• Learning to Walk All Over Again
• Why I teach internal arts basics
• Quiet Place, Quiet Mind
• Number One Ancient Chinese Secret
• My Tai Chi Story
• Shanghai in Brief
• Try this exercise to improve balance

Learning to Walk All Over Again

One thing you learn in taijiquan is the “form,” or postures linked together by transitions and producing dance-like movements. You can transfer many skills practiced in doing form to walking or any kind of movement at all. Tai chi techniques and principles bridge the gap between our habitual way of walking and more natural movement that utilizes the body more deliberately and consciously, more spirited and satisfying. Improved posture and balance are only part of the overall results. You can also achieve a calmer attitude, a greater sense of well-being and certitude about yourself and what you are doing in life. Your body is healthier, you are more atuned to the spirit. You appreciate life more.

Walking is one activity we all do, and tai chi walking helps to align the mind and body more harmoniously. Consciousness is actually created as the result of integrating and aligning mind and body in a new relationship. Bring Qi (life force, energy) into the equation and you’re not only creating consciousness, but also energy. You’re creating energy out of a positive meeting of forces. In the practice of tai chi, energy is utilized to create energy in new ways. At first, it seems you must make an exceptional effort, especially when you practice alone, but after time it takes less and less energy to achieve some surprising outcomes. "Four ounces equals a thousand pounds,” as the old Chinese saying goes. Achieving greater awareness of this come in incremental stages. It's usually easier to feel progress in a group setting in which practitioners are moving in unison with a knowledgeable practitioner. WE more readily feel the generation and exchange of energy the results in learning. We often discover this sensation late in life when exhausted from trying to make a living and forced to seek out the memory of being relaxed and at ease with our bodied and our lives. Rediscovery of infancy. Loving ourselves and accepting fate. Luckily, though, it’s never too late. You can start tai chi at any age, you can practice in any moment. Begin now, in the present moment. Reap the benefits offered through the practice of taijiquan and qigong.

Teaching

A young man contacted me one day and asked if I would be interested in teaching him taijiquan. He had heard from asking around that I might teach if I was asked. I had thought about it before he came along, but didn’t think I was ready. I thought I probably knew enough to share the basics, but was unsure if I would be a good teacher. I agreed to teach him and since then I have taught a few people.

In order to grow and improve the effect of showing others what I know I often examine why I teach. Two reasons: I need to practice taijiquan more and to learn the “secrets” of Chinese internal martial arts training; plus, I enjoy sharing knowledge and practicing with others. Practice daily. Change old habits and replace them with new, better ones. Just do the movement and maybe it will teach you.

I show others what I learn from my teachers. My first two are Susan A. Matthews and George Xu, both masters of extraordinary accomplishments. Susan has a natural gift for transferring understanding. Our teacher Master George Xu (www.georgexu.com) has publicly described Susan as a master in her own right. He has said that Susan has mastered certain principles of internal arts better than most women martial artists in China! She has mastered the essentials of structure and take energetic elements to levels that I have seldom seen in anyone; from the US, to Europe, to even China. She also sees very clearly the need of the student; the macro- and microcosm, the yin and the yang.

Master Xu is known by many practitioners in many countries. He is not only an accomplished martial artist, but a pioneer in spreading Chinese internal martial arts throughout the world. He is one of a select few who has transcended tradition by recognizing that these arts are gifts to the world and shouldn't be hidden away in secrecy. I have studied with many other master teachers since beginning practice, but Susan and George are the ones who ushered me into the journey that practice has been for me. I have deep gratitude for their efforts.

Quiet Place, Quiet Mind
Find a quiet place to practice like you would a place to meditate. Since taiji and qigong are moving meditations, it makes since to find a spot that helps to quiet the mind, especially the "emotional mind." Once you’re in your spot it’s easier to get in the mood. This facilitates concentration. I seek natural environments. Fortunately I live surrounded by nature, but it's not necessary. My teacher George Xu once told me that you can find peace anywhere, even in a noisy city. He said this to me one day alongside Lincoln Way in San Francisco, a noisy thoroughfare bordering Golden Gate Park. Like a candle that is unaffected by the wiind, he said. His message was to create the serenity, even in SF or in China where privacy and quiet places are scarce. In Southwest Colorado, there are countless places of solitude in a beautiful landscape. Whether or not you practice with a group or alone, you can easily find solitude that complements meditative practice.

Here is a thought if you're looking for a place within or outside of yourself: Recall your favorite place of all time. Remember it as if it were in front of you, even though you’re faraway. Let the sensation of being there flow through you. Feel the contentment and joy of being there. Smile inside. Do the form while maintaining this sensation. You can do this anywhere, in a noisy city, a cramped room, in the darkness.

A Rinpoche told a group of us . . . that Buddhism doesn’t separate the mind and the heart. They strive to integrate them in practice. Taiji and qigong are similar because they are methods for dissolving artificial distinctions between head and heart. In both taiji and qigong, effort is made to silence the mind of thought. You’ve heard of “quiet mind.” One way to clear the head of thoughts is to place your attention on other parts of the body while performing the moves that the teacher is showing. By giving yourself the task of conscious, deliberate movement, you deemphasize thinking (thus stress) and enhance your body’s ability to heal and strengthen your immune system, improve blood circulation, and so on. This also relates to the description of taiji and qigong as “moving meditation.”

It doesn’t take a lot of commitment to learn and practice taiji and qigong. Both are self-healing arts. With sustained effort you benefit from better health and well-being. You don’t need a chiropractor or other specialists to fix those occasional cricks in the neck and those sore muscles you get from irregular exercise or repetitive computer motion. The only requirement is that you do them enough. Do them regularly for prevention. These are simple truths about taiji and qigong.

In my class, we practice simple qigong sets and taiji basic single moves that you can practice at home and start making a difference in your life almost immediately. You need to practice more than a 90-minute class a week to truly self-heal. You need to remember the movements and their sequences. This is done by regular daily practice or remembering them. Even a single qigong set will work to progress towards self-healing. Do taiji single-move exercises, or the whole form regularly for preventing those recurring pains and strains. Taiji and qigong really can help you to age healthier … more gracefully.

"Number One Ancient Chinese Secret"
There are 1001 secrets in taijiquan and every one of them is number one. Here's one about the Dantian, the area of the abdomen. The dantian ... should move like water, like water in a balloon. The balloon’s walls are stable, yet move with the water, bending like a sapling in the wind, the dantian bends but doesn’t break. It opens and closes, expands and contracts, alive; but the inside is empty except for the ebb and flow of the water and energy. Sometimes it's like a balloon that has expanded with air or water; and when the air or water is let out the balloon retains its shape. It is as though it were still full ... yet it is empty.

No Muscle? No Effort!
Old sayings are commonly evoked in the practice of taijiquan. One--"four ounces equals a thousand pounds" can be thought of in a variety of ways. Here is one: endurance results from using the body more efficiently so that the least amount of energy is expended in any effort. So figuring out how to use your body in the most efficient manner is a worthy goal. The goal is not only is to reach the plateau of no muscle, but the plateau of no effort.

"No muscle” is not a completely correct instruction, rather "let the muscles go" is more accurate. Since the muscles are part of the body, you cannot move without them being engaged in some way. They are as important as any other part, all of which have their own unique function. But don't give the muscles more attention than they deserve. Let them support the movement, not lead it. Let deeper structure lead while the muscles let go and spiral in the spirit of the movement. The perfect whole results as each part perfects it role.

Balance . . . placing your feet in the best alignment with the rest of the body. Ankles are not turned in, pigeon-toed, or splay footed,collapsing and crushed inward; which will be painful as you age.

Alignment . . . learning to align the body in just the right way so that everything is used efficiently. Undue stress is not placed on a single muscle, bone, joint, ligament or tendon. If you’re interested in getting the most efficient motion out of the body, you ultimately want that kind of efficiency from every part of the body.

Practice . . . Stand in one place with your feet a shoulder width apart and parallel, facing straight ahead, arms relaxed at the side. Take a moment to orient yourself and then sink down the right leg. When you get to a certain point, maybe where you think you’re about to lose your structure, shift your weight through the hips and waist to the other leg, and sink into it. Don’t over extend, sink just enough to feel the motion of sinking, but also keep some weight in the leg you’re shifting from. Shift up and over like tipping an hour glass over from one side to the other and letting the sand drain through. Now, get a rhythm doing just that, going back and forth, up and down. If you want to incorporate the whole body, including arms, hands, fingers, then you can do any move at all: the tai chi symbol, punch, spiraling circles perhaps. Do whatever style you want, such as lan shou (side punch), or other kinds of punching. Perform all moves by shifting your weight and looking for your central core our of which everything seems to spins out from and around and return to. At the beginning all you can do is try to get a sense of the core whether it’s the center of the dantien or the linear core of the spine. You won’t have a great sense of the core at first. It’ll be vague, foggy; but keep doing the moves with an intention of narrowing the scope of what the central core is and try to get a better view of that by using your powers of visualization and imagination while you execute a continual, rhythmic movement side-to-side. This explanation is a biomechanical-movement approach, something that Susan Matthews talks about a lot and has developed a theory on.

One exercise you can do to become more conscious of the connection your feet have to the ground is to visualize doing qi circles in the bottom of your feet (Qi circles are among the things you learn in beginning tai chi class). Circle around the “bubbling well” while keeping equal weight on the part of the foot where your attention is placed. You’re actually pressing down into the ground. Keep even pressure as much as you can while trying to perfect the circle moving around the soles of the foot, drawing a line or circular image. Try to see how that can make the rest of the body follow through from that initial starting point, that original intention. At some point, your attention has to wave up with the qi in order to get a sense of it. A wave starts from the bottom of the feet (it can start anywhere, perhaps, but for this lesson, begin it at the feet, or perhaps the ground below the feet). It’s a fluid motion that travels through the bones in the foot and ankle, then up the leg and into the hip and waist. How do you keep equal weight of all parts of your foot while you circle around? You just make a circle and your body follows through. Practice doing it a few minutes at a time several times a day.

Many people start tai chi as a last resort. Having a great need to reduce chronic pain is very common. They look for tai chi teachers because little else has helped. Pain killers, even prescribed by doctors, lose their strength and damage the body. I had been interested in martial arts for a long time and finally was able to give it a try only after I have suffered enough. A physical therapist told me she couldn't heal a pulled groin muscle after six weeks of treatment. It had practically stopped me from doing any physical activity. I had been training in karate for more than 2 years. I was 45 years old. I had practice yoga lightly for about eight years, which I started because a chiropractor told me to try it to help heal a severe strain of the sciatic muscle in the lower back, which I injured kayaking during a roll. I couldn't sit down without pain for a year! That's not all, either. I got a hernia while moving a bathtub and had a hernia repair, something I do not recommend.

I believe all these things happened becaused I was using my body improperly. No one had taught me how in the first place. All those gym teachers, doctors, coaches. People say use your legs to lift heavy object, but who knows how to really do that properly?

There's more! When I began tai chi I had been suffering from symptoms of Meniere's disease. At unannounced times, I suddenly experienced severe ringing in the ears and extreme vertigo that lasted two or three hours at a time. I often left work early, or just never made it in. I had no idea what to do. A couple of times I got optical migraines where my vision was completely lost. All I could do was lie down for a few hours hoping it would pass. I was miserable. My MD and an eye, ear, nose specialist were of little help. My doctor actually told me, "It'll eventually pass. It's really nothing."

After doing a lot of my own research I somewhat concluded that I was suffering from really bad stress combined with allergies. I got sinus infections two or three times a year. It all just got worse. When I began tai chi I was in bad shape. My posture was poor to say the least. I was so tense that old injuries flared up with the slightest wrong step. I was depressed, too. I couldn't sleep at night for months. I even tried sleeping pills, which I hated doing. Doctors prescribe pills for everything, but I'm overly sensitive to such things and I wonder if they're worth it half the time. Sleeping pills are not all what the commercials promise.

Wow, you might be saying, but there are people worse off than I was. You might be one of them. But that's not me anymore. The first night I went to a tai chi class with my teacher Susan Matthews, I felt better. It took some months of regular practice to get the concepts and principles -- to internalize them as my teachers said -- but I gradually started gaining control over my ailments. I haven't had a sinus infection for years. The Meniere's symptoms are gone, althoug I have to wtch out during allergy season. My groin injury is manageable, so are all of the ankle and knee strains gained from telemark skiing. My posture is transformed, actually. My fellow tai chi classmates remark on the changes. It's pretty amazing, but it's not uncommon. There are many similar stories. Everyone who does tai chi has a similar story of shfting from illness to well being.

I would not have known what I know now about proper postural alignment and use of weight, gravity and leverage if I had not found my tai chi teachers and begun my practice. It took a while but I found out that tai chi could give me what I didn't even know I needed.

Since then I found out that what I really needed was overall better health. All the acute flare ups of strange and disturbing ailments were symptoms, signs, of broader issues surfacing to reflect to me not only how I was using my body to carry me through life, but also served to point out that my personal outlook and worldview were affecting my health and how I felt about living. Now I'm showing others what I have learned and it seems to have meaning for others. I teach exercises that support and complement my teachers, Susan A. Matthews and George Xu. If you see any similarities in your own situation, you will find any one of us practicing in our homes, in a park somewhere, or in a workshop with a group or alone. Don't hesitate to ask to join us. We will welcome you.

Shanghai in Brief

China Dec. 17, 2004: Hard mattresses and noisy nights out of doors. In the streets below, horns honk, brakes squeal, motors rumble, machines buzz and hammers pound. All of it rolls into a single hum that ebbs and flows, one minute loud, the next quelled like a surf as it recedes and fizzes, before it begins to swell again and coil and crash down again onto the sand. The city momentarily holds its breath before letting it out with abandon. All under the smoggy mist by the sea, as though there were no sky beyond, nor a solar system beyond that. No world news and events, or cataclysmic events, only the immediate pulse of Shanghai City.

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