Meditation or Medication?, by Carmen L Brocklehurst (August 2023)

In Justin Stone’s Meditation for Healing, T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) is given its own chapter. Justin always referred to TCC as a moving meditation. And he often referred to his Zen studies and showed similarities between TCC and Zen — especially the transmission of Chi, the healing energy that comes from practicing both. Chi is highly regarded in Eastern cultures and is now also regularly discussed here in the West.

Lately, pharmaceutical companies have gone looking for their main ingredients in India, Brazil, Africa, etc. Foreign ingredients are not thought of as strange. We have become more open to thinking that it is okay for our medications — many natural — to come from other parts of the world, especially as we learn they are helpful. We have become better about sharing our good and goods with others. 

Sometimes our medicines do not come in pill form, but rather in the form of movement such as TCC, Kinhin (slow walking practiced during long Zen meditation sessions), yoga, and others. When I started my career as a primary school teacher, my doctor suggested I needed a way to let go of stress. Teachers are famous for working long hours, including summers when they are teaching summer courses, helping with remedial classes, and taking courses to remain current with teaching techniques. I took a sitting meditation class, and then was introduced to TCC.

My Albuquerque teacher, Helen Brungardt Pope (who had just become accredited in the second TCC teacher training class in 1975), said she was including TCC in our sitting meditation course to help keep us healthy. It has been most valuable. TCC has given me a way to address the need for physical movement (as computers keep us sitting too much) and a way to release stress by initiating the balance and flow of Chi. The movements are so simple that it often takes years to realize the good that comes from this moving meditation — and that as a medication it is very helpful. In this case, meditation and medication come together. Several students have had serious medical issues and watched the efficacy of TCC. As stress released, it allowed the body space to heal. Mental problems caused from the seriousness of the illness also required and received a healing. It required a way to learn to love and share the Chi. 

Getting Quiet & Sharing the Feeling

Editor’s Note: TCC teacher Lisa Stroyan unearthed this February 2009 article by Carmen through a Google search; she’s loving Google searches for finding interesting articles in older issues of the Vital Force.

When I started to learn T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) 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 had 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’s what teaches us to love and share the Chi.