Tai Chi Chuan - I am not good at....

Tai Chi Chuan – I am not good at….

Like my teacher, Maggie Newman, I often use small walking steps to introduce a new posture or to find greater relaxation in an old posture.  These steps are a bit intricate and many students find it difficult to replicate them.   Perhaps they think, “I am not good at choreography….”

This statement has several problems.  Here they are in order of importance:

I.

Am.

Not.

Good.

Choreography.

If we were to spend a year ONLY on intricate footwork that changed each class, those who are not “good” at choreography would get better at choreography. 

I recall some statement from Prof. Cheng Man-ch’ing saying that if you don’t have a natural talent for tai chi, you simply have to put in more work.  Voila!

So in tai chi, “I’m not good at choreography” needs to be reengineered into “I need to attend more diligently to the choreography.”

Even better: “Working with choreography is a challenge I’m enjoying.”

If you focus on some idea of ultimate success, this is a dead end. 

If you compare yourselves to others, this is a dead end. 

If you focus on process, and what’s taking place “now”, this is great fun!  There is no goal when you work that way.  When there is no goal, there is no goalie, trying to stop you from your own experience.

In this case, more is better.  Whatever it is that you are not good at, but wish to gain greater ease, then this tells you to pay more attention and don’t toss it aside as something that does not apply to you OR as some sort of stumbling block that you cannot get beyond.

Remember when you began to walk?  No, I didn’t think so.  But this much is clear: Infants don’t say, “I’m not good at walking.”  They most likely don’t “say” anything to themselves.   They just try and try and try again.   Maybe what they think is “Let’s do this again.”  Or perhaps, “This looks like fun.”  Or, “I bet I can do that!”  They never give up.  They don’t own that experience when they give it a first try.  Their muscles and mind grow into the experience.

Zen adage:  Fall down seven times, get up eight.

That’s life, right?

It’s also good tai chi.

Tai Chi Chuan – Connections

 Tai Chi Chuan – Connections

It’s really important to connect to something outside of you.  Tai Chi training is very much about connecting to something outside of you. 

We follow each other.  We follow our partners in push hands.  We are connecting to heaven and earth and air during the form.  Hey, if you feel like it, connect your form to the universe!

All of that internal work amounts to little if we can’t let it engage with the outer world.  It is one HUGE listening exercise.  My teacher, Maggie Newman, often has us just listen to the sounds as they pass through.  This is a very profound way of being in the world.  We don’t shut it out.  We let it in.  We get close to it.  We connect.  It is a part of us.  Sound is a good place to start because we are wired to be one with sound.

As a martial art, this is an obvious choice.  How else could you defend yourself without connecting with the outer world?

Tai chi takes this a step further.  “Shadow boxing”.  We are so fused with the attacker that there is no real separation between you and the opponent.   He/She is not a “that.”  He/She along with me becomes an “us.”  Opponent + Me = 1.  Not 2.

It’s a healthy perspective to view the other – regardless of how you feel about them – as an “us.”  The important part is not where you separate; the important part is where you merge.  Focus on the connection.  That way, the places that don’t easily connect can be more readily addressed.  No one loses their center, gets tense or feels defensive.

Yes, this may not be possible at all times with all people.  But it’s a good place to start.  It will help you keep your balance, your ground, your internal space.

Have you connected to someone or something outside of yourself today?

Tai Chi Chuan - Opera and Patience

Tai Chi Chuan – Opera and Patience

I have discussed this before, but here goes!

I just lent a musically savvy friend a copy of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  It’s a great work.  My musical friend gave it a real try, but he missed 95% of it.  Like, it mostly didn’t register.

I was a fan of the Mozart operas because I was so familiar with the Mozart sound, which I loved.  I became interested in opera and La Boheme (due to the popularity of Rent) in particular.  Another friend recommended a great recording of La Boheme to buy and listen to.  I recall first hearing the beloved Puccini masterpiece and scratching my head.  What on earth did ANYONE hear in this work?  I heard one song that grabbed my attention but the rest, unlike Mozart, seemed meandering and even non-melodic.  Can you imagine anyone thinking Puccini as non-melodic?  Puccini critics find him to be too melodic, almost pandering to the lowest popular instincts, much like an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical.  My friend encouraged me to keep listening.  I did, and finally I was struck by what it is you are listening to when you listen to Puccini. I fell in love.

The issue here is not whether I liked or disliked the composer.  My point here is that what I was comfortable with did not easily transfer into a different musical sensibility.  The issue was I couldn’t even hear what others found appealing (regardless of my own feeling.)  Mozart is crisp and punchy, with a sort of zest that moves the opera forward.  Puccini has long leisurely lines of melody and the orchestra gives the work forward movement, often referring to earlier motifs as points of reference.  Some Puccini melodies are clean and identifiable and often rapturous.  But other sections are just as compelling and dramatic as characters talk to each other and move the plot forward.  Two famous arias in La Boheme are sort of lyrical monologues that seem to have no solid melody at all, relying on motif style delivery.

And then there is Wagner.  Etc.

How I found a love of Britten, I don’t recall.  He is oblique with a subtle mix of dissonance and lyricism.  Dialogues emerge into full motifs but it is hard to trace the development unless you are very familiar with the piece.  He can be direct, but more often he is very indirect.  It is a thrilling musical language.  It took me years before I could appreciate his opera The Turn of the Screw, many consider to be a masterpiece.

Curiosity of one sort or other kept me engaged.  What do others hear in this work?  What is the composer doing?  With Britten, questions still linger and those questions keep me coming back for more.  What is Britten up to in these long meandering passages from Oberon, king of the fairies, with his oddly eerie countertenor voice?

And so it is with tai chi.  What you see on day one is but a fraction of where you might go if you take it up as a practice.  Initially, practice is just an act of remembering what you were taught.  The real core of tai chi is far off.  Each student connects to it from a different angle.  Each student finds a path based on who they are.  Curiosity is required, and so is persistence and patience.  And it changes along the way – something that most students don’t really expect.  Yes, students expect to see improvement and “get better”, but change is a completely different issue.  It is ONLY by keeping engaged that the changes appear.

Often students arrive on day one, take a peak, draw a conclusion, and decide this is not for them.  What they don’t know is that they really need about 50 lessons to make that decision.  Something has to give them faith that there is something here that may be useful in life.  In tai chi, it doesn’t happen quickly, certainly not on day one.

There is another kind of student who also quickly leaves tai chi.  These students are extremely enthusiastic, think they see the value, love to practice, and begin to wear T shirts with Yin-Yang emblems or Chinese characters.  That is, there is a huge fantasy going on and when that fantasy is disappointed, they quit.  It takes more than fantasy to keep you going.

I myself was bored but knew I needed to practice.  I would tell myself that I only needed to do the first move and then I could stop if I felt like it.  But that first move got me going and I never failed to continue with the day’s practice.

I get a kick out of telling people I love Britten operas.  He’s sophisticated and my ego enjoys displaying my refined sensibility. I know I’m being snobby.  Mostly Britten operas are unknown, misunderstood and even derided.   I’m so esoteric, right? 

But I dislike telling people that I do tai chi.  I know the reference system for most people has nothing to do with what tai chi is about or what it offers.  There can be no real discussion here because tai chi is complex and most people have a very limited ability to see what it is.  Because it is complex, they usually don’t care to know.

I could talk a long time about tai chi, but I’d rather talk about the operas of Benjamin Britten – my ego gets a charge. 

Britten operas and tai chi take time to experience.

Both are complex.

Both are deep.

Both are thrilling.

Tai Chi Chuan - Why is Push Hands So Difficult and Confusing?

Tai Chi Chuan – Why is Push Hands So Difficult and Confusing?

Many a beginner and even many a more experienced tai chi player is confused by Push Hands practice.  Many think they don’t need it.

There is a fundamental and deep reason Push Hands is confounding.   It goes like this: we are biologically programmed by evolution for Fight or Flight.  We can all see why that worked in a world full of tigers or marauding invaders.  Push Hands is based on Relax and Respond.  We are not programmed for Relax and Respond.  Furthermore, in order for Relax and Respond to have any functional effectiveness, you need to learn the skill of fusing with your partner without being invasive, controlling or manipulative.  Hence, it takes our complete attention to make this shift.  It takes great inhibition of our evolutionary instinct.  It takes ongoing practice, trial and error, and lots of failure.  Little wonder we want to avoid it.

In terms of the tai chi form itself, Push Hands deepens the functionality of the form.  You begin to understand where the functional use is on many levels, why the sinking into the feet is needed, how being relaxed and light in the upper body allows you responsiveness and agility. 

Professor Cheng Man-ch’ing told us that we should do the form as if we are defending ourselves from an attack (or something like that) and practice Push Hands as if we are alone.  The sense of this statement is that you want to let the form have energetic and functional meaning, and you don’t want to get too involved in having an intention in your Push Hands (which leads to strength.)

So even if you haven’t “gotten it” yet, and you think you never will, there are many jewels to be discovered in the process.  It is a study worth studying.

I have come to believe that looking for an end point in Push Hands study is futile and limiting. Once you have one level of mastery, you can always aim higher by letting the game become more energetic and spontaneous, your push softer while generating more power, your listening more acute.  Most likely I will never be able to handle a real fight using tai chi.  It doesn’t matter to me.

“Why do we climb the mountain?”

“Because it’s there!”

But that is not the truth of the matter.  We climb the mountain because of the many lessons to be learned in the process.  We grow as a result of the very effort itself in climbing.

Imagine pushing someone without force!  How magical!  If you have the patience and the dedication to engage this practice, Push Hands study is pure gold!  Not because you can push someone without force, but because of the many many many OTHER lessons it has to teach.