When T’ai Chi Chih Feels Like New

How strange, I told myself through a rising tide of panic, this is the year 1999, isn’t it? I have been doing T’ai Chi Chih for nine years, haven’t I? At the T’ai Chi Chih Teachers’ Conference in St. Paul this past August, my T’ai Chi Chih practice suddenly seemed awkward, off balance, almost like I had never done it before. On Friday morning it was pointed out to me that my movements had become small, contracted. Oh no! So after breakfast I focused on extending them more fully. But just when I was feeling OK, all better, everything is fixed, another correction came unexpectedly from another source. Amid dismay and confusion I asked Ed for help on a small (so I thought) point. You’re using outer strength to move the arms, do you see? You’re not waiting, letting the weight shift move them, he said. I felt stupidly floored, aghast: I’m not what? I’m not waiting for the weight shift!? But what do you mean! I’m a patient person! I always wait! (Ha.)

I rallied and studied Ed in subsequent practices, and still felt uneasy and off-balance throughout the next two days. Sunday morning’s practice finally felt something like smooth, and I breathed a sigh of relief-thank God, it’s all fixed—my T’ai Chi Chih “has returned.” Then another observation after breakfast set me flailing and floundering again: It looks like you’re holding back, a teacher said. But I fixed that, I wanted to protest. Everything’s all better now! It was then I began to realize that:

1) I can’t “fix” anything; I have to get out of the way and do T’ai Chi Chih;

2) These vashanas that are surfacing in my practice and my life are not going to change immediately—certainly not in a couple of days (i.e., I must watch and wait);

3) It is no accident that my practice suddenly seems off balance and awkward right now; big outer changes have happened in the last few months for me, including moving out-of-state, buying a house, and changing jobs/career. The general “upheaval” outside is connected to upheavals inside, and even if the outer upheavals are wanted, they don’t come without unexpected inner ones. Or, as my high school English teacher used to quote from someone famous: there is no fine art to suppression—if you suppress one thing, you suppress all. Perhaps it could also be said that there is no fine art to change—if you change one thing, you change all.

Nevertheless, from teaching high school and from my generally quiet demeanor, I’ve always considered myself a fairly patient person, so Ed’s comment about my lack of waiting took me by surprise. Combined with the other corrections, his words started a reexamination of my movements, and, without any stretching of the imagination, a reexamination of the reflection of my practice in my life—and/or the perpetuation of qualities in my life from my practice (which came first?). I have come to understand more clearly that, faced with changes or unfamiliar situations, I tend to withdraw (not a new understanding, just discovered anew.) I have understood more clearly that holding back = holding on. I see that I reach for outer strength automatically, and as Ed said to us over and over at the conference, if you are relying on your own outer strength, you’re missing out.

WWW = Watching & Waiting for the Weight shift

My practice now feels deeper than it ever has, still off balance at times, but with a noticeable growth in flow and softness. Of course, it all comes back to the doing of the movements, not all these words in this article or any amount of thinking. Letting the arms wait for the weight shift to happen has opened my practice tremendously, made it feel deeper and more flowing. While moving there are more and more moments when it seems that no one is doing anything. Letting my weight shift happen fully (and letting this fullness be reflected in the arms, without effort) has deepened the softness and letting go, so my T’ai Chi Chih looks “bigger” than it did before but it contains less, or feels emptier. (Ironically enough, in recent months preceding the conference, I thought I was letting go by not extending fully—ah, the limitations of the thinking mind.) Perhaps the best part is that my mind is quieter because it is absorbed by WWW (see above.) Lately I have been doing my morning practice in front of a big mirror in our new house, so I can watch to see if the body there matches what I saw Ed doing up in front of us all in St. Paul. It feels truly like T’ai Chi Chih is teaching T’ai Chi Chih! But really I have Justin, Ed, Noel, Carmen, and Lois to thank. Thank you.