Mental TCC for Sleepless Bights

Editor’s Note: Warren Wolfe retired a decade ago from the Star Tribune, where he spent 20 years writing about aging and health care policy. He has been taking periodic T’ai Chi Chih classes from Linda Zelig for the past four years.

It was well past midnight in the hospital after knee-replacement surgery early last year, and I couldn’t sleep. The sleep-stealing culprit was muscle spasms firing every few minutes in my leg above my new knee, the result of a tourniquet clutching my thigh during surgery. I tried meditative deep breathing and visualizing what I could do with a chicken and an instant pot. I considered looking up quieting poetry on my phone, maybe calling a 24-hour prayer line.

Then, in a flash, I remembered a conversation with Linda Zelig, my T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) teacher. A client had found solace in the hospital by doing mental TCC. So, at 3 a.m., I started Rocking Motion, not just thinking the motions but moving my arms up and back while lying flat on my hospital bed. I was well into Daughter in the Valley when a nurse popped in.

“Are you OK? Is that some kind of meditation thing?” she asked. I explained that I was attempting mental TCC as a way to quiet my mind and my spasms. “Sounds good,” she said, “but we could ask the doctor to order a muscle relaxant for you in the morning.” Yes, tomorrow, but for now…

My spasms continued, but my brain moved to a quieter place. At last, I moved into some sort of broken sleep. That experience has stuck — especially when sleep eludes me because of too much coffee, a mind churning with life possibilities, or fussing about some trivial matter. And I used it again after my second knee-replacement last Spring.

But I have modified my mental TCC. I no longer require any movement beyond breathing to leave behind the cares of the day and into a mind at peace, and finally into sleep. Now my arms move only in my mind. But while my eyes are closed, my eyeballs actually track my mental moves, following my hands around the imagined circle of Pulling in the Energy or the ellipses of Carry the Ball to the Side.

If I find my thoughts racing when all I want is sleep, here’s what I do:

Take a few deep breaths. I usually visualize the first movement, Rocking Motion, then start “moving” through the set of motions. I can be in any position but I’m usually on my side.

Move at any speed. If I’m feeling agitated, I visualize faster movements, then notice that and consciously slow down. Sometimes I see myself alone and sometimes I’m back in class following Linda’s lead.

I notice my breathing, sometimes. The first few months, I was just simply doing the mental “motions” in search of a quiet mind and body. But after a while I noticed a pattern to my breaths: exhale as I visualized my arms moving away or upward, inhale when my arms move toward me or downward. That makes some sense: inhale as my lungs expand, exhale as they contract. So, with Push-Pull, I exhale with Push and inhale with Pull.

Posture matters. Sure, this is all happening in my mind, but sometimes I find myself mentally leaning into a movement. And I hear Linda’s gentle voice reminding me that a string is pulling my tan t’ien forward and keeping my posture erect. I check that, mentally, my shoulders are relaxed, my tailbone tucked in.

Six or nine repetitions? The answer is yes. When I started doing this mental exercise last year, I found myself doing six repetitions because I wanted to get through all the exercises before I fell asleep. But why the rush? The point was not to complete the 19 movements and one pose, but to move from a place of mental alertness to a calmer meditative state. Now I usually start doing nine repetitions. But as I relax, I often lose count or forget which motion I was doing. Then I simply pick up where I think I might have been or move on to the next motion.

I seldom complete the exercise. Sometimes I make it through Bass Drum or Daughter on the Mountaintop, sometimes into Pulling Taffy. In the scores of times that I’ve done mental TCC I remember only rarely getting to the end with Cosmic Consciousness. Once I made it well into a second set — maybe an hour or so — before I surrendered to sleep.

I don’t seek perfection. Just as when I do my physical movements in TCC at home, my mental TCC is a practice. I mentally adjust my feet, my balance, my count, or any other aberrations. The point is to move into a meditative state. Perfection simply isn’t part of the human condition.

Mental TCC doesn’t always work for me. On occasion I get up and read or play solitaire for a half hour. But that’s become increasingly rare. Typically, I move into a peaceful place, quiet and relaxed and soon to sleep. It is another blessing of TCC. Thank you, Linda.