It is a God given ability from when we are born we can move stepping jumping , running and the thousands of variations of these. In Tai Chi Chuan we learn to take a closer look at movement and try to control and enrich movement allowing us to among other things interact with others. It starts with the basic drills, hand form pushing hands etc learning to absorb energy and root it to the ground and then return in back to your opponent.
A student asked me “how can I move smoothly”, my answer: some people have a natural ability to do this and others like myself have to train this. First we need to train the ability to be able to take all our weight on one leg so we are able to move easily from posture to posture. We need to make our steps efficient, when stepping sinking (rooting) and transferring root from one leg to the other . In this way we can move smoothly and because we have the ability to carry all our weight on one leg our movement will not need to be hurried.
We learn this movement in our hand forms and drills and transfer it to our weapon forms and applications, the concept of this type of movement means we are efficient in both time and energy, giving us the ability to move quickly and efficiently when stepping, turning and delivering force.
Once we understand what is needed we are able to go about our work in the right way to achieve our goals.