Everything Is Round And In Motion

Everything is round and in motion.

The first time I heard Grandmaster Feng Zhiqiang say that, it stopped me in my tracks. It was so obviously true yet I’d never thought of the universe in that most basic way.

Just as the moon is round and rotates around the earth, the earth is round and rotates around the sun. Our sun, in turn, is one of maybe a billion round stars, many with round planets of their own, that swirl within our vast disc of a galaxy, which itself is just one of maybe a billion round and swirling galaxies in our universe. And now astronomers say there may even be multiple universes.

What’s true of the cosmic seems also true of the micro. I’ve never seen an atom, but they’re always represented as tiny round electrons spinning in circles around a round nucleus. Given that all matter is built of atoms, even a slab of granite is not the solid block of stone that appears to the limited vision of the human eye but rather a constellation of tiny round things in motion.

What does this have to do with Tai Chi? Everything.

Like all those other round things in motion that fill our universe, Tai Chi is round and in motion. It’s a martial art whose fundamental structure is a circle. And any point on one circle can be the beginning of another circle, perhaps of a different size and on a different plane. The possibilities are endless. Each movement should be a symphony of circles conducted by a calm and creative mind.

The circle is the natural shape of movement from beings whose mobility comes from ball joints. But not all circles are perfect circles or complete ones. A punch that looks straight to the untrained eye may be a fist partially tracing the arch of a large loop. Likewise, energy moves through the body in spiral patterns, but spirals after all are simply stretched circles. 

When you fight, says Master Chen Xiang, you should be drawing beautiful circles the air.