Grandmaster Tse’s Tàijí Fist 273

You will notice that when you are relaxed and practising your Tàijíquán 太極拳 form that when your body rises – you will breathe in and when it sinks – you will breathe out, also when you separate the arm out – you breathe in, and when you close the arms in-you will breathe out. Throughout the whole form the body is constantly moving up and down, and opening and closing. Sometimes we go up slowly and then our breath will be longer, then we go sink quickly and so we breathe out quickly. It all depends on the timing of the movement, and we allow our breathing to follow it. How about when one hand goes up and the other hand goes down? In this case, we just follow the body and if it needs to breathe in we breathe in, and if it needs to breathe out then we will breathe out. We do not need to think about it. It we just let the body breathe as it needs. When we practise our forms, we should just focus on the movements and relaxing and let the breath just follow. The only exception to this is when we Fā Jìn 發勁 – Release Power, and here we must breathe out quickly from the Dāntián 丹田. If we practise like this then we are following the natural way and this is Dào 道.