Sung & Satyagraha

One of the most difficult concepts to explain and comprehend in Tai chi is sung or what is generally translated as 'relax'.
 It resists description because what is usually thought of as relax is, in fact, collapse.  The idea that relax can produce strength is, at least in our culture, counter-intuitive.  Be that as it may, I remember reading about the revolutionary principle introduced by Gandhi called satyagraha which is often translated as 'passive resistance'.  Gandhi was said to have protested this and said that there was nothing passive about what he was doing.  Passive resistance does not describe the positive energy inherent in satyagraha or 'soul force'.  It may also have been better to choose 'resilience' rather than 'resistance'.  Thus we have 'active resilience' which seems close to the concept of sung.


Tai Chi has sometimes been called a 'soft style' martial art as opposed to 'hard style'.  Ben Lo told us that soft is not the same as relax.  First you get soft, then, as the spirit gets stronger, you relax.

Robert W. Smith, the first westerner to learn from Cheng Man-ch'ing, commented on an interesting psychological component to relax.  He often would say: "Tension is who you think you are, relaxation is who you really are."