Tai Chi Chuan – The Rational Body
The follow excerpt comes from On Being Certain, Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not (Robert A. Burton, M.D.):
§
“In Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson offer a succinct summary:
Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experiences… The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. To understand reason, we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding. Reason is not a transcendent feature of the universe of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.
Disembodied thought is not a physiological option. Neither is a purely rational mind free from bodily and mental sensations and perceptions.”
§
To think that the body forms the basis for “reason” is a radical, if somewhat logical idea. Like, come on! How could it NOT? Yet we tend to experience thought, and therefore “reason,” as separate from our bodies.
While I would not equate tai chi practice with having reason, or being rational, it makes sense to me that a practice about the body can potentially increase our powers of reason, our rationality.
So why do I not make an over-inflated claim to sell this art form with hyperbolic statements like “Tai Chi Chuan will increase your powers of reason!” or “Tai Chi players are more rational!”?
One only has to practice tai chi to see how challenging tai chi is, how slow it unfolds, the level of persistence required to embody even a small slice of it. The health benefit is far easier to obtain because even poor tai chi helps your health.
Practice just a bit more and you’ll sense how it works with and calms your emotions, or at least gives some of the distance/insight that any meditation provides.
But to actually jump from there to “reason” and “rationality” is a cognitive mile. If the statement quoted above is true, it is equally true to note that to be inside the body and understand it experientially is a difficult task, one that can take years. To be your body can be a threatening realization. You are really here, you are really responsible and you count. Often, we live within our thoughts as if the body doesn’t exist—that is until the body encounters pain that needs addressing. We ignore emotional signals embedded in our bodies, signals that become more apparent with tai chi practice. The logic within tai chi is counter-intuitive and therefore not easy to manifest. Most beginners quit for these reasons.
And yet I do believe that anyone involved in any practice that focuses on the body so deeply would have at least a good shot at obtaining more reason and greater rationality. If reason is the result of the body, as the body goes, so goes the world. Find the order within the complexity and know that little in life is what it seems. But despite what may look like chaos, within the chaos (perhaps complexity beyond one’s ability to comprehend it in this moment) an order exists. Otherwise, how else could I buy a cappuccino and enjoy it? (Take my Dada, please!)
Alas, because of its esoteric nature and Chinese origins, and because it works with something that Western culture is uncomfortable with (bodies), we tai chi-ers can be an odd breed— not always with a great measure of reason. Generally, we have lots of curiosity and are often playful (when we are not competitive)! Some have over active imaginations along with hungry egos wanting to attach to something as odd as tai chi to inflate the importance of the self. Yes, once upon a time I, too, thought I was special because I practiced tai chi. Now I think I’m merely an addict.
If you can can: keep it simple, enjoy the ride and laugh when you can. Let it lead you from time to time, get out of the way, share what you think is right, don’t assume you are a master, or that you “arrived,” or that you “know.”
It’s a marvelous thing to study. It feels good, too. Order and answers appear.
And sometimes, just sometimes, that makes us rational.
(On Being Certain is in among my 10 favorite books, one that changed my life. I can feel confident about some thought or idea, but can readily accept its flaws and then reject it. Being right is no longer a given. In fact, given the odds, it is the height of foolishness.)
The follow excerpt comes from On Being Certain, Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not (Robert A. Burton, M.D.):
§
“In Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson offer a succinct summary:
Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experiences… The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. To understand reason, we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding. Reason is not a transcendent feature of the universe of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.
Disembodied thought is not a physiological option. Neither is a purely rational mind free from bodily and mental sensations and perceptions.”
§
To think that the body forms the basis for “reason” is a radical, if somewhat logical idea. Like, come on! How could it NOT? Yet we tend to experience thought, and therefore “reason,” as separate from our bodies.
While I would not equate tai chi practice with having reason, or being rational, it makes sense to me that a practice about the body can potentially increase our powers of reason, our rationality.
So why do I not make an over-inflated claim to sell this art form with hyperbolic statements like “Tai Chi Chuan will increase your powers of reason!” or “Tai Chi players are more rational!”?
One only has to practice tai chi to see how challenging tai chi is, how slow it unfolds, the level of persistence required to embody even a small slice of it. The health benefit is far easier to obtain because even poor tai chi helps your health.
Practice just a bit more and you’ll sense how it works with and calms your emotions, or at least gives some of the distance/insight that any meditation provides.
But to actually jump from there to “reason” and “rationality” is a cognitive mile. If the statement quoted above is true, it is equally true to note that to be inside the body and understand it experientially is a difficult task, one that can take years. To be your body can be a threatening realization. You are really here, you are really responsible and you count. Often, we live within our thoughts as if the body doesn’t exist—that is until the body encounters pain that needs addressing. We ignore emotional signals embedded in our bodies, signals that become more apparent with tai chi practice. The logic within tai chi is counter-intuitive and therefore not easy to manifest. Most beginners quit for these reasons.
And yet I do believe that anyone involved in any practice that focuses on the body so deeply would have at least a good shot at obtaining more reason and greater rationality. If reason is the result of the body, as the body goes, so goes the world. Find the order within the complexity and know that little in life is what it seems. But despite what may look like chaos, within the chaos (perhaps complexity beyond one’s ability to comprehend it in this moment) an order exists. Otherwise, how else could I buy a cappuccino and enjoy it? (Take my Dada, please!)
Alas, because of its esoteric nature and Chinese origins, and because it works with something that Western culture is uncomfortable with (bodies), we tai chi-ers can be an odd breed— not always with a great measure of reason. Generally, we have lots of curiosity and are often playful (when we are not competitive)! Some have over active imaginations along with hungry egos wanting to attach to something as odd as tai chi to inflate the importance of the self. Yes, once upon a time I, too, thought I was special because I practiced tai chi. Now I think I’m merely an addict.
If you can can: keep it simple, enjoy the ride and laugh when you can. Let it lead you from time to time, get out of the way, share what you think is right, don’t assume you are a master, or that you “arrived,” or that you “know.”
It’s a marvelous thing to study. It feels good, too. Order and answers appear.
And sometimes, just sometimes, that makes us rational.
(On Being Certain is in among my 10 favorite books, one that changed my life. I can feel confident about some thought or idea, but can readily accept its flaws and then reject it. Being right is no longer a given. In fact, given the odds, it is the height of foolishness.)
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