My daughter has a beautiful antique Japanese silk kimono, which I recently found creased and crumpled in her wardrobe. The creases seemed indelible so I threaded a broom handle through the sleeves and hung it from a hook on the wall. Slowly, over weeks, the creases fell away and now it looks fit to wear.

This, in these weak agnostic times, is the difficult principle in Taiji: feeling the head suspended from above and allowing the body to hang, as though from a coat-hanger, and relax. Posture drops from above as well as rising from below, otherwise it lacks poise.