Sticking to a persons flesh should be a magical and lively experience. “I’d want her thighs to put birds in my fingers.” Unless one of you is totally into themselves the area of contact should dance with energy and possibility. Dull or dead contact should be avoided. If you stick to someone and their flesh feels dead it’s because their humanity is not reaching out: their selfishness does not allow feeling for others, or as JK would say, a lack of compassion’s breath. They can have all the correct words and be seemingly friendly and well-intentioned but it’s all a show and means nothing if they cannot touch meaningfully. Trust touch, it’s more important than anything else. Through touch you feel the person’s heart and you feel their mind, and you feel the struggle between the two. Mind expresses itself as tension: either hardness or retreat. Heart is soft and giving. It is your job to locate and join with the good part. Your heart should ease their mind and allow their heart more exposure: your entering should encourage theirs. Joining will then be teaching enough; there will be no need for words. “So let us melt and make no noise.”
The Tai Chi Form is similarly all about touch and sticking, despite the absence of another person. You are always touching both the ground and the air and Tai Chi famously develops an improved relationship with each. The relationship with the ground we call rooting. The relationship with the air is less well documented but Cheng Man-Ching has talked about “swimming in air”. Heart should be involved with each. Your softness and entering (giving) should and will invite the finer energies of earth and air to enter you. Surfaces and boundaries dissolve. You reach out. You don’t need to be doing Form to work with earth and air: they are always with you. Try to be heartful of each. Feel how when you relax into gravity it seemingly disappears to be replaced by a floating lightness which extends you into the world. One of the interesting things about the two beacons in my life (John & Pip) is just how fine, delicate and light is their relationship with these two elements. Their fineness makes the air around them and the ground under them fizz and dance with life. This is infectious. It is at once everywhere.
The Tai Chi Form is similarly all about touch and sticking, despite the absence of another person. You are always touching both the ground and the air and Tai Chi famously develops an improved relationship with each. The relationship with the ground we call rooting. The relationship with the air is less well documented but Cheng Man-Ching has talked about “swimming in air”. Heart should be involved with each. Your softness and entering (giving) should and will invite the finer energies of earth and air to enter you. Surfaces and boundaries dissolve. You reach out. You don’t need to be doing Form to work with earth and air: they are always with you. Try to be heartful of each. Feel how when you relax into gravity it seemingly disappears to be replaced by a floating lightness which extends you into the world. One of the interesting things about the two beacons in my life (John & Pip) is just how fine, delicate and light is their relationship with these two elements. Their fineness makes the air around them and the ground under them fizz and dance with life. This is infectious. It is at once everywhere.
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