Xu lin ding jing: Your spirit/mind must be empty, and your spine should feel as if hanging downward from the vertex of your head. It's the same thing as keeping your head up instead of down and tucked. You want to project control over the situation.

Liang yan ping shi: Both eyes look straight ahead to keep the head in position.

Wei shou xia e: Drop the chin slightly to straighten the back of the head & decompress the cervical disks.

Se di shang e: Put the tongue on the roof of the mouth to connect the Ren & Du meridians. From a combat perspective, it actually keeps you from fatiguing and from biting your tongue if your chin gets knocked.

Han xiong ba bei: Wrap the upper chest and pull the spine up straight. Meaning, relax your shoulders and pull the back straight, decompressing your internal organs, but don't pull your shoulder blades together.

Chen jian zui zhou: Sink your shoulders and drop your elbows. Never use your shoulder muscles more than you have to. Any time you lift your shoulders or elbows, you are offering a target for a strike to the ribs or an elbow lock.

Song yao zuo kua: Keep your lower back loose and your hips as if sitting.

Wei lu zhong zheng: Tuck the tailbone underneath to staighten the lumbar curve. This puts you in a position of a "standing crouch", like a tiger ready to pounce.

Liang qi wei qu: Both knees bent slightly, lowering your center of gravity and creating the potential for mobility.
Liang jiao ping xing: Both feet parallel shoulder width, in line w/the whole body. This is the ideal ready stance: non-threatening, relaxed, stable, and mobile.

Yong yi, bu yong li: Use your mind to move your body, not your muscles.
This can also mean "use your understanding and superior technique to fight, rather than just raw force and ignorance".

Qi chen dan tian: Sink your breathing down to your lower abdomen, using your diaphragm to breathe instead of your chest muscles.

Shang xia xiang shui: Make all your movements continuous, flowing. Can also mean that top & bottom of the body work together.

Nei wai xiang he: The internal and external strengths come together: Qi & brute force

Xu shi fen ming: The weight is distributed clearly on one leg or the other. In training, this is one of the biggest things you can do to build leg strength for mobility and for attack. For health, it builds the muscles around the lower limbs so that there is less chance of injury.

Xiang lian bu duan: Make any movement or set as one unbroken thing.
Each move flows into the next.

While most Tai-Chi practitioners simply practice the form and hope to derive martial usage out of it without understanding the theory underlying it, there are a growing number who are starting to understand the 8 great skills. Most push hands players only know the first four skills, therefore having an incomplete knowledge of the art they practice. Within these skills, the locking, throwing, full-body striking, elbow strikes, and kicking techniques of Tai-Chi exist. Once knowledge of these skills is achieved, the fighting techniques of the form become readily apparent.

1. Peng: Ward off- Like holding a beach ball in your arm and letting it act like a spring.

2. Lu: Pull back/Follow- Receiving force and bringing it in towards your body, but at the last moment, rolling it off your centerline. Adhering energy.

3. Ji: Press- One hand with Peng Jing (ward off energy), the other with An Jing (pushing energy). Reinforced hit.
**sub-skill - Hua: Separating- Opening a double handed attack or readjusting the centerline arrangement to open a line for your own attack.

4. An: Push- The gravitational double palm strike of Tai-Chi. Raking through internal organs. Can come from high to low (destructive) or low to high (unbalancing & lifting).

5. Cai: Pulling down- Can be worked abruptly or with varying tempo to whiplash your opponent. Joint-locking techniques also.

6. Lieh: Lifting/Turning body- According to Master Hwang, this is a diagonal lifting technique that can use the forearm or fingers to whip/strike. On the contrary, Master Wang says that this is a turning technique by which the body spirals like a coiling dragon to redirect any force which comes in to the body.

7. Zou: Elbow strike- Using the elbow to drop into the vitals.

8. Kao: Full body strike/press- Leaning into your opponent to either unbalance him or to strike vital areas with your shoulder or hip, reinforced by your stance.

1. Qian Jin: Entering forward (which includes both)
2. Hou Tui: Kicking/exiting backwards
3. Zuo Pan: Stepping left
4. You Gu: Stepping right
5. Zhong Ding: Fixing/holding the center - spinal axis & balance theory

For the Chinese version of this text done by the late Master Vincent Hwang Chao-ling, please visit http://www.csjb3la.org/taichi.htm