Martial Arts as Metaphor: Empowering through Connecting with the Way of Nature  



                                                                                                      Zibin Guo (Ph.D., The University of Tennessee Chattanooga, USA)



Centering and Flowing Mind and Body: The Story of Taijiquan

For humans, nature has been a source of both challenges and wisdom. The indescribable and immeasurable amount of power and ability it has, its graceful, flowing, and effortless way of demonstrating its power and cultivating a life for all beings, became the aspiration of early martial artists to develop a form of martial arts to cultivate a kind of power that empowers the limited physical ability.  

As ancient wisdom prescribes, to achieve this power, one must cultivate a fluid, formless, gentle, calm, centered, and engaged mind, like the Way (or Dao) for the natural world. This mind can become the body and effortlessly make the body flow like water.  By unifying all parts of body movements, including breathing, the mind can transform the body into a unified system, creating a force of four ounces to deflect one thousand pounds (a significant challenge).  This form of martial arts was first categorized as internal martial arts.  Later, it was named Taijiquan.     

The name Taijiquan consists of two concepts. Taiji refers to a state of being that can give birth to immeasurable power. Quan means fist or method. The term Taijiquan thus refers to the practice of cultivating a state of mind and body that can ward off an immeasurable amount of force. Shaped by centuries of drastic social changes, wars, and uncertainties, Taijiquan has undergone constant modification, transforming it into a multifaceted art that benefits both the mind and body, empowering people of all health conditions beyond cultural boundaries. 

Ancient Wisdom with Modern Application

While all traditional practices carry enormous cultural significance and historical value, their sustainability is often attributed to their adaptability to social, cultural, and environmental changes, as well as their potential impact on and contribution to upholding core cultural values. The long history and continuing popularity of Taijiquan practice in the modern era are attributed to its invaluable approach to strengthening the body by empowering the mind. Taijiquan does not view the body's ability as a tangible and quantifiable entity that only focuses on muscular strength and anatomical perfection.  Instead, it views power and body condition as fluid and contextual, reflecting the ability of an integrated and gentle mind and body to function as a unified system. This unique approach, which redefines strength and turns vulnerability into a source of power, empowers the mind and benefits all individuals. As the continuation of evolving social complexities in which our mind and body conditions and capabilities are increasingly fragmented and contested by the rapidly social challenges, this unique approach and practice have been able to continue to provide vital contributions to the empowerment of contemporaries in navigating through modern social life in which the narrowly and rigidly defined and practiced concepts of ability and normality challenge the human potential, creating the vulnerability of so many.

One of the powerful ways that the practice of Taijiquan strengthens our body by empowering the mind is that it embodies the power of a diversified and flowing nature. Inspired by the graceful, evolving nature, Taijiquan movements not only integrate the perceived principles governing the constant and flowing changes in the natural world (such as mountains, water, and bamboo) but also imitate animal movements, reflecting the deeply embedded human admiration and longing for being part of the natural world. Therefore, Taijiquan can also serve as a metaphor that empowers practitioners by transforming the socially constructed mind and body into an integral part of our natural being. 

Taijiquan as Metaphor: Working with Inner City Youth

In 2015, I led a team and conducted a funded project aimed at developing and implementing suitable and effective intervention strategies to address the challenges faced by inner-city adolescents in managing their physical and emotional health.  Collaborating with an urban Boys & Girls Club in a Southeastern region, the project team planned to incorporate a Taijiquan program as part of the health educational program for the summer day camp participants.  This Boys & Girls Club hosts more than 100 campers aged 7 to 14 years old every summer.  Of these campers, 99% were minority youths from low-income backgrounds and living in the challenging inner-city districts. 

Before developing the actual Tai Chi Chuan program for this project, we conducted several meetings and interviews with the Boys & Girls Club management team to gain insights into the characteristics and needs of their young campers.  We learned that many of these young campers faced numerous and daunting challenges in their daily life. Broken family care structures, widespread street violence, poor economic conditions, and lack of resources pose challenges for them in managing their behavioral and emotional health.  “Many learned to use physical strength and anger to deal with problems,” one counselor commented.  

After the meeting, the team agreed to develop a short Taijiquan form as part of the intervention program, providing participants with an embodied experience of an alternative perspective on the dynamics of power and its practice. Focusing on the concept “power emerging from gentle and graceful flow,” the main objective of this project was to provide participants with the embodied understanding of power of maintaining gracefulness and flow in both physical and mental contexts. self-control through learning and practicing the movements of Taijiquan.  

Considering the age of this group, we created a four-movement Taijiquan program, consisting of two movements from the Yang style and two from the Chen style. By mixing the graceful, slow, and flowing Yang-style Taijiquan movements with the fast and dynamically expressed energy of the Chen-style Taijiquan movements, this program intends to give the participants an embodied experience of the power of embracing and unifying through gentle flow while enjoying a simple but fun and engaging introduction to the art of Taijiquan. 

To achieve the project's main objective, implementation of this program focused on using metaphors/similes to guide learning and practicing the four Taijiquan movements. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is a commonly shared piece of wisdom, suggesting that a single image can clarify a complex idea or that a complex idea can be illustrated more effectively through a familiar image than through a written description. The use of this strategy was based on several considerations, including the age range of participants, the nature-oriented characteristics of the Taijiquan environment, and the effect of metaphors/similes to empower our perception and emotions. 

Each of the four movements (“Tiger pushes the mountain,” “Golden rooster standing on one leg,” for example) is a powerful metaphor, and the use of similes such as “stand like a tree, flow like water,” and “yield like bamboo,” during the instruction not only effectively make these slow, circular and gentle flowing movements meaningful, they also can empower the practitioners’ mind and body through creating body-nature association.  

The 8-week Taijiquan program was conducted at the Boys & Girls Club in the summer of 2016. Twenty-five camp participants, comprising 14 females and 11 males, aged 7 to 14, participated in the program. Each session was 30 minutes long and was conducted once a week.  

Shortly after the 8-week Tai Chi program ended, a program evaluation team from the School of Public Health at the University of Tennessee conducted two focus group interviews with a sample of participants: a group of four girls and a group of six boys.  The team asked each group to share what they remembered most from their participation in the 8-week Taijiquan program, and here are the top 9 items shared by the two groups. 

Table 1. The Impact of Adaptive Taijiquan Practice on Inner-City Youth N=10

They were then asked to identify the top three phrases they thought were important for their everyday lives. For the girls’ group, “Flow like water” was selected by everyone; the second one was “yield and redirect,” selected by 3 out of 4 girls, and the third-ranked was “Punch like a whip.” “Yield like bamboo” received two votes. When the evaluation team asked why they thought “Flow like water” was the most important theme for everyday life, all four girls agreed that this simile helped them stay calm throughout the day or whenever they got stressed.

For the boys' group, “Deflect distractions” received all six votes; “Focus” and “Golden Rooster stand on one leg” each with five votes. The boys’ discussions for “Deflect distractions” and “Focus” were essentially the same. Both had real-life applications in avoiding violence, focusing on school/home responsibilities, and having courage.

This study is another example demonstrating the impact of using martial arts practice, including Taijiquan as metaphor, on empowering the mind and body.  As George Lakoff, the author of “Metaphors We Live By,” adequately puts it: “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical … Metaphor is thus imaginative rationality.” Metaphors and similes shape our perceptions of life and the world around us. The positive metaphors and similes that convey uplifting, inspiring, or optimistic ideas and images can evoke feelings of hope, growth, and healing, communicating complex ideas and concerns in a more engaging and relatable manner.

※ Views in this article are the author's own