Do not uproot your heels.
Any movement which would necessitate lifting the rear heel is
improperly large.
Any range of movement is acceptable, so long as the rear heel remains rooted to the ground.
This is simple, but many people never notice their inattentiveness taking over and it takes Intention to truly benefit from TaiChi.
If you know you are making mistakes in your Practice, then it is a guarantee that you are making progress.
*I don’t like that phrase, but it is very popular.
There are flashy styles and approaches to Taijiquan.
There are styles which favor subtlety.
The former are like large, impressive yachts.
The latter, like a simple fishing boat.
No matter how fantastic and expensive the yacht, it doesn’t fulfill its function without the water.
The styles of Taijiquan are like different types of watercraft.
Each has unique traits, essential to their essence.
A raft is not the same as a yacht.
Yet it is water which makes each truly functional.
The TaiChi principles are the key to any style of Taijiquan.
It does not matter which style you study, perfect, or prefer-
so long as the TaiChi principle is your true objective.
The TaiChi principle is like water.
If you have the principle, any style will be smooth sailing.
So much of the full-potential of T’aiChi Ch’uan gets lost in translation.
When students are told to “shift the weight”, in a sense they are only being given half of the directions.
In my observation, there is a critical distinction between where we are carrying our weight and where we are expressing or generating our power.
When standing on a given leg, we tend to say that leg is full. It’s Yang, it’s substantial, and indeed it is carrying our weight. However, standing is a decidedly passive, or Yin, activity in the TaiChi Practice.
When stepping with with a given foot, we describe it as empty. It’s Yin, it’s unsubstantial, and indeed it is not carrying weight. However, stepping is undoubtedly a Yang activity. It is the visible and apparent aspect of Forms practice.
In other words, where we are holding or carrying the weight of a posture is not where we will find the power.
The principle of YinYang separation suggests that as the weight is shifted forward or backward, there is power or intention moving in the opposite direction. What we see occurring is functional because of the opposite action, thus as a result the appearance of shifting forward actually entails a maintaining of Center.
The only sure-fire way to make your TaiChi look good is to follow the TaiChi principle.
It will not matter which style you practice or are attempting to utilize.
If you tend to the principle, the appearance will take care of itself.
The unique appearance of all the styles of TaiChi stem from the same root of the TaiChi principle.
13 years later, this sequence is still a mainstay of my personal Practice.
Sifu Smiley often said that the sequence is short but full of depth, and I can confirm that he is correct.
Taiji movement, taken as a whole, is polyrhythmic.
The rhythms are synchronized, but unique.
At slow rates of practice this is made apparent, but at a moderate pace it becomes difficult to detect.
This is why imitated TaiChi looks and feels clumsy.
The Hands, Feet, Waist and other Body parts all tend to their specific tasks in their own rhythm similar to the dance of the planets in our Solar System.
Each planet completes a rotation on its axis at a unique rate, creating immensely long days and nights on larger planets but quick periods of day and night on the smaller planets.
Each planet revolves around the Sun on an individualized orbit, completing the journey without requiring the other planets to wait, nor asking other planets to catch up.
Our Body can operate in a similar manner.
When each part is free, or encouraged, to perform its function independently then the true Dance of TaiChi can play out.
The relationship of specific unique rhythms and movements creates the overall Body-actions we think of as TaiChi.
It’s not just What we are doing, but also When we are doing it!
Out on The Way, there comes a point where you either turn left or right. It’s a fork in the road, as They say. If you turn left, you will encounter a wide-variety of distractions and oddities. There are countless details, funny little snags and plenty to chew on; Zigs and Zags galore.
If you turn right, there is a much cleaner experience. Things are fairly straightforward. The path is well-maintained and very obvious. No frills or fanfare, just a path to follow.
This is how it is.
And it isn’t the case that you cannot switch. If you turned right and wish you hadn’t, you can struggle through the untamed brush and arrive on the other path. Likewise, if you turned left and are overwhelmed by it’s lack of clarity, you can trudge through to the other path (it’s easy to find, since it’s so predictable!).
Ultimately, both paths work. They lead to the same destination.
The funny part is, the destination is where you were before you ever came to the fork in the road. The Beginning is the End.
And yet, once you’ve set out on The Way, you have to pick a path. Turn left, or turn right. It doesn’t matter which path you take, but you will have to walk it (or bounce back and forth between them) because that’s The Way. IT. IS.
You can use the methods of thinking and analyzing to get there. You can use the methods of chaos and intuition to get there. It won’t make a difference in the end because getting there means arriving HERE.
We’re out on The Way for a reason. Most of us are living out the fable of the Musk Deer.
This poor ol’ Musk Deer roams the forest, searching for the source of the marvelous scent he has picked up on. Looking everywhere, he never seems to find it. Forever seeking, never finding, because the scent is coming from him. If he just stood still, he’d be all set.
We are very much the same. We seek peace. We seek relaxation. We seek health and wellness, among so many other things. None of them are meaningfully outside of ourselves. That isn’t the Nature of Things.
You cannot experience anything outside of yourself.
You ARE an experience.
It’s already happening.
ALL THE TIME.
The Mind and Body are doorways. TaiChi and Yoga are doorways. We are invited to walk through if we choose. Some doorways take us to the left, others to the right. All of them are useful, all of them are valid.
But you have to go through. You have to keep walking.
The need to understand the path is a wall.
Attachment to the path is a wall.
You have to keep walking.
If you just sit down and refuse to keep walking, you will only delay your arrival.
It does very little good to be mad that you are out and about. We have to get back.
So you just keep walking the path.
And when you finally realize you have re-arrived at the “destination”, you simply stay for as long as you can.
All these paths and doors will lead you to that place. But you have to do the walking.
And when you find yourself “There” (which is to say “Here”) you have to do the staying.
And inevitably, by our own design or not, you will end up lurching off the mark again and have to take another walk.
And each time this occurs, we run into the forks in the road; so we choose a path and we walk it until we get back again.
There isn’t much else going on with this “Being Human”.
Find your doors and go through. Acknowledge your path and keep walking.
If you’re already There (again, read: HERE), then just stay put.
Don’t put up a wall where you’ve been given a door.
It’s that time of year again! World TaiChi and Qigong Day will be observed on Saturday April 28, 2018. At 10:00 AM, in each timezone all around the world, TaiChi players and Qigong practitioners will contribute to a global wave of healing energy.
Check out what events might be in your area, or just take a moment at 10:00 to share some deep breaths with the whole world. One World, One Breath.
The Law of TaiJi tells us that there is always something to be uncovered if we believe we have arrived at a conclusion.
When we dream up our ideal life, we rarely consider what suffering is included.
We talk about the qualities we want in a partner, but rarely acknowledge what kind of quirks we can reasonably tolerate.
We play the (unduly simplistic) Opposites-Game.
I want this quality which I like.
I don’t want this quality that I do not like.
Which qualities that you don’t like do you want? Which qualities that you want are you happy to do without?
See how this works?
I’ve been thinking about the Practice of keeping a Grattitude Journal after listening to a Sharon Salzberg lecture, but I know from experience that I don’t fare well with the conventional approach to this Practice.
List three things, each day, that you are grateful for. Easy enough, but it quickly becomes a merely cerebral exercise and feels like a chore. It feels like the kind of forced and potentially-fake positivity that is so pervasive in the SocialMedia landscape.
So I poked around my mind for awhile, and it became clear that I could also ask myself, what are three things I’ve taken for granted today?
What we take for granted is where our grattitude truly lies, and it seems to me that the beauty of it all actually depends upon our taking it for granted.
That’s how Grace works.
It’s not that we must never mention or recognize it. In fact, when we do it will be all the more genuine. It’s like getting lost in Presence and then realizing what’s happening. Rather than searching for it, it simply arises.
You can be grateful for all the little, and the big, joys and surprises during the course of a given day, but for my Mind it is much more powerful to pause and recognize all the things I am able to not even notice and to appreciate that this not-noticing is even possible.
Afterall, the Good and Bad aren’t so obvious in the long run and with enough Looking you can see how to flip them into each other anyhow!
It is a very common experience in a vinyasa yoga class to be told that Child’s Pose (Balasana) is a resting pose, and to utilize it whenever we need a break or a rest.
The posture fulfills that purpose nicely as it is a tri-doshic posture and therefore energetically neutral and balanced.
However, in my own experience, Child’s Pose is an excellent place to build strength and energy in the hands and arms, as well as prep the shoulders, hips, and core for postures like Four-Limbed Staff Pose (Chathur-Anga Dandasana) and Downward-Facing Dog Pose (Adho-Mukha Svanasana).
All of those benefits of the posture, of course, largely vanish if the posture is treated as a resting posture.
It’s not so much a matter of a resting posture being “wrong” but rather a matter of being willing to ask: what if I treat this as something other than a resting posture?
A dear teacher I’ve known would often remind us to “activate the posture” and this is precisely the premise I am interested in here. To activate the body, dynamically and definitively, while in Child’s Pose creates a much different experience than we get when we are using the posture as a place to rest.
If the Mind is uncomfortable with the idea of Child’s Pose being anything other than your “homebase” when you need to rest during a vigorous practice, then give yourself the chance to explore a “Stubborn Child’s Pose” once in a while so you can take full advantage of what the posture has to offer besides being just a place to rest.
Yin-Yang-Yoga 