Fortuitously, Silliman's Blog was all about relaxation yesterday. He defined it:
In TaiChi we have a Form - an external structure we impose on our time & energy, training our different aspects in a better way of doing things, hopefully replacing bad habits with good ones. However, a good habit is still a habit, is still a careless, unnatural action, with the implications of inappropriateness or lack of listening, lack of connexion. What we should strive for in our solo practice is to soften the edges, so to speak, to relax our imposed Form sufficiently for it not to strangle the lightness always wanting expression but often constrained by externals. We need to give the lightness a little head, let it inform our Form, and develop that internal aspect so often missing from TaiChi (and everything else).
In Heartwork our movements (can't really call them postures) are so natural (almost gestural) & so fast (when we do them interactively) that complete relaxation is a possibility (& a necessity). What becomes interesting then is that a small movement done with the hand, say, invades every part of the body, so that the movement seems to be happening in the foot, the head, the jaw, the tongue, the eyes, the spine, the heart, the energy body, the mind, the emotions, etc. Each different movement also takes on a character & life of its own - it comes alive, almost independently alive, so that the flurry of our interaction lives on many different levels: reality in the heart is softly fractal. This means that the more relaxed we are the more activity can be crammed into an interaction, the intensity increases and surprisingly the thing gets even quicker, far too quick for the mind to comprehend or fathom. This is another consequence of our relaxation - the mind no longer controls or directs any aspect of our being - instead it all comes from spirit. Otherwise life is too slow and we always miss the boat - it's all happened before we get a chance to get involved. Working relaxedly like this you begin to seep into time, behind, before, through, beyond time. Then your connectedness becomes really interesting because it manages to influence itself through pre-emption and anticipation. Heart thinks ahead.
relaxation - by which I mean, finally, that sense of giving the poem its head, letting it determine where it needs to go, rather than fixing it on any idea prior to (or otherwise outside) the writingHe's hit the nail on the head, I think, a measure of his intelligence & sensitivity - as Olson said "the poet is the only pedagogue left, to be trusted".
In TaiChi we have a Form - an external structure we impose on our time & energy, training our different aspects in a better way of doing things, hopefully replacing bad habits with good ones. However, a good habit is still a habit, is still a careless, unnatural action, with the implications of inappropriateness or lack of listening, lack of connexion. What we should strive for in our solo practice is to soften the edges, so to speak, to relax our imposed Form sufficiently for it not to strangle the lightness always wanting expression but often constrained by externals. We need to give the lightness a little head, let it inform our Form, and develop that internal aspect so often missing from TaiChi (and everything else).
Cease activity and return to stillnessWithout this the TaiChi is just heavy & dull.
And that stillness will be even more active.
In Heartwork our movements (can't really call them postures) are so natural (almost gestural) & so fast (when we do them interactively) that complete relaxation is a possibility (& a necessity). What becomes interesting then is that a small movement done with the hand, say, invades every part of the body, so that the movement seems to be happening in the foot, the head, the jaw, the tongue, the eyes, the spine, the heart, the energy body, the mind, the emotions, etc. Each different movement also takes on a character & life of its own - it comes alive, almost independently alive, so that the flurry of our interaction lives on many different levels: reality in the heart is softly fractal. This means that the more relaxed we are the more activity can be crammed into an interaction, the intensity increases and surprisingly the thing gets even quicker, far too quick for the mind to comprehend or fathom. This is another consequence of our relaxation - the mind no longer controls or directs any aspect of our being - instead it all comes from spirit. Otherwise life is too slow and we always miss the boat - it's all happened before we get a chance to get involved. Working relaxedly like this you begin to seep into time, behind, before, through, beyond time. Then your connectedness becomes really interesting because it manages to influence itself through pre-emption and anticipation. Heart thinks ahead.
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See also Keats concept of negative capability:
"Browne & Dilke walked with me back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge."
Negative in the sense that something (self) has been removed.
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