As you move in the form (or, one could argue, nearly any activity), notice each part of your body and how tense it becomes. Try the same motion without that tension. How must you adjust your body? Does the movement becomes focused in some other part of your body? Does it create tension somewhere else? Can we soften that?
For example, try opening the door to your home. Move forward, reach out for the handle, grasp, pull or push, swing. Let’s examine the arm. When the arm reaches out, does the arm tense? How about the hand? Certainly there must be some amount of muscle activity in the hand to hold the handle, but how little tension can there be? Experiment with this.
Once we’ve gotten a hold of the door, how much tension appears in the arm to twist or pull on the handle? Can that be done more gently? What part of the body is pulling or pushing here? If the arm is doing all the work, see if the motion can originate from the hips or the legs instead.
Once you feel that you can’t soften any more in the arm, examine other parts of the body. What about the face and the area around the eyes when we open the door? What about the belly? It’s like playing hide-and-seek with the tension in your muscles. Seek it out, soften it, and then soften it some more. You can try this with any motion, or even — gasp — standing still!
Play on, Taiji friends.
Green Leaf Tai Chi 