Love

It is well established, at least here, that if we open to gravity and allow it to act upon our relaxed physical structure then it will apply a constant streaming pressure through us to the earth, which, when accompanied by an opening of our heart, stimulates the earth's energy to stream in the opposite direction into us. The opening is essential otherwise there is no room or space – no welcome – for the energy from the earth. That opening streaming pressure we call love, and in fact is a principle, i.e. it works everywhere, not just in regard to gravity and the earth. So, the pressure we apply forwards – our fundamental tenet: the feast is forwards – when accompanied by an opening – embracing – of the heart – brings what we are facing into ourselves. There is then a sort of oneness, and communication can take place. In fact communication may be that oneness; it is certainly erroneous to think that communication is the passage of energy or information from one place to another. Communication is what happens naturally when the separation – the distance – disappears or stops. In matters of the heart there is no distance, there is only opening and embracing.

If we want an energy to enter into us – to empower or enrich or fulfill us – then we simply need to apply a constant streaming and opening pressure to that energy. Without the opening we will drive it away. Without the streaming – the constant giving – there is no possibility of forever, and time – distraction – enters the equation. Love is forever. If you fall out of love it is because you fell in love in the first place. Falling is never a good idea, but giving is. Love has to be supremely active – no let up – which requires the mindset and demeanour of the warrior, or at the very least, the hunter. Heartwork is simply learning how to give and receive simultaneously – how to effectively and affectively become one. Hunting and gathering – the male and the female – in the same action.

Posturally we have the four directions – up down forward and backwards. Each requires a pressure to be applied to it in order for it to reveal both its energy and its secrets. Down and forwards – the earth and the other – we have already dealt with. Backwards – the domain of the guardian – is managed with our leaning back posture – or maybe the word rearing is more accurate than leaning: the upper back, and back of the head, should apply an active (absolutely nothing passive about any of this) pressure backwards – a streaming and opening pressure which brings the guardian into us. To bring the heavens down we must apply an upward pressure from the top of the head and the upper heart. With these four streams issuing from us, and the returning streams entering us, then we are as charged and potent as we can possibly be. The fifth stream is our destiny. The pressure we apply to this is the work we do. Again this work must apply a constant pressure – cannot afford to be intermittent or slack. We have just about enough time in a life to complete the task if we work flat out, undistracted. The good student knows this better than anything and the work she does is charged with urgency.

Recovery

Unfortunately there is always a price to pay – the inevitable come-down. An extraordinary experience can stretch ones energy and resources and leave one frayed and a little wretched once the excitement has dispersed. This is just a type of tiredness and simply needs rest.

When the heart or spirit are opened and involved more than we are used to then our physical structure, emotions, and energy get stressed beyond their usual bounds and there will be an ensuing period of incapacity and recovery some time after the original event. Indeed, sometimes the body can get sick (there were two occasions when my teacher nearly died). On one occasion I spent 5 days in bed with only enough energy to drag my self to a bucket in which to vomit and defecate – I lost 13 kilos in those 5 days.

The unease and disbelief that begins to set in a week or so after a heart-opening or energy-transforming event is partly the body and energy trying to place the experience within the context of our daily life, and partly the ego trying to reassert its dominance by dragging us back into its domain of doubts, anxieties and resentments (disconnections). The best way to deal with the ego is to laugh at it – the one thing it loathes is humour – or at the very least rise above it and not play its paltry games, and the best way to help us come to terms with what happened it to put into practice what was learned and not try to hold onto feelings and sentiments. My teacher's catch phrase is "the feast is forwards" or to probably misquote Walt Whitman "Onward and outward, nothing collapses." This requires us to pass over the experience – use it as a spring-board with which to thrust us more energetically, more aware, and more open into our daily duties and responsibilities, thereby sharing and pooling the good energy we all created together.

Don't hold on. If the experience was real and worthy then it wont let you go even if you try your utmost to shrug it off.

Posture

Click the picture to be directed to the article accompanying it (or click the Comments link below). Thanks to Caroline Ross for sending me the link, and to Heather Atchison for being involved in the research. Notice that the leaning back posture has a perfectly vertical lower spine, a fact that seems to have passed the journalist who wrote the article by.

Emotional Intelligence

I had never come across this term before, until my landlady used it to describe a message I received from one of the Israeli students/masters:

You know, it's very funny. I realize now, that I have never met a person, in such a way that I'm meeting you, from the inside, the essence, to the outside. When I think of it, that's how people should meet, otherwise they might never get to the essence. I understand now that it was the same thing that made the workshop so successful – you worked from the inside out.

A remarkable insight straight from the heart rather than the head – it hasn't come from cogitation, it has come from feeling, and an honesty and sincerity that allows such feeling all the freedom and clarity it needs to find expression in communication. The more I do Tai Chi the more I realise that it is a matter of emotional range, freedom and texture more than it is about anything else. Feeling those eternal stirrings, and joining so that what stirs stirs you. The internal is touched when inside and outside become one.

No one
there. Everyone
here.

Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.

What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.


Robert Creeley

If any of you want an Xmas present idea for an intelligent and sensitive friend (I've never seen the point in friends that aren't) then you can't go wrong with The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley 1945-1975. Not the best designed book in the world but the poems are sublime.

Someone recently asked me to describe London.
I immediately replied, "God forsaken."

Heart & Mind

The heart can contain anything.

It is the heart that expands to contain and thereby takes us outside and beyond the bounds of self-satisfaction.

The mind is frightened of beyond so sets up border control, checking everything for conformity. Every now and then there is a breach – something gets in or out that shouldn't have done – and all hell breaks loose until the mind, working ten to the dozen, re-establishes the status quo. The past – our memories and experiences – are as much creations or censorings of the mind as they are a catalogue of real events. The heart can breath life into them but only if we are prepared to allow them to change, and so change us in the process. The mind doesn't much like change, especially unpredicted or unpredictable change, whereas the heart thrives on it. If your practice comes from the heart then any interruption will be gratefully swallowed up and put to use, whereas when the mind is in control resentments abound.

              one has 
             touched
              contains
               energies
     by consuming time
                  which despite the fundamental
      appear in groups
the linguistic expression
              I make friends

A problem is only really interesting if it is going to consume you for the rest of your life.

Tips

I was asked recently by a journalist writing an article on Tai Chi for some "tips" (secrets?).

1. All bodily movements should be initiated by a turn of the waist. This turn is itself initiated by what we call "spirit of vitality," and correct or appropriate (perfect) spirit is the result of our heart expanding to contain the other.

2. The lower vertebrae must be kept plumb erect, which means the upper back appears to lean back slightly.

3. In Tai Chi attend to the energy before you, but be aware of the energy behind.

4. Rooting in Tai Chi (the energetic bonding of you with the earth) is as much a rising up into you of the earth's energy as it is a sinking into the earth of your energy: one should initiate the other, and in action one tends to contain the other.

5. Relaxation in Tai Chi is the removal of tensions and blockages so that the body mind and spirit, and the many parts of each, can firstly shake apart and then coordinate and operate energetically rather than forcefully. Relaxation and energy are the result of understanding. Force results from ignorance.

6. True energy is not something you possess and utilize, it is something you connect to and obey.

7. "Energy is eternal delight" (William Blake). The enemy of energy is self. Self is the product of objectification – the hoarding of energy (the refusal to give as good as you get) to such a degree that it separates and condenses. Self can only operate forcefully. It is heavy, dull and anathema to any natural process. It always puts itself first, hence the Taoist injunction: Forget self and become one with the Tao.

8. The energy that issues from your right hand is generated in the left leg (cross-energy).

9. To transfer the weight from the back foot to the front foot first straighten the back leg (heels push apart) (up to 50/50) then pull with the front leg (heels pull together), staying sunk throughout.

10. In Pushing Hands always enter first. Entering means part of you, whether physical, mental, emotional or energetic (and preferably all four), leaps behind the other so that your heart contains them.

11. Always go forwards. The good student is the one who refuses to settle into complacency, and is constantly endeavouring to shed the soft skins of contentment (oxidation). When the skin is peeled away the flesh beneath weeps, seeps and glistens. If you stand still for an instant a scab of self-satisfaction will form. It is the moving forward that abrades the skin and keeps you raw.

Hard Work

The importance of hard work cannot be overemphasised. Without the ability and hunger to work flat out for extended periods (not just when you feel like it) then progress will be at best unsure, and your insights will never become internalised. Hardwork, and the discipline required to work hard – the ability to put aside and ignore the physical, mental and emotional pain – the complaints of your sensitivities and sensibilities – and just get on with it, develop fibre (moral and otherwise) and wisdom, giving you the resilience to take knocks and bounce back. There is no substitute. Given the ability to work, the problem then is what to work on. This is where correct teaching, intelligence and good old karma come in. And experience – the experience, or intuition, that tells you when something is correct – when it is going somewhere useful, interesting and beyond your control.

The more advanced example shows a 
                     balanced
                       zigzag
                           relaxation
                   an epic tempo
                           when the
                       diagonal
                       is present
                further back things lighten progressively

Sticking

Sticking requires, or is, adherence. Adherence can be thought of in two ways: the introduction of a sticky film between the two objects which 'glues' them together (a visualization I have never worked with, though I'm sure it's valid), or one object (or both objects) pulling at the other in order to keep the two in contact. Pulling itself requires purchase otherwise the pulling action will separate – pull apart. So to effectively pull requires two actions: a purchasing or gripping, followed by the pull proper. The gripping – a claw of energy enclosing the point or surface of contact – is really just ward-off: energy travelling out from the rim to enclose as the centre invites, accepts and swallows, and has its own pulling component (the swallowing). The pull proper – the draw (sucking in) – is achieved partly in the legs and waist and partly with the breathing. The sucking at the other object is achieved by adopting an air or mood of sucking – sucking the ground with the active foot by tensing the hamstring (pulling heels towards each other) and breathing in as you tighten and contract the whole body but particularly the belly (reverse breathing). Training the hamstrings is a really good idea otherwise you never really learn to generate energy by bending a leg. Try transferring weight from leg to leg by pulling yourself with the empty leg rather than by thrusting with the loaded leg (requires the waist to turn towards the pulling foot). The energy that travels up the pulling leg from the ground is of a completely different nature and order than that obtained by straightening the leg – more electrical, more sticky (like little velcro hooks), and not locked into your physical structure so with no forceful component.

remains faithful to
        discern a timid
          glance
        hovering
     as elastic
         blows
      Reciprocal
        interaction
          a kind of liberation

I guess I'm just sick of a measured approach – in fact measurement of any kind. It has nothing to do with anything except self-defence. If only people would realise that their own lack of courage doesn't just hold them back, it also soils and spoils all around them. Let the heart fill and spill – over everything.

Improvement

Oh dear oh dear, I seem to have opened a can of worms with that last post. People seem to think that because I travelled to Israel and had a good time that I'm about to convert to Judaism and become a Zionist. My comments were an attempt to try to understand why the experience was so remarkable – why the people I worked with there operated effortlessly from the heart especially compared to those from these islands. The reason of course is that they have a handle on personal energy and personal power (capability and focus) – their personal energy was fantastic so nothing I asked of them was beyond them. And this is an important point: to go deeper into anything your energy must improve, or rather must be improving. In fact to go forwards your energy must be improving, and mustering the courage to go forwards regardless is one sure way (the only sure way) of entering that process of improvement.

The picture is of the beach near where Nitsan lives, empty despite the hot sun (it was winter after all). Seeing the English inscription on the wall – two beautiful words almost aligned with the two beach shelters – I couldn't resist taking the shot.

Ancestry

Been trying to get my mind around writing something meaningful about the Israel jaunt. It's been well-nigh impossible for me, mainly because the whole experience was so much of the heart and not of the head. Suffice to say that it was without a doubt the time of my life – never have I felt quite so connected or effective as a teacher and as a human being – amongst other human beings of such quality. One thing – principle – that became very obvious whilst I was there, that I hadn't quite appreciated or managed to put so simply before, was that to give from the heart one must take to heart. For some reason those at the workshops did this effortlessly and immediately and I'm not sure how. It may be high intelligence (legendary amongst Jews) which means the head only needs fleeting involvement – doesn't need to belabour things, but it is probably more to do with their remarkable heritage – ancestry – genetic culture – positive conditioning – an unbroken thread going back thousands of years, giving a confidence and a depth and richness to the energy. One can only effectively and powerfully relax if there is something solid and real to relax into – what better than a tribal and religious culture made all the stronger by others attempts to persecute. If you want to connect properly and fundamentally with the deep aspects of your energy then it is so important to be where your ancestors came from, or at least to understand where they came from. I remember a young Swedish student of mine years ago saying to me that one cannot love others until you love yourself. I suspect you cannot love yourself until you know from where you stem: until you properly vibrate and resonate with your ancestral history.

Essence » Spirit » Heart » Connexion » Awareness » Guardian

             more things
             into being
                   and
               their
                 motion
      is concerned with the smile
    all the seductions
               never ceases
               thank God

This astonishing photograph, taken by Isak, sums up for me the Israeli experience: two of the softest people I have ever had the pleasure of putting my hands on engaged in an act of total communication.