Gaining freedom

Tai chi was designed to free your body from tension, to calm the mind and settle the emotions.
Providing you avoid hampering your own progress, you will enjoy the benefits of a freer, more responsive body quite quickly.

The Tao Te Ching is filled with good advice concerning the use of tension and force: 

 

People at birth are soft and supple;
At death they are hard and stiff.

When plants are alive they are green and bending;
When they are dead they are dry and brittle.

Soft and bending is the way of the living;
Hard and brittle is the way of the dying.

Softness overcomes hardness.

The softness of water overcomes the hardness of stone.
Yielding overcomes unyielding.
The weak outlast the strong.
Those who bend endure long after the unbending have broken.

A bow pulled too far will break.
A blade oversharpened will not hold an edge.

Those who stand of tiptoe cannot maintain their balance.
Those who hurry cannot sustain their pace.

By yielding, overcome.
By bending, remain straight.
By emptying, be filled.

Because the sage does not struggle with the world, the world does not resist.

Those who use force soon exhaust themselves.

Force creates resistance.
Because those who follow tao do not use force, force is not used against them.

Force can master others, but only strength can master self.

When force is not used, people do not resist.
What is not resisted cannot be opposed.