Thinking & the Mind

According to Taoist Master Waysun Liao, “Thinking is wasteful.” Or, in the wise words of our beloved T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) teacher trainer, April Leffler, “When I think in TCC I stink in TCC.”

In TCC we speak of harmonizing body, mind, and spirit. I get the body and spirit part, but I have been struggling with the mind part. We are not supposed to be thinking during our practice but at the same time we must use our mind. So, what does that mean?

We are thinking all the time, but most of it is very small stuff. We are thinking 10,000 things, most of which are not right, not real, not helpful. Our minds are not well if they are anxious, fearful, jealous, angry. We let the monkey mind take over. We become our own worst enemies. We must put that monkey in its cage and learn to discipline the mind in our TCC practice. But how do we do that?

The universe (God) has given us the ability to think. Our power comes from our ability to think, not what we are thinking. We must train our minds to think large, to connect with the universe, with God, instead of thinking so small. But again, how do we do that?

We slow down. We turn our minds back to feeling. We train our minds to focus on what we are feeling in our TCC practice inch by inch, moment by moment. We train our minds to focus on what is happening in the soles of the feet.

We must be calm to really feel. We take baby steps to really feel things as we move. When we feel the right side is heavy then we shift that to the left. When we feel the left side is heavy, we shift to the right. We move away from heavy to light. We keep yielding. And we focus the mind on feeling that shift every millimeter of the way.

Little by little more awareness comes up. We cultivate that awareness. We grow it. We start to change, layer by layer. We are now beginning to learn to focus the mind where we want it to go, to harmonize the mind with the body and spirit. Learning to connect back to the real self through training the mind is our true power. Now we start to get the real benefits of TCC practice.