The Importance of Images in Tai Chi

In Tai Chi you see, they use images quite a bit. One of them is that your body is suspended from your head like a piece of cloth held up. That's quite a useful image because it indicates that you are upright and yet relaxed,. They also have other things like the arms are supposed to be like hair moving in water. In fact, one of my Chinese teachers, Dr. Chi Jung Dao, famously said, in Tai Chi, no arm move. It wasn't that no arm was actually going to move at all. It was simply going to follow the main framework of the body.