ONLY YOU CAN
LEARN
Tai-chi-Chuan
students may be very confused as they read through the pages of this and other
articles and books. Many teachers claim to be the only legitimate inheritor of
the “true teachings.” The ideas presented in one article seem to contradict
those in other articles.
Who really is
the leading Tai-chi-Chuan master today? You know very well who it is. The true
master traces its lineage back to the first single-celled organisms who began practicing Tai-chi (“The Grand Ultimate Way), even
before Chang San-feng (the legendary originator of
Tai-chi-Chuan, “The Grand Ultimate Martial Art”).
Every organism
since then has not only been practicing Tai-chi but recording its accumulated
knowledge in the “book” of biological evolution. This is a book as clear and
readable as the words on this page. Yet, if you were not familiar with the
English language, you would not be able to read these words.
The
Tai-chi-Chuan I teach is really a language course. This language is read not
only with the eyes, but the ears, the heart and with the sense of “chi.” I
don’t care if the student knows the definition of “chin”, “shen”
or “jing” and can use it in the sentence.
I’m reminded of
the elementary school joke, “Use the word, ‘pencil’ in a sentence.” “If I don’t
wear suspenders, my pencil fall down”. Too many
students are concerned with, if their pencil “fall
down.” They “jing” their way through Tai-chi-Chuan
training and trust in the belief that their teacher knows what he is talking
about.
I don’t use
Chinese words at the Long Island School of Tai-chi-Chuan and won’t discuss them
if the student brings them up. I AM impressed if a student who is a plumber
talks about Tai-chi-Chuan in terms of cleaning a sewer; if a dentist talks in
terms of filling a cavity. Then I know they “feel”- they directly experience
what they’re talking about.
So how do you
“read” nature? How can you listen to your own body? Here are a few suggested
exercises:
1. Balance the flow of chi.
Too often
“chi-gung” consists of channeling the flow of the internal energy within the
body before it is balanced with the environment. This not only can cause severe
health and emotional problems but can also prevent you from using chi to sense
the flow of energy around you.
You are balanced
when the flow of energy out of the body (spherically) is equal to the flow of
energy into the body. In this state, the “chakras” (energy valves) work at
their best.
To achieve this,
just remember how it feels when you place your complete attention on something
you are enthralled with. It may be an activity, a person, a beautiful scene,
smell or sound. Then remember how it feels when you are not paying attention at
all. You may be tired or just uninterested in what you are doing. Take these as
the two extremes of the direction of the flow of your attention. (Notice that I
have tied “chi” intricately to attention).
Practice paying
full attention to something you love (music?) and notice how that feels at your
tan-tien (dantien), along
the spine and at the surface of your skin.
Than catch
yourself when you just don’t feel like paying attention to anything - when you
feel like you’ve “just had it” for the day. But this time, do pay attention
(again) to the tan-tien, spine and skin. Notice the
difference.
Practice
evening out the flow of attention so that it is somewhere between these two
extremes. You will
feel like a balloon that is filled with air just before the point that the
rubber begins to stretch. This will allow you to become very quiet inside.
When your energy
is still and even, it can be used as an energy sense. We live in an energy
environment as complex as our physical environment. If there were constant
flashes of light in our eyes, we would not be able to see.
In a similar
way, if the flow of chi between us and the environment is twisted and
disrupted, we cannot perceive the complexity of our energy environment.
Once this
evenness is achieved, then you won’t need to ask about chin, shen and jing because you will
directly perceive what is going on. If you are a martial artist, you might
describe it in fighting terms.
I must point out
that I am not against learning chi-gung on an intellectual level, for that
provides a framework for understanding. The problem is that too many students
(and teachers) take the intellectual description for the thing itself.
The old Chinese
Zen teachers were known to smack students who asked intellectual questions.
While I don’t do this myself, I feel like doing it all the time. It is too easy
to get caught up in “knowing the facts” about chi. Being clever is not the path
to inner development.
2. Develop the
resolution of the sense of chi.
It is difficult
to work with your own attention because, to a large extent, we are the slaves
of those forces that distract our attention. To relax, we usually must seek a
place where there are no distractions.
In this way, we
try to relax by controlling external conditions. To develop the sense of chi,
we must deal with attention head on. This means that our energy must be smooth
and even under any conditions.
Yet what then
would be dealing with attention. Isn’t attention the core of what we are? This
is another extensive subject, “the elements.” To put it
simply, there several “parts” to a living creature. What we are doing is
to balance those parts (e.g., the body, will, mind, emotions, creativity and
attention).
The Passive
Observer:
To begin this
exercise, allow your attention to move to whatever distracts it, however
frequently (even if many times per second). Do not latch onto anything the
attention moves to but allow it to keep switching. (Semantics becomes awkward
here. It is misleading to refer to attention as “it” but please allow this
license in the use of language).
You may notice
that 1. The attention jumps very rapidly from one thing to another and that 2.
It is very difficult not to latch onto things (whether sensory perceptions,
thought, physical and emotional feelings, etc.) Perhaps there is a fear of
letting go of the attention — a fear of losing (or loosening) one’s mind.
This shows that
“will” (centered in the tan-tien) is weak. If you are
centered, if everything sinks to the
tan-tien,
then this fear lessens. It is really a fear of becoming even more unbalanced.
The more you sink into the tan-tien, the more relaxed
attention will become.
Jumpy attention
is usually due to an imbalance in favor of the thinking process which seizes
and guards attention. We are literally releasing the gripping fingers of the
thinking process and allowing attention to permeate our whole being.
This exercise
will result in being able to perceive changes in your surroundings many times
per second (very useful in fighting). You will notice tiny details in your
physical surroundings as well as in your own behavior patterns.
This will allow
you to discover the sources of patterns in your life. You will understand how
“things always seem to happen to you.” You will be able to concentrate on
individual muscles and nerves in your body and be able to detect intricacies in
the balance and intentions of your push hands or fighting partner. Your rate of
progress will increase rapidly.
3. Allow
attention to fill the whole body as water moistens and softens dry earth.
Think about the
implications of this statement. This does not mean “pushing your concentration
into your body,” but relaxing and allowing attention to sink and permeate into
every crack and crevice.
Your awareness
will move into the body all by itself. Information about your body will come
back to you just as liquid will run up a pipette by capillary action. (A
pipette is a glass tube with a very narrow hollow core). There is no effort
involved in this. In fact, if you exert effort, you will muddy up that flow of
information.
Where does this
information flow to? It flows to the tan-tien and
Body-mind. It is interpreted by the Body-mind, not by the thinking mind. The
thinking mind only translates into words the information analyzed by the
Body-mind which sits at the tan-tien.
This processing
of information is at a more rapid pace than thinking. We humans are capable of
21 separate perceptions per second. This is why film must be shown at least 22
frames per second to give the illusion of fluid motion. Twenty-one times per
second is quick enough to roughly perceive the tan-tien’s
information.
We must use
breath to allow attention to sink down to the body. Choose a particular muscle
or spot within the body on which to concentrate. Breathe in fully and, as you
breathe out, allow your mind to relax.
Concentrate on
the particular spot you chose until your breath is fully out. As you breathe
in, slowly re-direct your attention to the scenery around you. As you breathe
out again, slowly direct your attention towards that spot and so on until this
process comes naturally.
You may indeed
feel like the tip of a pipette reaches down to touch the spot. Your attention
must flow smoothly down to the spot along with the breath.
Under no circumstances
should you “grab” the spot with your attention but rather, allow attention to
settle down onto it of its own accord. Under no circumstances try to pull or
draw perceptions “from the spot” but allow those perceptions to flow up as they
may.
Your job is to
allow the tip of the “pipette” to settle down to touch the spot on the
out-breath. It is the satisfying feeling of that touch which is important.
Soon you will
develop the ability to “touch” several spots on the out-breath, with finer and
finer “pipettes” Then your attention will fill all spots during both the
out-breath and in-breath. Each cell of the body will be like the invigorated
moist earth, which can grow fine crops of creativity.
4. Allow
attention to fill your environment.
Now that the
body is filled evenly with attention, it is time to fill the
“rest of your body” with attention. This refers to your
entire environment.
The skin is not
a real boundary to chi, yet allowing attention out of the body can be a fearful
experience as mentioned before. This is ultimately the fear of re-joining the
separated parts of yourself so that you don’t feel like an isolated individual
anymore. (This re-uniting experience is referred to as “the little death” in
some cultures).
The world around
you will no longer seem like the “place in which you live.” You and the “place”
will become one organism. Then you will realize what an impact our modern
industrialized world has had on the greater “you”. And that’s a sad thing to
realize. But isn’t it better to be whole and aware than divided and oblivious?
At the Long
Island School of Tai-chi-Chuan, we practice pulsing
our attention into the environment. This allows us to feel this connection
vividly and convincingly.
Breathe out and
concentrate on the tan-tien. As you breathe in, allow
your attention to expand spherically (and at a SMOOTH PACE!) to the surface of
the skin. This may take some practice. You may feel tingling sensation on your
entire surface. (Remember to concentrate on the back as well as the front).
The moment
between inhalation and exhalation is very important. Keep inhaling (or
attempting to if you are at the apex of the in-breath) until you feel an extra
little breath sneak into your lungs. Immediately after that, you will exhale.
As that extra
little breath comes in, allow part of your attention to move out beyond the
surface of the skin and “evaporate” spherically. This is the part of the
attention that expanded with the in-breath to the surface of the skin.
The momentum of
the expanding attention allows it to move out of the body into the environment.
I refer to this as the “momentum of the breath” because the attention followed
the expanding breath.
As you breath out, let go of that part of the attention so that it
can be released into the environment. It passes through the skin like a wave
passing through a screen.
At the same time
the central part of your attention will sink back down to the tan-tien as you breathe out.
This is a
mechanical description of the first step in re-uniting with the world around
you. You may ask, “But how do I do these things? Give me more instructions.”
The answer is that you must get more instructions, not from me, but from that
greatest master I mentioned earlier - the one inside yourself.
There is an
element of trust in this. You must trust that your body and attention know all
about this “game” and that once you start playing it, your internal teacher
will come to the rescue.
Use my words
just as a guideline. Let go of the idea that you are a helpless clod whose hand
must be held every step of the way by an “expert”.
The exercises
listed here are very safe. They are natural and in keeping with the way your
body and attention work. There is no attempt here to twist or warp that natural
mechanism.
When your
attention is able to flow outward and “touch” the environment, you will find
that information flows back along with it, through your skin and again, back to
the tan-tien.
The
integration of this environmental information with that of the body (brought up
by the “pipettes”) is the basis of Taoist philosophy. If you don’t directly experience this
integration of nature’s information, then the philosophy will seem like just,
well. . . Philosophy.
In reality, it
is a concrete description of the mechanics of nature - including our own
nature.
These exercises
are designed to allow this natural process to take place in such a way that you
can perceive it.
The job of a
true teacher is not to tell you how it is, but to ask you what you see. So when
you read a Tai-chi article, view it as one would a painting.
It is a
description of an internal experience merging with the perception of the
artist’s surroundings. The painting represents that meeting of the internal and
external where true learning takes place — the Body-mind.
An article is
just like that. Read it with your gut to allow your Body-mind and the author’s
Body-mind to merge. Read it as an equal, as a fellow participant in life.