Getting Quiet & Sharing The Feeling

When I started to learn T’ai Chi Chih in 1976, my first teacher, Helen Brungardt Pope, asked us to share what we had learned from our practice. She wasn’t talking about where to put our hands and feet. She wanted to know what we had experienced from doing the movements. I didn’t really know what to say because I would simply become quiet during the practice. Although this by itself was amazing, I didn’t know exactly how amazing it really was. You see, before learning TCC my mind whirred like a blender. It was continually spinning and going nowhere. During my practice, though, everything was quiet. The more I continued my practice, the more that “quiet” began to be part of my daily life.

From the beginning Helen’s question was very important because it made me notice what I was experiencing. This continues to the present day. This question has affected everything, including what my hands and feet are doing. Is there softness in the wrists? (This softness allows the energy to flow onward to my hands and then circulate to the rest of my body.) Can I feel what my feet are doing – from the planting, to the shifting of the weight, to the bubbling of the springs beneath my feet? Each part opens me to the full expression of my being within the body, but not in a floating way. Floating takes place outside of the body. Experiencing it within the body takes strength, courage, and freedom; it’s what makes it possible to have a healthy body. By doing TCC correctly, a priest in Justin’s class was even able to regain his sense of smell.

Doing the hip swivel in the side-to-side movements is monumentally different than doing the movements in a stiff, straight-across, turn-the-waist-with-no-elliptical-motion way. The elliptical motion opens up the tan t’ien so that we can experience its roundness and its actual motion; we can experience it as part of our being. This motion is the natural flow of life; it is circular. When I asked myself, “What is happening in the tan t’ien?” I would experience a warm nebulous feeling. Now, though, I can feel the turning that naturally occurs all the time. Now it has become dynamic during my practice. It is what is teaching us to love and share the Chi.