Story goes, the master who invented the Yang style Taiji used to sit in a chair and watch his students practicing for hours. He wouldn’t give much corrections, but he will say “relax” at least one hundred times.
Relaxation is an essential part Taiji practice Paradoxically, through relaxation, a student feels the connection between different parts of his body, he learns how to align his body in the most effective way, and he find out how to organize and channel the energy to maximize the explosive outburst.
Key relaxation in Taiji is the relaxation of the four major joints, shoulder joints and hip joints. It was said that a person can never become a mast martial artist if he can not achieve the thorough relaxation of those for joints.
One benefit of relaxation of those four major joints is to discover the internal movement in the abdomen region. In Taiji, abdomen region movement is considered to be essential. It can expand, contract, stretch, twist, rotate. Something that by doing too much sit up exercises will probably make it difficult to connect to.
As the core philosophy component of Taiji is opposition, relaxation has to find it’s opposition too. I think this is the most important Taiji theory that may benefit release technique.
In Taiji, to make relaxation possible, you need to find a point in your head to pulls you up. Its like a jacket, if you drop it on the floor, it just collapse, but if you grab it collar and pull it up, the jacket will nicely relax down from there.
So paradoxically, relaxation in Taiji is never collapsing. It is made possible by the needle sharp energy that is pulling up and letting all the body parts to fall into their positions.