Mindset

Different activities demand different mindsets. A mindset is the state of mind induced when mental activity is focused on a particular location within the brain. So, thinking concentrates mental activity into the frontal lobe – hence the furrowed brow and heavy craning head of the inveterate thinker. Fighting and fucking takes us to the mid-brain. Meditating brings us further back towards the occiput – the mysterious back-brain. Gaining some awareness of, and feeling for, these various locations lets us begin to "know our mind" and gives us the ability to shift around in the head with unattached facility. The natural place for the mind to rest is close to the top of the spinal-cord, where it erupts into the brain. When we relax the mind then this is the place it tends to move to, allowing the front brain to open up and "see" the world as though with an internal eye – hence the third eye on the forehead. From the top of the spine we can then bring the mind down through the torso and let it abide in any of the energy centres within the body: in Tai Chi the belly or lower dan tien is preferred. So, "putting the mind in the dan tien" – that strange instruction which confuses and alienates so many fresh students – is a very precise instruction that is only possible once the student has learned to relax the mind and then move it around like a piece of internal furniture: once he has made the mind physical. It has nothing to do with thinking about the dan tien, which is effectively bringing an image of the dan tien into the front-brain.