Tai Chi Chuan and the Key to Happiness

Tai Chi Chuan and the Key to Happiness

We all want happiness. I ran into an interesting statement which I will paraphrase: 

Easy Choices, Hard Life;

Hard Choices, Easy Life.

What?

I have been studying something else besides tai chi and that something else is a language which does not use the English alphabet, Arabic. It has been a challenge to learn new letters, new sounds in some cases, totally new looking words - just about NO correlation to English. This is not my best skill set so to say this is a challenge is an understatement.

And yet my favorite 1.5 hours each week is Arabic class. Small, nice interested group of students, and a wonderful teacher. Some of the classes I just love and they feel easy. Other classes, I sort of dread because they threaten to push into my deficiencies. I struggle.

Yet I leave the class buzzed! It is always fun. The teacher will review and review and break things down more and more if needed. I find the material and the process fascinating. New phrases, new grammar, new rules of pronunciation and so forth. It is much more work than I had anticipated or desired. It is also much more fun.

I have often wanted to quit tai chi but have been pulled back time and time again. Arabic may be yet another skill to add to that list.

Happiness?  It seems to me that both have something in common and that is what makes them so joyful in the end. It has to do with being absorbed by what you are doing. To really give this thing (movement, position, letter, word, grammatical nuance) your full attention. It is simply that. Total focus. The more the better.

I am beginning to think that focus and attention – for whatever reason – is the key to happiness.

Nothing else will do it. Focus is a process; it is not a result or a success story within itself. Just take a look at what you think brings you happiness. Do you not focus on it, attend to it? Would it be the same if you didn’t focus on it? Are those items that come effortlessly more satisfying than those that you need to work on, focus on?

I notice one obstacle to tai chi in general and that is the notion that by just doing it, all will be well, that benefits will come your way. Most of us go on automatic pilot and sort of don’t exist in much of our practice – and it doesn’t improve. It has to mean enough to you that you want as much of your attention to be on it as you can.  It is more than just brushing your teeth or taking a shower.

When I say this, I am not implying maniacal self-critical correction mode. That doesn’t help either. I was prone to this at one point and I realized I could no longer practice where the focus was on fixing fixing fixing. I was one big act of masochism. No, what I am talking about is paying attention. There may be some fixing. But it is also just seeing what is there as you do it.

The more you attend, the better it will feel. But regardless of that, the more you attend, the more you will feel happy. And this applies to everything.  In my language class, I don’t have a choice. If I didn’t pay attention, it would be utterly pointless. I’d quit in a flash.

Hard choices always require great attention and effort. And it helps if these are truly choices!

Even if you are doing something you don’t want to do, I believe that if you do it with resistance, it becomes a chore and not very satisfying. But if you simply put all of your attention on it, the time will be something you enjoy. Attention is a choice you can make.

All the easier when you WANT to attend to the activity you are involved in.

So I hope that tai chi has that kind of interest for you. You don’t even have to be good at it to create some happiness. You just need to show up and pay attention. Want to pay attention.

Find that thing that you want to focus on, even if it isn’t tai chi, and you will have a life of happy moments.

Results are nice, but focus is a thrill!

Tai Chi Bit By Bit

Tai Chi Bit By Bit

To continue with my language metaphor, learning tai chi is very much like learning a VERY foreign language (as in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic - where there is no English alphabet). I’m studying Arabic.

We learn letters, then groups of letters that make up a word, then words that combine with other words to form meaning, then grammatical rules so that the combinations can be replicated and imitated in other sentences and so forth.

But you have to start from the beginning. Like a letter. Or a shape.  Like imagine learning the paragraph sentence above in another language.

We learn how a letter combines with another letter and how that sounds, and how a movement progresses into the next part of the movement to make a continuous sequence. Then the sound combinations will have meaning, as the movement sequence will have a martial or energetic functioning.

Then grammar kicks in so that you can manipulate those words consistently.

In tai chi, you incorporate principles to the basic movements and combination of movements in order to have an entire posture. A posture in tai chi is the movement from beginning to end of one small section that has one basic function. It makes its own sentence. Each posture has a name but each posture is made up of several letters and even words. But in order to pronounce the letters together correctly, you need principles that cement the beginning and the end into one functioning statement.

We conceptualize the form as having three sections. I might call these paragraphs which contain multiple moves. How you pronounce your moves, connect your moves, improve your grammar, your pronunciation will impact on the meaning of the paragraph.

Some think that once you “know” the paragraph, you can move on. Well, not quite. As you learn nuance, the meaning in the paragraph will change. And as you learn the infinite variable sentences of push hands, you change the meaning of your tai chi form.

“Fire” vs. “fire”.  One is a noun, one is a verb. In that previous sentence, I follow the rules of capital lettering. And if you say the word “fire”, the context will drive the meaning. And even when you choose a meaning through the context, the feeling of that meaning will have infinite variations.

“Through”. “Threw”. “Through”.

I threw the ball.

I am now through.

I went through the tunnel.

Sound and meaning. Context and emotion. Written expertise. All of these are factors in these sentences just like each posture has a context and a meaning depending on the person doing the form.

Your form may be the moves. Or it may be the connection between the moves, or the fullness of each move, or how the fullness in yang part of the move dissolves into the yin part of the move to create an ebb and flow, not just a straight line. Or it may be an expression of a martial arts move or the expression of a body that knows how to fill up and expand and empty to become light and nimble, it may be the folding and unfolding and how the body makes that happen through relaxation, sinking, non-doing.

Some writers are terse, others elaborate. Some have a light touch, others a thickness that needs effort to read. Some love long intricate sentences, others as brief as poetry.  For some the meaning is IN the words, for others, the meaning is what is between the words or what is not stated.

So too your form.

Of course, the kind of learning I’m talking about is not the only way to learn. We actually absorb our native tongue far before we can break it down and understand its internal workings. Some learn tai chi in exactly this way as well.

There is a childlike absorption process in learning both language and tai chi. At first you are learning even though you don’t know you are learning something. The language takes you. Tai chi takes you. Only later can you pull it apart to see what has taken place, hidden in plain sight, to reveal deeper expression. It takes deep reflection on what has taken place in the past to understand this.

Mastery comes when it simply comes out of you without any effort. We don’t construct HOW to say anything after a while. It just appears as you need it. No gaps in execution.

Arabic is difficult and technical, and like my native language I hope it can just flow someday. Like tai chi, it is extraordinarily elegant. And for me, worth the effort.

To find something, ANYTHING that requires this kind of attention is of great value.