Recently I was practicing push hands with another practitioner, someone who really wants to get this right and improve. He’s good too. In our verbal exchange, I noted something that I was feeling again and again and again and this “error” gave me an opportunity to push him. I forget if he asked me what it was that inspired my pushes, or if I volunteered the observation, but it was a simple fact. “When I am moving forward on my press, you are using your arm to push me away.” It was NOT a gross level pushing me away, but nonetheless there was an effort to keep me out. I’m moving in and he’s trying to keep me out. Clash! He didn’t notice the error, and even after it was pointed out he continued to repeat it. This is not unusual because what is normal to us is hard to see and feel. His understanding of the neutralization was incomplete (or so I felt). We worked on it and he found a different idea about the neutralization.
But then he countered that my push “could be better.”
Here is the language problem. Or to create a new word, the “languaging” problem. How do we communicate to help each other? To tell your partner that their push could be better is an empty statement at best and unhelpful as well. Empty because all pushes could be better. Empty because he has no way of knowing if my push at this time could be better. Unhelpful because what he was expressing was his opinion. Opinions don’t help in push hands practice. I learn how he “feels” about something, but not much about what I’m doing. The “bad-good” discussion or the “better-worse” discussion doesn’t really move our skill level along nor does it increase any real understanding or appreciation of push-hands. (The same might be said of Life in general .)
Instead of telling him that he was pushing me back when he needs to take me in (standard operating procedure in push hands and tai chi because this avoids class and tension and hardness) I could have told him, “Your neutralization could be better.” What is he supposed to do with that? He has no more information on hand than before and not a clue as to what I am working off of. He most likely will feel judged and this does not help.
Of course, the whole situation is sticky to begin with because perhaps he doesn’t want to hear my factual observation at all. I could be wrong in the observation, yes, or he may not really want to hear it. Some folks like to work with push hands, experiment and try to figure out solutions by themselves. I’m not opposed to this, though it is the loooong road to improvement. My own preference is to take some time to try to figure it out and feel it out, but if I truly can’t see it I’d like to hear what they are experiencing and observing. I need a factual observation, not a judgment about whether it is good or not good.
With my regular push-hands partners, we have our languaging in pretty good order and we are on the same page with sharing information. The operative question is “Does it work?” If so, why? If not, why not?
Did my push work? My partner says the direction felt good to him, but it did not feel like the pressure that generally generates a good push went down all the way to my feet. We can argue this fact, but nonetheless, we are talking about a fact and not a judgment on the quality of the push as a whole.
To digress a bit here, I love the way tai chi gives one ample opportunity to be with each other and to note or solve problems that permeate our lives. The languaging problem is endemic and engineering better ways to communicate can help us along tremendously in relationships. But it helps to have a context that creates the problem in the first place. Believe me, you will never see a more heated laboratory than push hands when it comes to relationships. How we talk to each other and treat each other in this context is very very close to the surface. I have noted elsewhere (in another blog commentary) where I RAN from one partner because of his insensitivity. I know that I’ve insulted quite a few by my ignorance as well. But the lure of push hands gives us a reason to keep coming back. It’s a marvelous marvelous tool to see how you relate to others while playing a complex game.
In fact, because push hands is so confusing for such a long time, this aspect of practice doesn’t really surface until a later date. Mostly we muddle through with liking this partner and avoiding that partner. Just like life. And that is fine because not all partners will help you grow as a push hands practitioner or as a person. I still do that, I admit it! But at least I see the problem and how I am dealing (or not dealing) with it and, hopefully, why.
I reflect on one individual that I avoided for years and years. He drove me nuts. But at a later date, I realized he was EXACTLY what I needed for my own selfish growth. The interaction changed between us radically and then I loved working out with him. He has passed on since. I really miss him and – surprise! - not only for selfish reasons.
Tai chi gave me this invaluable experience.
A few years back I took a workshop on Having Difficult Conversations. A core insight from that workshop was the following: There are facts. Then we select the facts that appeal to us. From this we draw a conclusion. When we argue with each other, we typically argue from the perspective of the conclusions we have drawn. The facts are no longer in view. Of course, our conclusion is wrapped in a judgment that satisfies us. This conclusion is right, correct, good. We assume it is supported by the facts and to a certain extent, it is.
I’d like to suggest in tai chi and push hands, we get back to the facts and work from there. The process is more like mining for gold. We have to dig and dig and dig and explore and discover. More data is uncovered as we move through the process. To settle with some judgment or conclusion will not move us along. At best, it is a temporary resting place to let us gather some experience to move to the next level. Your conception of a good push, or your experience of some great push that you have met with some master will only get you so far. The facts that make up YOUR push are crucial to understand, discover and work with.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Circles - New York Times article
This off the beaten track article is not really about tai chi, but about circles. Tai Chi is loaded with circles (and spirals) and to that end, this art world article may give us some clues and inspiration about how important these circles are. NOT required reading this, but sort of fun in a tributary way.
Enjoy if you decide to venture forth. Tom
December 8, 2009
Circular Logic of the Universe
By NATALIE ANGIER
CIRCLING my way not long ago through the Vasily Kandinsky show now on display in the suitably spiral setting of the Guggenheim Museum, I came to one of the Russian master’s most illustrious, if misleadingly named, paintings: “Several Circles.”
Those “several” circles, I saw, were more like three dozen, and every one of them seemed to be rising from the canvas, buoyed by the shrewdly exuberant juxtapositioning of their different colors, sizes and apparent translucencies. I learned that, at around the time Kandinsky painted the work, in 1926, he had begun collecting scientific encyclopedias and journals; and as I stared at the canvas, a big, stupid smile plastered on my face, I thought of yeast cells budding, or a haloed blue sun and its candied satellite crew, or life itself escaping the careless primordial stew.
I also learned of Kandinsky’s growing love affair with the circle. The circle, he wrote, is “the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditionally.” It is “simultaneously stable and unstable,” “loud and soft,” “a single tension that carries countless tensions within it.” Kandinsky loved the circle so much that it finally supplanted in his visual imagination the primacy long claimed by an emblem of his Russian boyhood, the horse.
Quirkily enough, the artist’s life followed a circular form: He was born in December 1866, and he died the same month in 1944. This being December, I’d like to honor Kandinsky through his favorite geometry, by celebrating the circle and giving a cheer for the sphere. Life as we know it must be lived in the round, and the natural world abounds in circular objects at every scale we can scan. Let a heavenly body get big enough for gravity to weigh in, and you will have yourself a ball. Stars are giant, usually symmetrical balls of radiant gas, while the definition of both a planet like Jupiter and a plutoid like Pluto is a celestial object orbiting a star that is itself massive enough to be largely round.
On a more down-to-earth level, eyeballs live up to their name by being as round as marbles, and, like Jonathan Swift’s ditty about fleas upon fleas, those soulful orbs are inscribed with circular irises that in turn are pierced by circular pupils. Or think of the curved human breast and its bull’s-eye areola and nipple.
Our eggs and those of many other species are not egg-shaped at all but spherical, and when you see human eggs under a microscope they look like tranquil suns with Kandinsky coronas behind them. Raindrops start life in the clouds not with the pear-shaped contours of a cartoon teardrop, but as liquid globes, aggregates of water molecules that have condensed around specks of dust or salt and then mutually clung themselves into the rounded path of least resistance. Only as the raindrops fall do they lose their symmetry, their bottoms often flattening out while their tops stay rounded, a shape some have likened to a hamburger bun.
Sometimes roundness is purely a matter of physics. “The shape of any object represents the balance of two opposing forces,” explained Larry S. Liebovitch of the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. “You get things that are round when those forces are isotropic, that is, felt equally in all directions.”
In a star, gravity is pulling the mass of gas inward toward a central point, while pressure is pushing the gas outward, and the two competing forces reach a dynamic détente — “simultaneously stable and unstable,” you might say — in the form of a sphere. For a planet like Earth, gravity tugs the mostly molten rock in toward the core, but the rocks and their hostile electrons push back with equal vehemence. Plutoids are also sufficiently massive for gravity to overcome the stubbornness of rock and smooth out their personal lumps, although they may not be the gravitationally dominant bodies in their neighborhood.
In precipitating clouds, water droplets are exceptionally sticky, as the lightly positive end of one water molecule seeks the lightly negative end of another. But, again, mutually hostile electrons put a limit on molecular intimacy, and the compromise conformation is shaped like a ball. “A sphere is the most compact way for an object to form itself,” said Denis Dutton, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
A sphere is also tough. For a given surface area, it’s stronger than virtually any other shape. If you want to make a secure container using the least amount of material, Dr. Liebovitch said, make that container round. “That’s why, when you cook a frankfurter, it always splits in the long direction,” he said, rather than along its circumference. The curved part has the tensile strength of a sphere, the long axis that of a rectangle: no contest.
The reliability of bubble wrap may help explain some of the round objects found among the living, where the shapes of body parts are assumed to have some relation to their purpose. Eggs are a valuable commodity in nature, and if a round package is the safest option, by all means, make them caviar round. Among many birds, of course, eggs are oval rather than round, a trait that biologists attribute to both the arduous passage the egg makes through the avian oviduct, and the fact that oval eggs roll in a circle rather than a straight line and thus are less likely to fall out of a nest.
Yet scientists admit that they don’t always understand the evolutionary pressures that sculpture a given carbon-based shape.
While studying the cornea at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Liebovitch became curious about why eyeballs are round. “It seemed like their most salient feature,” he said. He explored the options. To aid in focusing? But only a small region of the retina is involved in focusing, he said, and the whole spherical casing seems superfluous to the optical needs of that foveal patch. To enable the eye to roll easily in the socket and dart this way and that? But birds and other animals with fixed eyes still have bulging round eyeballs. “It’s not really clear what the reason is,” he said.
And for speculative verve, nothing beats the assortment of hypotheses that have been put forth to explain the roundness of the human female breast. It’s a buttock mimic. It’s a convenient place to store fat for hard times. It’s a fertility signal, a youth signal, a health signal, a wealth symbol. Large breasts emphasize the woman’s comparatively small waist, which is really what men are interested in. As for me, I’m waiting for somebody to explain why a man’s well-developed bicep looks like a wandering breast.
Whatever the prompt, our round eyes are drawn to round things. Jeremy M. Wolfe of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues found that curvature was a basic feature we used while making a visual search. Maybe we are looking for faces, a new chance to schmooze.
Studying rhesus monkeys, Doris Tsao of the California Institute of Technology and her colleagues identified a set of brain cells that responded strongly to images of faces, monkey and otherwise. The only other sort of visual stimulus that aroused those face tracing neurons, Dr. Tsao said, were round objects — clocks, apples and the like. She suspects the results would be similar for humans. We make a fetish of faces. “If you have a round object with two spots in the middle,” she said, “that instantly attracts your attention.”
Or maybe the circle beckons not for its resemblance to human face but as a mark of human art. Dr. Dutton, author of “The Art Instinct,” pointed out that perfect shapes were exceedingly rare in nature. “Take a look at a billiard ball,” he said. “It’s impossible to imagine that nature threw that one up.” We are predisposed to recognize “human artifacture,” he said, and roundness can be a mark of our handiwork. When nature does play the meticulous Michelangelo, we are astonished.
“People come to see the Moeraki boulders of New Zealand,” he said, “and ooh and aah because they’re so amazingly spherical.”
Artists in turn have used the circle as shorthand for the divine: in mandalas, rose windows, the lotus pad of the Buddha, the halos of Christian saints. For Kandinsky, said Tracey Bashkoff, who curated the Guggenheim exhibition, the circle was part of a “cosmic language” and a link to a grander, more spiritual plane. A round of applause! We’ve looped back to Kandinsky again.
Enjoy if you decide to venture forth. Tom
December 8, 2009
Circular Logic of the Universe
By NATALIE ANGIER
CIRCLING my way not long ago through the Vasily Kandinsky show now on display in the suitably spiral setting of the Guggenheim Museum, I came to one of the Russian master’s most illustrious, if misleadingly named, paintings: “Several Circles.”
Those “several” circles, I saw, were more like three dozen, and every one of them seemed to be rising from the canvas, buoyed by the shrewdly exuberant juxtapositioning of their different colors, sizes and apparent translucencies. I learned that, at around the time Kandinsky painted the work, in 1926, he had begun collecting scientific encyclopedias and journals; and as I stared at the canvas, a big, stupid smile plastered on my face, I thought of yeast cells budding, or a haloed blue sun and its candied satellite crew, or life itself escaping the careless primordial stew.
I also learned of Kandinsky’s growing love affair with the circle. The circle, he wrote, is “the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditionally.” It is “simultaneously stable and unstable,” “loud and soft,” “a single tension that carries countless tensions within it.” Kandinsky loved the circle so much that it finally supplanted in his visual imagination the primacy long claimed by an emblem of his Russian boyhood, the horse.
Quirkily enough, the artist’s life followed a circular form: He was born in December 1866, and he died the same month in 1944. This being December, I’d like to honor Kandinsky through his favorite geometry, by celebrating the circle and giving a cheer for the sphere. Life as we know it must be lived in the round, and the natural world abounds in circular objects at every scale we can scan. Let a heavenly body get big enough for gravity to weigh in, and you will have yourself a ball. Stars are giant, usually symmetrical balls of radiant gas, while the definition of both a planet like Jupiter and a plutoid like Pluto is a celestial object orbiting a star that is itself massive enough to be largely round.
On a more down-to-earth level, eyeballs live up to their name by being as round as marbles, and, like Jonathan Swift’s ditty about fleas upon fleas, those soulful orbs are inscribed with circular irises that in turn are pierced by circular pupils. Or think of the curved human breast and its bull’s-eye areola and nipple.
Our eggs and those of many other species are not egg-shaped at all but spherical, and when you see human eggs under a microscope they look like tranquil suns with Kandinsky coronas behind them. Raindrops start life in the clouds not with the pear-shaped contours of a cartoon teardrop, but as liquid globes, aggregates of water molecules that have condensed around specks of dust or salt and then mutually clung themselves into the rounded path of least resistance. Only as the raindrops fall do they lose their symmetry, their bottoms often flattening out while their tops stay rounded, a shape some have likened to a hamburger bun.
Sometimes roundness is purely a matter of physics. “The shape of any object represents the balance of two opposing forces,” explained Larry S. Liebovitch of the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. “You get things that are round when those forces are isotropic, that is, felt equally in all directions.”
In a star, gravity is pulling the mass of gas inward toward a central point, while pressure is pushing the gas outward, and the two competing forces reach a dynamic détente — “simultaneously stable and unstable,” you might say — in the form of a sphere. For a planet like Earth, gravity tugs the mostly molten rock in toward the core, but the rocks and their hostile electrons push back with equal vehemence. Plutoids are also sufficiently massive for gravity to overcome the stubbornness of rock and smooth out their personal lumps, although they may not be the gravitationally dominant bodies in their neighborhood.
In precipitating clouds, water droplets are exceptionally sticky, as the lightly positive end of one water molecule seeks the lightly negative end of another. But, again, mutually hostile electrons put a limit on molecular intimacy, and the compromise conformation is shaped like a ball. “A sphere is the most compact way for an object to form itself,” said Denis Dutton, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
A sphere is also tough. For a given surface area, it’s stronger than virtually any other shape. If you want to make a secure container using the least amount of material, Dr. Liebovitch said, make that container round. “That’s why, when you cook a frankfurter, it always splits in the long direction,” he said, rather than along its circumference. The curved part has the tensile strength of a sphere, the long axis that of a rectangle: no contest.
The reliability of bubble wrap may help explain some of the round objects found among the living, where the shapes of body parts are assumed to have some relation to their purpose. Eggs are a valuable commodity in nature, and if a round package is the safest option, by all means, make them caviar round. Among many birds, of course, eggs are oval rather than round, a trait that biologists attribute to both the arduous passage the egg makes through the avian oviduct, and the fact that oval eggs roll in a circle rather than a straight line and thus are less likely to fall out of a nest.
Yet scientists admit that they don’t always understand the evolutionary pressures that sculpture a given carbon-based shape.
While studying the cornea at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Liebovitch became curious about why eyeballs are round. “It seemed like their most salient feature,” he said. He explored the options. To aid in focusing? But only a small region of the retina is involved in focusing, he said, and the whole spherical casing seems superfluous to the optical needs of that foveal patch. To enable the eye to roll easily in the socket and dart this way and that? But birds and other animals with fixed eyes still have bulging round eyeballs. “It’s not really clear what the reason is,” he said.
And for speculative verve, nothing beats the assortment of hypotheses that have been put forth to explain the roundness of the human female breast. It’s a buttock mimic. It’s a convenient place to store fat for hard times. It’s a fertility signal, a youth signal, a health signal, a wealth symbol. Large breasts emphasize the woman’s comparatively small waist, which is really what men are interested in. As for me, I’m waiting for somebody to explain why a man’s well-developed bicep looks like a wandering breast.
Whatever the prompt, our round eyes are drawn to round things. Jeremy M. Wolfe of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues found that curvature was a basic feature we used while making a visual search. Maybe we are looking for faces, a new chance to schmooze.
Studying rhesus monkeys, Doris Tsao of the California Institute of Technology and her colleagues identified a set of brain cells that responded strongly to images of faces, monkey and otherwise. The only other sort of visual stimulus that aroused those face tracing neurons, Dr. Tsao said, were round objects — clocks, apples and the like. She suspects the results would be similar for humans. We make a fetish of faces. “If you have a round object with two spots in the middle,” she said, “that instantly attracts your attention.”
Or maybe the circle beckons not for its resemblance to human face but as a mark of human art. Dr. Dutton, author of “The Art Instinct,” pointed out that perfect shapes were exceedingly rare in nature. “Take a look at a billiard ball,” he said. “It’s impossible to imagine that nature threw that one up.” We are predisposed to recognize “human artifacture,” he said, and roundness can be a mark of our handiwork. When nature does play the meticulous Michelangelo, we are astonished.
“People come to see the Moeraki boulders of New Zealand,” he said, “and ooh and aah because they’re so amazingly spherical.”
Artists in turn have used the circle as shorthand for the divine: in mandalas, rose windows, the lotus pad of the Buddha, the halos of Christian saints. For Kandinsky, said Tracey Bashkoff, who curated the Guggenheim exhibition, the circle was part of a “cosmic language” and a link to a grander, more spiritual plane. A round of applause! We’ve looped back to Kandinsky again.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Non-Doing Is, Oddly, Hard To Do
I’ve been having an interesting time teaching a simple exercise. We start to do it standing in the legs with little steps. At first I have the class do it as sort of an easy movement. Essentially we perform the movement, but it is sort of a glob. No real skill is being utilized. We “do” it.
Next, I begin to break it down in greater and greater specificity. This means that I’m looking at ways to accomplish the same movement but using relaxation and non-doing. As I articulate how to make it one whole non-doing movement, slowly but surely the students start to lose the movement altogether. Then they go through a time period where they feel they have mostly lost the movement. It falls apart in their hands.
One student commented that the more we work on it, the harder it gets. This is because the focus has shifted. As an unskilled glob, it was easy. But now we are relying on a whole body movement where all parts are integrated and working together. Each part individually is not required to hold you together. The whole is holding you together. One part is all parts. So each individual part has little to do, but more importantly each part must communicate with every other part.
Harder to not "do" it? How fascinating.
Of course, this is impossible to nail in print here because this is an experiential experiment. But the class goes from being able to “do” it, to not being able to “do” it. Nor are they able to NOT “do” it. We perpetually lock ourselves into the habit of doing in order to accomplish what is essentially a simple simple movement.
Or to put it another way, we only know how to do things, we don’t know how to allow things. Allowing relaxation, air, ground, structure, whole body integration to be the tools that hold us together and create a movement. Our habit, and therefore our experience, is that a sense of our doing things is how we get things done. If that support system is removed, we fall apart. Yet to utilize this other support system makes a world of sense because it requires much much less effort. It makes life easy. And now we have a surplus of energy. All that fuss and stiffness is gone.
I see our American sense of personality as a way of forcing results to happen as well. We throw this around like a calling card to help identify who we are and get what we want. This would be OK except this is often unnecessary, tiresome and inefficient. And it is so hard to let this go. Who are you and how do you act if you don't access your personality? And so many times it actually gets in the way and prevents us from getting what we want.
This comes up a great deal in the work place where most of us are on automatic, getting things done as quickly as possible, and relying on habit to do so. Doing what comes naturally, which usually means how we have always done it via "doing". The spaciousness and potential of non-doing is completely lost: mistakes are made, feelings are hurt, work is poorly executed, working relationships are damanged, information is misinterpreted and so on. Ever happen to you?
Oddly, in our culture, presenting who you are – your personality – is considered a necessary means of getting to know each other. But it is primarily this habit of doing that we are presenting. Maybe this is a good thing because it is this habit that we ultimately have to deal with. Isn’t it an insult to say "Mr. Jones" has no personality? Yet when we complain about someone, it is the personality that we are annoyed with. How ironic.
If nothing else, I would like to suggest that adding “non-doing”, or allowing, as a tool to get things done is a worthy pursuit and an invaluable practice. The art of tai chi is one way to study this (although not the only way.) Certainly you will add energy to your day since you now need less of it to do what you used to do. You get out of the way of what needs to be done. Your energy goes where it needs to go to accomplish tasks. You are no longer this stiff glob, but free flowing energy.
Yes, this IS difficult to do! Because we don’t practice this. Is "non-doing" on your to do list? It requires great focus and a certain kind of commitment. But the pleasure of tasting even a little bit of this is what tai chi students love. The thrill is palpable. Non-doing is a challenge, yes, but is also thrilling.
Next, I begin to break it down in greater and greater specificity. This means that I’m looking at ways to accomplish the same movement but using relaxation and non-doing. As I articulate how to make it one whole non-doing movement, slowly but surely the students start to lose the movement altogether. Then they go through a time period where they feel they have mostly lost the movement. It falls apart in their hands.
One student commented that the more we work on it, the harder it gets. This is because the focus has shifted. As an unskilled glob, it was easy. But now we are relying on a whole body movement where all parts are integrated and working together. Each part individually is not required to hold you together. The whole is holding you together. One part is all parts. So each individual part has little to do, but more importantly each part must communicate with every other part.
Harder to not "do" it? How fascinating.
Of course, this is impossible to nail in print here because this is an experiential experiment. But the class goes from being able to “do” it, to not being able to “do” it. Nor are they able to NOT “do” it. We perpetually lock ourselves into the habit of doing in order to accomplish what is essentially a simple simple movement.
Or to put it another way, we only know how to do things, we don’t know how to allow things. Allowing relaxation, air, ground, structure, whole body integration to be the tools that hold us together and create a movement. Our habit, and therefore our experience, is that a sense of our doing things is how we get things done. If that support system is removed, we fall apart. Yet to utilize this other support system makes a world of sense because it requires much much less effort. It makes life easy. And now we have a surplus of energy. All that fuss and stiffness is gone.
I see our American sense of personality as a way of forcing results to happen as well. We throw this around like a calling card to help identify who we are and get what we want. This would be OK except this is often unnecessary, tiresome and inefficient. And it is so hard to let this go. Who are you and how do you act if you don't access your personality? And so many times it actually gets in the way and prevents us from getting what we want.
This comes up a great deal in the work place where most of us are on automatic, getting things done as quickly as possible, and relying on habit to do so. Doing what comes naturally, which usually means how we have always done it via "doing". The spaciousness and potential of non-doing is completely lost: mistakes are made, feelings are hurt, work is poorly executed, working relationships are damanged, information is misinterpreted and so on. Ever happen to you?
Oddly, in our culture, presenting who you are – your personality – is considered a necessary means of getting to know each other. But it is primarily this habit of doing that we are presenting. Maybe this is a good thing because it is this habit that we ultimately have to deal with. Isn’t it an insult to say "Mr. Jones" has no personality? Yet when we complain about someone, it is the personality that we are annoyed with. How ironic.
If nothing else, I would like to suggest that adding “non-doing”, or allowing, as a tool to get things done is a worthy pursuit and an invaluable practice. The art of tai chi is one way to study this (although not the only way.) Certainly you will add energy to your day since you now need less of it to do what you used to do. You get out of the way of what needs to be done. Your energy goes where it needs to go to accomplish tasks. You are no longer this stiff glob, but free flowing energy.
Yes, this IS difficult to do! Because we don’t practice this. Is "non-doing" on your to do list? It requires great focus and a certain kind of commitment. But the pleasure of tasting even a little bit of this is what tai chi students love. The thrill is palpable. Non-doing is a challenge, yes, but is also thrilling.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Tai Chi: To Change or Not to Change -- That Is the Question
I spoke with a successful friend a while ago and asked: In the last ten years, how have you changed?
Answer: No change at all!
I was momentarily stunned. I see life AS change and assume if you are alive, you are changing. I guess this is not so for all.
Personally, I’ve had to change because there were so many things that I needed to let go of and address. I resented this for a long time. So it makes sense that I have taken up a practice that is about change.
My teacher of many years, Maggie Newman, is still looking for what can be improved in her tai chi form. It’s just part of the fun at this point. Change in tai chi ultimately means better functionality, more relaxation, more balance, and greater whole body unified movement. You will feel better as you discover new ways to accomplish these goals. She carries this into her non-tai chi life as well. Maggie is always exploring new ways to encounter reality in order to better meet up with reality.
They say in business that if you are not growing, you are dying. I have the privilege of talking to accomplished individuals in science and engineering and business. They are always on the prowl for improvement: Improvement in either themselves, or in the operations that they are involved in. Most work very hard and rarely do they rest on their achievements. One goal is accomplished and off to the next one. Yes, this can be form of workaholism. But it doesn’t have to be. It can be a source of creativity and liveliness, a form of being fully engaged.
We can rest in a comfort zone, or repeat endlessly the niche that we do well. This can lead to a success of sorts. But it is also dead in a way. It’s inert, complacent, self-satisfied, unmoving. At a Zen talk one day, the monk speaking noted that it is good to do things we don’t do well. I didn’t get the point then, but I do now. The point is not about success or failure. It’s about a willing connection with whatever you are doing without judgment or motive. It’s about pure engagement.
Change can come naturally, without effort or conscious intent. Or one can consciously decide to work at it, perhaps motivated towards a better world, a better me, a better you. Change, therefore, can be a choice. You decide to engage with the changing world and therefore you will need to change. It is possible to decide what aspects that you want to change. It could be small, incremental changes, or large sweeping changes. It can be internal changes, or external involvement effecting change. I suspect either way, the arrow will go in both directions. By this I mean, if you decide you need to make an internal change, this will create changes in the external world. If you want to make real changes in the external world, it will cause changes in your internal world. External forces may create or even force internal changes. We grow into new perspectives this way.
Tai chi is a very internal art. The changes are mostly about your physical and mental state. It will definitely impact your external world. Since there is so much to study and work on in tai chi, in one way you can select what’s next on the study list. Or you can ask your teacher or fellow student what they think you might tackle next. This can be a very exciting journey.
I tend to be fearful of change, but fear is not really a part of tai chi. I also tend to change slowly and that is fundamental to tai chi because the changes in tai chi are very deep and very subtle. They take time to manifest. Fear tends to actually block progress and it is harder to change in a fearful environment (internal or external). One has to deal with, or at least minimize, fear.
Mostly, tai chi feels like experimental play. You experiment with various aspects until you are ready to attempt play in a potentially fearful environment (as in aggressive push-hands partners). But even then, there are ways to minimize the fear and maximize your ability to experiment.
The mindset of discovery, to learn something new, is a way of engaging life. As you change your tai chi form, you could be changing your life. You never really arrive, settle, or land with a final “product”. You are always experimenting and playing with SOMETHING. In this way, tai chi is endlessly fascinating.
Do you know how to stop growing in tai chi (or life)? Assume that what you are doing is right, or that the path you are on is the right path. OK, in fact, it may be that your path is the best path for you, but you always need to test it. And test it again. Is there a better way? Did this really work? Is there something else? Did I miss something? How do others manage this?
I hold high the example of those who think they really have it nailed down. I hold them high because I know I don’t want to replicate them. They prove my point. They don’t improve. They repeat some “technique”. They may even be very, very good at what they do. But this doesn’t make them right or better or successful. Often, it makes them stuck. It is easy to delude ourselves when we “win” using some “technique”. In push hands, it’s easy for me to confuse a beginner by doing something other than using real tai chi principles. I can fool myself into a feeling of superiority.
These last paragraphs may give you the impression that you have to constantly second guess yourself and never feel secure. That’s not the point. You only have to work towards freedom of movement, relaxation and ease, and to keep working on ways to accomplish this. It’s the difference between saying, “Here’s how it’s done – here’s the answer” versus “Currently, this seems to work best for me. It feels good. What works for you?”
Catch that shift? You can feel good about the experience you are having right now. You don’t have to close the door to something new. Nor do you have to invalidate someone else’s experience to prove your own.
I love most the example of those who keep learning and experimenting and playing with the principles of tai chi. Sure, I’m a sucker for a new “technique”. But growth and learning don’t end there. This is where it begins.
Answer: No change at all!
I was momentarily stunned. I see life AS change and assume if you are alive, you are changing. I guess this is not so for all.
Personally, I’ve had to change because there were so many things that I needed to let go of and address. I resented this for a long time. So it makes sense that I have taken up a practice that is about change.
My teacher of many years, Maggie Newman, is still looking for what can be improved in her tai chi form. It’s just part of the fun at this point. Change in tai chi ultimately means better functionality, more relaxation, more balance, and greater whole body unified movement. You will feel better as you discover new ways to accomplish these goals. She carries this into her non-tai chi life as well. Maggie is always exploring new ways to encounter reality in order to better meet up with reality.
They say in business that if you are not growing, you are dying. I have the privilege of talking to accomplished individuals in science and engineering and business. They are always on the prowl for improvement: Improvement in either themselves, or in the operations that they are involved in. Most work very hard and rarely do they rest on their achievements. One goal is accomplished and off to the next one. Yes, this can be form of workaholism. But it doesn’t have to be. It can be a source of creativity and liveliness, a form of being fully engaged.
We can rest in a comfort zone, or repeat endlessly the niche that we do well. This can lead to a success of sorts. But it is also dead in a way. It’s inert, complacent, self-satisfied, unmoving. At a Zen talk one day, the monk speaking noted that it is good to do things we don’t do well. I didn’t get the point then, but I do now. The point is not about success or failure. It’s about a willing connection with whatever you are doing without judgment or motive. It’s about pure engagement.
Change can come naturally, without effort or conscious intent. Or one can consciously decide to work at it, perhaps motivated towards a better world, a better me, a better you. Change, therefore, can be a choice. You decide to engage with the changing world and therefore you will need to change. It is possible to decide what aspects that you want to change. It could be small, incremental changes, or large sweeping changes. It can be internal changes, or external involvement effecting change. I suspect either way, the arrow will go in both directions. By this I mean, if you decide you need to make an internal change, this will create changes in the external world. If you want to make real changes in the external world, it will cause changes in your internal world. External forces may create or even force internal changes. We grow into new perspectives this way.
Tai chi is a very internal art. The changes are mostly about your physical and mental state. It will definitely impact your external world. Since there is so much to study and work on in tai chi, in one way you can select what’s next on the study list. Or you can ask your teacher or fellow student what they think you might tackle next. This can be a very exciting journey.
I tend to be fearful of change, but fear is not really a part of tai chi. I also tend to change slowly and that is fundamental to tai chi because the changes in tai chi are very deep and very subtle. They take time to manifest. Fear tends to actually block progress and it is harder to change in a fearful environment (internal or external). One has to deal with, or at least minimize, fear.
Mostly, tai chi feels like experimental play. You experiment with various aspects until you are ready to attempt play in a potentially fearful environment (as in aggressive push-hands partners). But even then, there are ways to minimize the fear and maximize your ability to experiment.
The mindset of discovery, to learn something new, is a way of engaging life. As you change your tai chi form, you could be changing your life. You never really arrive, settle, or land with a final “product”. You are always experimenting and playing with SOMETHING. In this way, tai chi is endlessly fascinating.
Do you know how to stop growing in tai chi (or life)? Assume that what you are doing is right, or that the path you are on is the right path. OK, in fact, it may be that your path is the best path for you, but you always need to test it. And test it again. Is there a better way? Did this really work? Is there something else? Did I miss something? How do others manage this?
I hold high the example of those who think they really have it nailed down. I hold them high because I know I don’t want to replicate them. They prove my point. They don’t improve. They repeat some “technique”. They may even be very, very good at what they do. But this doesn’t make them right or better or successful. Often, it makes them stuck. It is easy to delude ourselves when we “win” using some “technique”. In push hands, it’s easy for me to confuse a beginner by doing something other than using real tai chi principles. I can fool myself into a feeling of superiority.
These last paragraphs may give you the impression that you have to constantly second guess yourself and never feel secure. That’s not the point. You only have to work towards freedom of movement, relaxation and ease, and to keep working on ways to accomplish this. It’s the difference between saying, “Here’s how it’s done – here’s the answer” versus “Currently, this seems to work best for me. It feels good. What works for you?”
Catch that shift? You can feel good about the experience you are having right now. You don’t have to close the door to something new. Nor do you have to invalidate someone else’s experience to prove your own.
I love most the example of those who keep learning and experimenting and playing with the principles of tai chi. Sure, I’m a sucker for a new “technique”. But growth and learning don’t end there. This is where it begins.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Tai Chi - Stress Buster! How?
Tai Chi is well known for its ability to reduce stress. How does this happen?
Stress is ultimately a body issue. The causes of stress are many and inevitable in life. One type of stress (the garden variety) is self induced – we think too much about things that we have no control over, or on problems that have no acceptable solutions, or solutions we do not like. We want what we want. Perhaps we lack patience, or acceptance of “what is.” Perhaps we are too needy. Maybe we only think of others, or only of ourselves.
While one might claim that all stress is self induced, I tend to think that life offers experiences that are sometimes threatening, uncomfortable or unhappy. Tsunami’s do, in fact, happen. Partners decide they want something different in life and leave us. We lose our jobs because markets change. Or a new boss doesn’t like us. We can’t concentrate on our work. We fail crucial exams. Children die prematurely. Spouses get hit by cars. We are rejected by a university we want to attend. The car breaks down on the freeway at midnight. Cancer invades our lives. It is raining cats and dogs and we forgot to pack an umbrella.
“Life happens” and it doesn’t match our game plan. Some solutions lie in changing how we think. Some solutions lie in simply going with the experience and allowing ourselves to feel where we are (without judgment) and letting it go. (Letting it go is the difficult part.) Or meeting the situation head on with total acceptance. Oy!
Stress is a body issue. Regardless of the source, it will damage your body. Research confirms that stress causes obesity, heart disease, lowers immunity, premature aging, even damages your DNA. We all know of someone under stress and how they “age” suddenly. The New York Times published the following article, October 8, 2009: When Stress Takes a Toll on Your Teeth. Yep, some dentists are seeing an increase in patients with teeth grinding, up 20 to 25 percent from last year due to economic worries on the part of patients. Dr. Steven Butensky reports, “I’m seeing a lot more people that are anxious, stressed out and very concerned about their financial futures and they’re taking it out on their teeth.” Teeth are under attack from stress? Who knew?
The study of tai chi is synonymous with the study of relaxation, whether you are relaxing throughout your form, push hands, sword form or sword dueling. It’s relax relax relax. We use the tools that are always available: gravity, the ground, the air, your muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones. These are the tools we have to experience relaxation. Throughout the study of tai chi, we discover real relaxation, a physical condition inherent to the body you are now “renting.” We gain insight into our own tension and how to let it go. This is the detailed work of a soft martial art. We come back again and again to what is relax? What is letting go? What is a whole body movement? What does it feel like to be “centered”? And we come to experience that particular state and begin to inhabit this state not only during practice, but in our everyday lives.
One way to counter stress is to acknowledge its presence. Awareness, a key element to any study, comes into play, but in tai chi, the particular area of awareness is the body, its tension, and relaxation. Awareness: we are on alert that stress has arrived. Some people are so tense they don’t know what life is like without it. In fact, some people equate life with tension. Prisons, of course, are filled with them. Guards and prisoners bounce off one another like a set of billiard balls. Tension can be motivating to some people. I call this beating the egg whites: lots of activity, lots of effort, lots of motion, lots of noise, lots of thinking, improved muscle tone and then a small result.
Tai chi gives students a way to feel something different and to feel this while they are in motion. Actually, relaxation is the cause of motion. You can relieve stress by going jogging, but you will not let go of muscular holding patterns when you go for a jog. You simply carry them with you, burn yourself out, and then feel what you think is relaxation. Ah! Relief! Actually what you are feeling is exhaustion. Not bad but this isn’t a solution to stress. Exhaustion is the body’s way of escaping stress. Many confuse exhaustion with relaxation and stress relief. Beat those egg whites, exhaust yourself. This is a lifestyle for many. We even admire it at times!
Compare exhaustion to relaxation. Ultimately, with exhaustion, you can’t move, nor do you want to move. The sudden absence of extraneous movement will feel good to those who are prone to exhaustion. But with relaxation, in the tai chi sense of the word, you are simultaneously alert and ready to move. In fact, it feels good to move. It is a source of joy. Just watch any infant in a waking state. Moving is a source of fun. With relaxation you are ready to respond! You are ready to explore and engage.
I was teaching a class to some beginners in a less than desirable situation. We had half of a basketball court. The other half of the court had a group of young athletes having fun shooting hoops. Renegade basketballs inevitably came bouncing our way. One student was hit twice. Not very relaxing! These were beginner students, but if this had been an advanced class, this would be a GREAT way to train. The advanced student would pay attention to the instructions, follow the exercise, but also be aware of the other half of the basketball court. You take in the whole picture and include it. One aspect of tai chi training is being aware of the external world so that you can protect yourself. Alert, but not tense. You align yourself with what is. I feel more relaxed just thinking about this as a possibility.
A while back on a wet cold icy day, I was walking to work very carefully to make sure that I wouldn’t fall. I have delicate knees and I am careful to prevent giving them an unwanted twist. I walked all the way to the building safe and sound. But as I was walking on the hard linoleum in the halls indoors, I struck upon a hidden wet spot and took a complete fall to the ground. Wham! I simply got up without any injury. I think the sense of being whole, relaxed and round helped me with that fall. Somehow I did it right. (We do not train in tai chi in how to fall!)
Once you are aware of stress and tension, does the alternative experience that you are learning from tai chi come to the rescue? You may have to go through some feelings of stress. But if you are a tai chi student you do have some tools in dealing with it. For one, the increased awareness that your body is out of kilter will help you identify the Not-Relaxed state. The second thing is that you can practice tai chi or simple standing meditation to help get you back on track. Even this may not necessarily help when you are in a stressful situation. But what does help is that, knowing you are out of kilter and tense, you will more readily want to find a way to return to a state of centered relaxation.
I do get knocked off center, but my body wants to get back to a whole relaxed state as soon as possible. It seems that I return to “normal” more quickly these days. I look for solutions, or go through the stressful process knowing that something else exists.
I know it because I’ve been practicing it, every day, for years.
My body knows it. Yours can too!
Stress is ultimately a body issue. The causes of stress are many and inevitable in life. One type of stress (the garden variety) is self induced – we think too much about things that we have no control over, or on problems that have no acceptable solutions, or solutions we do not like. We want what we want. Perhaps we lack patience, or acceptance of “what is.” Perhaps we are too needy. Maybe we only think of others, or only of ourselves.
While one might claim that all stress is self induced, I tend to think that life offers experiences that are sometimes threatening, uncomfortable or unhappy. Tsunami’s do, in fact, happen. Partners decide they want something different in life and leave us. We lose our jobs because markets change. Or a new boss doesn’t like us. We can’t concentrate on our work. We fail crucial exams. Children die prematurely. Spouses get hit by cars. We are rejected by a university we want to attend. The car breaks down on the freeway at midnight. Cancer invades our lives. It is raining cats and dogs and we forgot to pack an umbrella.
“Life happens” and it doesn’t match our game plan. Some solutions lie in changing how we think. Some solutions lie in simply going with the experience and allowing ourselves to feel where we are (without judgment) and letting it go. (Letting it go is the difficult part.) Or meeting the situation head on with total acceptance. Oy!
Stress is a body issue. Regardless of the source, it will damage your body. Research confirms that stress causes obesity, heart disease, lowers immunity, premature aging, even damages your DNA. We all know of someone under stress and how they “age” suddenly. The New York Times published the following article, October 8, 2009: When Stress Takes a Toll on Your Teeth. Yep, some dentists are seeing an increase in patients with teeth grinding, up 20 to 25 percent from last year due to economic worries on the part of patients. Dr. Steven Butensky reports, “I’m seeing a lot more people that are anxious, stressed out and very concerned about their financial futures and they’re taking it out on their teeth.” Teeth are under attack from stress? Who knew?
The study of tai chi is synonymous with the study of relaxation, whether you are relaxing throughout your form, push hands, sword form or sword dueling. It’s relax relax relax. We use the tools that are always available: gravity, the ground, the air, your muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones. These are the tools we have to experience relaxation. Throughout the study of tai chi, we discover real relaxation, a physical condition inherent to the body you are now “renting.” We gain insight into our own tension and how to let it go. This is the detailed work of a soft martial art. We come back again and again to what is relax? What is letting go? What is a whole body movement? What does it feel like to be “centered”? And we come to experience that particular state and begin to inhabit this state not only during practice, but in our everyday lives.
One way to counter stress is to acknowledge its presence. Awareness, a key element to any study, comes into play, but in tai chi, the particular area of awareness is the body, its tension, and relaxation. Awareness: we are on alert that stress has arrived. Some people are so tense they don’t know what life is like without it. In fact, some people equate life with tension. Prisons, of course, are filled with them. Guards and prisoners bounce off one another like a set of billiard balls. Tension can be motivating to some people. I call this beating the egg whites: lots of activity, lots of effort, lots of motion, lots of noise, lots of thinking, improved muscle tone and then a small result.
Tai chi gives students a way to feel something different and to feel this while they are in motion. Actually, relaxation is the cause of motion. You can relieve stress by going jogging, but you will not let go of muscular holding patterns when you go for a jog. You simply carry them with you, burn yourself out, and then feel what you think is relaxation. Ah! Relief! Actually what you are feeling is exhaustion. Not bad but this isn’t a solution to stress. Exhaustion is the body’s way of escaping stress. Many confuse exhaustion with relaxation and stress relief. Beat those egg whites, exhaust yourself. This is a lifestyle for many. We even admire it at times!
Compare exhaustion to relaxation. Ultimately, with exhaustion, you can’t move, nor do you want to move. The sudden absence of extraneous movement will feel good to those who are prone to exhaustion. But with relaxation, in the tai chi sense of the word, you are simultaneously alert and ready to move. In fact, it feels good to move. It is a source of joy. Just watch any infant in a waking state. Moving is a source of fun. With relaxation you are ready to respond! You are ready to explore and engage.
I was teaching a class to some beginners in a less than desirable situation. We had half of a basketball court. The other half of the court had a group of young athletes having fun shooting hoops. Renegade basketballs inevitably came bouncing our way. One student was hit twice. Not very relaxing! These were beginner students, but if this had been an advanced class, this would be a GREAT way to train. The advanced student would pay attention to the instructions, follow the exercise, but also be aware of the other half of the basketball court. You take in the whole picture and include it. One aspect of tai chi training is being aware of the external world so that you can protect yourself. Alert, but not tense. You align yourself with what is. I feel more relaxed just thinking about this as a possibility.
A while back on a wet cold icy day, I was walking to work very carefully to make sure that I wouldn’t fall. I have delicate knees and I am careful to prevent giving them an unwanted twist. I walked all the way to the building safe and sound. But as I was walking on the hard linoleum in the halls indoors, I struck upon a hidden wet spot and took a complete fall to the ground. Wham! I simply got up without any injury. I think the sense of being whole, relaxed and round helped me with that fall. Somehow I did it right. (We do not train in tai chi in how to fall!)
Once you are aware of stress and tension, does the alternative experience that you are learning from tai chi come to the rescue? You may have to go through some feelings of stress. But if you are a tai chi student you do have some tools in dealing with it. For one, the increased awareness that your body is out of kilter will help you identify the Not-Relaxed state. The second thing is that you can practice tai chi or simple standing meditation to help get you back on track. Even this may not necessarily help when you are in a stressful situation. But what does help is that, knowing you are out of kilter and tense, you will more readily want to find a way to return to a state of centered relaxation.
I do get knocked off center, but my body wants to get back to a whole relaxed state as soon as possible. It seems that I return to “normal” more quickly these days. I look for solutions, or go through the stressful process knowing that something else exists.
I know it because I’ve been practicing it, every day, for years.
My body knows it. Yours can too!
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Tai chi, amoebic flow and freeways
It strikes me that in tai chi, a central theme has to do with working with two aspects at once. And these two aspects are polar opposites of a spectrum.
The first polarity would be the sense that you are an amoeba. You have no real form, but you definitely are in space and flowing as you want to flow. You fill here, you empty there. You explore here, you dip there. It is easy, unforced, undirected, open. In fact, the lack of force or effort or even too much intention allows you to be flowing and easy.
Then there is the fact that you are definitely moving through a very very specific shape with a specific purpose. It reminds me of the perfection of a freeway system. To get the traffic to flow in a meaningful way, we create channels that form the turns of the freeway so that the cars can accommodate the freeway and the other cars. The specificity of the channel gives order and meaning to the flow of the cars. It perfectly accommodates the situation in order to get you where you need to go. The curves are elegant. They are specific, fixed, smooth, well defined. I’ve often admired the clover like shape of two intersecting freeways. Once you enter into the correct pathway, you zoom in the right direction, adjusting your speed as needed, always accommodating other cars and the sides of the curving pathway.
Tai chi is, of course, a martial art. The tai chi form has a shape with well defined curves and vectors. Yet the way the entire operation moves is from the perspective of an amoeba. The practice, the challenge, is to find the specificity of the shape and flow from within the easy, relaxed, open, directionless feel of the amoeba. The form is the intersection of both qualities. If it looks, from the outside, too much like an amoeba, lacking form or direction, then it lacks the specificity of the martial art. It becomes fuzzy. If it starts to look like slo-mo Karate, then it has lost the open, relaxed, exploratory feel of an amoeba. That’s the edge. It’s neither and it’s both.
Even more, the pathway and the flowing amoeba like quality are actually one. If the freeway is the channel, the pathway, the amoeba quality itself is the fuel that creates that freeway. It fulfills itself as the pathway. So the pathway itself can easily change as the amoeba flow (chi) changes. Another way to think of this is that air itself simply flows around aimlessly, but air can also be a tornado which has a real strength and direction and force and path. The air in the tornado eventually returns to its aimless air-like state of being. Yet another example is water in the ocean. Water molecules are mostly free floating, aimless and flowing, until they become a wave of force, power, direction… and then again relax into a quiet random flow.
As a martial art, both ends work to make tai chi functional. Yet another challenge! If your perfect shape cannot accommodate some force that invades this perfect shape, then you are relying on shape itself, and you will clash with this incoming force. The strongest will “win”. But we say in tai chi “the soft overcomes the hard”. The amoeba quality is there to allow an infinite amount of variation in responding to a force. You are not trapped in your shape. It holds you but you hold it.
On the other hand, if a force invades your shape and you don’t have skill for redirecting that vector force off your center (neutralizing) and then turning it around so that your new shape maximally returns that force back to the attacker, you merely crumble from the attack. Just like that freeway system, you have to be able to find the correct path to redirect that force. Out of this, you then need to find the curve that allows you to return that force right back to the perpetrator. This is very high level skill. This is where your sense of shape comes into play. You need to understand the right shape that will deliver the right results. You momentarily dissolve your old shape (the one that has been attacked) and then regroup so that this force is being redirected back to the attacker.
The form trains you to be sensitive to the forming and dissolving and reforming of various martial arts shapes in a manner similar to an amoeba. Push hands trains you to functionally do the same thing when presented with an actual force. These qualities of flow and shape give you an experience of your body that is hard to find in other disciplines. The matter at hand (you, air, amoeba) has the ability to change and flow and change and flow and ….. endlessly.
Tai chi is a superb method to explore this area and to find shapes that maximize the potential for holding energy (chi, air) and use it efficiently to accomplish your goals.
The mind that is aware of all of this also benefits in similar fashion.
The first polarity would be the sense that you are an amoeba. You have no real form, but you definitely are in space and flowing as you want to flow. You fill here, you empty there. You explore here, you dip there. It is easy, unforced, undirected, open. In fact, the lack of force or effort or even too much intention allows you to be flowing and easy.
Then there is the fact that you are definitely moving through a very very specific shape with a specific purpose. It reminds me of the perfection of a freeway system. To get the traffic to flow in a meaningful way, we create channels that form the turns of the freeway so that the cars can accommodate the freeway and the other cars. The specificity of the channel gives order and meaning to the flow of the cars. It perfectly accommodates the situation in order to get you where you need to go. The curves are elegant. They are specific, fixed, smooth, well defined. I’ve often admired the clover like shape of two intersecting freeways. Once you enter into the correct pathway, you zoom in the right direction, adjusting your speed as needed, always accommodating other cars and the sides of the curving pathway.
Tai chi is, of course, a martial art. The tai chi form has a shape with well defined curves and vectors. Yet the way the entire operation moves is from the perspective of an amoeba. The practice, the challenge, is to find the specificity of the shape and flow from within the easy, relaxed, open, directionless feel of the amoeba. The form is the intersection of both qualities. If it looks, from the outside, too much like an amoeba, lacking form or direction, then it lacks the specificity of the martial art. It becomes fuzzy. If it starts to look like slo-mo Karate, then it has lost the open, relaxed, exploratory feel of an amoeba. That’s the edge. It’s neither and it’s both.
Even more, the pathway and the flowing amoeba like quality are actually one. If the freeway is the channel, the pathway, the amoeba quality itself is the fuel that creates that freeway. It fulfills itself as the pathway. So the pathway itself can easily change as the amoeba flow (chi) changes. Another way to think of this is that air itself simply flows around aimlessly, but air can also be a tornado which has a real strength and direction and force and path. The air in the tornado eventually returns to its aimless air-like state of being. Yet another example is water in the ocean. Water molecules are mostly free floating, aimless and flowing, until they become a wave of force, power, direction… and then again relax into a quiet random flow.
As a martial art, both ends work to make tai chi functional. Yet another challenge! If your perfect shape cannot accommodate some force that invades this perfect shape, then you are relying on shape itself, and you will clash with this incoming force. The strongest will “win”. But we say in tai chi “the soft overcomes the hard”. The amoeba quality is there to allow an infinite amount of variation in responding to a force. You are not trapped in your shape. It holds you but you hold it.
On the other hand, if a force invades your shape and you don’t have skill for redirecting that vector force off your center (neutralizing) and then turning it around so that your new shape maximally returns that force back to the attacker, you merely crumble from the attack. Just like that freeway system, you have to be able to find the correct path to redirect that force. Out of this, you then need to find the curve that allows you to return that force right back to the perpetrator. This is very high level skill. This is where your sense of shape comes into play. You need to understand the right shape that will deliver the right results. You momentarily dissolve your old shape (the one that has been attacked) and then regroup so that this force is being redirected back to the attacker.
The form trains you to be sensitive to the forming and dissolving and reforming of various martial arts shapes in a manner similar to an amoeba. Push hands trains you to functionally do the same thing when presented with an actual force. These qualities of flow and shape give you an experience of your body that is hard to find in other disciplines. The matter at hand (you, air, amoeba) has the ability to change and flow and change and flow and ….. endlessly.
Tai chi is a superb method to explore this area and to find shapes that maximize the potential for holding energy (chi, air) and use it efficiently to accomplish your goals.
The mind that is aware of all of this also benefits in similar fashion.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Tai Chi Habit
The Tai Chi Habit.
Well, not so fast. Let’s look at habits in general....
I was at the Zendo some time ago and I saw something that has stuck in my mind. There was this male sitting in Zen meditation and, along with all of us, he was at it for roughly an hour with a kin-kin walking meditation in the middle. But unlike the rest of the group, his torso was not vertically upright. He held it leaning back, perhaps at a 20 degree angle off the vertical. This was not someone with a disability. He was merely in the habit of leaning back while sitting zazen. In order to do this, he had to be holding muscles tightly to maintain the angle for an hour. Looking at him made my back ache, but I'd guess this felt normal to him. I don’t know where he learned sitting meditation and I suspect he doesn’t have a teacher. But generally, one is taught to sit erect in order to find a line of balance that is comfortable. Just like in tai chi.
So here was a good example of someone with a poor habit, at least in terms of a comfortable posture. Perhaps his habit gave him a sense that what he was doing was comfortable. His muscle holding pattern had been sufficiently developed so that what would hurt the average person felt OK as far as he was concerned. And if you corrected him, the new posture would feel uncomfortable to him. Such are the ways of habit. What’s “wrong” feels right and what’s “right” feels wrong.
In a way, of course, we are all like my example here. The only difference is that our patterns may not be as visible or dramatic. We are in a somewhat correct place, but still, there are uncomfortable holding patterns that are hard to see, and even more difficult to feel, because we have become accustomed to the position. What feels normal is not correct, but merely a habit that blinds us to what would be truly comfortable. There are 656 to 850 muscles in the body (depending on which expert you consult) and to arrange them properly is a science and an art.
In tai chi we are aiming for perfect relaxation so that precisely the muscles that are needed in any given movement are free to do the job exactly as required. Improper muscle usage blocks freedom of movement. This is why the study of tai chi requires great attention. It is very difficult to discern habit and improper use of muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints, from relaxation and proper muscular tonus.
Holding a posture for a long time can be a double edged sword. Often it will reveal that you are tensing some muscle improperly. But habit can also hide poor muscular usage and actually make the habit itself WORSE. We unconsciously tell ourselves, “I am right because it feels right." But it is the habit that makes it feel right. The mind assumes that what you are doing is correct and this will override the actual experience in the body.
Answers? Here are a few but I can’t claim this is a complete list.
1. A good teacher. (In addition to tai chi, The Alexander Technique is a superb method to focus on recognizing and changing habits.)
2. Aim for comfort. Since comfort may in fact be habit, search for deeper comfort than the level you currently inhabit.
3. Try it different ways to experiment.
4. Aim for the whole picture, not just the isolated area of concern.
5. Do the posture as if you are a marionette and see if you can find a way let the structure fall into place.
6. Use non-doing as a guide.
7. Let the body fill from the inside out and see if you can find a feeling of releasing into space and ground.
8. Balance the top of your head with the bottom of your feet with the right and the left and front and back of the room and the four corners. Be balanced in space so you can let your body relax but in a round way.
9. It may be helpful from time to time to look at a mirror and see if what you think you are doing IS what you are doing. It is not a good idea to rely on mirrors, however.
I haven’t bothered here to note habitual ways of THINKING. That is yet another level.
The tai chi habit is to practice on a regular basis, and to examine again and again any habitual patterns (mind and body) that may be interfering with relaxation. We need to play with our structure and test it out.
Let go of being right. Let go of being wrong.
Get in the habit of trying something new.
That’s the tai chi habit!
Well, not so fast. Let’s look at habits in general....
I was at the Zendo some time ago and I saw something that has stuck in my mind. There was this male sitting in Zen meditation and, along with all of us, he was at it for roughly an hour with a kin-kin walking meditation in the middle. But unlike the rest of the group, his torso was not vertically upright. He held it leaning back, perhaps at a 20 degree angle off the vertical. This was not someone with a disability. He was merely in the habit of leaning back while sitting zazen. In order to do this, he had to be holding muscles tightly to maintain the angle for an hour. Looking at him made my back ache, but I'd guess this felt normal to him. I don’t know where he learned sitting meditation and I suspect he doesn’t have a teacher. But generally, one is taught to sit erect in order to find a line of balance that is comfortable. Just like in tai chi.
So here was a good example of someone with a poor habit, at least in terms of a comfortable posture. Perhaps his habit gave him a sense that what he was doing was comfortable. His muscle holding pattern had been sufficiently developed so that what would hurt the average person felt OK as far as he was concerned. And if you corrected him, the new posture would feel uncomfortable to him. Such are the ways of habit. What’s “wrong” feels right and what’s “right” feels wrong.
In a way, of course, we are all like my example here. The only difference is that our patterns may not be as visible or dramatic. We are in a somewhat correct place, but still, there are uncomfortable holding patterns that are hard to see, and even more difficult to feel, because we have become accustomed to the position. What feels normal is not correct, but merely a habit that blinds us to what would be truly comfortable. There are 656 to 850 muscles in the body (depending on which expert you consult) and to arrange them properly is a science and an art.
In tai chi we are aiming for perfect relaxation so that precisely the muscles that are needed in any given movement are free to do the job exactly as required. Improper muscle usage blocks freedom of movement. This is why the study of tai chi requires great attention. It is very difficult to discern habit and improper use of muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints, from relaxation and proper muscular tonus.
Holding a posture for a long time can be a double edged sword. Often it will reveal that you are tensing some muscle improperly. But habit can also hide poor muscular usage and actually make the habit itself WORSE. We unconsciously tell ourselves, “I am right because it feels right." But it is the habit that makes it feel right. The mind assumes that what you are doing is correct and this will override the actual experience in the body.
Answers? Here are a few but I can’t claim this is a complete list.
1. A good teacher. (In addition to tai chi, The Alexander Technique is a superb method to focus on recognizing and changing habits.)
2. Aim for comfort. Since comfort may in fact be habit, search for deeper comfort than the level you currently inhabit.
3. Try it different ways to experiment.
4. Aim for the whole picture, not just the isolated area of concern.
5. Do the posture as if you are a marionette and see if you can find a way let the structure fall into place.
6. Use non-doing as a guide.
7. Let the body fill from the inside out and see if you can find a feeling of releasing into space and ground.
8. Balance the top of your head with the bottom of your feet with the right and the left and front and back of the room and the four corners. Be balanced in space so you can let your body relax but in a round way.
9. It may be helpful from time to time to look at a mirror and see if what you think you are doing IS what you are doing. It is not a good idea to rely on mirrors, however.
I haven’t bothered here to note habitual ways of THINKING. That is yet another level.
The tai chi habit is to practice on a regular basis, and to examine again and again any habitual patterns (mind and body) that may be interfering with relaxation. We need to play with our structure and test it out.
Let go of being right. Let go of being wrong.
Get in the habit of trying something new.
That’s the tai chi habit!
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