The Moving Heart

Working with Victoria last night I was struck by just how much movement there needs to be. And that that movement is rooted in the heart and not the waist. It is the heart that needs to move. Imagine being on your death bed, so weak and decrepit that you can barely move a muscle. If your loved one entered the room, which part of you would move to connect? Certainly not the waist. The heart would open, fill, warm and leap towards them, especially if theirs had done the same to you. How do we move the heart? In a sense it happens all the time, it's called being human, but it can be worked on. The chest cavity needs to become flexible and mobile. If a part of your body feels stiff and blockish then split it in two (mentally) and try to move the two halves against each other. We do this with the arms/shoulders and legs/hips (obviously) but also with the hands and feet (less obviously), the eyes, the spine and also the sternum. We can split the sternum (heart) vertically into a left and right side but also horizontally into a top and bottom - effectively into four sections. Each section corresponds to a circle of the two figures of eight that would be traced by the two hands in front of you. As you do the figure of eight exercise (alternate vertical figures of eight with each hand) try to get the movements into the chest in order to reveal and work this four sectioned heart. Limit the movements of the arms and maximize the movement in the hands. Your hands (and feet and eyes) have a natural connexion to the heart which you should utilize. As the heart moves things will stir up and emotions will surface. This is the feedback you need - it indicates that you've hit the spot. Through all this just try to maintain your root. In fact, working the heart in this way will develop a really fluid and elastic root. You will be connecting not just to the ground through your feet, but to the living vital essence of the ground - its heart, and you will develop an emotional and compassionate connexion to it, rather than simply the power connexion you would develop by sinking and relaxing.

Yang Style Tai Chi contains none of this. It encourages the torso to remain stiff and immobile. The torso moves with the waist but there is no movement within the torso. Similarly there is no movement within the hand or the foot (or the eye), or between the left and right shoulder or between the left and right hip. If there is no movement within a body part then it is dead - or rather it doesn't contain heart. What we're striving for in heartwork is to get heart into every part of us - on a cellular level eventually - and thereby into everything we do and touch. Heart should be the flame that licks and burns through all aspects of you and yours.

I learnt yesterday that the Chinese ideogram for "to speak" is a mouth with two words and a flame issuing from it.