Tai Chi Chuan - Raising the Bar!

Tai Chi Chuan – Raising the Bar.

OK, I got bored.

There we were in class going over a repeating movement, up high on our legs, again and again and again.

“Get more comfortable,” Maggie kept telling us.

“Yes,” I thought to myself. “I AM feeling comfortable!”

I was smooth, easy. I was enjoying myself by working on that sense of everything culminating at the full part of the posture, like a ballerina on point. So I skipped that “comfortable” part because I thought I had that down cold. I was leading the group in this exercise.

But then she was looking at me, talking at me about becoming more comfortable. How can I become more comfortable? I didn’t know. Her words kept coming my way, as did her eyes.

I was a little embarrassed and very confused.

Finally she pointed out a place where I was on automatic. I hadn’t noticed. It got better, it WAS more comfortable. When we returned to the actual form, this was the most smooth, easy, delicious form I had ever done. It was an amazing experience. The form was more like riding in a smooth luxury car cruising down the highway. I was only there for the ride.

This raises a vital question. How do we raise the bar? Particularly when we think we are already on point?

Being knowledgeable can be a tremendous hindrance. As someone who knows a fair amount about tai chi, I sometimes disregard an instruction because I feel it doesn’t apply to me. I’m already there, or so I believe.

I was working with a good push hands beginner who felt she didn’t have any more yield in her neutralization. I thought she did. Initially, she was convinced of her self-observation. But she was open to working on this more despite her feeling, her knowing that she did not have more. Then she found more yield and more neutralization.

The simple, yet hard answer is that we have to assume, always, that there is more. You never really arrive. You have to love what you have but keep looking for those places that are habitual. And see if you can see more.

I suppose this is not particularly good news. Perhaps it’s OK to rest on your achievements for a while and to let them soak in and feel good about them. That’s important.

But they can’t become stuck places or medals of honors or badges of success or places the ego justifies its own existence. Once that transformation takes place, you are carrying around some dead thing to show others like some carcass from the hunt. I’m not talking about trying to be modest or humble. It’s knowing you have not arrived, you never will arrive and, if nothing else, you now have something to give away. You can’t clutch it greedily as a bragging point. It is now a gift to give others IF (IF!) they want it.

There is a lot of potential tedium in tai chi practice. There is a great deal of repetition and this can lead to disinterest (and therefore tedium.) But you have to be in it to get it. Generally, it doesn’t just come to you; you have to reach out to find it. Tai chi is for those of us who like to search, to explore.

And that IS the solution to the tedium. Exploring for new levels of experience pushes aside that tedium. Repeating it for the purpose of finding something else can lead to new insights. That’s where the excitement is!

The reward is more comfort, more chi, more peace, more awareness, possibly more confidence without the egotistical aspects that often gets attached to confidence. This is confidence that wants others to “get it”, not confidence that wants to impress.

So back to reality: there is more more more. That’s why tai chi keeps me fascinated. That’s why I want to keep learning. This is the hardest lesson of all to embody.

I think this is Life at its core.