Breathing and standing: Taijiquan as resonant subjectivity

In describing experiences of learning and practising the Chinese internal martial art of 太極拳 taijiquan in the context of artistic research, this paper asks how this movement practice opens ways of producing knowledge. By focusing on breathing and standing, taijiquan works with 氣 qi , often translated as ‘breath’ or ‘energy’, which philosopher Tu Wei-Ming has called ‘the continuity of being’. Contemporary forms of taijiquan have roots in movement and breathing meditation practices, now commonly called qigong (‘breath work’). Such movement is not intentionally expressive but a grounded form of philosophy wherein the self is not a subject, but rather a relation of qi circulation and cultivation. Through taijiquan practice, I ask how 感應 ‘mutual resonance’ can be sensed so as to understand the self as fundamentally (inter)relational. In exploring martial movement as a practical integration of cosmological whole-body thought, health and defence, this article traces breathing and standing in taijiquan, and how this embodied practice operates as a mode of inquiry.