This why taiji is full of people who can't fight

" I say to get over it - it's a preparatory move, it doesn't necessarily have to "mean" anything other than what it is, which is a way to initiate via the respiratory diaphragm's function the ground reaction force through the tensegrity-based connective tissue matrix, in order to establish and differentiate root (gan) in the legs and lightness (hing) in the torso, and then amplify this out through the distal extremities; if you want to talk from a Taoist perspective, it's basically a way to "activate" the micro/macrocosmic orbits and meridian system (starting with the Lung) prior to doing the form, and which arguably got tacked on to the beginning of the form by YLC (notice, the Chen form doesn't start the same way at all...)"

What a load of bollocks.