#119: Lighten Your Load – Tai Chi’s Double-Weighted Error [Video + Podcast]

Welcome to Episode #119 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Lighten Your Load – Tai Chi’s Double-Weighted Error.”

The art of Tai Chi Chuan is often criticized (or even mocked) in modern martial arts circles. Of course, much of that criticism comes from people who have never researched or practiced the art whatsoever!

Typically, the critics have only seen Tai Chi Chuan students being defeated in competitions and then concluded that the art’s strategies and techniques offer no value to a serious martial artist.

NOT SO!

To be fair, many teachers of Tai Chi Chuan prefer to practice the philosophical aspects of the art more than the practical, which can definitely lead to trouble in the realm of self-defense. However, that does not mean the art itself is lacking in profound and valuable concepts.

One concept that I find extremely helpful is the “double-weighted error”. Even as a mere admirer of Tai Chi Chuan, as opposed to a formal student, my understanding of this classic piece of advice has changed my practice for the better.

Right or wrong, I hope this concept will change yours, too!

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Lighten Your Load – Tai Chi’s Double-Weighted Error

Here’s the video. If the player doesn’t work, click this direct link.

As always, if you’d like to keep the conversation going, feel free to leave a comment here or through my Contact Page.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome my friend. Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. This is episode #119 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Let me ask you, have you ever felt stressed out, overwhelmed, like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders? Well, of course, you’re human. And the fact is that life is heavy. And when it comes to self-defense, someone trying to injure you or even kill you, well, that’s about as heavy as it gets.

Today I want to break down the four different ways, the four different categories of weight in this world.

Why does life get so heavy? And I also want to share three tips to help you unload some of that weight or, hopefully, avoid it altogether.

Now, this whole discussion was inspired from the art of Tai Chi, or Tai Chi Chuan. In the classics of Tai Chi, you will find a term, double-weighted.

Now, the idea of being double-weighted is an error. It’s something you want to avoid in your practice, whether it’s alone or with a partner or in a real fight.

Now, let me say right up front, I am not speaking today as a student, formal student of Tai Chi. I’ve dabbled, but I’m certainly not an expert. I wouldn’t even call myself a formal student.

I am an admirer, and as someone who has read about and dabbled in practicing Tai Chi, this concept was inspiring. So, I’m just going to share my thoughts, my understanding of this concept. And if it doesn’t match up with what the experts say, well, guess what?

When it comes to the Chinese martial arts, even the experts disagree. We don’t know exactly what the old masters meant when they wrote it down. And if the experts can disagree, then I feel much better about sharing my humble opinion.

So, here’s what double-weighted means to me and how I’m using it in my practice.

First of all, you might find some people who think that double-weighted just means even distribution of your weight in your feet, like a horse stance, 50-50. That idea makes no sense to me, so I’m just going to ignore it.

To me, double-weighted starts to make sense when you think about that feeling you get, when you feel stuck, when you feel frozen. For instance, you are standing and someone comes over and puts their head on your shoulder and leans on you, let’s say.

Now, when they’re leaning on you and you are now crooked, you are not just supporting your weight, you’re also holding up some of their weight. So, if I don’t accommodate that, if I don’t shift my position, I don’t adjust my posture, I am now tighter, I’m straining a little bit, and I’m not as free as I was, I’m somewhat constrained.

So, in that way, I would say you are double-weighted. It’s my weight plus their weight. The state of being frozen.

It could also be just on your own, if you slip and you fall, okay, you have the physical challenge of managing this fall down to the ground, but let’s say you’re also afraid. You stiffen up, your eyes go wide, your hands pop out, and when you hit the ground, because you’re stiff and because you weren’t able to soften and go with it, you break a wrist or you hit your head, you have a bad fall.

So in that way, I would say you were double-weighted because you felt stuck or frozen, helpless, for that fall to the ground.

So this is something, this state of being double-weighted, getting heavier than you normally are, of getting stuck, can happen on your own or it can happen because of someone else’s activities against you. So let’s break it down even further.

Like I said, four different ways, more specifically, that you may add heaviness, weight to your life. And hopefully we can avoid these, but here’s the first one.

The first one is your body versus gravity. This one, we can’t escape. There’s no way you can get around it. You’re living in a body, I presume. So your weight is always being pulled down by gravity. And we try to manage that with good posture, right?

So one of our studies as martial artists is the study of stances and our alignment. If you are bent over in your life or you’re hunched over commonly, that means that some of your muscles are working harder than they need to.

You’re burning calories, extra calories. You are adding tension into your body. And that strain is limiting your freedom of movement because you’re tighter some place. And over time, certain muscles are getting weaker while others are trying to accommodate for them.

So you’re imbalanced and you’re constrained and you’re unnecessarily burdened. So we try to lighten that load by good posture. Once we start moving, it becomes even more challenging.

If you can’t balance yourself and get rid of excess tension when you’re just standing, now that you’re stepping, running, kicking, fighting, it’s only more difficult.

So example, a spinning hook kick to the head. Do you practice spinning hook kicks to the head? Well, that’s physically challenging. If you had a jump spin hook kick to the head, okay, now we’re getting somewhere.

You really have to have a great skill to figure out your alignment, your timing, your shifting, to execute that technique and land comfortably.

And this is the point of our training. As martial artists, we are in the pursuit of efficiency.

I can’t stop gravity. There will always be some tugging and some effort. That’s our single weight. Let’s call that. I’m not double-weighted yet. It’s single-weighted, just that natural alignment.

But anything that takes us off of that, if we’re tilting, leaning, we’re not practicing how to move in this world with coordination and ease, then we are now double-weighting ourselves. We’re making it even harder.

So, if you’re training well, then in most cases you should be finding comfort in how you stand, how you sit, and how you move in the world.

So that’s category number one, where you might find excess weight in your life.

The second category, instead of your body versus gravity, what about your mind?

Your mind versus beliefs and your mind versus emotions. What is your mental state at any given moment?

Let’s say something frightens you, like when you take that fall. That immediately adds tension into your body as well. Or if you’re afraid, you hear a bump in the night, and your body gets tight, okay, now you’re double-weighted that way.

In your head, if you’re afraid of something, you may also be less aware than you would have been if you were just staying calm. You start to tunnel vision. You start to add worry, like what was that? Am I going to die? Do I have what it takes to get out of this situation?

So while you’re worrying, you’re not paying attention to opportunities and possibilities. You’ve lost some of your creativity.

So it’s very likely that you will find yourself on a daily bas