I'm sticking with you...

We have been doing a little work on following and adhering recently, and it throws up some interesting things. First and foremost, in practicing sticking and following, the boundaries between who's "in charge" and who is "following" become very blurred indeed. Once you can give up the idea that you are fighting, and you should be doing some particular attack, the whole experience is less stressful, and requires less energy. The better your following ability, the more likely and the more often it is that applications will appear spontaneously. Rather than thinking "I must get White Crane on him", you follow with both hands and feet, and lo and behold, a technique will appear. It may be White Crane, it may be something else. But it is all the more effective for having appeared like a lightning bolt from the cloud of foot/leg/body/arm/hand movements. This is the magic of tai chi, and a true example of wu wei, that much-vaunted concept attributed to the Taoists. It really becomes apparent only when you nominate one partner as the attacker, and one as the defender. This could also be called distinguishing between yin and yang. It also removes most of the Ego from the exercise. Ego, it seems to me, is the chief enemy of spontaneity, because the body stiffens up in trying to deal with commands from the conceptual mind, rather than reacting to circumstance.

So there you go. Easy, huh?