Wherever You Go, There You Are

I like to go places. Weekends away. Long vacations. Working trips where I might go to an artists’ residency and write, semi-secluded for a month. I pack lightly. All the usual stuff—including a thin, foldable yoga mat. Some years back I always stuffed one of those stretchy resistance bands into my bag and either a Jazzercise DVD or a yoga DVD. While the yoga mat sometimes got unfolded, the exercise bands and the Jazzercise DVD never once made it out of my bag. T’ai Chi Chih, I’ve found, is far more portable that any of the above, and it requires neither packing nor unpacking.

TCC requires only the willingness to practice. It can be done outside or inside, with shoes or without, in hot weather or cold weather, on land or at sea—and even inside your head, belted into an airplane seat. In recent years I’ve practiced TCC on the rim of the Grand Canyon, and below sea level on the salt flats at Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park. I’ve practiced in writer’s studios overlooking the Gihon River in Vermont, a meadow in rural Virginia, and a snowy hillside in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I’ve practiced in my brother’s double-wide at a mobile home park in Maryland with two curious cats looking on, and in a fancy Las Vegas hotel room. All I had to do was get on my feet and remember what Justin said, “The best times to practice TCC are when you feel like it and when you don’t.”

It takes recurring effort to establish a habit, and it took time for me to establish my daily TCC practice. I want to say that my personal practice has been a daily devotion for years, but that’s only half true. Sometimes the devotion only happens in my mind, and in reality I’m lying in bed with pneumonia, or broken ribs, or I’m too busy packing and unpacking a billion boxes for my move from California to Minnesota. But once we’ve made the effort to trench the groove of a daily practice, we will come back to it. The Chi, it seems to me, quite literally calls to us, and it knows where we are.

A decade ago when I took my daughter to college I marveled at how lightly her generation traveled. No cumbersome stereo and milk crates of vinyl albums. No boxy portable TV. She had an iPod, a phone and a laptop. Nowadays we can get by with just a smart phone if need be. And when I go places, now that I have TCC, I can get by without the exercise equipment and videos. TCC is the invisible smart phone of practices.

Funny thing about the yoga mat though. Over the past several months, I’ve developed a daily home yoga practice—which I credit to the energy and discipline of practicing TCC. So I’ll still need to pack that folding yoga mat.

let

go let

go let go

let go let go

let go let

go let

go

~~ Jeneth

Pyramid Poems From The Silence

we

are in

sweet silence

energy is

everywhere

comforting

smiling

home

~~ J.N.

mind

contains

connection

communicate

silently

without

words

~~ Anon

in

silence

I am still

quiet searching

deep within

coming

peace

~~ Pauline Quimson-Miller

still

silent

joyfully

alive aware

allowing

quiet

peace

~~ MR

so

quiet

speaking voice

stillness abounds

inner truth

does come

forth

~~ JK Veerkamp

my

mouth closed

quiet eyes

heart filled with peace

turned inward

smile now

joy

~~ Kristin Clark Taylor

be

quiet

listen to

stillness inside

moving me

towards

peace

~~ MW

no

one spoke

struggled can’t

communicate

I could not

say a

word

~~ Jeannette Stotts

when

I am

most silent

I hear my world

most clearly

I hear

God

~~ Benj Brisjar

feel

silence

knowing truth

go within and

stay grounded

connect

love

~~ Judy

time

to let

go of the

past and to know

that joyful

is the

now

~~ DW

love

new friends

precious and

in our silence

together

we are

one

~~ Paula H.