Path of the Planets; Path of Life

On December 21st, I hosted a half-day online TCC retreat with the theme of the Winter Solstice. This event further opened my awareness of the relationship of the cyclic nature of creation and of life and to the yin-yang interplay and balance inherent in the T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) practice.

Each September and October signal the (reluctant) closing of our backyard pool, and the coming of colder days and longer nights. First there is the brilliant beauty of the changing colors of the foliage, and then the colors fade and the leaves fall to the earth to provide nourishment for the return of life the following Spring.

The Winter Solstice event, however, brings a glimmer of hope, as the earth slowly reverses it path and its slant in relationship to the sun, and the days begin to lengthen once again.

Nature’s cycle symbolizes to me the Real. The circular seasonal cycles are something that remain the same. As sure as day follows night, Spring follows the Winter. Some 15 weeks of dryness in the Northeast last Fall were finally followed by rains, and now some snow.

The TCC practice is also cyclic, and circular (elliptical). Yin becomes yang and yang becomes yin. It is not just getting all the weight onto one leg, and then the other. There are subtle moments in between, as well as the transitions in weight shifts, which are so paramount to the continuity of the practice.

When one knee finishes bending, and the other is straight, the movement is not frozen still. The arms and hands continue to cycle through the moment of transition, until the opposite weight shift begins.

It is like moving around the hairpin turn at the end of the ellipse — it’s a strongly felt transition but not an instantaneous one. The curve and continuous smooth movement provide grace and lack of effort — a flow that feels like a surrender to a natural rhythm that is greater than us as individuals.

Finally comes the realization that all of life is part of that flow. There is only One, and that is the Real. The essence of TCC is awareness. I am grateful to remember that Justin Stone’s initial newspaper advertisement to attract the very first students to his first TCC classes, used the words, “Enter the Cosmic Rhythm with T’ai Chi Chih.”