TCC When You Can’t Move

I’m sitting still right now and not moving a muscle. As a passenger on the North Jersey Coast Line, I’m moving at 50 mph as the train travels through miles of small shoreline towns, until the scenery becomes more urban and the train slides through the tunnel under the Hudson River to deposit its commuters at Manhattan’s Penn Station. I have been on the train for two hours, and while still not moving my person, I’ve been moving steadily along.

It reminds me of two occasions that I’ve done T’ai Chi Chih when I couldn’t move. Once I was in a car; another time, I was in a hospital.

I was sitting anxiously in a parking lot as part of a police sting. The local police had asked me to participate in order to retrieve my Apple laptop computer stolen from an unattended grocery cart. The story has many twists and turns, so I’ll fast forward: I was to meet the thief (a teenager with a drug problem) at his chosen location, where he was going to reap the “reward” he needed for returning the stolen computer. I was raised as a policeman’s son and, at age 65, this meeting felt more of a lark than anything else. Yet as the time approached, I realized that a lot could go wrong no matter how benign the situation seemed. My anxiety rose. And rose. My face felt hot and I knew I was turning red. My hands trembled. My breathing was fast. I figured the minute the kid saw me he’d know something was wrong, and then who knew what could happen. One of us was bound to do something foolish.

Earlier, when I’d asked the police if he was likely to be carrying a knife or worse, they laughed and said, “No, he is a knucklehead.” Suddenly, this cavalier attitude seemed ominous. I thought I was going to have to ask the lead detective – sitting in one of three unmarked cars scattered around the parking lot – to call the whole thing off.

As I sat waiting, anxious and red in the face, I started going over TCC’s 19 movements as a distraction. I’d recently started studying with Daniel Pienciak, and had been conscientiously memorizing the names of the movements. When I got to Six Healing Sounds, I found myself vocalizing the sounds as I sat in the car. An instant wave of calmness came over me. I repeated the sounds, again and again. When my cell phone rang and it was the kid saying he was on his way, I was perfectly calm. As it turned out we never had to meet face-to-face as the police arrested him as he walked with the computer under his arm through the parking lot. Then, almost as an afterthought, they signaled for me to meet them back at the police station.

The following week, Daniel and I talked about the possibilities of utilizing TCC when one can’t actually move. I remembered preparing for a tennis match by closing my eyes and going over my strategies, picturing a perfect backhand, a perfect serve. A few months later, I did something similar with TCC, though in a far different setting.

I’d just been wheeled into my hospital room after a five-and-a-half-hour heart procedure, which involved working on my heart through a catheterization process to cauterize heart cells causing intense atrial fibrillation. I was still feeling the effects of the anesthesia, but wanted to get up and around as soon as possible. I was kind of swaddled in blankets as I was put into the bed and couldn’t move my feet or arms. I could, however, say the Six Healing Sounds softly.

Within minutes I was imagining the whole practice, visualizing each movement, and eventually also making micro movements with my toes and fingers. I also emphasized the “Ho” (for heart) sound as I lay there, repeating it many times. When an orderly came into the room, I asked him to “unswaddle me” and help me stand. With the friendly orderly spotting me, I took slow laps around the corridor, surprising some nurses at their central station. What a confidence builder that was. I have no doubt that visualizing the movements and vocalizing Six Healing Sounds contributed to my rapid recovery.

Follow-up: The teenager attended an alternative-to-sentencing program, which I advocated. A year later his probation officer said he’d done very well and was about to graduate. I needed a second heart catheter ablation three months after the first one, and I envisioned a full TCC practice in the same way. I recovered even faster. The next morning I hailed a cab from the hospital to the train station. Then home, again, on the Jersey Coast line.