Taichi fighters perform their art in circle. This sounds very complicated. A stance of circle means the performer’s mass is in a continuous, horizontal circular motion between two legs.
The JONG of Taichi - The Taichi JONG is similar to Bagua in the way that they are both moving JONGs. That means, performing the JONG shall keep your body moving in a certain way to gain momentum and advantage. The illustration of the Taichi moving JONG is as follow
You may start with standing with your two legs opened in the length of your shoulders, and then draw a circle with its diameter is the distance between the middle of your feet. You will then find that the centre of the circle is the point where your mass is perpendicularly pointing at. Then, move your bodyweight to one of your leg (which is equivalent to standing with one leg and the other leg just touching the ground) you will then find your body mass is on the arc of the circle. Start moving your body mass along the circle, until you become standing with the other leg and your original standing leg is now just touching the ground. You have moved a half circle if you check the circle you drawn on the ground. Keep moving your body mass along this circle is the basis of Taichi as all the force you want to apply to opponent or borrow from opponent shall run along this circular path of your body mass. A Taichi performer shall keep his body mass in this circular exercise so that the moving circular force can then be his asset to attack or absorb attacks from opponent.
This technique makes performer entire body mass become a vortex, a turbulent that pulls in all coming attacks or adhered strange object, spin them and then repel them off with their body balance lost.
The above is only the mechanism of a horizontal circle (the foundation). Expert level of Taichi shall combine with a vertical circle as well. Combined with a vertical circle, the entire body mass shall move in a diagonal circle, either high in front and low in rear, or low in front and high in rear (you change it by will) and they generate different result to your opponent.
The vertical circle technique divide into performer and opponent two division. As a performer, my body mass goes up and down in circle without turning myself down (my head always pointing to the heaven during the vertical circle motion) In contrast, I have to use my vertical circle motion to affect my opponent to work in vertical circle as well but in a rolling circle. It means my opponent shall be put in a vertical circular motion which would cause him upside down, his head shall point from heaven to the earth and to the heaven again as a complete circle. A theory called Spherical Heaven and Cubic Earth (天圓地方) shall apply here. Spherical Heaven means the circular motion that your opponent shall go through, and the Cubic(Square) Earth means his two shoulders and two sides of the hip (All these four are the root of four limbs, everytime your opponent attack with limbs, the root of the attacking limb will indicate) If we put this square into the circle, and the Spherical Heaven means what the earth should go through, we would then have to move the two upper corners of the square to the right side so that they become the two corners at the right side (moving 90 degree) Therefore, it means we move the two shoulders of your opponent to the right by 90 degree, or even 180 degree for being upside down. Being upside down means your opponent lost his balance. This is the meaning of Spherical Heaven and Cubic Earth in Taichi.
This is a video clip I made to illustrate the Taichi basic principles in youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdbP-08TiCI
