07/22/2026
For more than two thousand years, the great traditions of China preserved their deepest teachings not only through forms and techniques, but through poems, songs, aphorisms, and parables. The masters understood that there are truths which cannot be handed from one person to another like a book or a sword. They can only be hinted at. A poem plants a seed. A lifetime of practice allows that seed to bloom.
Song of Tai Chi: Dancing with the Wind is my humble contribution to that ancient tradition.
For more than sixty years I have walked the path of the Asian martial and healing arts. For more than fifty years I have stood before students, attempting to teach lessons that cannot truly be taught by words alone. A teacher may explain a posture, demonstrate a movement, or correct the placement of a foot or hand, but the deeper principles of Tai Chi can only be discovered in silence, patience, surrender, and thousands of hours of practice. There are moments when the body suddenly understands what the mind has struggled to grasp for years. Those moments cannot be borrowed. They must be earned.
Many students seek techniques. Few seek transformation.
The old masters knew this. That is why they clothed profound truths in poetry. They knew that words could accompany the student long after the lesson ended. A verse remembered in youth might suddenly reveal its meaning decades later while standing quietly beneath a morning sky or practicing alone as the wind moved gently through the trees.
This song is not about martial technique. It is about the inner journey.
Tai Chi is often described as an internal martial art, yet its greatest victories are not won against an opponent. They are won against fear, impatience, pride, resistance, distraction, and the restless mind. Its strength is softness. Its power is yielding. Its secret is stillness. Like water, it overcomes hardness not through force but through persistence. Like the wind, it cannot be grasped, yet it changes everything it touches.
The lyrics speak of Grasp Sparrow's Tail, Single Whip, White Crane Spreads Its Wings, and Wave Hands Like Clouds, but these are more than movements. They are symbols of an inner landscape. They are invitations to breathe more deeply, to become quieter, and to discover that the greatest journey is not across mountains or oceans, but inward.
Throughout this song runs one simple refrain:
"By breathing out and breathing in..."
Every breath is a beginning.
Every breath is a return.
Every breath is another opportunity to awaken.
Many of these ideas have accompanied me throughout my life and found their way into my small book, Scent of a Forgotten Flower: Meditations on Tai Chi, where I wrote that "Tai Chi... cannot be measured, defined, or contained. I perceive it as a dance... Spirit Dance." Elsewhere I reflected that "Power is the ability to change a heart," and that "You can only know the secrets that you have experienced." These are not simply observations about Tai Chi; they are reflections on life itself.
If this song touches something within you, I invite you to continue the journey by reading Scent of a Forgotten Flower. It is not a technical manual. It is a collection of meditations, questions, and quiet reflections gathered over a lifetime of study with remarkable teachers, decades of practice, and countless moments of discovery. It is written for those who sense that there is something hidden beneath the movements—something that cannot be explained but can be experienced.
In the end, every form comes to stillness.
Every movement returns to silence.
The dance is done...
Yet it never ends.
It begins again...
With the next breath.
Acknowledgment:
No work of art is created in isolation. Every teacher stands upon the shoulders of those who came before, and every student carries forward a spark received from another.
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to Nasser Butt, whose thoughtful writings first stirred my imagination and inspired me to begin this creative journey. Although the lyrics presented here have grown into an original work reflecting my own lifelong experiences in Tai Chi, martial arts, healing, and teaching, the initial inspiration came from Nasser's poetic vision. I gratefully acknowledge his contribution and friendship.
Nasser Butt is a highly respected teacher, researcher, and author specializing in the internal Chinese martial arts. He is the founder and Chief Instructor of the Fa-jing Ch'uan Internal Chinese Boxing Schools and the Chief Editor of Lift Hands: The Internal Arts Magazine. For many years he has devoted his life to the study, preservation, and teaching of the Old Yang Style of Taijiquan, Baguazhang, Wudangquan, Qigong, and the Erle Montaigue System of Fighting and Healing. His articles, research, and instruction have helped preserve and share the deeper martial, philosophical, and healing traditions of the internal arts with students throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. He has taught professionally since 2006 and is widely respected as one of the foremost senior instructors in the Erle Montaigue lineage.
