Tai Chi Chuan - The Rational Body

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.):

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“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.”

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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.)

Tai Chi Chuan - True Relaxation

Tai Chi Chuan – True Relaxation

I was practicing push hands with a good beginner who hasn’t yet discovered how to relax his arms. You can feel him immediately and this error gives me the upper hand, at least in a slow game. You might think stiff arms would be an asset, but not so in tai chi. It locks you in and limits your choices should you be attacked. You are pre-stuck.

I tried to get him to relax his arms more and to reengineer his understanding of what push hands “stick and follow” is.

By holding his wrist and allowing his arm to just hang, we were testing to see how much he could simply let me hold up his arm. He couldn’t do it. He HAD to hold up his arm, even though I was already holding it up at the wrist. Eventually he did let go a bit more. There were a few more ideas that helped as well. But in our play, he didn’t really get it. Not to the extent that we could then focus more on to the next issue, that of function.

His question to me was: Is there an exercise to get a handle on relaxing the arms? The answer is basically NO.

The feel of relaxed arms is more or less an experiential understanding of relaxed arms. That understanding comes from the many ways that you use the body and how you conceive of relaxation in physical terms. Many elements are at play. And until you get a feel for it, well, you don’t know what you don’t know. That is why to tell someone to not use strength or to simply relax often doesn’t really help. Such advice has to tap into their knowledge base and if they don’t have it already, the knowledge base won’t help them now. (As I’ve stated before, this is like telling an angry person to not be angry, or an uptight person to stop getting worked up.)

What are some elements?

Allowing the body to melt into the ground.

Relaxing into the leg you are on before you shift to the next leg.

Elbows that are non-doing, non-held and sinking or heavy.

Letting the hands be weightless and floating.

Supporting the arms with the whole body.

Using the ground to support the whole body.

Moving everything at the same time (even if one part LOOKS like it is not moving.)

Allowing the spine to hang and the tailbone to be heavy.

Rest the arms in space; rest the elbows on a table top (that isn’t really there.)

Activate the whole chi of the body in moving the body and therefore the arms.

Keep the elbows relating to the hips/waste and dropping into the hips/waste.

No doubt there are more….

To understand relaxation, you have to keep chipping away at the stone to create a new sculpture. There is no simple one thing that you do. It is a complex of things that you do (or don’t do) that allows this relaxation to manifest. One fellow student sees the art of relaxation as a lifelong endeavor.

One general approach is to keep looking for ways relaxation moves the form. We look to increase relaxation and see how it functions. We don’t focus on the tension and try to get rid of it. Let relaxation grow and consume tension. These are two sides of the same coin, of course, but one way is that the glass is half empty; the other the glass is half full. Denial notwithstanding, which feels better to you?

Hey, you can always go back to using tension. But why bother? Ever look at someone who thrives on conflict, anger, force, hostility? Once relaxation enters your life, these folk look foolish.

Needless to say, this is a life challenge for all of us. We are sculpting ourselves into a new reality that opens many doors.

Tai Chi Chuan - It Ain't Lady Gaga, That's For Sure!

Tai Chi Chuan – It Ain’t Lady Gaga, That’s For Sure!

I’m always alarmed at the cultural tendency in Western Society towards honoring and celebrating Individualism. It seems to me that Individualism ends up with Lady Gaga, who is shoveling it in to the bank in truck loads. I haven’t been all that impressed with her music. Her main “success” is clever outrageous costumes of one sort or other. It is a talent, if only for the tireless effort to keep up the momentum. (Queen Elizabeth I did the same thing I’m told.) Are we not tired of this self promotion?

Our love of celebrity, our cheering of high level performers, the awe at those 400 super rich Americans who have the wealth of all of the lowest 150 million Americans combined, the applauding of making it to top and the approval of aggressive ANYTHING that results in “success” does not add up to much in my book. (Aggression is the new good in our desperate economically challenged society. It is highly regarded and often rewarded without regard to collateral damage.)

The trickledown theory shows up in body piercing and tattoos and body building. A way for the “common man” to differentiate himself. We have a cultural disdain for “bureaucrats.” We will do just about anything to make ourselves seen as somehow different or special or unique. To be separate. Our sense of differentiation and judgment become more and more developed.

In tai chi, we are not concerned with such fluff. We are cutting away the excess and finding the common denominator within our bodies and with each other. Less is more, and being “empty” creates integrated movement and action. Being like others in a group, moving with them and not standing out per se, is what you aim for in tai chi.

Yes, hard work, real talent, excellence, determined effort – all to the good. We love to see our human potential manifested before our eyes. It can be thrilling.

I’m not suggesting that you eliminate or diminish your individuality or that you need to hide yourself under a burka or have no personality. Tai chi is not an act of suppression. It is an act of realization of where we connect to others.

Becoming one block of chi with others is intrinsically satisfying and ultimately more meaningful. Allowing your body to unify and move as one block of chi is intrinsically satisfying and ultimately more meaningful.

To separate from yourself or the group creates disharmony. Lady Gaga might feel out of place in the tai chi world.

Unless she gave up her act.

Tai Chi Chuan - Study Demonstrates Mood Enhancement with Heart Failure Patients

Tai Chi Improves Moods of Heart Failure Patients

By FYI Health Writer on Jun 13, 2011

Summary

Evidence indicates that exercise involving meditation may have some benefits for patients who suffer from heart conditions such as heart failure. This hypothesis has, however, not been proved in clinical studies. This study was conducted to see if an exercise form such as tai chi, along with supportive regular therapy, helps for a prolonged duration patients with heart failure. Results showed that, although there was no reversal of the disease process, there was an improvement in the patients’ perception regarding their quality of life, exercise capacity, and general mood.

Introduction

Earlier it was believed that patients suffering from heart failure should not be permitted physical exercise. This belief persisted through the 1980s before new studies showed that regular moderate exercise can benefit patients with heart failure. Exercise modifies their disease, improves their quality of life and alleviates mental ailments like depression. Recent studies have shown that meditation-related physical exercises may help heart failure patients to a large extent. Tai chi, an ancient oriental exercise form, involves meditation as well as gentle balancing body movements and breathing techniques. Studies have shown that tai chi may help lower blood pressure and improve balance, mood, muscle diseases and exercise capacity. This study evaluated the effectiveness of tai chi in heart failure patients.

Methodology

For this study, 100 heart failure patients with an average age of 67 years from different centers were chosen and involved in the study between 1st May 2005 and 30th September 2008.

Half of the participants (50) were included in a 12-week tai chi program involving one-hour group classes. The other half was given educational material regarding good health and exercise practices for the same duration. All patients also received standard heart failure care.

At the beginning and end of the training, all participants were assessed for how much exercise they could undertake (a measure of the heart health) and also how they perceived health, quality of life, mood etc.

Tests were done on participants’ blood samples, for measurement of catecholamines and inflammation factors. Another questionnaire asked about medications taken, and healthcare visits, accidents, falls and symptoms of illness.

Key findings

Results showed that at the end of the study there was no marked difference in capacity of exercise in the two patient groups
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However, those in the tai chi group reported a better perceived quality of life at the end of the study.

Patients in the tai chi group reported that perceived efficacy of the exercise was high and they had improved mood after the tai chi program.

Next steps/shortcomings

Authors write that patients in the education program group were aware that the other group was receiving tai chi classes and this could have affected their reports on quality of life at end of the study. However, researchers had tried to reduce this problem by promising those in the control group tai chi training at the end of the study. They also agree that the study sample was small. A larger sample could define the benefits of tai chi further. Also, the authors admit uncertainty regarding the mechanism by which tai chi benefits heart failure patients.

Conclusion

This study concludes that tai chi – a meditative form of physical exercise – is acceptable and effective in the improvement of daily quality of living, mood, and exercise efficacy in frail patients with heart failure. However, tai chi does not appear to change the disease process significantly. Further studies are needed to see how these findings can be applied to the general population in terms of effectiveness, cost, and feasibility. Further research is also necessary to see exactly how tai chi and its components of meditation, deep breathing, balance and aerobic exercises aid in benefiting patients with heart failure. This attempt would guide caregivers in improving the quality of life and mental health of heart failure patients.

Tai Chi Chuan - one more time with the chatter already!

Tai Chi Chuan – one more time with the chatter already!

1. Yet AGAIN the same issue came up. Very few get it. It’s truly difficult to get. It’s the lesson that keeps on giving.

“Is it OK for you to grip my wrist?” was his question.

We were practicing push hands. The question might have also been:

“Is it correct form for you to grip my wrist?”

“Should you be gripping my wrist?”

“Isn’t it wrong in push hands for you to grip my wrist?”

His question might have been a hidden statement of: “I thought gripping the wrist is wrong!”

Strictly speaking, it doesn’t matter what your partner does. There is no Wrong, Should, Correct, OK in what your partner does. The focus is on HOW YOU RESPOND to whatever it is that grabs your attention. It’s what YOU do that matters, not what THEY do.

They are free to do anything at any time.

2. Principles vs. Rules. We have principles in push hands and tai chi. We don’t have rules. You can bend a principle. You can’t bend a rule. We strive to get closer to the principle. Rules are there to limit us (and this is not a bad thing, either!)

The reason we don’t have rules is that we want great latitude within the context of the experience of tai chi and push-hands.

And yet in push hands, this distinction gets blurred. We do limit the game in early training and there are rules. These rules are there to create strong boundaries such that the players can learn basics. Later, when you let the rules go, you hope that principles are being practiced and applied to a variety, an infinite variety if you will, of situations.

3. What is the question that is relevant?

It goes like this:

“What can I do when I feel you gripping my wrist?”

Here you can focus on your reaction or action to that grip. This does not control your partner or tell them what to do. Here is a problem for you and you are the solution.

4. Let’s look at that “grip.” For one thing, it may be helpful to look closely at what exactly is being labeled a “grip.” The gripee may have strong ideas about what just went on. The gripper may also have feelings about what just went on. A grip can be many many things. We may not see eye to eye here. This conflict often goes nowhere.

Here is a debatable proposition: I believe that if you are ready for a push hands exchange where the “rules of engagement” are broadened, and a grip occurs, that grip is helpful for the gripee and not helpful for the gripper. I feel this way because the gripper is using (possibly!) strength and is engaged in a doing action, and we want to minimize strength and doing in all exchanges. So the gripper is not getting the most out of his practice.

That stated, the larger picture tells us that this is a choice of the gripper. Since ultimately we can do anything, it is not wrong. He will befuddle many a tai chi player with his gripping. From the outside, often it looks like an effective tool. Getting back to “wrong,” he may be testing the skill of the gripee. He may not yet understand better ways of playing the game. He may not be adding skills to his own game. But WRONG is a useless concept in push hands. It is simply a judgment that leads us down a path to nowhere.

On the other hand, the gripee is given an opportunity to see what she can do with that grip within the context of non-doing and not using strength. Pure gold! How else do we take the principles of tai chi and apply them to a situation that doesn’t suit our comfort zone or skill level? Can relaxation and non-doing serve us when confronted with a player who grips our wrist?

5. So that gripper is getting you annoyed? Again, a good way to keep the game going and not create a rule or make grand claims about Right or Wrong is to speak up and suggest that this level of challenge is beyond your skill level just now. It is perfectly fine to create a practice that allows you to work with a partner and not deal with the ultimate challenges, or challenges that you are not prepared to take.

Another option is to take that moment of doing/force and slow it down such that it is more manageable, so you can see what is going on, to see how you react to that situation, to see what might be a solution. Perhaps you can’t access this at a regular speed, but it may open your eyes to the possibility that the principles can and do work.

[Often I see an exchange that is all or nothing. The gripper has the upper hand, the gripee is lost and confused and sees no way out. The gripper feels like the winner, the gripee is confused OR claims that the gripper is breaking the rules of engagement (verbally attacks the gripper and takes the moral high road.) What do we learn here?]

6. The ultimate confusion – one that I personally look at a great deal – is that THEY do not create YOUR reality. YOU DO! This is extremely hard to see, let alone understand and live by.

The best way to work in push hands is to avoid accusations (direct or implied) or declare a moral code. The best way to work in push hands is to seek out solutions within the context of the principles.

If you have a partner where you can do this, you have a great thing going…

WET Design CEO Mark Fuller - New York Times article

Please forgive me for this one, but the tai chi links here are abundant! Listening, spontaneity, not knowing the next move, conflict resolution, change, curiosity, openness, honest self reflection, generosity, team work, being flexible, sense of humor. Take a look if an original way of living in the corporate world is of interest. Tom

April 16, 2011

WET Design and the Improv Approach to Listening

By ADAM BRYANT

This interview with Mark Fuller, C.E.O. (which stands for chief excellence officer) of WET Design, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What’s unusual about your company’s culture?

A. We have three classrooms and a full-time curriculum director who teaches all the time and also brings in outside instructors. One of the really fun classes we do is improv.

Q. Why improv?

A. Improv, if properly taught, is really about listening to the other person, because there’s no script. It’s about responding. I was noticing that we didn’t have a lot of good communication among our people.

If you think about it, if you have an argument with your wife or husband, most of the time people are just waiting for the other person to finish so they can say what they’re waiting to say. So usually they’re these serial machine-gun monologues, and very little listening.

That doesn’t work in improv. If we’re on the stage, I don’t know what goofball thing you’re going to say, so I can’t be planning anything. I have to really be listening to you so I can make an intelligent — humorous or not — response.

So I got this crazy idea of bringing in someone to teach an improv class. At first, everybody had an excuse, because it’s kind of scary to stand up in front of people and do this. But now we’ve got a waiting list because word has spread that it’s really cool.

You’re in an emotionally naked environment. It’s like we’re all the same. We all can look stupid. And it’s an amazing bonding thing, plus it’s building all these communication skills. You’re sort of in this gray space of uncertainty. Most of us don’t like to be uncertain — you know, most of us like to be thinking what we’re going to say next. You get your mind into a space where you say, “I’m really enjoying that I don’t know what he’s going to ask me next, and I’m going to be open and listening and come back.”

We’ve got graphic designers, illustrators, optical engineers, Ph.D. chemists, special effects people, landscape designers, textile designers. You get all these different disciplines that typically you would never find under one roof — even making a movie — and so you have to constantly be finding these ways to have people connect.

So we do things like improv, and I think they really have developed our culture.

Q. What else?

A. We also encourage people to put their ideas on our walls. Or if you’ve got a drawing, you can stick a couple of magnets on it. The point is to get people to put their stuff out where other people can see it. We don’t want a culture of, “That’s my idea. I don’t want anybody to see it. Maybe they’ll find a flaw in it.”

I had a teacher once who said, “Whenever you guys are sitting here, and you realize that you’ve made a mistake on something you’re working with, I want you to applaud yourself.” He said: “That will accomplish a couple of things. First of all, instead of saying, ‘Oh, I made a mistake, I’m never going to learn this stuff anyway,’ you’re going to reward yourself because you caught the mistake before I did.” We all rolled our eyes in the class, but I’ve never forgotten that.

So one of the things I will do is to start some meetings by saying, “Let me tell you where I just screwed up.” That sets the tone of, we’ve got to put our mistakes out there. They don’t call it “learn by trial and success.” You learn by trial and error.

Q. What else have you done through the years to set the tone for your culture?

A. Early on, I decided that whenever somebody comes into my office and starts blaming something on another department, I will say: “Really? Let’s get them in here. Hold that thought.” It’s just like with your children at home — you don’t want serial tattletaling. You get everybody together, and then suddenly people are saying that maybe they exaggerated a bit, and things weren’t quite as bad as they said.

I’ve been in environments where a C.E.O. will sit back and try to watch a gladiator match for entertainment. That’s totally not cool. It’s so common, I think, in corporate life. You want to have the conversation and say: “O.K., what really went wrong here? There’s three of us in this room. We’re going to fix this thing. How do we do it?”

Q. You’ve clearly thought a lot about cultures and how to get people to work together.

A. I really love coming to work to develop the workplace and the team. I think it’s either a virtuous or a vicious spiral, and it’s exposed when you go to hire somebody.

To get really good talent, you need to be doing interesting stuff. Take a great kid out of college or somebody from another company — they’re not going to come if there’s not something really interesting to work on. I suppose you could throw gobs of money at them or something, but that’s not the idea. So you need to build the company so you have great talent, and great projects, and a great environment. You get those three, and then they just feed off of each other.

Q. I’ll keep asking: What else is unusual about your company?

A. One thing we do is we move people around a lot into different positions. And quite honestly, it’s pretty unsettling because everybody loves to be comfortable. I think we’re built that way. Find your cave, and draw some nice picture of a mammoth on the wall so it feels like home.

Most of my key people have held really different positions. That helps prevent these silos and fiefdoms that tend to get sclerotically reinforced over time in companies when people say: “Oh, the fifth floor is engineering. You don’t go up there without a hall pass.”

The world is driven by change, so part of my job, I think, is to stir things up.

Q. But at what level are you moving people around? You’re not taking the Ph.D. chemist and saying, “Learn sheet metal,” are you?

A. Not full time. We do take all of our key employees and put them through an immersion program that typically lasts six weeks. I can show you some great receptionists who are pretty darn good welders because they spent a week or two in the machine shop. They get it, and they understand what’s going on. Again, they’re not permanent assignments for everybody, but it’s really about walking in the other person’s shoes to understand their job.

Q. Let’s shift to hiring. What are you looking for? What questions do you ask?

A. There are two questions I would definitely ask after we’d been talking for a while. One is, “Do you like to read?” and, “What do you like to read?” I’m an unbelievable reader. Jeff Bezos is in the black only because of Mark Fuller’s daily Amazon orders.

And then I will ask: “What do you build? Do you do anything with your hands? Do you have a hobby? Pottery? Do you fix old cars? Do you have any kind of a shop in your garage? Do you play an instrument?” I’m listening for something tangible — something that tells me you’re not just all about work. I really value intellect, but I like people who are connected with real stuff, too.

Q. Are you asking that of everybody, even, say, a finance chief?

A. I do. If a finance person chops motorcycles or likes to repair his own computer when it breaks, they’ll have a connection to our technical people or our hands-on people as opposed to somebody who’s just Mr. Spreadsheet.

Q. Can you talk more about the qualities you’re looking for?

A. There’s sort of four things when you’re interviewing somebody. There’s passion and commitment. If you’ve got that, you can go a long way.

The next one is I.Q. I mean, you’re kind of born with that. So we look for signs of a high I.Q.

The third one is the one that most people focus on, which is explicit knowledge and experience. That’s actually the one thing that’s easiest to fix. I mean, you can pour knowledge into somebody’s head, and you can build experience over time. We try to get a blend there. We don’t want all just fresh kids out of school because then you’re inventing everything over and over again. So we also like some seniority and experience.

And then the fourth one is the negative category: we look for X factors. We may even try to prod them a little bit. Do they have a hair-trigger temper? Have they got an ego that’s going to get in the way? Those are our interview criteria.

Q. What else do you look for in an interview?

A. I like to find out what makes people laugh, because if people don’t have a sense of humor, if they can’t laugh, they’re really just not going to make it.

I also like to take people we’re considering for a key position on a tour of WET. I’ll take maybe an hour and a half, and I’ll listen for their level of curiosity. It tells me a lot. So most of my interview is actually walking around in the tour.

Q. And how long does it take you to get a sense of whether the person’s right or not?

A. I can tell pretty fast, and those are sometimes shorter tours.

Tai Chi Chuan - Learning by Failing

Tai Chi Chuan – Learning by Failing

Learning tai chi is unlike learning other subjects.

Tai chi is a physical experience and, therefore, trial and error are required. Some students want to figure it out, or see it in a video or get the book! While that won’t hurt, it never really helps.

Tai chi is more like learning to swim by being put into a pool, shown a few strokes, and then encouraged to go towards the deep end.

In a tai chi class, you can’t learn it first and then do it. You can’t stop in the middle of a class, pull out a book and figure out the next move. You jump in, struggle, imitate, catch what you can and get into the groove as much as possible. You don’t first “understand” it. You will only understand it when your body understands it. And that means you have to try it again and again and again.

You do it to understand it. I encourage beginners to jump in, not understand, do it all wrong and flounder at first. Sometimes I introduce a movement without introduction. We just do. The students are confused. But my goal is to get them to be comfortable with confusion. It’s a normal state to be in. Being comfortable with confusion is what you need – exactly what you need –to learn tai chi. How can it be otherwise?

Simply put, this is a healthy dose of “let me try this….”

An approach that includes confusion and failing is the opposite of how much of our education is delivered or the attitude of expectation in the work place. We tend to like information first, practice later. Frankly, that is the best way for many studies. Can you imagine a math class where you are asked to add, but you don’t know the numbers or what add means? Or fly a plane without a deep understanding of flight before you sit in the cockpit? Law? Medicine?

Tai chi is more like learning how to walk. No one tells l you how to do it. You just watch how others do it and you keep falling down and getting up until you can walk.

Tai chi is more like that first time you rode a bicycle. Once those trainer wheels were gone, you fell until you discovered how to sail. How did that happen anyway? You notice others can do it and you keep trying until you can do it. And THEN you understand what it takes.

Our desire to know - before we do - cripples us in experiential exploration: failure WILL happen frequently—and that’s the norm in tai chi.

Yes, it’s not safe, and there’s risk. Acceptance of this failure, but trying again and again and again, is truly healthy.

How so? Your body is learning a new skill. Your mind, unfamiliar with this new skill, may have a conceptual idea about that new skill, but this idea will never replace actually putting yourself on the line and just trying it out. “Trying it out” amounts to following others in fits and starts to grab clues or little pieces of what you think you see, until you merge with the others and can feel what you see. It keeps you observing and alert. It keeps you connected to others, too.

In the safe space of tai chi class, failure is encouraged. You have to jump in. I have never liked that level of vulnerability in life, but in tai chi, that’s fine. When you do “get it,” you will REALLY get it because you have earned it through trial and error. You know what it isn’t. When you feel what it is, it’s yours.

But rarely does this happen without a fare amount of failure. Here, we fail until we learn… In this way, tai chi IS life.

Fail fail fail fail – success – Ah ha! I see! This can be frustrating and even embarrassing.

It happened again for me in class recently. Maggie gave me a correction in the sword form. I did what I thought she was showing me. “No,” she told me, and repeated the move. Again I tried it. “No, not that,” she corrected. This went on for some time. It was very very frustrating because I truly thought I was doing what she was doing. Ah! I finally got closer! I began to understand after many attempted failings.

If you don’t have fortitude and patience, or lack the intention of developing those qualities in your life, tai chi is not the art form for you.

Push hands practice takes years of confusion and failing. My own idea about push hands has changed radically in the last few years. How I practice now is worlds apart from how I began. How else can you make such changes without a large amount of experimentation? I might be inclined to say that all that earlier work was a waste of time. True, it took me a long time to see a different way (and frankly I’m still working on it!) But all that earlier work clarified my latter discoveries. My understanding is much deeper than it would be without that earlier trial-and-error practice.

Perfection is a wonderful goal. Toss it and give yourself permission to stumble along the way. I have NEVER seen any student fail who keeps trying to succeed. Not one.

Note this wonderful aspect of tai chi class: Failure is expected and simply the way to learn.

I find that incredibly refreshing.

Tai Chi Chuan – “Invest in Loss,” really?

Tai Chi Chuan – “Invest in Loss,” really?

The question arose recently: Does the adage to “invest in loss” in tai chi push hands have any relationship to a personal loss in real life?

At first I didn’t think so.

From the dictionary:

Invest: To spend or devote for future advantage or benefit; To devote morally or psychologically, as to a purpose; commit; To endow with authority or power.

Loss: The condition of being deprived or bereaved of something or someone; The harm or suffering caused by losing or being lost.

In push hands, you volunteer to learn a skill where trying to win – at least initially – will inhibit your progress. In a very real way, if you are attacked by your partner, you need to accept the attack and NOT fight her off. You let it happen. During this process, you may have mind left over to see what is going on, even if you don’t have a good solution. You will feel more and relax more. Eventually, perhaps through your own growth, or through the suggestion of your partner, you begin to see the solutions. One way to get there is simply getting pushed and pushed and pushed. This can be very frustrating!

Like any loss, it is very confusing. But it is also very rewarding because by “investing in loss” you will see the situation from a very different perspective. Otherwise, you are investing in struggle, resistance and strategy. By removing the desire to win, you open up your ability to see exactly what is really happening in this moment. It is virtually impossible to see what is happening in this moment if you are always strategizing or resisting what is actually happening NOW.

In real life, you don’t seek out loss in order to learn. Loss comes hard and sometimes there is no real obvious gain. The process of loss is just loss. Redemption is not always on the playing field. Unlike push hands, loss=gain is not true. Mostly loss=loss.

But not always. It is true that if you spend lots of energy on fighting the loss (as in push hands,) you have two problems: The loss + the pointless struggle of fighting it off. You’ve added baggage to a difficult situation. Letting go of that baggage is an important step to learning whatever lesson the loss may give you.

[Please note to those who have not participated in push hands: when you struggle against someone who understands push hands, generally, you lose the game! Struggle works against you.]

Clearly there are losses in life that create life altering changes in individuals and, to sound corny, they turn lemons into lemonade. This does happen. One is forced to do something else because something has been taken away. To persist in fighting the loss itself may close the door to what could be an alternative, possibly better, way to exist.

For some losses, to look closely at the loss often reveals steps that you did not take but in retrospect could have taken. You missed the opportunity to act when you needed to or to take necessary steps at the right time. You may learn something here and grow as a result.

But again, this is not always the case. I ponder those individuals in the World Trade Towers on September 11th, 2001, an unforeseeable disaster. Some were hopelessly trapped. Some had the option to run out of the building as fast as they could. Others decided there was no real danger and stayed where they were, perhaps avoiding panicked crowds going down stairwells in the dark. They couldn’t have predicted the tragic outcome.

“Invest in loss” has a sense of non-resistance to it. Giving up struggle, gain, winning. One side benefit of this is “being.” And allowing whatever is happening to happen. There is much to gain by doing this.

But what is “being” in the face of personal loss, grief, injustice perhaps?

Acceptance is one element. Awareness is another. Opening new possibilities is yet another. Allowing yourself the feelings that you need to feel as you experience the loss is one more. Giving yourself space to “not do” something in order to fully comprehend the situation, to fully be with it. Giving yourself time to simply exist with the totality of the loss. To embrace who you are – totally – in this moment. The knowledge that you are MORE than your loss.

While all of that is rarely pleasant, to NOT have that creates more tension and pointless struggle. To NOT have this binds you in.

It is interesting that in the push hands situation, a situation that you have volunteered to work with, many of the same problems and frustrations come up as if life had handed you some REAL loss. Experientially, it’s not so different. Inevitably you hit a wall of sorts and can’t seem to handle the partner in front of you. The desire to win often creates the very problem that creates frustration and a sense of loss. I have been so angry and frustrated at times with push hands partners that I have left the game. Others have felt the same about me.

Some real life losses create severe stress. While it may be easier to accept loss in push hands, the process of push hands takes time, attention, persistence, acceptance of who you are and your level of skill, and a great deal of letting go, of not reacting with your emotions. By this I don’t mean that you don’t have or recognize emotions. I mean that you don’t act on them as if they are some sort of trustworthy actionable directive. “I feel therefore I do” is not the adage. I hit you because I feel angry? Sorry no no! I feel my anger. I feel like hitting you. But I don’t. “I feel therefore I am.” (For some, if they don’t recognize their own emotional impulses, the action bursts forth as if by its own unrecognized volition. See Law and Order!)

Does personal loss require any less?

But more to the point, what if the loss had nothing to do with your actions or inactions? What if you were born with a loss? Or someone has decided you are inferior because of ignorance, fear, whatever the reason. Or cholera is in the water and it is the middle ages and no one has heard of cholera? Life happens despite our best efforts. It is loaded with losses, small and large. It is normal.

A book comes to mind, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. He presents the concentration camps and the suffering and loss experienced by the Jews. He was there. The bottom line for him is that loss tests our humanity. To weather a severe and real loss with dignity or even generosity is a personal victory worth struggling for. That is a profound and existential challenge.

No one wishes such harm on anyone, but when faced with ultimate loss, how do you rise to the occasion?

As you lose again and again and again in push-hands, how do you rise to the occasion?

The stakes in push hands are not the same, but the human struggle is similar to real life loss. You have to face yourself.

“Invest in loss” has answers to dealing with personal loss. Sometimes the best way to live is to allow the loss to happen (if you have no control over it) and see what comes next. Equanimity. Walk through the mud, don’t wallow in it. Or wallow in it for a while, and then get on with task of living.

By accepting loss, what can you make of loss? What does life have to offer, despite the loss, or even because of the loss? To me, this is “invest in loss.”

Tools for Thinking - New York Times article

Perhaps the connection here to tai chi is slim, but I see ideas and words that resonate with a tai chi process. Words/ideas like context, emergence, “bottom up and top down simultaneously,” letting go of past associations (and solutions) to see what is happening now, and so forth.

This is a profound article of CHANGE!

Tom

March 28, 2011

Tools for Thinking

By DAVID BROOKS

A few months ago, Steven Pinker of Harvard asked a smart question: What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?

The good folks at Edge.org organized a symposium and 164 thinkers contributed suggestions. John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University, wrote that people should be more aware of path dependence. This refers to the notion that often “something that seems normal or inevitable today began with a choice that made sense at a particular time in the past, but survived despite the eclipse of the justification for that choice.”

For instance, typewriters used to jam if people typed too fast, so the manufacturers designed a keyboard that would slow typists. We no longer have typewriters, but we are stuck with the letter arrangements of the qwerty keyboard.

Path dependence explains many linguistic patterns and mental categories, McWhorter continues. Many people worry about the way e-mail seems to degrade writing skills. But there is nothing about e-mail that forbids people from using the literary style of 19th-century letter writers. In the 1960s, language became less formal, and now anybody who uses the old manner is regarded as an eccentric.

Evgeny Morozov, the author of “The Net Delusion,” nominated the Einstellung Effect, the idea that we often try to solve problems by using solutions that worked in the past instead of looking at each situation on its own terms. This effect is especially powerful in foreign affairs, where each new conflict is viewed through the prism of Vietnam or Munich or the cold war or Iraq.

Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University writes about the Focusing Illusion, which holds that “nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” He continues: “Education is an important determinant of income — one of the most important — but it is less important than most people think. If everyone had the same education, the inequality of income would be reduced by less than 10 percent. When you focus on education you neglect the myriad of other factors that determine income. The differences of income among people who have the same education are huge.”

Joshua Greene, a philosopher and neuroscientist at Harvard University, has a brilliant entry on Supervenience. Imagine a picture on a computer screen of a dog sitting in a rowboat. It can be described as a picture of a dog, but at a different level it can be described as an arrangement of pixels and colors. The relationship between the two levels is asymmetric. The same image can be displayed at different sizes with different pixels. The high-level properties (dogness) supervene the low-level properties (pixels).

Supervenience, Greene continues, helps explain things like the relationship between science and the humanities. Humanists fear that scientists are taking over their territory and trying to explain everything. But new discoveries about the brain don’t explain Macbeth. The products of the mind supervene the mechanisms of the brain. The humanities can be informed by the cognitive sciences even as they supervene them.

If I were presumptuous enough to nominate a few entries, I’d suggest the Fundamental Attribution Error: Don’t try to explain by character traits behavior that is better explained by context.

I’d also nominate the distinction between emotion and arousal. There’s a general assumption that emotional people are always flying off the handle. That’s not true. We would also say that Emily Dickinson was emotionally astute. As far as I know, she did not go around screaming all the time. It would be useful if we could distinguish between the emotionality of Dickinson and the arousal of the talk-show jock.

Public life would be vastly improved if people relied more on the concept of emergence. Many contributors to the Edge symposium hit on this point.

We often try to understand problems by taking apart and studying their constituent parts. But emergent problems can’t be understood this way. Emergent systems are ones in which many different elements interact. The pattern of interaction then produces a new element that is greater than the sum of the parts, which then exercises a top-down influence on the constituent elements.

Culture is an emergent system. A group of people establishes a pattern of interaction. And once that culture exists, it influences how the individuals in it behave. An economy is an emergent system. So is political polarization, rising health care costs and a bad marriage.

Emergent systems are bottom-up and top-down simultaneously. They have to be studied differently, as wholes and as nested networks of relationships. We still try to address problems like poverty and Islamic extremism by trying to tease out individual causes. We might make more headway if we thought emergently.

We’d certainly be better off if everyone sampled the fabulous Edge symposium, which, like the best in science, is modest and daring all at once.

Tai Chi Eases Depression in Elderly - New York Times article

March 18, 2011, 1:18 pm

Tai Chi Eases Depression in Elderly

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Robert Spencer for The New York Times A tai chi group practicing in Pawtucket, R.I.

The ancient Chinese practice of tai chi appears to relieve symptoms of depression in older people, a new study shows.

The findings, published this month in The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, are the latest to suggest that the slow movement, breathing and meditation of tai chi results in meaningful benefits to patients with chronic health problems. Other recent studies have shown that practicing tai chi may provide benefits for patients with arthritis and fibromyalgia. But the newest research is important because depression is notoriously difficult to treat in older people, many of whom are already coping with other health problems and are less likely to respond to drug treatment.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, studied 112 older adults, in whom major depression had been diagnosed, including many who had been struggling with the illness for years. Their average age was about 70. Everyone was first treated with Lexapro, and 73 exhibited a partial improvement but still scored high on depression scales. The rest of the patients dropped out of the study, including just one patient who had a full remission after drug treatment.

The remaining depressed patients were randomly assigned to either a 10-week course of tai chi or a health education class, which included 10 minutes of simple stretching exercises. Both courses were given for two hours once a week.

After 10 weeks of tai chi, 94 percent of depressed older adults showed marked improvement on depression scales, compared with 77 percent in the health education group. And 65 percent of the people in the tai chi group experienced remission, compared with 51 percent in the education group.

The tai chi group also showed marked improvement in measures of physical function, cognitive tests and blood tests measuring levels of inflammation.

“Altogether the effects were pretty dramatic,’’ said Dr. Helen Lavretsky, lead author and professor of psychiatry at U.C.L.A. “If a psychiatrist were to add exercise like tai chi, which is very nondemanding and easy to access, that would be a very beneficial thing instead of adding another drug.”

Dr. Lavretsky said one reason both study groups showed improvement was that all the patients probably benefited from spending time with other people, whether it was in the practice of tai chi or the group education class. “I’m sure the social aspect contributed to the improvement in both groups,’’ she said. “In the control group we see improvement, and that was purely because of the social interaction and bonding that occurred.”

But the marked improvement in the tai chi group suggests an additional benefit from tai chi. Research has shown tai chi can improve physical function and quality of life, relieve stress and anxiety and lead to improved sleep quality, the study authors noted.

Dr. Lavretsky said the findings are exciting because depression is so difficult to treat in older people, two-thirds of whom don’t respond to initial drug therapy. Often when a patient doesn’t respond to the first drug, an additional drug is given, but that’s not always practical for patients who are already taking 10 or 15 drugs for other health problems. A study this month found that more than 60 percent of patients over 65 experience moderate or major side effects the first time they are prescribed an antidepressant.

“This is very easily translatable into community care,’’ she said. “As their health improves, they may be able to reduce the other drugs they are taking for pain or other problems.”

A NYTimes reader comment: “Not surprised. My grandmother in Hong Kong lived to almost a hundred without any major health issues and was mentally sharp till the end. She practiced a form of tai chi everyday at 5 am. I was sure that the tai chi was a large reason for her well being along with a simple diet of fish, fruit and vegetables with little meat.”

Tai Chi Chuan - Kultur Shok!

Tai Chi Chuan – Kultur Shok!

Culture Shock: The American Culture versus what could be called Tai Chi Culture.

Tai chi develops a different cultural mindset from the one Americans typically encourage and identify with. In simplified terms, it goes like this:

American: getting, doing, having, strategizing, manipulating, leading, individuality, making a claim, staking our territory, taking risks, family centric, competitive, divisive, aggressive, acquisitive, exclusive, fast, moving forward, expressive, taking control, looking for gain.

“The hard will overcome the soft – get to the gym!”

Sound familiar? We value these qualities, but I think this is small-mind living. (Yes, all of humanity shares these qualities, and America excels in them!)

Tai Chi Chuan: being, non-doing, non-striving, no strategy, no manipulation, “sticking and following,” group sensitivity and connectivity, ceding all claims and territories, being comfortable, community centric, cooperative, cohesive, allowing, letting go, inclusivity, slow, cultivating stillness, listening, yielding control, “investing in loss.”

“The soft will overcome the hard – relax….”

This is large mind living. Business executives might read this and scratch their heads in disbelief and cry out: “Show me the money!”

America is about consumerism gone wild. Tai chi is about relaxation, integration and connection. The conflict here is deep. We find it difficult to see the value in a tai chi existence (which is really Taoism in action.) We too often crave the American approach because it is held up as the best option for success and happiness.

Let’s look at two Americans:

Bernie Madoff. Do you find him appalling? Are you envious? I feel both ways. His greed,wealth, manipulation, cleverness, selfishness and those years of avoiding detection. But then came the aftermath of his behavior; destruction of lives – his own, his family’s and his victims.

Can we surgically excise just the good part of Bernie and emulate it to succeed? Most of us are not as vile as Bernie. Is there a “success” story out that takes the “good” of Bernie and leaves the bad behind? There are many, of course, but they are hard to replicate and depend on many factors beyond our control.

Let’s consider:

Bill Gates. He followed the path of honesty and hard work. He became wealthy and created a charitable foundation to give back. If his path looks logical, very few are privy to it and those with the means often DON’T give away their wealth. In fact, even Gates was initially using his foundation to counter bad press because of lawsuits against Microsoft.

To think that hard work and talent create a happy outcome ignores many other factors. Bernie and Bill had both. But what about luck, circumstance, upbringing, personal conditioning and even genes? We worship American style success, but never examine the factors that create success. Success is not all about being in control, talent, hard work or strategy, though these qualities will certainly contribute.

Sometimes all the factors arrive at the right moment and the individual is not so much the guiding force, but is the conduit for other forces to express themselves.

Bernie and Bill exemplify American values. One is odious; the other agreeable. It reminds me of a study involving twin brothers – one a successful physician, the other a derelict. When asked how they got to where they are, both replied in unison: an alcoholic father.

Back to my original statement about Culture Shock: the American approach and the tai chi approach to living both have plusses and minuses. But the value in tai chi as lifestyle has been greatly overlooked.

My own feeling is that the American lifestyle may create a certain kind of security – if it works out – but it can be a false security, a fantastical lifestyle about living. Such fantasies are created, in part, by advertisement, with which we are bombarded. We can’t avoid those commercials showing smiling beautiful people with white teeth and perfect bodies. Hot babes are still used to sell merchandise (as if there is a connection!) By confusing such imagery with reality, does this create real happiness? Madison Avenue is hard to resist.

Yes, the American lifestyle can create blissful moments for some: you reach a goal and feel joy and pride in your accomplishment. But joy and pride always fade and the need for a new surge of joy and pride quickly rises. Keeps you busy, right?

Americans love to applaud the winners, because we want to identify with the notion that hard work and talent equals success. How easily we forget the Bernie Madoff’s of the world, or how many other factors are involved in success that have nothing to do with hard work or talent.

On the other hand tai chi works on “being” which creates happiness. Research supports this finding. In 2010, the press often reported on what constitutes happiness. Happiness is interesting to consider, almost impossible to define and, practically speaking, impossible to create through willful intention. For me, however, happiness results from “being here and now.”

Look at it this way: If you “stick and follow” (a basic principal in tai chi’s push hands practice,) don’t manipulate others (or yourself for that matter,) immerse yourself in acceptance of what is, don’t bank your happiness on achievement and don’t create situations that destroy, the result will be a mind that is happy and content. If only we could understand that the source of happiness is here and now with what is and your complete participation (no wandering minds!) in the task at hand. It is being fully engaged with now, and not being engaged with a fantasy about some desired future result, a result that you can’t really predict or count on anyway.

Many “successful” people describe their path in just this way: Working hard from where they are and NOT planning the next step. They just follow opportunities as they appear.

“The here and now” may sound fuzzy, but really, is there anything else other than the here and now? Can you show it to me? And is there a better way to be here and now than to be fully engaged in the here and now? Existence in “real time” – that is tai chi’s deepest lesson.

The American way puts the cart before the horse. Not all people in the world have the luxury of living life as we do. What we think is natural and a God-given right – this American lifestyle – is a historical anomaly. America is an odd conglomeration of the right time and the right mix of people: Our rebellious forefathers, a nation of immigrants, a country without traditions and free from a past, the pronounced desire for independence and freedom. As a result of this confluence, some aspects of “the American way” turned out to be successful.

Positively speaking, America has done remarkable things in short order in terms of our economic growth and commitment to human rights. Alas, we think our achievements are inherent in our existence, as if the “good” is a logical result of our values. We take it to the next step by exporting it to the rest of the world as if the final word regarding our “good” is in and others would be well advised to follow suit.

Look, the American approach has certain benefits and I’m not urging to you give up all goals, plans and dreams only to enter what might seem like some sort of directionless la la land. It means that while you participate in that American mindset, remain fully aware of another more important aspect of life. You can’t predict success or achievement; but you can be here and now.

Back to “being”.

The catch? “Being” is hard to “get.” “Trying” gets in the way of “being.” But not trying is not a solution. Tai chi is counter intuitive: As a meditation practice it teaches “non-doing” to get things done. You go back to go forward. Going slow teaches you how to go fast. And so forth.

I could go on but the real solution is not in my words….

Try a slow moving class in tai chi and see how it feels. Start with your body and see how to use it by not trying to use it. After a good round of tai chi, or attending a class, I feel much better than I did before. Unlike other exercise programs, you learn a way of being and reducing stress. You may want a bit of tai chi in your life.

Check out the David Brooks article, The Humble Hound, included in this blog site. He states my proposition in more practical terms.

(Special thanks to Stuart Dim who questioned incomplete or undeveloped thoughts along with bad grammar and syntax. The topic was so grand that I needed an objective eye to challenge and clarify my statements. The result has more punch and greater polish.)

Meditation and the Brain - New York Times article

Tai chi is a form of meditation. The body is the object of focus and the movements require you to keep with it. Here is an article that discusses meditation and gray matter changes. Tom

January 28, 2011, 10:29 am
How Meditation May Change the Brain
By SINDYA N. BHANOO

Over the December holidays, my husband went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Not my idea of fun, but he came back rejuvenated and energetic.

He said the experience was so transformational that he has committed to meditating for two hours a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, until the end of March. He’s running an experiment to determine whether and how meditation actually improves the quality of his life.

I’ll admit I’m a skeptic.

But now, scientists say that meditators like my husband may be benefiting from changes in their brains. The researchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. The findings will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory.

The images also showed a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes.

But how exactly did these study volunteers, all seeking stress reduction in their lives but new to the practice, meditate? So many people talk about meditating these days. Within four miles of our Bay Area home, there are at least six centers that offer some type of meditation class, and I often hear phrases like, “So how was your sit today?”

Britta Hölzel, a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author, said the participants practiced mindfulness meditation, a form of meditation that was introduced in the United States in the late 1970s. It traces its roots to the same ancient Buddhist techniques that my husband follows.

“The main idea is to use different objects to focus one’s attention, and it could be a focus on sensations of breathing, or emotions or thoughts, or observing any type of body sensations,” she said. “But it’s about bringing the mind back to the here and now, as opposed to letting the mind drift.”

Generally the meditators are seated upright on a chair or the floor and in silence, although sometimes there might be a guide leading a session, Dr. Hölzel said.

Of course, it’s important to remember that the human brain is complicated.

Understanding what the increased density of gray matter really means is still, well, a gray area.

“The field is very, very young, and we don’t really know enough about it yet,” Dr. Hölzel said. “I would say these are still quite preliminary findings. We see that there is something there, but we have to replicate these findings and find out what they really mean.”

It has been hard to pinpoint the benefits of meditation, but a 2009 study suggests that meditation may reduce blood pressure in patients with coronary heart disease. And a 2007 study found that meditators have longer attention spans.

Previous studies have also shown that there are structural differences between the brains of meditators and those who don’t meditate, although this new study is the first to document changes in gray matter over time through meditation.

Ultimately, Dr. Hölzel said she and her colleagues would like to demonstrate how meditation results in definitive improvements in people’s lives.

“A lot of studies find that it increases well-being, improves quality of life, but it’s always hard to determine how you can objectively test that,” she said. “Relatively little is known about the brain and the psychological mechanisms about how this is being done.”

In a 2008 study published in the journal PloS One, researchers found that when meditators heard the sounds of people suffering, they had stronger activation levels in their temporal parietal junctures, a part of the brain tied to empathy, than people who did not meditate.

“They may be more willing to help when someone suffers, and act more compassionately,” Dr. Hölzel said.

Further study is needed, but that bodes well for me.

For now, I’m more than happy to support my husband’s little experiment, despite the fact that he now rises at 5 a.m. and is exhausted by 10 at night.

An empathetic husband who takes out the trash and puts gas in the car because he knows I don’t like to — I’ll take that.

Wandering Mind - New York Times article

Tai chi as a meditation encourages well being and joy. Here is an odd article that supports that thesis based on the fact that tai chi forces you to pay attention to tai chi when you practice. Read on if this sort of research intrigues! Tom

November 15, 2010
New York Times
When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays
By JOHN TIERNEY

A quick experiment. Before proceeding to the next paragraph, let your mind wander wherever it wants to go. Close your eyes for a few seconds, starting ... now.

And now, welcome back for the hypothesis of our experiment: Wherever your mind went — the South Seas, your job, your lunch, your unpaid bills — that daydreaming is not likely to make you as happy as focusing intensely on the rest of this column will.

I’m not sure I believe this prediction, but I can assure you it is based on an enormous amount of daydreaming cataloged in the current issue of Science. Using an iPhone app called trackyourhappiness, psychologists at Harvard contacted people around the world at random intervals to ask how they were feeling, what they were doing and what they were thinking.

The least surprising finding, based on a quarter-million responses from more than 2,200 people, was that the happiest people in the world were the ones in the midst of enjoying sex. Or at least they were enjoying it until the iPhone interrupted.

The researchers are not sure how many of them stopped to pick up the phone and how many waited until afterward to respond. Nor, unfortunately, is there any way to gauge what thoughts — happy, unhappy, murderous — went through their partners’ minds when they tried to resume.

When asked to rate their feelings on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being “very good,” the people having sex gave an average rating of 90. That was a good 15 points higher than the next-best activity, exercising, which was followed closely by conversation, listening to music, taking a walk, eating, praying and meditating, cooking, shopping, taking care of one’s children and reading. Near the bottom of the list were personal grooming, commuting and working.

When asked their thoughts, the people in flagrante were models of concentration: only 10 percent of the time did their thoughts stray from their endeavors. But when people were doing anything else, their minds wandered at least 30 percent of the time, and as much as 65 percent of the time (recorded during moments of personal grooming, clearly a less than scintillating enterprise).

On average throughout all the quarter-million responses, minds were wandering 47 percent of the time. That figure surprised the researchers, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert.

“I find it kind of weird now to look down a crowded street and realize that half the people aren’t really there,” Dr. Gilbert says.

You might suppose that if people’s minds wander while they’re having fun, then those stray thoughts are liable to be about something pleasant — and that was indeed the case with those happy campers having sex. But for the other 99.5 percent of the people, there was no correlation between the joy of the activity and the pleasantness of their thoughts.

“Even if you’re doing something that’s really enjoyable,” Mr. Killingsworth says, “that doesn’t seem to protect against negative thoughts. The rate of mind-wandering is lower for more enjoyable activities, but when people wander they are just as likely to wander toward negative thoughts.”

Whatever people were doing, whether it was having sex or reading or shopping, they tended to be happier if they focused on the activity instead of thinking about something else. In fact, whether and where their minds wandered was a better predictor of happiness than what they were doing.

“If you ask people to imagine winning the lottery,” Dr. Gilbert says, “they typically talk about the things they would do — ‘I’d go to Italy, I’d buy a boat, I’d lay on the beach’ — and they rarely mention the things they would think. But our data suggest that the location of the body is much less important than the location of the mind, and that the former has surprisingly little influence on the latter. The heart goes where the head takes it, and neither cares much about the whereabouts of the feet.”

Still, even if people are less happy when their minds wander, which causes which? Could the mind-wandering be a consequence rather than a cause of unhappiness?

To investigate cause and effect, the Harvard psychologists compared each person’s moods and thoughts as the day went on. They found that if someone’s mind wandered at, say, 10 in the morning, then at 10:15 that person was likely to be less happy than at 10 , perhaps because of those stray thoughts. But if people were in a bad mood at 10, they weren’t more likely to be worrying or daydreaming at 10:15.

“We see evidence for mind-wandering causing unhappiness, but no evidence for unhappiness causing mind-wandering,” Mr. Killingsworth says.

This result may disappoint daydreamers, but it’s in keeping with the religious and philosophical admonitions to “Be Here Now,” as the yogi Ram Dass titled his 1971 book. The phrase later became the title of a George Harrison song warning that “a mind that likes to wander ’round the corner is an unwise mind.”

What psychologists call “flow” — immersing your mind fully in activity — has long been advocated by nonpsychologists. “Life is not long,” Samuel Johnson said, “and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.” Henry Ford was more blunt: “Idleness warps the mind.” The iPhone results jibe nicely with one of the favorite sayings of William F. Buckley Jr.: “Industry is the enemy of melancholy.”

Alternatively, you could interpret the iPhone data as support for the philosophical dictum of Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t worry, be happy.” The unhappiness produced by mind-wandering was largely a result of the episodes involving “unpleasant” topics. Such stray thoughts made people more miserable than commuting or working or any other activity.

But the people having stray thoughts on “neutral” topics ranked only a little below the overall average in happiness. And the ones daydreaming about “pleasant” topics were actually a bit above the average, although not quite as happy as the people whose minds were not wandering.

There are times, of course, when unpleasant thoughts are the most useful thoughts. “Happiness in the moment is not the only reason to do something,” says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research has shown that mind-wandering can lead people to creative solutions of problems, which could make them happier in the long term.

Over the several months of the iPhone study, though, the more frequent mind-wanderers remained less happy than the rest, and the moral — at least for the short-term — seems to be: you stray, you pay. So if you’ve been able to stay focused to the end of this column, perhaps you’re happier than when you daydreamed at the beginning. If not, you can go back to daydreaming starting...now.

Or you could try focusing on something else that is now, at long last, scientifically guaranteed to improve your mood. Just make sure you turn the phone off.

Tai Chi Chuan and the Tough Question

Tai Chi Chuan and the Tough Question

I look at my classmates, all senior students; all have many years and valuable insights into tai chi. All of us all have more to learn too.

In addition to real skills, I see in each one a distinct error. It is different for each of us – we generally don’t share the same deficiency. Usually that error has been there a long time. Our teacher has corrected our errors many times. Yet we each forget that correction, and return to that original habit. Somehow we experience THAT particular habit as normal and sort of invisible, perhaps untouchable. These are the deepest habits to correct and require a persistent amount of attention.

Alas, they feel so natural to us. We codify our error in our experience and this is how normal happens. Since much of what we do in tai chi feels good, it is hard to recognize the habit. They become part of the picture that feels good to us and since they are ingrained in our form, even harder to extricate. When they are pointed out to us, quickly they return.

I think if we were to all gather around and tell each other what we see, we might even note different mistakes in each other’s tai chi forms. Out of respect for the practice (and its deeply personal aspect) and for creating an environment of learning together, we tend to be more accepting than critical. Understandably we leave most of the correcting to our teacher.

It’s good to sometimes ask each other what we think needs to be addressed. In this way I learn from their experience. I don’t have to necessarily agree with what they say but I am free to consider it. And if I do ask, I should consider their comment. I have the alternative of putting it aside for now, or even rejecting it.

But seeing that we all carry old patterns, I decided to ask my teacher, Maggie, what MY biggest error is. Her assessment was that I didn’t utilize relaxation as the core impetus in moving into the next posture. I tend to lead with the arms and pelvis before they have a chance to feel the total relaxation of the body. The arms and pelvis are driving the shape forward. The shape of the postures drives my form to the next posture.

For me, this misunderstanding is a very old way of functioning that makes progress in a certain direction nearly impossible. I have spent a great deal of time getting the external shape down with accuracy. Hence, the shaping of the body, arms, hips, was something I was very careful to study. I am aware of a great deal of relaxation, but I see how activation of arms and hips are leading the relaxation and not the other way around.

I can also see why this correction easily leaves my consciousness and that I revert back to “doing the shape”, to leading the body by activating the shape of the posture. There is a built in pride in this accomplishment. I can do this and I can answer questions on how to do this! I’m ahead of the game!

I see “doing the shape” in others quite readily, yet I am guilty of the same problem. I suspect I hide it better than others because of my long standing study in accurate shapes. It has been integrated in the way I do the form. That level of integration hides the fact that it is still there. Subliminally I am constantly trying to improve those shapes, constantly working to get that cart to lead the horse.

It’s frustrating to keep looking and looking and looking at what’s needed for improvement. There has to be a large amount of appreciation for what we have in order to allow that level of scrutiny to not destroy the good and turn into some crazed habit of self criticism. We can’t live in this realm in order to eat ourselves alive. Nor can we live in this realm in order to serve up criticism of others.

Tai chi has to be an act of generosity towards ourselves (and others) so that this experience has a beneficial value. It has to be a gift we give, not some masochistic punishment, like a dog biting its tail to remove a flea that always jumps away.

An attitude of real appreciation for what we have, and a total acceptance of where we are, coupled with a simple question, makes for a good combination.

That question is, “This feels good now but I know tai chi can be even better. What ingredient do I need to add (or remove)?”

This “ingredient” is a magic variable for each of us and as we progress, the “ingredient” will change over time.

I’m so curious. What’s next?

Tai Chi Chuan and Anger

Tai Chi Chuan and Anger

While I don’t consider my own anger levels to be out of control, I do have a fair amount of Irish genes! I blame it on my genetics. There have been a few flair ups over the years. Given the New York Times article regarding research on Anger “control” and exercise, I thought I might reflect on my own experience in relation to Tai Chi.

I recall a funny experience I had the first time I pushed with Ben Lo. Having come from the comforting environment that Maggie Newman, my teacher, provides for her students, that first Ben push was a shock. It shouldn’t have been. I was watching what he was doing to other students the whole week at his camp. He did to me what he did to them. But when it came to be my turn and I was flung 10 feet – I had an honest jolt of ANGER. It was along the lines of “That wasn’t nice!! You shouldn’t be doing that to a beginner!! How dare you!!” I remember looking at him directly in anger, shock and awe. He clearly saw my expression. And then I realized I had to go back into the ring to get another one.

Worse, it dawned on me that I was trapped. There was no way I could express my anger. There was no way this anger could be manipulated into some sort of dramatic scene. There was no way I could even channel it into some sort of useful action. There was no way I would win in the coming rounds of repeat slams. I couldn’t act on my anger or mete out revenge. I couldn’t commiserate with others on the unfairness of it all (they had a similar experience and seemed to enjoy it!) I couldn’t let the anger go, either. This was truly a losing battle.

I laugh to think of that anger reaction today: so spontaneous, so complex, so perfect. Tai chi offered yet again a laboratory to face myself and teach me a lesson: not everyone will behave in the way you would like them to and anger only gets in the way. I may be special (to me), but I’m not THAT special!

There have been other push hands interactions that have provoked my anger. It never helped the situation. Anger prevents listening (on all levels) and tai chi is about listening. If you see your anger before it becomes action, you have to admit it is YOUR anger. Sure, perhaps they helped bring it out, but it is still YOUR anger. If you can contain it and stop it from being expressed in an inappropriate way, generally this is a frustrating experience. If you act on it, generally it is a disastrous situation.

There have been others who have ended up in real fights from their anger. They acted on it before they could grasp it. It’s a hard lesson to learn, let alone incorporate into life. Yes, others can and do provoke your hidden treasure, but you are the keeper of the keys. And there are ways to move forward without denying it or acting out on it. The general pattern with anger is that one tends to blame the other for the anger and therefore want to punish or destroy the “cause” of the anger. They are doing something to me. Yes, they may be. But the anger is yours!

The deep practice of tai chi relaxation helps to release as well as alleviate anger. I remember in my earlier years of tai chi that during the form I used to get more and more angry as I worked through the form. My guess is that the relaxing I was practicing was releasing it. My angry thoughts were directed at me, and at those I was blaming at the time for whatever insult it was that I had endured. At the end of the form, I would be furious. I also shook a bit. It was like letting go of some layer of anger that was there all the time but I hadn’t noticed. My anger was being trapped in a very tense body. And believe me, when I began tai chi, I was very very tense.

Another deeply important aspect that tai chi brings out is that if you are angry, it is best that you truly feel it and acknowledge it, at least to yourself. Then you have some choice. You can stop the game and excuse yourself, or you can remain in the game and just be deeply aware of anger while maintaining as much composure and relaxation as possible. That’s a high wire act, no?

Some may need more help with their anger than tai chi can provide, but tai chi can help release it through regular practice. Anger is chi rising and we are working to let chi relax into the body. If you have anger chi, it will rise to the surface and be visible. Individuals with anger issues can see or experience their anger from a different perspective.

For me, the bottom line is that denying it or not feeling it is VERY dangerous. I would NEVER tell someone to not feel angry, or say to them “Don’t be angry.” The real question is “What Exactly Is Making You Angry?” In the meantime, just be clear when it comes to the surface and feel it. Feeling it will not necessarily create some sort of steam engine train that will create irreversible havoc. Not feeling it is the situation you want to avoid! If you need to separate yourself out to give it attention and fully feel it, then that is what you need to do.

You are lucky if you have a push hands partner that you can really express in words that you are feeling angry in this moment. But I think our culture is rather poor at discussing this as an issue. It is still considered to be a “bad” emotion, one that indicates you are not in control. Blame gets attached to it. While I am stating you are responsible for your anger reactions, I am not assigning blame. This is a subtle difference.

If someone is angry with you, an appropriate response is, “What’s going on?” If you are angry at someone, an appropriate response is, “What’s going on?”

I have just spent a few months with a certain situation that has continually brought up LOTS of anger, the kind where I need to keep breathing deeply to be with it. It is a slow process.

Anger is a very complex topic with no simple answers.

Exercise Soothes Anger - New York Times article

August 11, 2010, 12:01 am

Phys Ed: Can Exercise Moderate Anger?

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

David Sacks/Getty Images

For years, researchers have known that exercise can affect certain moods. Running, bike riding and other exercise programs have repeatedly been found to combat clinical depression. Similarly, a study from Germany published in April found that light-duty activity like walking or gardening made participants “happy,” in the estimation of the scientists. Even laboratory rats and mice respond emotionally to exercise; although their precise “moods” are hard to parse, their behavior indicates that exercise makes them more relaxed and confident.

But what about anger, one of the more universal and, in its way, destructive moods? Can exercise influence how angry you become in certain situations?

A study presented at the most recent annual conference of the American College of Sports Medicine provides some provocative if ambiguous answers. For the study, hundreds of undergraduates at the University of Georgia filled out questionnaires about their moods. From that group, researchers chose 16 young men with “high trait anger” or, in less technical terms, a very short fuse. They were, their questionnaires indicated, habitually touchy.

The researchers invited the men to a lab and had them fill out a survey about their moods at that moment. During the two days of the study, the men were each fitted with high-tech hairnets containing multiple sensors that could read electrical activity in the brain. Next, researchers flashed a series of slides across viewing screens set up in front of each young man. The slides, intended to induce anger, depicted upsetting events like Ku Klux Klan rallies and children under fire from soldiers, which were interspersed with more pleasant images. Electrical activity in the men’s brains indicated that they were growing angry during the display. For confirmation, they described to researchers how angry they felt, using a numerical scale from 0 to 9.

On alternate days, after viewing the slides again (though always in a different order), the men either sat quietly or rode a stationary bike for 30 minutes at a moderate pace while their brain patterns and verbal estimations of anger were recorded. Afterward, the researchers examined how angry the volunteers became during each session.

The results showed that when the volunteers hadn’t exercised, their second viewing of the slides aroused significantly more anger than the first. After exercise, conversely, the men’s anger reached a plateau. They still became upset during the slide show — exercise didn’t inure them to what they saw — but the exercise allowed them to end the session no angrier than they began it.

What the results of the study suggest is that “exercise, even a single bout of it, can have a robust prophylactic effect” against the buildup of anger, said Nathaniel Thom, a stress physiologist who was the study’s lead researcher.

“It’s like taking aspirin to combat heart disease,” he said. “You reduce your risk.”

When the men did not exercise, they had considerable difficulty controlling their racing emotion. But after exercise, they handled what they saw with more aplomb. Their moods were under firmer control.

The question of just how, physiologically, exercise blunts anger remains open. Mr. Thom and his colleagues did not test levels of stress hormones or brain chemicals in the test subjects. But earlier work by other scientists suggests that serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain, probably played a role, Mr. Thom said. “Animal studies have found that low levels of serotonin are associated with aggression, which is our best analogue of anger in animals,” he said. “Exercise increases serotonin levels in the rat brain.” Low serotonin levels in humans are also thought to contribute to mood disorders.

Changes in the activity of certain genes within the brain may also have an impact. In a 2007 experiment at Yale University, researchers found that prolonged running altered the expression of almost three dozen genes associated with mood in the brains of laboratory mice. Mr. Thom says he hopes that future studies by himself and others will help to determine the specific underlying mechanisms that link exercise and a reduction of anger.

But for now, the lesson of his preliminary work, he said, is that “if you know that you’re going to be entering into a situation that is likely to make you angry, go for a run first.”

Tai Chi Chuan - The Push-Hands Dialogue

PLEASE NOTE: I am going ahead with posting this one despite some hesitation. It is hard to find the right language to describe a complex interaction when words are being used to help each other. I may update this one from time to time. In addition, each verbal exchange has a context. There are infinite contexts. Clearly I’m choosing a context here but not explaining it. Hence the ambiguity of language, intention, personality, etc. cannot be elaborated in great detail.
Tom Daly, 6/24/11.

Tai Chi Chuan –The Push-Hands Dialogue

Again, because I believe this is very important, I want to explore what we say to each other when we are working on push hands. (First things first: I’m assuming you and your partner are comfortable with exchanging views. I am assuming you want to help each other. I am assuming you want feedback, at least some of the time. This is not always the case. Some simply like to experience whatever comes their way and work from there. I think that’s also a great way to work on push-hands.)

Which of the following statements is not helpful and may be counterproductive?

a) You didn’t take my force into the ground.

b) You pulled your arm away from your body while neutralizing.

c) You are using your arm to protect yourself and block me.

d) You were twisting in the torso.

e) Your push is too hard.

Have your answer? (If you are confused about how to approach this, try my blogs on Critique, or Fact vs. Judgment.)

Let me elaborate on these statements:

a) This is a specific item that needs to happen in creating a return (yield-return) to the force received. An observable fact.

b) Your arm was not moved by your body, but separated from the body and did its own thing. Another observable fact.

c) The arm is stiff and protective, instead of inviting and listening. Therefore, it stops me from coming towards you. We don’t block in tai chi. We invite them in. A fact.

d) We want the torso full and aligned at all times. A turn in the hip joint is where rotation comes from. Twisting the torso is adding some sort of tension in the torso. We push tension. A fact.

e) This describes your subjective experience. Often there is a hidden linkage of “hard” and “bad” fused together here. The statement is a value based assessment (hard=bad) of my subjective experience (the “hardness” of your push.) An unspoken judgment goes into how you feel about this (good, bad) from how you experience it (soft, hard). If this is what I want from my partner, fair enough. But in general, I think this is a serious mistake. (At face value, a “hard” push is the result of some other error. Oddly, I could be hard, but you may not experience it that way. )

Helpful push-hands discussion, your verbal communication, is not music appreciation where opinions reign supreme – where what you hear is your experience and sharing your feeling is the point of the statement.

If you are looking for pushes that feel good to you, you may be in the wrong arena. Most of us have to start somewhere and generally it takes a long time to learn how to do a push without force.

Yes, that push may have felt hard. Yes, in fact it may have been hard. I’m noting that this statement doesn’t help anyone. I learn that your experience of my push felt hard to you. This may not be the case with someone else.

That “hard push”. It is almost impossible to actually measure this because if you feel hard to me, I am hard to you. So who is “hard” and who is being “bad”? I’ve heard it said that when students complained to Professor Cheng Man’ching, “his push was too hard”, Professor would reply it takes TWO to be hard!

“Your push is too hard” might set up a relationship that you don’t want to create between you and your partner. If I make such a statement, by inference, I am superior. Besides the power of being the Judge, it also assumes I know a “soft” push from a “hard” one in my own body. Without any proof, I am saying I understand a hard push vs. a soft push.

No, you say, you have felt a good soft push from someone else and therefore you know the difference ‘tween soft and hard in pushes. But your second hand experience is not enough. It does not confer on you judging rights. You are an expert when you can do a soft push and you can explain it to someone else.

Here is my favorite passive aggressive judgmental statement – a hidden “you are hard” statement. Your partner tells you “When Master Cho-Chi pushed me, I didn’t feel anything. I was just flying.” True or false, you may as well tell me Bill Gates is a billionaire. Really what they are saying is “Your push doesn’t compare to a perfect push. Your push is hard, or bad, or not very good, or…. You don’t feel like Master Cho-Chi.” Now, is this helpful?

Again, if you experience that push as hard, you had to be harder in resisting it. A more honest statement would be, “I must be VERY hard in comparison to your push. If you are hard, I must be harder.” That, of course, would be a self judgment. Even this statement is not so helpful because again you are assessing something so personal and subjective that it won’t help you progress your skill. But at least it puts the onus on you and not on them.

To embrace your experience of helplessness by a hard push is very frustrating. The experience may mean that this push frightens me, or frustrates me because my skill is too small to work with it, or I don’t like to “lose”, or simply feels uncomfortable for whatever reason.

Let’s face it, if you could neutralize that hard push, you would not say “Your push is too hard!” More likely you would laugh with delight and say, “Do that AGAIN.” You would want to continue practicing your wonderful neutralization. And those hard pushes wouldn’t feel hard to you at all because you did not offer any resistance. You didn’t get in the way. You let them in. Your hard partner would then be forced to ask, “How is it that I can’t seem to get you?”

To say “Your push is too hard” is really saying STOP THAT! Who, besides you, does that help? In fact, it doesn’t even really help you.

True, the pusher may not be aware of the strength being used to push. But your judgment doesn’t give the pusher a clue as to what to do next. “Be more soft”? How much “more soft”? “Be totally soft”? How does soft pushing do the job in the first place? What is needed to accomplish that feat?

It’s very complex. If the words “be more soft” were really helpful, everyone could do a good push. But most of us can’t. For most of us, being “more soft” is an empty gesture. It seems to me that a good push, while it is soft, has many elements that create that sensation of softness. The words hard and soft do not specify what is needed to achieve the effect of being soft. Some partners, in an attempt to be soft, don’t push at all when they push. There is no there THERE.

“Soft” or “not using force” is the sum total of many aspects that happen simultaneously to create a push that does not rely on force. It relies on good timing, direction, listening, following, no intention to push, sticking and whole body movement connected to and into the ground and connected to the partner. When I hear the suggestion “be more soft”, it reminds me of those who suggest to some sad person to “be more happy.” Great idea. Like, has that ever helped anyone?

To add nuance to that last paragraph, yes, you want the total experience of your push to be more “soft”. That is a big goal. We need to embrace that goal, but at the same time, it is not a tool for criticism of the other. It’s far too vague, too loaded with judgment, and complex.

So what do you do if you can’t deal with that force? A few options are: simply continue to get pushed, but focus on the feeling in your body (and soul), not their arms/hands.

Or, tell your partner you simply don’t have the skill to deal with that (perceived) force and ask if we can take the game down a notch.

Or, another way is to ask the partner to explain what they are feeling when they push you. This may tell you what you need to work on to alleviate their pressure and to improve your neutralization.

Or, ask the partner what they are doing when they are pushing you.

Or simply excuse yourself from the game. Walking away can be the best option at times.

The hardest lesson in push hands is that what they do is not the point. It is your reaction or action to what they do that is the point. And what you do is in the realm of your choices. Are they limited? We study push-hands, among other reasons, to give ourselves more choices.

Please, don’t tell them their push is too hard, or that it didn’t feel good. Find something else to say that’s helpful and specific, or just be quiet.

Tai Chi Chuan - Process, Not Product!

Tai Chi Chuan – Process, Not Product!

I sadly saw a good beginning student quit tai chi class. Something wasn’t working out for her despite her expressions of appreciation for the class. One particular note was that she didn’t want to spend two years to learn it.

Actually, we can take even three years to learn it. This is not because the moves are so difficult but because true relaxation and the functionality that emerges is so hard to understand. Even after three years most students do not have that. Only the inkling of that. It takes that long to begin to see what might be there if you keep at it. Generally Americans do not want that type of discipline. We are in a rush.

I began in 1982 and I want to quit tai chi every three months. My fantasy is that by finally getting it, I will feel a victory and have something in my hand that I can show for my effort. But that is the wrong road to take because tai chi is about the process of going through movements in a relaxed manner and then applying them to a situation of combat. OK, we hardly make it combat at all in the beginning, but that is generally the end game. The form itself is a template for relaxed movement and the discovery of how relaxation itself facilitates movement. This is a process.

This notion of practicing a process, not fixing a product, is extremely hard to involve yourself in, understand, and want to continue. My own desire for product inhibits my growth. To be so involved in process often feels like something I need to get past, so that the result of all this process is a product fully formed and NOW I can practice this product that gives me X, Y and Z.

But in fact, it is the process that gives me X, Y and Z. Oops!

Just to illustrate how much this gets in my way, I often begin my own practice sessions with some little isolated tai chi moves that focus on some small aspect that I’ve identified as worth accomplishing. Then I go ahead and do the form. But during this transition to actually doing, and accepting, the form, I begin to internally fidget. I hesitate. I get frightened. I don’t want my own product to disappoint me. I might go get something to eat or start to read something to give me a few more moments of avoidance. I’ve had this feeling for years.

Once I actually begin to do the form, the resistance goes and the fascination with all those tiny and often satisfying moments begins to unfold. Of course there are also disappointing moments in the form for me. Some parts have not evolved to where I want them to be, and I may simply miss other moments and do them in a less than satisfactory way on any given day. But in the middle of it, there is enjoyment. Whatever I have mastered in my process takes over and I’m practicing process.

In that sense, you never really learn the form. You learn process.

A while back, I was having a terrible time at work. The department was not unified, the management hostile, old alliances were reinforced and unity amongst the group was an unobtainable goal. There was change in the air, and abrupt expectations were made for which you were held responsible. The past was not to be brought up. We were on a new track and if that track was linked to the past, the past was not a subject for re-examination. Only “what is”, as if it came from some sort of existential vacuum, was cut up and dissected. The why’s and the wherefore’s were expendable, giving all us an odd sensation of being out on some limb of a tree that had no tree trunk. We were accountable for the current situation without any relational cause with the past. There was no ground beneath our feet, no one to work through all the myriad issues so that working order could be achieved. I sort of think that was the point on the part of those in charge. The ONLY thing one could lean into was “process”. To just being present and attentive as the waves and wind moved you about. Process was the ONLY key in this situation. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it is one tool you always have access to.

So I treasure this place where the whole point of the exercise is process and not some final product. That should be freeing. Can I call this a luxury of sorts?

Incidentally, I’ve seen some students “finish” the form and, at least in their eyes, think they have something and then quit class. They are no longer involved in process. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to practice tai chi after that.

One thing that keeps me going is curiosity. When I plateau in progress and each day starts to feel like the day before and my sense of improving my product is being thwarted, I really want to quit. But I am too curious to see what will happen next. And it always changes after that. Revealing more process.

Although I can’t say for sure, I would guess that even Professor Cheng had more he wanted to learn in the form -- and most regarded him as an unqualified master.

If you keep at it with openness and a desire to see more, it will change. And the endlessly fascinating process of learning process kicks in.

For me, that’s a key experience in tai chi.