Watch Your TCC Practice

Have you ever felt you were rushing around – so caught up in getting from point A to point B, C … and Z – that you lost sight of experiencing life? What can you do to change this feeling? The answer is simple: Watch yourself.

Traveling across town (or across the world) usually involves stresses. Sure, we get to our destination, but did we see the scenery along the way, talk to anyone, enjoy the ride? Probably not. We get so caught up in getting there that we fail to notice the world, its people or the journey. Such is life lived in the fast lane.

We notice others rushing, worried, irritated; in them we see a reflection of ourselves. We notice children laughing, playing, being joyous; through them remember what we’re missing. As others zoom by, ground yourself within your T’ai Chi Chih movements. Throughout your movements, watch with as much awareness as you can.

Watch from the soles of your feet. Feel the grass between your toes. Observe the daughters traveling from the mountaintop and into the valley. Breathe your joyous breath in and out and in again. Watch your stress melt away with each passing cloud, as clouds lazily watch you back. Settle into rest, and experience Cosmic Consciousness in the ever-changing moment of now.

We do TCC because it improves our lives. Cloudy minds are best cleared when tuned-in to the present moment. Move quietly in meditation. Think of no-thing. Be here. Be now. Thoughts will come bubbling up from our stillness. In watching them settle, we can learn more about ourselves than when we rush to take action.

Watch what happens when you step outside yourself and observe your practice. Act as an observer. When self-doubts, self-criticisms, rationalizations and fears arise, realize that they are all illusions; learn to let them go. You see desires and realize the hold they have over you. And in doing so, you realize that you can make them powerless – by quietly moving in stillness, watching them and not acting on those desires.

By watching as we move in meditation, we come to know our true selves. And as we know from the observer effect in physics, the act of watching changes what we watch. Taking a few minutes everyday, to move with awareness in meditation, will change your life.