlying Principle
It can produce kung fu by practicing only fifteen minutes a day. This is what the 'five masters' of pushing Tai Chi to the world said, the teacher of Song Meiling's calligraphy teacher – Zheng Manqing. Zheng Manqing, known as 'Red Beard', was a direct disciple of Yang Chunjung and a junior disciple of Li Yaxuan. His practice time was even one minute less than mine, seven minutes in the morning and seven minutes in the evening, totaling only fourteen minutes.
Red Beard is a very intelligent person, and we ordinary mortals may still need to honestly and seriously spend more time practicing, especially in the initial stage, the time spent should be more. But at least it shows that we don't need to 'practice at three o'clock in the morning with candlelight and a rooster's crow to torment ourselves. Because incorrect practice can only be repeated errors, consolidate weaknesses, especially if you toil, the result will be ingrained habits that are difficult to change and difficult to overcome, which is not the theme of this article. But 'correct' practice of Tai Chi is the premise.
Almost all sports rely on quantity to guarantee quality. Listening to a friend who used to be a swimming coach, a professional swimmer only needs to 'kick legs' for 30 million times, this number probably will make many people dizzy. But in the Tai Chi world, the saying 'punch ten thousand times, the principle is self-evident' is commonly accepted.
If we calculate carefully, from a time perspective, each round of practice is 30-50 minutes, how much time is required to do 10,000 times? In today's society where time is converted into money, people's pace of life is no longer the pastoral song of 'rising with the sun and setting with the sun', can it allow you to spend so much time on 'Tai Chi that takes ten years to get out' ? That's really true!
Tai Chi is achieved through peaceful movement to achieve high-intensity exercise effects. Therefore, Tai Chi's training first needs to achieve sports effects, such as muscle soreness and so on. Tai Chi is also a process of sublimation, the closer to correct, the more obvious and stronger the exercise effect will be, and the less time required.
Red Beard has reached a deep understanding of Tai Chi, so he only needs a few minutes, and those few minutes of practice are of high quality. Our kung fu is still shallow, the quality is not high, it needs to be guaranteed by quantity, not truly just practicing 15 minutes of kung fu. But we should believe that as long as we truly grasp the essence of Tai Chi, and use the correct method to truly practice Tai Chi, without a doubt, 15 minutes is enough.
Red Beard's spending of little time on practice is also related to his 'Tai Chi should be concise, not greedy' attitude; at the same time, he emphasized 'kung fu must have perseverance, so my morning and evening only practice for seven minutes, to take perseverance first, let it be first, time is more or less irrelevant' ; and 'then I don't need to eat, kung fu must be first'.
Red Beard's 'less is better, more is confusing' concept and perseverance spirit should be advocated. Red Beard also gave examples of his students: 'A young child can understand Tai Chi in five or six months, so is Tai Chi difficult?' This shows that Tai Chi is not limited by cultivation time, and it is not that it takes ten years to get out, the key is that as long as you learn the right way and practice in a right way, you may 'become enlightened and become a Buddha' in one step, and step into the sky.
Tai Chi is a special movement that needs to be understood with the heart and felt with the body, it cannot be understood by conventional sports methods. Therefore, I also advocate 'not to toil' to understand the essence of Tai Chi, and it seems enough. Pursuing quality or pursuing quantity, how to calculate it, think about it yourself.
