Song is ‘active release’. It is more than just relaxation: it means letting go in ways that take some practice.
Active relaxation and release – song – causes qi to move inside the body. The first thing we notice when we song properly is that our weight reaches the soles of our feet. It may seem strange, but almost everyone holds weight higher than necessary, mostly in large joints like shoulders, hips and knees. Obviously, we can’t keep gravity at bay with our hips. But when we dissolve that holding, we feel more and more weight ‘arriving’ in the soles of the feet. We are in effect lowering our center of gravity: our ‘feeling awareness’ drops. We would say in the context of taiji that we have lowered the qi to the ground.
My teacher was sitting with his teacher in a restaurant, talking about song. My teacher’s teacher picked up the soy sauce bottle and said:
“The stopper of this bottle is the same shape as the neck of the bottle, so it fits right in. We work for years to find the right alignment of our body, in order to song properly. When we know the way, however, we just drop into position, like the stopper.”