Though I have thoughts and thoughts about Tai Chi, and I think of sixteen things every hour of study that I might want to expound upon and explore further, it is a very difficult to sit down and write about it.
Which likely explains the relative rareness of specifically topical books in the Dong Tai Chi school, and they're only written by the masters, and the more fantastic students. The Red Book went only published in Chinese for generations, until Alex Dong managed to make a purportedly fantastic translation in the past few years. He has also written another discussion on Tai Chi, finished a couple of years ago, having taken years to write. Even for the masters, writing on Tai Chi is difficult.
When you take into account that the best way to learn Tai Chi is to follow with your body what you see your teacher doing, and the best rule is instructions in fewest words possible, it's imaginable that words cannot capture the scope of the study.
There are Tai Chi magazines, there are text books, and there is me, and folk like me, writing about Tai Chi, but it's just words until you study, and even then, they are just words.
How conceited of me to think I could write about Tai Chi.
Yet I will still write, but I will know as I study that writing about what I study is much less important than why and how I study, and what I learn from my study. It will take the pressure off the constant search for thoughts to write about. And it gives me direction, for writing with out direction is like studying Tai Chi without purpose.
07 December 2008
27 August 2008
Epiphany
My first study with Alex Dong I learned one universally important thing: Not every correction is for me.
Not that I'm not doing it wrong, just that I am incapable of understanding what it is to do it right. Unlike any other study I have subjected myself to, there is no way to impart the knowledge of what is right implicitly. A student has to evolve into understanding of what a specific set of words really means, how a demonstration of the movement or position really feels.
The study of tai chi is filled with metaphors: even the movements and positions themselves have metaphorical names like "grasp bird's tail" or "part wild horse's mane." The applications of these sequences have nothing to do with wild animals, unless that is what you consider your opponent. In class, there are repeated and varied descriptions of what it might feel like, what you might need to be imagining, what real-life experience you can attempt to replicate in order to feel the study properly. Whether it is sinking both feet into the sand, or allowing a leg full of water slowly overflow into the other leg, or that there is a string between your fingertips and knees, these metaphorical concepts eventually give way to understanding.
This is the epiphany.
I remember when I first realized what it felt like to relax my shoulders into my hips and my hips into my feet. I cherish that feeling even today, the ability to really melt between my joints and allow the earth and my body's natural structure to hold me up.
I remember when I held my arm just so, in such a way that my muscles have my brain convinced that my radius and ulna are actually bowed: this is the soft, round arm structure. My elbow has such a connection with the earth and my wrist and fingers are pushing forward and down in such a way that there is no way my arm could be a straight line between those two points: my arm is a bow and the next movement of energy is the arrow. Not that I expect this description to make sense to anyone but myself. It is just another metaphor, because there is no other way to share that feeling with you.
And what Master Alex kept telling me not to try while he challenged the hall full of seasoned practitioners to criticize each other for, this was sinking. No, not just sinking, but sinking lower. I could get closer to the ground; I could bend my knees. But only two years after that class did I experience what can only be described as sinking. I sank. I continue to sink. I do my best not to rise and fall with the waves, remaining immutably sunk.
The study of tai chi is not a study of what movements to make, but how to move. This is a study that moves forward by leaps and bounds interspersed with a struggling crawl. This is my tai chi.
Not that I'm not doing it wrong, just that I am incapable of understanding what it is to do it right. Unlike any other study I have subjected myself to, there is no way to impart the knowledge of what is right implicitly. A student has to evolve into understanding of what a specific set of words really means, how a demonstration of the movement or position really feels.
The study of tai chi is filled with metaphors: even the movements and positions themselves have metaphorical names like "grasp bird's tail" or "part wild horse's mane." The applications of these sequences have nothing to do with wild animals, unless that is what you consider your opponent. In class, there are repeated and varied descriptions of what it might feel like, what you might need to be imagining, what real-life experience you can attempt to replicate in order to feel the study properly. Whether it is sinking both feet into the sand, or allowing a leg full of water slowly overflow into the other leg, or that there is a string between your fingertips and knees, these metaphorical concepts eventually give way to understanding.
This is the epiphany.
I remember when I first realized what it felt like to relax my shoulders into my hips and my hips into my feet. I cherish that feeling even today, the ability to really melt between my joints and allow the earth and my body's natural structure to hold me up.
I remember when I held my arm just so, in such a way that my muscles have my brain convinced that my radius and ulna are actually bowed: this is the soft, round arm structure. My elbow has such a connection with the earth and my wrist and fingers are pushing forward and down in such a way that there is no way my arm could be a straight line between those two points: my arm is a bow and the next movement of energy is the arrow. Not that I expect this description to make sense to anyone but myself. It is just another metaphor, because there is no other way to share that feeling with you.
And what Master Alex kept telling me not to try while he challenged the hall full of seasoned practitioners to criticize each other for, this was sinking. No, not just sinking, but sinking lower. I could get closer to the ground; I could bend my knees. But only two years after that class did I experience what can only be described as sinking. I sank. I continue to sink. I do my best not to rise and fall with the waves, remaining immutably sunk.
The study of tai chi is not a study of what movements to make, but how to move. This is a study that moves forward by leaps and bounds interspersed with a struggling crawl. This is my tai chi.
08 August 2008
Purpose, as well as intention
I go to class with a scrambled mind, and leave trying to remember what I was so scrambled up about. Tai Chi is in the moment. I cannot be thinking about mowing my lawn or paying my bills and replicate a motion successfully. In fact, I can't even be thinking about the mistake I made a move ago and perform the next one with any skill. There is a lot of muscle memory involved, but you can't make your muscles remember the right thing unless you get it right in the first, second, and third places. Each correction is like a bit of spit and polish on a stone sculpture, or more accurately, a chunk of unwanted stone removed with a sharp tool, sometimes a very large sharp tool. What I get out of two hours of class is only what I put into it, so eventually everything else in the world fades away.
It's been like this since the beginning. I started taking this class because I needed the credit for my degree. I thought I'd be totally new-aged out of the idea and drop the class shortly after the mod started. Instead, this teacher, a stand in for the normal college class teacher, drug my perception of tai chi centuries into the past. I began to ache if I were late to class. I wanted that hour. I wanted the cleansing properties it scrubbed into my mind and body, the rush of getting children up, dressed, fed, out the door, off to daycare at the same time I was getting dressed, fed, out the door, and off to school--the rush being scrubbed from my memory. I left that class capable of seven-and-a-half hours of third-year literature classes. I did this two days a week. I believe it's what kept me alive. Literature classes involve a lot of brain work and without peace of mind, the mind gets lost.
I used to drag myself to class on most occasions, but I have stopped imagining that I could use the night off. Now, I try to figure out how I can have another night on.
It's been like this since the beginning. I started taking this class because I needed the credit for my degree. I thought I'd be totally new-aged out of the idea and drop the class shortly after the mod started. Instead, this teacher, a stand in for the normal college class teacher, drug my perception of tai chi centuries into the past. I began to ache if I were late to class. I wanted that hour. I wanted the cleansing properties it scrubbed into my mind and body, the rush of getting children up, dressed, fed, out the door, off to daycare at the same time I was getting dressed, fed, out the door, and off to school--the rush being scrubbed from my memory. I left that class capable of seven-and-a-half hours of third-year literature classes. I did this two days a week. I believe it's what kept me alive. Literature classes involve a lot of brain work and without peace of mind, the mind gets lost.
I used to drag myself to class on most occasions, but I have stopped imagining that I could use the night off. Now, I try to figure out how I can have another night on.
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