About 18 years ago my teacher was chatting to me at the old Wimpole Street centre. He asked how my practice was going. I told him that it seemed to be going through an unfruitful patch where everything I did seemed to be wrong and nothing felt right. "Ah, sign of progress", he said. He then thought for a while and added, "You have to believe that otherwise it wont be".
In a sense Tai Chi is a negative exercise in that it is all about removing conditioning, ego, hardness, in order to reveal and encourage our more subtle natural qualities such as essence, heart, softness. It stands to reason therefore that there are going to be regular periods of discomfort and darkness, especially in our solo practice. These are just times of internal conflict - the last desperate gasps of the old you putting up a valiant defence - and must be weathered cheerfully (unless you enjoy depression). I have seen so many students give up Tai Chi when they hit one of these walls. One student in particular gave up her very successful and well paid job in the city to devote herself to Tai Chi (she had some romantic notion of becoming a spiritual ascetic, living in a luxury flat in Hampstead). Within a week of her new life, practising about 3 hours a day, she hit a wall, and gave up Tai Chi almost instantly, never to do it again. The tragedy was that right at the end her energy was fantasic - strong and available - but she couldn't cope and nothing I could say would change her mind and bring her back. She had no negative capability, not at the time anyway. She went on to have children, without the support of a man, and had to learn that one in a hurry.
Back at the old Wimpole Street centre the Tai Chi syllabus was structured as so: Short Form, then the Long Form, then the Left Side Long Form, and then a time of what was called a Power Class, before going on to the Dance of Equality. Da Lu ran alongside these classes, as did extra pushing hands. The Form classes were basically about learning to relax whilst going through a rigorous and disciplined set of movements. This involved learning to use the turnings of the waist to direct the movements, the power for which was generated by the legs (single-weightedness). The Power Class was about strengthening the legs which meant sinking, hours and hours of it every day, and learning to fire your energy out - whipping the energy up from the ground, through the body and into the opponent. The Dance was about developing lightness and spirit. I was lucky in having 3 years of the Power Class, each week listening to my teacher find a new and inspiring way of getting us to willingly put up with the pain of sinking (I used to marvel at his powers of invention). One thing he said was that becoming stronger was like acting: you had to pretend you were strong and that would draw the strength to you. He used to get us to swell out into such huge ward-offs that the room felt barely able to contain us all: "Make yourself as large a vessel as possible and energy will naturally flood in". To eradicate self-image you have to first take it through various transformations. For me this meant changing from weak to strong to lively, etc. The process is still going on. Still polishing those facets, one by one.
In a sense Tai Chi is a negative exercise in that it is all about removing conditioning, ego, hardness, in order to reveal and encourage our more subtle natural qualities such as essence, heart, softness. It stands to reason therefore that there are going to be regular periods of discomfort and darkness, especially in our solo practice. These are just times of internal conflict - the last desperate gasps of the old you putting up a valiant defence - and must be weathered cheerfully (unless you enjoy depression). I have seen so many students give up Tai Chi when they hit one of these walls. One student in particular gave up her very successful and well paid job in the city to devote herself to Tai Chi (she had some romantic notion of becoming a spiritual ascetic, living in a luxury flat in Hampstead). Within a week of her new life, practising about 3 hours a day, she hit a wall, and gave up Tai Chi almost instantly, never to do it again. The tragedy was that right at the end her energy was fantasic - strong and available - but she couldn't cope and nothing I could say would change her mind and bring her back. She had no negative capability, not at the time anyway. She went on to have children, without the support of a man, and had to learn that one in a hurry.
Back at the old Wimpole Street centre the Tai Chi syllabus was structured as so: Short Form, then the Long Form, then the Left Side Long Form, and then a time of what was called a Power Class, before going on to the Dance of Equality. Da Lu ran alongside these classes, as did extra pushing hands. The Form classes were basically about learning to relax whilst going through a rigorous and disciplined set of movements. This involved learning to use the turnings of the waist to direct the movements, the power for which was generated by the legs (single-weightedness). The Power Class was about strengthening the legs which meant sinking, hours and hours of it every day, and learning to fire your energy out - whipping the energy up from the ground, through the body and into the opponent. The Dance was about developing lightness and spirit. I was lucky in having 3 years of the Power Class, each week listening to my teacher find a new and inspiring way of getting us to willingly put up with the pain of sinking (I used to marvel at his powers of invention). One thing he said was that becoming stronger was like acting: you had to pretend you were strong and that would draw the strength to you. He used to get us to swell out into such huge ward-offs that the room felt barely able to contain us all: "Make yourself as large a vessel as possible and energy will naturally flood in". To eradicate self-image you have to first take it through various transformations. For me this meant changing from weak to strong to lively, etc. The process is still going on. Still polishing those facets, one by one.
1 comment
Having proper perspective toward reality and life is a key to everything. This post help merealize something important.
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