Tai Chi Chuan - Behind, With, Ahead of the Curve

Tai Chi Chuan - behind, with, ahead of the curve

Process. For me, as I watch students work a new exercise, there are three ways to “be” with that exercise.

First, you are learning. So in essence, you are behind the curve. You look, see, feel, attempt to understand. Correct, self correct, adjust, revise, look again.

Then you are experiencing. You are inside of the exercise. Deeper deeper deeper if you can. With the curve.

Lastly, you are looking at where this might take you, the future, the value, the benefit, how it will add to your grab-bag of skills. Ahead of the curve.

For me, the most important one is #2, experiencing the exercise. Out of this moment, other ideas, feelings, sensations, strategies and so forth will emerge. NOT thinking of what this will get you in the end, not comparing this to that other exercise, that other teacher’s opinion/experience, not being anywhere but where you are is the most valuable place to be.

If this is the 100th time I have approached this exercise, I put aside all the other 99 to get to what is happening TODAY and NOW.

How many times have we entered an exercise from a place of I know this, I don’t need this, I’m ready to move on…? (OK, not all exercises will have the same value for you as time moves on.)

Alas, we all want to think we can climb K2 and just go forth and be there. Ahead of schedule, you know where this is leading and you want to be in that future fantasy place.

I’m not saying that future fantasy has no value. It does. It may stimulate an aspiration, a goal.

But it doesn’t teach you as much as the place that you are fully experiencing NOW.

It seems so simple to me, but I say this because I see MOST students jumping to the third place, ahead of the curve.

I see my own tendency to assume expertise that I don’t really have, flatter myself to think I don’t need this moment, and jump to where I think this will take me.

Sound familiar?

A silly example, I was tracking a pathway on Google Maps and it would show me exactly where I was on the map, and where I should be on the map. I was so confused thinking I was following the directions carefully and then observing my body indicator going elsewhere. It was difficult to stay the course and be where I needed to be so that the next moment was accurate in completing the journey.

I like to make things dumb and dumber. Dumb and dumber until you are in it. Then you can move in a better direction.

Try that on for size!

Tai Chi Chuan - Goalposts and خبر

Tai Chi Chuan - Goalposts and خبر

There are (at least) two kinds of growth experiences in tai chi.

One is the خبر, another is the goalpost.

OK, خبر is basically “khabar” (Arabic) and it means a piece of news. It is specific, like a news item.

I’ll call it khabar from now on!

In any given class, you are given a khabar. Some detail that needs to be corrected. Usually you need to be fairly comfortable at this point so that you have mind left to absorb it. Often this is very rewarding. You’ve gotten something new, it helps, you are better for it. Usually it doesn’t take all of you in order to get it. Often it may be a detail that has to be given to you because otherwise your habit or lack of understanding prevents you from seeing it. In this way, it can be an eye opener.

You want as many of these as you can possibly get. To get more, listen to the corrections that other students get. You may or may not need that correction, but you can again zero in on the detail and take note. You can also check in on the teacher as you do the form with he/she. I myself often looked at Maggie, even after many years. I note few of my students take a look at me. Sob. They use class time forms to just do the form.

But they are missing an opportunity to grab a khabar.

How many khabars do you need to improve your form? To say this is a slow method is stating the obvious unless you take private classes. And even then, overload may stop you from actually getting what is being given. Comfort and even a kind of confidence is needed with the khabar.

The goalpost is much more difficult and gives you much much more growth. However, often it involves lots of time, repetition, and some sort of pain/strain. It may be physical pain, as in holding postures for a long time, or mental strain as in paying attention to something over and over and over and over again, much like following the breath in meditation. Either way, you are expanding your capacity and the effect is far deeper than the khabar. You are going past a limit, a boundary. This is rarely fun. And it is often priceless.

Actually, one way to make it more fun is to do this with a group. I have not a clue as to why that is so, but this has been my experience. Perhaps it's simply we are all in this together, suffering for the greater good, for the benefit of each other and ourselves. The oneness here can be powerful.

Both styles of growth are necessary. Many students love the khabar, but resist the goalpost.

A few love the goalpost. A few. Masochists.

A word to the wise!

Tai Chi Chuan - Judge/Compare; Explore/Experience

Tai Chi Chuan - Judge/Compare; Explore/Experience

I have two themes that relate to each other.

I run into a curious resistance in teaching a tai chi exercise.

Some students like to Judge and Compare. That is, they have an instant judgement about the exercise. This is backed up with comparisons to other teachers or exercises, thoughts or readings, another class, another time. Perhaps it validates this current exercise, or gives the student permission to avoid it because they determine it violates some other rule they hold high.

For me, it is never Judge and Compare, it is always Explore and Experience. Whatever that other idea, exercise, teacher was, did, etc. is not here now. And even if you have experienced the same material in a different dress, this time it may be different. So any sense of judgment and comparison to that past experience rarely helps. Actually, this is often the hard part because the need to validate, eliminate,
categorize, recall the past, is so strong that being with this moment, this experience is rarely achieved. And so this specific tai chi experience is never under your belt.

JUST DO THIS.

I recall working on an exercise with a group of students. The exercise directly addressed something I didn’t see in their form. Immediately after, one student tells me of another teacher where something was similar to what I was doing and he had drawn a connection. Another told me that they had already done a lot of work on this in various ways and that the exercise was not so helpful. Nice to know, but I hadn’t seen what it was that I was teaching, and this exercise literally forces you to move in the right direction. He didn’t even see that he had completely missed it. Probably missed it before and definitely missed it NOW.

Maggie used to get around this by having us do a movement again and again and again past all that chatter and judgement. Eventually, you simply did the work and felt the effect. You got past the boredom, the judgement. You just got into the pool with all the other fish.

Another way of NOT DOING THIS is to think of OTHER elements that you might practice while doing THIS exercise. Stacking the deck with all the other tools in your tool kit actually detracts from the exercise.

These tools may be 100% right, but that’s not the point. This, just this. Not this and this and that and that and that and the other that and the one after that, and the really good that, and… .

THIS, JUST THIS is hard to do. Clutter is what we are used to. In our minds, more is better.

An exercise in the sense that I am talking about is an act of “doing”. The focus is small and specific so that you can enlarge that part of the tai chi experience. It is limiting for the sake of growth.

Putting it all together is a different experience, one of “non-doing”.

Hopefully an exercise pulled and stretched out some aspect. But the form is really the act of non-doing.

So you don’t DO this aspect or any other aspect. You allow it all, as best it can, as best as you have it in your DNA. But you don’t DO it.

Certainly you can do a form with something specific in mind, holding it tight to seal the deal and insure that this element gets incorporated into the form. But this is still somewhat limiting. It may be necessary as well. I’m not calling this BAD. A great deal of my own practice has been looking after this or that as I do the form.

So drop Judge and Compare, and work with Explore and Experience.

Incidentally, if any given exercise is not satisfying or leaves you with doubt, by all means look at it, judge it and compare. Here is where J&C can be helpful. Slice and dice, alter, remove, enlarge, minimize, see what someone else has to say if possible, or just let it pass you by. We all have different needs at different times.

But try to have the experience that the exercise is trying to give you. It’s just a tiny piece, but it may create big changes.

Once you have it, you don’t need to attend to it. It will take care of you.

Tai Chi Chuan: 2 goals, 3 choices.

Tai Chi Chuan: 2 goals, 3 choices.

I am often inspired by two goals in tai chi: letting go of resistance + change (= growth) .  

Letting go of resistance: Once you get involved in push hands – the issue of resistance is as clear as a bell because stopping your partner in any way creates resistance. The one resisting loses the game and gets pushed.

Change: Change is a bit harder to perceive because it can happen so slowly. Over time, we hope the body gets more integrated, relaxed, interconnected, healthier. More functional. Changes here can be dramatic, but mostly they are very very slow. The longer you practice, the slower the incremental changes occur. “We measure our progress in decades.”

In tai chi, as in life, letting go of resistance and being open to change are critical. It is what you are studying when you study tai chi.

Where do we learn these? Both are challenging. Both create better lives.

Many peeps never learn either. War is a big industry.

So my big concern is finding ways to create a condition for change and to learn how to let go of resistances. This leads me to how can we engage in tai chi, as in “best practices”.

My own experience and observation lead me to a simple conclusion. Simple, that is, in concept, but difficult to embody.

There are three basic choices in working on a new exercise.

The first choice is resistance: “I don’t want to do this, this is too hard, this never helps, I’ve done this a million times before, I can’t do this, I’m not good at this.”

Here one creates a wall. It’s one big NO = TENSION.

The second one is resignation: “OK, if you insist, I’ll do this exercise. I’ll go along to get along, but I know this one won’t help, sure, I’ll do it to please you but it won’t really please me.”

This one bears a grudge and partly you might feel compromised.  Stoic, at best, but not enthusiastic. This is a YES, BUT NOT REALLY = COLLAPSE.

We say in tai chi “relax, don’t collapse”. But we also emphasize structure without getting stiff. We look for the middle way, exactly between stiff and collapse, and that is essentially relax. Because of this, it’s actually difficult to say what relax really is because in one sense, it is not this and it is not that. You can’t do a “not”. “Relax not collapse” is the absence of tension and it is “letting go” but maintaining a structure.

The final way - which works 100% of the time, money back guaranteed - is to FULLY PARTICIPATE. Here you are on mission to discover something new. Even when the exercise is old and you feel that you have already discovered all there is to discover, the “new” here is the deepening of the experience through repetition. That, of and in itself, can open doors. FULLY PARTICIPATE = EMBRACE.

This brings to mind The 18 Therapies. Maggie Newman, my teacher, introduced them to us after many years of tai chi. In one regard they were disappointing. Too easy, too simple, boring, no challenge, nothing dazzling to show your friends. Whoa! Resistance and resignation reared their ugly heads! We were soooo  superior to these exercises.

For me, the challenge with The 18 Therapies was in the EMBRACE. It was one HUGE exercise in embracing! Here the resistance was that they seemed too easy, too simple and worse, they would not further the “I want to be the best in tai chi” agenda. But if you can, these exercises too are pleasurable, rewarding, beneficial.

So the next time you have the urge to resist or just grudgingly go along, CHANGE your attitude, let go of RESISTANCE and begin to EMBRACE the experience.

What does it have to offer you today? What can you learn from it? How can you incorporate this into your form, your life? What will happen next if I get in the experience? How can I master this? What do I need to do?

Tai chi/Life is more challenging that way, more rewarding, and much much more fun!

To go one step further, how can you embrace ALL experience, not just the ones you like? What does it mean to embrace a negative situation, and have no resistance or resignation? There are no simple answers here…

Tai Chi Chuan - Not My Job!

Tai Chi Chuan – Not My Job!

Tai chi was recommended to me by an acting teacher who said that tai chi was the best exercise for actors because it teaches you how to give up resistance.

I began in 1982.

In looking at push hands, I can honestly say that I have NEVER said to myself or to any of my teachers, that I can’t do this, or this is too hard, or this doesn’t help me. NEVER.

My job – when given an exercise to work on - is to participate as fully as I possibly can, not judge it, or determine the value, or disregard it (as in – I already know this!)

Of the many things I have done poorly, THIS is not one of them. My worst offence was disregard in that I felt I knew what this exercise had to offer and then not give it my all. But I changed that resistance and got back to work. And learned more.

You can always learn more, even if this is the umpteenth time you have worked on an exercise. This is because every push hand interaction has many layers. Perhaps infinite.

You can learn EVEN MORE if this exercise is difficult or confusing or “not my skill set”.

Resistance is a many headed monster.

Step one: recognize it.

Step two: If you have it, let it go….

Tai Chi Chuan – Let’s Do It Wrong!

Tai Chi Chuan – Let’s Do It Wrong!

I like to experiment. And in my laboratory, often I’ll take a small aspect of tai chi, and make it the ONLY thing you do in tai chi. That way, I get a fuller experience of that small aspect.

It is often very hard to get students to join me. They want what is familiar, what feels “normal” or “correct”. They want the end of the road, not the journey, not the beginning. But aren’t journeys and beginnings exciting? Doesn’t this tap your creativity?

So resistance is what I often meet when encouraging a new look at something small and then making it BIG. Students do all they can to normalize my exaggeration. It stops the process.

Myself, I don’t get it. You have to knead the dough, pull it, pound it, and stretch it, let it rise, before you can begin to bake it. It’s OK to distort, because you can always return to normal. Some experiments work, others fail. This kind of fundamental work is particularly difficult with more advanced students, the ones who “know”.

Perfection is not the goal. I think perfection is a fortunate accident that stumbles upon a few in a precarious way. To keep your goal as perfection cuts off all exploration.

So when I want students to “do it wrong to get it right”, we are not in the land of the perfect. We are in the land of the explorer trying to find some gold.  In a way, I think that is more like tai chi than some fantasy of being a star or master. If you become a master, great! But there are no guarantees. Some students have great talent, some have little talent. Regardless, we can all be explorers in tai chi.

I have to say, the long time students who do not like to explore, who just like to do the form over and over and over again, as if THAT will create some perfection, they are often the WORST tai chi practitioners.

Your tai chi form is your best habit to date. Nothing wrong with that, but perfecting an imperfect habit will go nowhere.

In the meantime, try being open to NEW as the new goal.

You might even enjoy it!

Tai Chi Chuan - May the Force Be With You

Tai Chi Chuan – May the Force Be With You

OK, really, this will not be a religious treatise.

I am more and more interested in the form as a result of forces. I am not interested in the form as a series of shapes or pathways to those shapes, or even soft shapes or soft pathway to those shapes.

Is that you?

What else is there?

Here are a few images that I like to think about, at least in terms of meaning, though not in terms of literal execution. These are metaphoric, not prescriptive.

Like, you are a marionette puppet, and you are moved by strings by someone else.

Like, you are an amoeba that morphs from one shapeless shape to another floating in an aqueous solution.

So too you are a basketball, being tossed from here to there, affected by gravity as well as your own innate buoyancy, as well as those that throw you here and there and dribble you down the court.

You are a hot air balloon that drifts along the sky.

You are the result of forces outside of yourself and inside of yourself. In one very real sense, the postures you make are not entirely from a decision to make a posture. The posture does not make the posture. Even a soft posture does not make a soft posture. Nor does the pathway make its own pathway.

All of this is the result of forces at your disposal. You don’t “do” a posture, you orchestrate forces that allow a posture to exist, to arrive, to morph into that shape, to release into the shape you want created.

Of course, these metaphors do not have mind.

So to extend the metaphors a bit, you are the puppet and the puppeteer. Can the puppet exist without the puppeteer?

You are the basketball and all the players and the court. Can you really exist without those players and the court?

You are the aqueous solution that supports and allows that amoeba to glide here and there. Can you be separate from that aqueous solution?

You are the source of heat and the pilot on the hot air balloon who steers the craft as you embrace air and space. Does a hot air balloon float without the heat? Or maneuver in space without some sort of driver at the helm?

There is mind guidance. But the tools that you have at your disposal create the actual physical act of each posture. Your tools are air, ground, gravity, the upward structure of the body, relaxation, the buoyancy of the body, momentum, the spiralic architecture of the muscles, the ball and socket architecture of the joints, the innate ability of the body to communicate within itself and place itself in space with awareness.

We don’t “do” a shape; we don’t “do” a movement. We let forces take care of that. We are never still or fixed or truly static. We are fluid, releasing, morphing, becoming one piece, becoming many pieces. We use our mind to connect these forces. We are not separate from these forces. The forces are us. These forces DO us!

Too much mind: All doing, and all function; Too little mind: yes, perhaps Non-doing, but no function.

If you do a posture, or a pathway, you are missing the big picture.

This is an aspiration I want to embody.