Sinking your Boat: (1) The Hull.

Oct 12, 20182 min read

Updated: Jan 26

Behaving like a boat

Your body has a keel and a mast. The question is, how do you experience it?

The hull & keel

This is your pelvis and your legs. When a boat sits in water, it tries to sink to the bottom of the sea, it has no intention of floating. The challenge for us is to try to emulate that sensation; okay, we’re not in the sea, but we’re constantly (and subconsciously) trying to sink towards the core of the planet. But, by and large we don’t, we try to ‘float’ across the surface of the planet like the wind. We become ungrounded.

Feel it

To experience your hull, you have to put yourself in the position of feeling exactly how you would ‘feel’ if you were the hull of a boat. If you don’t feel it, then it’s all conceptual – all in your head. So, if your pelvis were the hull of the boat, with your legs reaching down into the water (the keel), how heavy would you feel as you attempted to sink to the bottom? Your upper body, everything else from the waist up, would be the contents of the boat, the deck, shrouds, rigging, sails, etc. You could still rock from side to side, or forwards and backwards, you could still turn and twist, but all of those upper movements would be coming from a stable platform.

James Drewe teaches Tai Chi and Qigong in both London and in Kent and online.

Details of weekly classes both live and online can be found on the website, and there are classes for 2-person Tai Chi on one Saturday a month.