Month: March 2023

The name of this move puzzled me for years. 野马分鬃 – Wild horse parts mane – what does it mean?

In English this move is sometimes called Parting wild horse’s mane. This rendering leads on to the idea that the tai chi player is parting the mane of a wild horse. This always seemed a bit unlikely to me. Wild horses are, well, wild. In Taoism, the wild horse is a metaphor for the raw energy of our physical body, the energy of youth. Think of the movement in the Lok Hup set Wild horse chases wind, whose name describes how we so easily waste our energy on useless projects. The energy must be brought under control, but the idea that we will get a comb out and part the mane of a wild horse – really?

Chinese is rather terse as a language and frequently dispenses with things such as articles (a, the) and possessive pronouns (his, hers, its). It’s very tempting to add extra words to make nice English phrases, but these are not English phrases – they are Chinese. 🙂 Here the Chinese simply says, literally, wild horse parts mane. So who is doing the parting?

My answer came to me one day watching a nature documentary about mustangs, the wild horses of the North American plains. In this documentary there was some slow-motion footage of a running horse which, as its ran, was shaking its head. The slow motion footage revealed how this sent a rippling motion down the animal’s neck.

Suddenly it all became clear. As we perform Wild horse parts mane to right and left, we are the horse, shaking our mane – our neck and spine – from side to side. In the video, look at the way a wave ripples along the horse’s neck as it shakes its mane.

攆 猴 Repulse monkey is one of the repeated moves in the Tai Ji set. Why do we repulse the monkey? The simplest explanation is that to calm the mind, we must repulse or expel (攆) the chattering monkey mind.

This makes sense, but perhaps there’s more to it than this. As ever, the question to ask is: What would a Chinese person understand by the name of this move?

Monkey was a cheeky Chinese demi-god. He got up to all kinds of mischief, but the exploit that the Chinese best remember is revealed by the name of a movement in the Lok Hup set: Monkey picks fruit. According to the legend, Monkey stole the Peaches of Immortality from the garden of Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, and gorged on them. He is now an Immortal – the goal of Taoist practice – but he has taken a short cut. This is cheating, and Buddha Shakyamuni imprisons him under Five Elements Mountain for 500 years. This episode is widely depicted in Chinese art, both in paintings and sculpture.

In Repulse Monkey we try to stop Monkey from stealing the peach. Imagine a nice juicy peach in the upturned palm of your hand. As Monkey reaches for it, you withdraw it, and the rear hand delivers a palm strike, thrusting him away.

You think this image a bit fanciful? The movement just before Repulse Monkey is Fist Under Elbow. This was once explained to us as: Reach out, grab an apple, and slice it in half. Now, apples are to the West what peaches are to the East. The Chinese Peaches of Immortality should remind us of the Golden Apples of the Garden of the Hesperides in Greek mythology which also conferred immortality. One of the 12 Labours of Hercules was to steal some apples from this garden, which was guarded by a dragon. The parallels don’t stop there: the Peaches of Immortality were in the garden of the Queen Mother of the West, whilst the Hesperides were also in the far west, and situated near a mountain – the mythical Mount Atlas. The Garden of Xiwangmu is situated near a mythical Taoist mountain, Mount Kunlun. Both gardens are attended by young maidens: the Garden of Hesperides is named for the nymphs who tend them, whilst Xiwangmu’s garden is tended by her seven daughters. The Garden of Hesperides is the original paradise (the word means ‘enclosed garden’) – the Garden of Eden.

In Repulse Monkey, then, we thrust away our desire to achieve results without working for them.

If one may not steal one of the Peaches of Immortality, how can one get one? Xiwangmu would occasionally give them to deserving mortals. In other words, they cannot be taken, but only given. In the West, this is what we call grace.

A final inspiration for our practice comes from the monkey itself. The character 猴 yuan today refers to any kind of monkey but formerly it was used just for gibbons. Gibbons swing through the forest canopy on their long arms, which are beautifully extended in long, relaxed arcs, rather than locked straight, with the elbows pointing down. “Drop elbows” was the correction Mr Moy gave more than any other.