Inspiration from My Practice and Insight from Mother Nature

Gale Portman and the conference committee asked me to speak about “Inspiring Your Practice From Within — How Does Your T’ai Chi Chih Practice Inspire Your Teaching” for the 2004 Conference in St. Louis this summer. At the request of Kathy Grassel and other attendees I have submitted the exact text of my presentation as follows. Hope you enjoy it.

I had just hung up the phone after one of several conversations with Gale Portman. I stood leaning against the doorjamb of my back bedroom. I was gazing out of the window past the lemon tree into the space beyond. I was contemplating the question at hand, “How does my T’ai Chi Chih practice inspire my teaching?”

At that moment, a beautiful little hummingbird flew into the lemon tree and was hovering from blossom to blossom drinking the nectar. And I thought, of course, the hummingbird represents JOY in Native American medicine. It’s the JOY of T’ai Chi Chih that inspires me from within. Suddenly the hummingbird flew to the open window, hovered there momentarily looking directly at me as if to say, “Yes, Athene, this message is for you.”

As he flew off, I saw that the inspiration from my T’ai Chi Chih practice is in the joy of exploration, the joy of discovery, the joy of sharing, and the joy and bliss of flowing on the river of chi that comes of simply “Letting Go.”

I stood at the open window feeling warm all over from the strong presence of Mother Nature and these lovely thoughts. I heard the cries of my hawks, a mother and son that have been residing in my Oak tree. First from the mother hawk came the full-bodied experienced cry and then from her teenage son came a perfectly echoing cry, but it had the sound of youth and inexperience.

I had witnessed for weeks now, these patient lessons of mother to son of their amazingly varied calls. And I thought of course, it’s the fullness and depth of my own T’ai Chi Chih practice that I bring to my students that they might first echo my experience and then fly on their own.

How fitting I should hear the hawks just now, I thought, as hawks in Native American medicine represent the messenger. Hawk medicine teaches us to be observant and to pay attention to the signals.

Isn’t that what I’m doing in my T’ai Chi Chih practice and when teaching? I’m constantly observing myself and my students moving—flowing. I’m constantly paying attention to the signals that tell me, “Hey, there’s something here that you need to let go of so that you can flow more softly.”

One message was loud and clear after my accreditation and that was that my journey was just beginning. The next four years became a journey of exploring and discovering at conferences, workshops, auditing trainings, a retreat, an intensive and a weekly continuing class where I attend as an eager student.

During this time I have made many refinements. The symptoms have been varied, but they have always pointed back to one cause—the hips: the hips not moving fully and freely.

While auditing the teacher training in Canada, I had a very profound experience when I recognized a lifetime pattern of holding my hips tightly tucked under. Auditing a teacher training in New Jersey, I unleashed a waterfall of tears as my hips moved just a little more completely in forward and back weight shift. I discovered an emotional pattern existed there within that extra little bit of weight shift and that pattern was that I didn’t want to go there!

Auditing at the Chicago teacher training and attending the Santa Barbara intensive, I discovered a more complete side-to-side weight shift. I found myself shifting into space that I had no idea existed before. (Are you beginning to wonder as I did, how did I ever get accredited? Beats me.) That little bit of space had no reality for me before. Now, shifting to the right felt great but shifting to the left into to that little extra bit of space was like trying to pull a rat from a cat’s mouth. It just didn’t want to let go!

Do you know that there’s a flip side to Hawk medicine? That aspect is when you shut down your powers of observation and allow your emotions to override your perceptions.

I believe this left side issue was tied into patterns on many levels and also to a broken leg experience of 20 years ago. Hmm. It’s true that I had clouded vision about this issue and couldn’t see the solution, and it’s true that I really wanted to know how to solve the problem, but I can’t help thinking that the Universe could have perhaps found a more gentle way to get the message across. For I proceeded to break my baby toe on the left foot. I was then forced to walk for four weeks rotating the weight to the inside of my left foot. As a result I was forced to awareness of a whole restrictive movement pattern in my left hip. And in the end, I was forced to establish new movement patterns throughout the pelvic girdle and out into the whole body. Wow! That was some message. Or, was there a bigger one?

Over time, these experiences have brought change and evolution to my personal life and to my teaching. But as with the eye of the hawk and his higher vision and greater perspective, a more encompassing awareness began to emerge. Was the observing being done now more with the inner eye? And were the signals pointing to messages on another level?

Now in my students, I could see patterns just as I had seen them in myself—patterns of resistance, patterns of fear, emotional patterns, mental patterns, patterns of denial, patterns of protection, patterns of which they were unaware, patterns in which they were locked.

Now, not only did I see the students not shifting the weight all the way forward but I saw a pattern of fear—a pattern of protectiveness around the knee and a pattern of reluctance to be fully present in the forward weight shift. It turns out that this student had an old knee injury. Now, not only did I see a student’s hips tucked in tight, but also I saw a pattern of restriction that was being reflected in their whole practice. And when I saw big arms and fancy hands I looked past that and saw their fear and resistance to being in the lower part of their body.

Most of this is left unspoken. But by observing these signals, these patterns, I believe that my understanding is deeper—the message is more complete. And it has enhanced greatly my ability to assist my students toward our goal of “letting go” and “flowing softly” from the center.

Standing at the window, I was filled with gratitude for these insights. I thanked my hummingbird and my little hawks. And I thanked Mother Nature for these moments of reflection.