Here is a statement that needs to be intrinsically understood to progress in Tai Chi: Internal energy building and circulation, balance, and martial abilities are dependent on posture. For those of you that are one step ahead of me, you are seeing the potential bang-for-your-buck by focusing on posture over other more trivial matters, and learning about the six harmonies is the way to get there.
Small postural improvements have huge impact on your health, practice, and mental state.
Posture is the tai chi version of the Pareto Principle which states that 20% of your activities realize 80% of the results and vise-versa. Small postural improvements have huge impact on your health, sitting at your desk, your tai chi form, balance, push hands prowess, etc. We cover how to improve posture while doing the form specifically in another article to see how to apply what you learn about the six harmonies. Check it out when you are done here.
Pro-tip: The great degree to which posture affects our mood, energy, and ability to work is finally making it a huge focus in health circles and have led to an explosion in ideas for how to improve posture.
How do we evaluate our posture and make corrections?
We could have proper instruction, do chiropractic work or even Rolfing. But thankfully, Tai Chi also has a blueprint to evaluate yourself and make corrections in real time.
The Six Harmonies – History
Dai Long Bang was a master of the internal martial arts who lived in the 18th Century. His family cultivated and developed Xing Yi Quan, one of the two other major internal martial arts. During his life he recorded a great deal of tactical points of martial arts and wrote “The Six Harmonies Fists.” It’s from this work that the Six Harmonies are taken.
What are the Six Harmonies?
The Six Harmonies are a tai chi theory used to instruct how to coordinate movements between three external joints (6 total, 3 per side) and the coordination of three internal processes that align emotion and intention. “Harmony” does not only mean “moving together” despite this being a good start. It also connotes a connection between the movements.
External Harmonies (san wai he)
1) The hands harmonize with the feet.
2) The hips harmonize with the shoulders.
3) The elbows harmonize with the knees.
Internal Harmonies (san nei he)
1) The heart harmonizes with the intention.
2) The intention harmonizes with the Chi.
3) The Chi harmonizes with the movement.
Coordination of the Six Harmonies
“Coordination” or “Harmonizing” includes good posture and the body parts moving in unison. It does not mean you move like a robot or that your body parts aren’t moving in different directions at times. Harmony can also refer to the angles of the joints being the same or the body parts moving in the same direction. An example of this last point could be your hand traveling forward and your toes pointing in that direction.
Coordination of the External Harmonies
Coordination of the external harmonies is a straightforward alignment of pairs of joints. In tai chi we are initially concerned with the hip and shoulder alignment because the other two harmonies will be dependent on this primary structural alignment. This can easily be studied by looking in the mirror and making concrete adjustments. Let’s take a look:
The hands harmonize with the feet: the toes are pointed in the direction that the hand is traveling and the step and strike/grab arrive at the same time. Proper alignment of hands and feet leads to heavy pushes or strikes where the support of the ground is felt rather than arm strength.
The hips harmonize with the shoulders: the shoulders are aligned over the hips. The hip joint (kua) and armpit are not collapsed. Rotational power is generated by the hips and carried out though the torso. You can accomplish this harmony by turning your whole torso as you move rather than just your arm and by keeping an upright posture as though you are sitting on an invisible chair.
The elbows harmonize with the knees: The elbows shrink and expand in unison. A great example is shooting a free throw in basketball. The player crouches down, springs up, and the hands are over his head releasing the ball at the second that the entire body has expanded.
Coordination of the Internal Harmonies
Internal coordination or harmony is dependent on external coordination. So if you have not checked your posture throughout different parts of the tai chi form, external coordination has to be present first. Coordinating the internal harmonies is putting the intention and will (the brains and heart) behind the movement.
The heart harmonizes with the intention: The heart is the emotional that sets the motivational fires burning. It can be difficult to conceptualize how emotion and intention can impact movement so let’s use grabbing a doorknob as an example. One can simply grab a doorknob mindlessly and turn it. There would be no thought about how weight is distributed or how much force is used to turn the knob. A person might actually be leaning on the knob if their balance is forward.
Now imagine being angry while grabbing the knob with the intention of slamming the door as hard as you can once it’s open. Your emotion will alter how you stand, seize the knob, breathe, and employ not just your hand but your whole arm. Secondly imagine that you are in a magic show competition. If you are too slow in trying to grab the knob it will move. You need to be quick, light, and silent. Your excitement to win and focus will alter your posture and relax your muscles so that your whole body can move simultaneously. This is how we energize our movements with intention and emotion.
The intention harmonizes with the Chi: Your degree of intention will determine your degree of concentration. Walking by a tai chi class most people just see attendees moving slowly. The slowness is not the goal! It is the result of concentrating on the accuracy of each step and movement and correctly setting them in motion.
The chi harmonizes with the movement: Now it is time to act. Your posture is good. You are focused and choose to move. The brain is given very detailed information allowing you to move in a connected, alive state. Your job as a practitioner is to feel this for as much of the form as your experience and attention span allows for.
Applying this Tai Chi Theory to Your Practice and Life
The six harmonies give us a way to self-monitor and make adjustments while taking action. Secondly, they heighten our awareness of the smallest, often mundane tasks and increase our focus. Once someone has learned the movements of the tai chi form, working to maintain posture and harmony is what makes the form truly enjoyable and can create a flow state where any other worries, thoughts, or troubles fade into the background.
I am always on the lookout for ways that tai chi can positively impact my life outside of the classroom and six harmonies theory has far reaching implications. Throughout work or life, I have found so many useful suggestions that simply fall apart at the time that I need them the most. These can be suggestions for how to parent exhausted, screaming children, how to organize your calendar so you aren’t missing workouts or social events, to how to tackle a project. You read about something, put it into place, and then in the heat of the moment total forget how you were hoping to act or through the planning out the window and slip (again) into survival mode.
The six harmonies will give you amazingly good posture which means that you have full access to your lungs for breathing, you are not constraining joints so you have great blood flow without unneeded pressure. And all of it is accomplished because you are working to improve posture while moving. It has been designed within the activity rather than as a drill to do before or something that is practiced independently and then applied to the form. Going back to real life examples, I no longer accept any suggestions that aren’t specifically baked into the task or interaction that I am trying to improve. I no longer add or abandon whole systems to create change, I focus on small doable components. When I have a win, I maintain that and again add another tiny change, always within the context of my parenting, interaction, workout, schedule, or project. Progress has become an accumulation of small wins overtime which feel slow to me but appear impressive to an onlooker.
Betty Edwards in Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain (ad) described it the best when she talked about getting lost and forgetting about time when you incorporate intention and balance in the creative process. If I get nothing else out of tai chi class, I at least get a break from the continual ramble of thoughts (grocery lists, where did I put my…) that usually accompanies my day.
Thank you
For a clear and direct approach to a complex often recorded in poetic language