Shì means to test, lì means force. Standing builds up a force that holds the whole body together. Shili tests whether it survives movement: very slowly, against an imagined resistance, point by point.
“Zhan Zhuang is the foundation, Shili is the decisive method,” as the tradition puts it. Wang Xiangzhai already called testing the force the most important and at the same time the most difficult part of the work. The reason: what arises in standing is only worth something if it can be moved without falling apart.
In near-motionless standing the whole-body force is built up.
Tiny movements in the stance feel for the force — the transition to Shili.
Movement becomes a path. What is tested is whether the feeling of force is kept at every point along that path.
Only one who can keep the force in movement can also release it. Without Shili, Fa Li cannot be learned.
“Shili is Zhan Zhuang in motion, and Zhan Zhuang is still Shili.”
— Wang XiangzhaiA widespread ordering puts the standard Shili into four groups of three. In the first three groups each exercise works mainly on one axis: forward and back, up and down, left and right. Choose an exercise.
Order. Pingtui comes first everywhere. After that the teaching paths part: some teach Boshui before Kaihe, others Kaihe before Boshui — there Kaihe counts as Pingtui with closing as the main direction, and Boshui as the most involved of the three.
Groups. Ordering by type of movement puts Fu'an among the arm-led basic exercises. The four-group ordering places it with the Tuishou Shili; its basic exercises are only Pingtui, Boshui and Kaihe.
The basic exercises are practised first in the parallel stance, then in the fighting stance. In a widespread teaching programme the number of Shili grows with the stance:
Each exercise on its own, without steps — the basic form.
Linking the Shili freely, for instance Gougua → Boshui → Fu'an, and fitting the movement to the situation (Zonghe Shili).
Shili and the rubbing step (Mocabu) together: the force is now tested while walking as well.
Everything freely combined — the most direct preparation for fighting.
Number of steps, direction, speed and size change with no fixed order, with melody and pauses. “In the end even the notion of Shili disappears.”
One may learn several stages at once, but the weight lies on the first one first. And whatever detail a later lesson adds applies retroactively to all earlier exercises too: in the end everything should become “one idea, one feel”.
With practice the outer movement becomes ever smaller while the force remains. Wang Xiangzhai puts this into a ranking: large movement is not as good as small, small not as good as wormlike — a movement in which the whole body stirs as soon as one part stirs.
Shili trains three things at once: holding the whole-body force together in movement too, perceiving the finest differences of force, and adapting spontaneously.
Standing is shortened Shili, Shili is standing stretched out into space. Whatever is lost in moving was not yet firm enough in standing.
One who breaks the path into many points and can change at each is prepared for the point of contact in partner training. A group of Shili of its own aims at exactly this.
The rapid alternation of releasing and tensing makes the force pulse. The faster the alternation, the more continuous the release of force becomes.
Water, board, ball and tree are tools: they are meant to evoke a feeling of force, not an inner film. Whoever paints out the images instead of feeling the resistance misses the point. The teachers’ orderings differ in details — in the order of the basic exercises, in the grouping, and in how many secondary directions a movement carries. This page shows the differences instead of declaring one of them the right one.