What is Rooting in Tai Chi?

In Tai Chi, rooting is the foundational skill of establishing a deep, stable connection with the ground. It allows a practitioner to remain balanced while moving and to redirect external forces—such as a push from an opponent—directly into the earth rather than being toppled. 

It’s more than sending energy down into the earth through your feet. It’s about proper alignment, proper foot connection with the ground, Songing the joints, and achieving Ying, or mental quietness, so Qi can sink or be released through your body down into the earth, through roots you visualize extending out the bottoms of your feet into the ground.

Key Components of Rooting:

• Alignment: Proper structural stacking is essential. The head should feel lifted, shoulders dropped, and the spine straight with the pelvis in a neutral position.

• Solid contact with the ground: Feel equal contact with the ground from the ball of the foot, with the toes making gentle contact, to the heel.

• Relaxation (Song): True rooting requires the muscles to be relaxed so that weight and force can "sink" through the body to the feet. Tension in the joints acts like a blockage that breaks the root.

• Mental Intent (Yi): Rooting is partly psychological; practitioners visualize their energy or "roots" extending deep into the earth like those of a tree to increase stability. 

How to Root:

Imagine your Qi moving down your body and legs and through your feet into the ground, creating a feeling of more stability and balance. Your imagination will guide what this is, or what this looks like, for you. Students describe roots that look like tree roots, a golden outline of your feet going down into the earth. I've even heard a student describe hers as a glowing metal-like beam extending down from the "Gushing Spring", or Yongquan (Yong chu-aun), that hollow just behind the ball of the foot in the middle of the foot.

The importance is that you release or sink energy down into the earth to improve balance and stability, not what you imagine it looks like.

Sifu Shirley Ha (Chock) - good video on stance and how it affects rooting - does a how-to as well: https://youtu.be/ga5-n5qnw-w?si=wDFeoeKrftaG_Cc8

Susan Thompson - Good, teaches how, slow but important start, goes past initial how-to: https://youtu.be/Pk1kUZW_cBQ?si=ho-x2h9y3O5gG5Bb

Good luck in your practice -- enjoy the journey.