Feeling The Chi

There have been questions regarding what it means to “stay grounded” or “stay in our feet.” When Justin taught, he was always grounded and he stayed in his feet.

Justin would say, “You can feel a lot of Chi as you loosen your waist” and “Did you feel that?” He spoke from his experience of feeling the Chi in that moment of teaching. Some students would nod in agreement, others wouldn’t. Even though we were all accredited teachers, we didn’t all feel the Chi. Imagining it wasn’t enough. In fact, imagining it often got in the way because it activated the thinking mind and removed us from our feeling nature.

First and foremost, Justin was interested in our experiences, not in what we were thinking. He once told the story of a very fine person, a professor at the university, who couldn’t learn the T’ai Chi Chih movements. He added, “It wasn’t that he wasn’t smart enough, but he was so much in his head that he couldn’t feel the movements.” When we do the same, the result is the same. When trying to figure out the movements, our minds are activated rather than our bodies. We end up moving in a jerky manner because every inch of movement is analyzed rather than felt. Justin wasn’t against mental intelligence, quite the contrary (he was quite intelligent); but it did not rule his body or his life experience. His movements flowed – because he felt the Chi.

Justin also said, “The movements are not start, stop, start, stop; where is the flow in that?” Some interpreted that to mean the movements were supposed to be connected, without any stopping. That was (and is) not the case. Continuity is about moving into a deeper understanding of life. The feeling is that life is as it has always been – and that we are timeless. The feeling is that even though we are standing perfectly still, life is gloriously flowing in and through us. “No one is doing anything. T’ai Chi (Supreme Ultimate) is doing T’ai Chi.” Many heard Justin describe his experience of doing TCC in a Japanese garden with those words. How many of us have felt it?

What’s the result of bringing our feeling nature into our practice? We bring forth beauty and health. Wholeness is always beautiful. As we allow our body to feel, we learn to love and share the Chi.