A Balanced Life or a Balanced Perspective?

Over the course of the past few weeks, while I’ve been contemplating the subject of “balance,” I have been literally bombarded with messages about “balance” from a number of sources. I continue to feel awe at how ideas and information will find you if you are open to them.

Balance is something that everyone says they want. I’ve always blithely assumed that a balanced life is primarily what I seek. But this week, it came to me that a “balanced” life, by definition, won’t be an easy or happy life. It will have love and heartache, sweetness and bitterness, ease and disease, pleasure and pain, birth and death…. Honestly, I had to admit that I didn’t really desire a “balanced life.” I have actually spent quite a bit of energy trying to “tip the balance” of life in favor of the good and happy stuff. So I stepped back and came to the conclusion that Life would balance itself, regardless of my efforts, and I would have to accept the outcome. Instead, I could seek to have a balanced reaction/non-reaction to life whatever it brought me (or appeared to bring me.) Accordingly, T’ai Chi Chih has not and will not “balance” my life. I do believe, however, that regular practice of TCC will help bring my reactions to my life experience into balance.

When TCC students ask me how the practice has helped me and how it will help them, I say, “Well … it depends what kind of help you actually need at any given moment and how open you are to that help.” In one class I have a student who says the practice energizes him; next to him is another student who says TCC relaxes her. How can we explain these different reactions except to say that TCC is balancing each person’s internal energy in an individual manner? How can I explain that many students go home from class beaming with happiness, but that just recently, another student burst out crying while thanking me at the end of an introductory class? In my experience it is best to have no specific requests of or desires for TCC, so that one is free to accept whatever the practice brings.

Merging Balance & Bird Flaps Its Wings

By Hannah Hedrick, Mountain View, HI

As an Aries who tends towards extremes, “balance” in all its ambiguities is a daily challenge. “Improved balance” is the T’ai Chi Chih benefit I cite most frequently from my practice. For me, using TCC to bring my body and mind toward balance creates a greater sense of spiritual balance.

Bird Flaps Its Wings is frequently described primarily as a “warm-up movement,” but I have experienced unexpected benefits from Bird Flaps Its Wings. I have thought several times about sharing via The Vital Force, so I appreciate this invitation.

Spending too much time at the computer was causing my forearms to go into spasm; hand and arm pain would awaken me several times at night. I noticed that my symptoms were relieved very early in my TCC practice, after Rocking Motion and Bird Flaps Its Wings. So for a couple of days, I did only Rocking Motion and Bird Flaps Its Wings for 15 minutes twice a day, observing the gentle wrist rotations while doing them with as little effort as possible. My nighttime symptoms were notably reduced.

Previously, I focused my Bird Flaps Its Wings awareness on releasing the sitting bones down toward the heels as the heels peel effortlessly off the ground, keeping the weight relaxing down into the balls of the feet without feeling pressure in my knees. I consciously relaxed my pelvic girdle to reduce lower back tension.

I now pay equal attention to relaxing my shoulders and shoulder blades, as well as the muscles across the tops of my shoulders and the top of the front chest. I then perform the wrist circles with as little effort as possible, observing how this simple movement reduces tension and enhances energy flow in the shoulders, spine, and hips. I feel grounded and “balanced” and prepared to do the rest of the TCC movements with TEH! Warm Aloha.