Upper and lower Part 2 - "doing" meets "not doing" or "Ippon" meets "Koka" 

For the person with the bandana, I will provide an explanation that may be very useful. Tai Chi lower dantien essentially becomes a gimball or fluidic sphere/ball, that replaces what the joints/muscles normally do. But in order to create this fluidic ball at the lower dantien, a core, your breathing has to be relaxed and from the belly, expanding and inflating the belly. THis is contrary to the fight/flight stress reaction, which sucks in resources to defend the core organs and draws blood from the skin to nurture the muscles. Like a turtle going into its shell. It is also extremely fluid and responds immediately, vs the muscles where you are controlling it manually. The poewr of the lower dantien, when you connect it to a muscle powered move, is many times stronger and you don't even run out of oxygen when doing so. If say you could push a wall for 1 minute with your left hand and rooting through the ground so you are unmoved, by inflating the lower dantien and using the air there as the poewr generator, you may be able to hold it for 2 minutes without feeling exhausted. It doesn't even matter what the technique/skeleton format is, you can use any form of movement. This is why Tai Chi chuan started with breathing for external martial arts and not techniques. The actual throw/defense technique is almost immaterial once you obtain the skill levels of neutralization and refleciton. I unlocked a lot of this when doing massage work, ironically enough. So while your leg muscles and joints are "rooted" to the ground, that is not what a root means in Tai Chi internal art energy manipulation. It is a lower dantien byproduct of processing all the energy vectors inside this ball/core inside your stomach gut.

I do taichi and judo, biggest thing in judo that's different is getting used to the jacket when someone grabs your sleeve and lapel. You can't just turn your wrist or turn your spine and wedge your way into better positions. Sinking into better positions is even difficult because your opponent has such a good handle on you because of the gi you're wearing. But it definitely helps to sink into the ground, while maintaining mobility, because just only sinking is not enough, your opponent will sweep or just go around, or under etc

Ian you are a scary person in Tai Chi and this is a compliment.....

"but you shouldn't have done something - you have to stop doing what you are doing in order to do do do the thing your not doing" my nominee for new tai chi poetry that is equal parts true and annoying