Balance

Assi sent me this link to online video footage of Kyuzo Mifune (1883-1965), the great judo master, strutting his stuff. My teacher used to cite him as one of the only non-Tai Chi masters to appear to have a rudimentary understanding of uprooting. David Knight recently sent me footage of Ueshiba in action and I was quite surprised at how coarse his energy is - certainly no uprooting in evidence there, or indeed any short energy (or yielding for that matter). He has great spirit but his students don't, so that vital between-energy (heart-energy) never gets a chance to operate. It is so important for a teacher to try his utmost to drag his students up to his level. It is only by doing so that he will continue to advance. There is always stuff inside that hasn't yet surfaced, but it needs stimulation to reveal itself, and for a master whose own teachers have passed on, that stimulation generally comes from his advanced students.

Another thing that struck me about the Ueshiba footage is the complete absence of female energy. Over 30 of John's students went to visit Dr Chi in the 1980's for Tai Chi instruction and Dr Chi said that without exception all the women were better than all the men. Softness is a feminine quality - it comes natural to the female; softness is a woman's strength and power. Male softness is very different. For a man his softness is his weakness and fragility and vulnerability. His aloneness. In a natural world the male is a tiny speck in a sea of female energy – a thin line of Y-chromosomes stretching back into a mass of X's. This is why men have created a predominantly masculine world – a world of tall buildings, straight lines, right angles, and technology, where the natural power of the female is suppressed – it helps him feel secure, and strong in that security. However, in his stupidity he has failed to realize that it is precisely his aloneness in the predominantly female universe that keeps him forever vigilant and on his mettle and sufficiently pressured and stimulated to express his natural masculine power which has nothing to do with muscles or brains or hardness and everything to do with keeping alive a vision or a dream of the connected beyond – the perfect woman, or what my teacher calls perfection's soul, and communion and union with that perfection. Olson was right to stress the importance of mythology – the story – the energetic environment rather than the physical one. If we had done this then the world certainly wouldn't be as filthy as we've made it. It's time to remythologise – to breath life and soul back into the mundane – to reanimate the universe and place the male and female back in their rightful place. This is what the Tai Chi class should be: a model of the natural world. The only other place I've found it is in poetry.