Tai Chi and Yoga, the Similarities
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 5 years before Mar 16, 2017
MiBeloved 5 years ago
Questions from an email:
I did 10-15 mins of pranayama then sat to meditate. After 7-10 mins of meditation in half lotus posture. I rose to a standing posture with physical eyes closed and body locks engaged. I began to perform my tai-chi form and sense that the postures are an extension of the yoga asanas. Essentially, the tai-chi postures are asanas in motion which allow kundalini to travel throughout the nadis of the subtle body. The subtle body became more electrified and visible through the tai-chi movements. Some teachers described tai-chi as "moving yoga". Is there some partial truth to that?
MiBeloved’s Response:
Yoga is listed by Patanjali as having 8 parts. Posture or asana is just one part of that and it is the 3rd stage in those 8 segments of yoga. Higher Yoga is called samyama by patanjali, and that is the three highest part, when done as a sequential practice.
This samyama has come to be called meditation in the Western countries. And people here are mostly concerned with meditation and not with the preliminary parts of the process as listed by Patanjali.
Some people are concerned with postures but only for the purpose of physical health and physical beauty.
What is tai chi? I will let you answer that question. Yoga is for transcending ourselves as physical systems and finding everything else which is the self. In other words, besides my physical body, what I am?
So yoga is the tool used to pry into that. Is Tai Chi’s purpose that? Again you have to answer the question.
If in saying that tai chi is yoga, some teachers really mean that tai chi is asanas or postures in motion, then tai chi is not yoga.
Is there more to tai chi besides the physical movements or is there more to yoga than the asana postures.
I can answer for yoga, that the asanas are not yoga, but they are the 3rd part of yoga.
Yoga is an escapist thing. Those who feel locked down in the material world, like prisoners locked down in a max-security prison, might try for yoga. With yoga we escape from this dimension and research other places, trying to find something which we are agreeable with. In meditation (samyama) the yogi researches other dimension in his hunt for something which suits his needs.
If he finds any dimension which involve the use of a temporary body or which is connected to a place where temporary bodies are used, he is not interested. So he keeps looking.
Is that done in tai chi? I will let you provide the answer.
The highest stage of yoga, is called samadhi which is mostly tripping out from this place and keying in to other dimensions and other types of beings, divine beings.
Why, because a yogi realizes, “O shit! I got to have a connection to somebody in those divine places, if I want to migrate there.”
When doing tai chi, are the practitioners getting such ideas?
To find out what a yogi investigates in this and other dimensions see Patanjali Yoga Sutras, chapter3. There is a long list of those achievements. Is that similar to tai chi?
Most of the tai chi which is being practiced, is an effort to either harmonize one’s psyche with the natural environment or to compel a hostile environment to relate to oneself in a harmonious way. Tai Chi might also have other objectives but from what I see so far, most of the practitioners are doing it for one or both of those reasons.
Yoga is not concerned with straightening any kinks in this environment, nor in becoming harmonious with it. On the micro level among the bacteria, a yogi sees that this is a dog-eat-dog situation all the way through to the top level of the human predators. So the yogi has no hope of harmonizing with this or of causing this to harmonize with the self.
Our idea is to abandon this and to find an already-existing place which is devoid of the dog-eat-dog profile.
So how does Tai chi relate to that?
