Cheng Man Ch'ing - Tai Chi as swimming through air

Cheng Man Ch'ing (1902-1975) was one of the later students of Yang Chengfu (1883-1936), a key figure in the development and codification of Yang style Tai Chi. In 1947 he wrote 'Thirteen treatises on T'ai Chi Chu'an', translated and publisehd by Black Snake Books (California) in 1985. I was struck by this section on the relationship between Tai Chi and swimming:'The tan tien is the chi hai (sea of chi) and is located 1.3 inches below the navel. It is named "sea" because of its large capacity and deep floating power. If the ch'i can travel to the "sea" and accumulate day by day, then in three years there will be significant enhancement. But this is siphoning only a little ch'i from the universe, as if one were to take only a single hair from ten thousand oxen.How does one start to accumulate such chi? The answer is to learn the movements of Tai Chi Ch'uan [...] Swimming is the only other exercise that conforms to the principles of Tai Chi Chuan and wíhch concentrates the ch'i to become…

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