Tai Chi & Heartwork

Gravity clasps us firmly to the mundane. Tai Chi is a method for cementing, investigating, developing and deepening our relationship with gravity and with the source of gravity – the Earth – through coordinated movement. The most important part of the body in Tai Chi is what we call the waist – a band of energy that passes around the hips and waist rather like a wide belt. This has been likened to the rim of a wheel, the axle being the spine, which we endeavour to keep erect so that the waist can turn freely on a horizontal plane. It is by turning the waist that all movements in Tai Chi come into being. When we sink in Tai Chi this band of energy extends downwards to the ground and upwards to the crown of our head, and the waist becomes a cylinder which completely encloses us – we become all waist. Sinking, especially when combined with relaxation, is joining with gravity – it is our way of yielding to gravity – allowing it to take us and make of us what it will. Turning the waist is how we move through and with this field. There are two aspects to this turning – centripetal and centrifugal – drawing energy in and throwing energy out – working with energy rather than against it. A consequence of sinking and turning is what we call body as one unit. When we yield completely to gravity and allow it to possess the whole of us, but still insist on moving through that by turning, then we naturally bind into one coherent mass which pulses with energy – constantly giving and receiving. We then have the possibility of communication. This, simply put, is the way of Tai Chi. It is not, however, the way of the heart. For the heart there is only heart. When the heart properly functions – when it opens and casts aside the clinging mind and its attendant fears – then a reality is revealed in which gravity does not exist because matter does not exist. Neither does time and neither does space. There is only heart. How well one functions in this world depends purely upon ones quality as a human being, or maybe we should reverse that and say that ones quality as a human being depends solely on how well one functions in the realm of the heart. For many years my teacher was puzzled by a great inconsistency he had found in the Tai Chi. When teaching Pushing Hands to a class of complete beginners he found that there were many people in such a class to whom he simply could not yield. When they placed their hand on his, in complete innocence and with complete openness (as only beginners can do), then he was lost – lost in admiration as much as anything. He found that the only way he could properly meet such a situation was not by becoming yin to their yang (the classic Tai Chi way) but by emulating their quality – by becoming like them or by becoming them. He then began to realise that this was not an inconsistency – a paradox – after all, it was in fact the way, and from that realisation we have what we now call Heartwork. The skill in Heartwork is to have the confidence, willing and grace to create an environment into which all the hearts present can enter to create a situation in which all are equal (though not the same) and all are nourished and brought forward by the experience. You don't need to be in company for heartwork. There are always other hearts present – the heart of the earth beneath you, the heart of the heavens above you, and the hearts of your loved ones hovering all around you, including those that have died, ancestors you have never met, and future acquaintances you have not yet met. The heart world is a real maelstrom that the mind can never hope to fathom, so best to occupy the mind with things it likes most – technical trivialities – does the waist turn this way or does it that – and leave the heart to sort things out.