Yin-Yang-Yoga

Category: Thoughts

  • Balance is about TaiChi

    Everyone loves to say “TaiChi is about balance.”

    It’s a plenty-true statement, but when we’re approaching TaiChi Practice through physical exercises (more specifically the moving sequences of Taijiquan) it is more important to remember that our balance comes from TaiChi.

    TaiChi is “Great Polarity” and for the postures which express physical balance most blatantly there is one distinct key (which, yes, applies to ALL of the postures/movements to some degree).

    Whenever we seek to stand on one leg, the key is to release or sink down.

    A skyscraper does not stand up because of the part in the sky!

    Even the fourth floor is dependent on something below it.

    You’ve got to get to the bottom of things if you intend to stand at all, especially if you intend to stand like a Golden Rooster on one leg!

    When your body is allowed to fully sink into one leg, the other can have a feeling of emptiness which allows to “float” or even lift up significantly without disrupting your balance.

    On a very simple and practical note, this is so because your center of gravity is lowered and so balance is less difficult.

    A more subtle way to think about it is to recognize that the combined action of sinking and raising creates a fairly large combined-range of motion. Rather than raising your knee two-units, you raise the knee one-unit and sink into your standing leg one-unit which still creates the same total movement but splits the effort into halves!

    Of course, effective sinking depends on correct posture and alignment which is most rapidly cultivated in your standing meditation (Zhan Zhuang).

    Practice makes possible!

  • That’s a Door. That’s a Wall.

    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.

  • Flip It If You Gotta

    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!

  • S**T.

    Surely everybody knows the phenomenon: you go to the bathroom and the result doesn’t match the expectation. You might think you’re going to evict days worth of food and get rabbit pellets. You might plop down expecting nothing to happen at all and require the courtesy flush! That’s life, eh?

    Practice sometimes feels the same way.

    Oftentimes when it seems like our efforts won’t be fruitful is when we get the wildest results, or have the most incredible experiences.

    If ever there were a meaningful case for DailyPractice, surely this is it.

    There are no guarantees that we will have epiphanies or transcendent highs, but if we don’t attend to Practice we are assured to not have such moments.

    The Gretzky-classic goes, “You miss one-hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”

    Even when it seems irrelevant or unimportant, Practice.

    There aren’t substitutes or shortcuts. You just do the work.

    Sometimes it will feel wonderful and amazing.

    Sometimes it will feel procedural or difficult.

    But Practice is not about how it feels in that moment. It’s about tending to the moment, no doubt, but Practice is largely just for Practice’s sake. You do it because you can.

    Because you want to.

    Because you have to.

    Because what you develop through Practice pays off when it’s time for “performance”, so to speak.

    You don’t have to like Practice to get results. But you will have to do it.

    Shit.

  • Walking to Wuji

    The “Tai Chi Walking” exercise is well-known and widely-practiced.

    A walking meditation…

    It’s worth remembering that

    what we’re really practicing

    is a single Step.

    Many times.

    Returning

    to the steadfast

    wuji.

  • Meditation

    In meeting with several teachers and associates today, the topic of Meditation came up.

    Recently, Meditation has also been mentioned more often on SocialMedia and in other arenas of dialogue. Of course, this includes the voice of non-meditators, some of whom feel a sense of peer-pressure (if not the pressure of pure smugness and superiority) from the pro-Meditation crowd.

    Today’s conversations helped me appreciate the diverse possible approaches to Meditation. Certain systems of Meditation exist with specific instructions and time-tested methods. Some traditions and lineages of Yoga are examples of this, though Modernity has also spurred a large blurring of lines and borders between different traditions.

    In any case, if we were to avoid asking the adherents or advocates of a particular system or brand of Meditation, we would find that Meditation itself can be practiced and applied (or at the very least, conceived of) in many ways.

    There are Buddhist perspectives that suggest manual labor to be among the best of Meditations.

    Many Yoga classes invite us to use Savasana as a Meditation.

    TaiChi CHuan is often marketed as a “moving meditation”.

    These are all active attempts or efforts at Meditation;

    what of the inadvertent or unassuming Meditations?

    Riding a bicycle down a smooth road on a sunny day. Fishing a lazy stream in the late afternoon. Lounging, legs-up, on the sofa as gentle breezes whisper in the branches outside the window.

    Meditation might be more properly thought of as an Experience.

    Any Experience during which we are wholly (or transcendentally, to look at it from the other side of the coin) engaged, fully attuned, whether by way of keen mental-acuity, or that broader body-based proprioceptive perspective, being truly In-The-Moment is the bottom-line of Meditation.

    Surely an exception to the Rule might exist, but I believe Everybody pursues Meditation, whether they realize it or not.

    A Runner’s High. The first bite of a sumptuous meal. A job well-done.

    Meditation, in it’s truest form, is something that happens without our recognition more often than not.

    See if you can catch yourself meditating from time to time. The people who claim to not want anything to do with Meditation might find that they already DO meditate, and perhaps more often than many people who have bumper-stickers declaring their Practice.

    Meditation as a Practice in and of itself is certainly not Everybody’s cup of tea.

    Meditation as a general category of States-of-Being, however, is something inherent to the Human condition. It is simply a part of our Natural Experience.

  • On Progress

    Embarking on a TaiChi or Yoga journey often seems like stepping onto a linear path, but in my own experience this has proven to not be the case.

    Something about the Western Mind, in particular, insists on this sense of linear progression.

    Always forward, upward, onward…

    Lately, it has occurred to me that the more Time I spend on the Journey, the less linear it becomes. To speak in linear terms, there is a lot of backward, downward, sideways, and cyclical.

    We tend to like Asana practice and Forms practice because they give us the tangible and concrete sense of improvement, achievement, and progress that makes sense to the Mind.

    Although growth in these aspects has plenty of value, it is simply incomplete, if we are truly engaging with Yoga or TaiChi. We might accomplish a great amount, but it isn’t whole.

    If our Practice were about Color, progressing in Asana or Forms would be like trying to get really good at Red; we could be the Reddest Red around, but we have been offered an entire rainbow!

    This is not to suggest that practicing only the physical aspects of Yoga or TaiChi is bad. Progress in these areas is absolutely valid and measurable, which is precisely why it is, in fact, good. To leave Asana or Forms training out of the picture would be equally problematic.

    But it’s easy to get lost in that linear-mindset. Our Type-A neuroses, our pathological Desire can easily creep in and undermine the Internal work which occurs often just outside of our field of awareness.

    It has been my impression lately that the expansion of that awareness is a more useful measure of progress. The longer we keep at it, and the deeper our Practice becomes, the more we realize how much mountain there actually is to climb and how deep the Rabbit-Hole really goes.

    Our perspective begins to take in more and more of the picture, and we zoom out rather than zoom in. It’s not about climbing the mountain at all. Just look at it!

    Linear progress suggests that we get to leave behind, or graduate from what we’ve learned. Progress in Practice is expansive. We don’t leave anything behind. We assimilate the old and the new simultaneously, perpetually, and wholly, and they always inform each other.

    We come to know the “basics” in an intimate manner as we are able to apply them across a broader and ever-broadening spectrum. Progress spreads outward, and we can grow in our Practice because we are always still embracing step-one.

    Find the Center, keep the Center. The TrueSelf resides there!

  • TaiChi Is A Little Spooky

    It has been said that before Knowledge there was Truth.

    It would seem that some of the wisdom expounded in the Tao Te Ching might exemplify this notion.

    One of the peculiarities discovered by physicists only about a century ago, is the phenomenon known as Entanglement.

    The laws of Quantum Mechanics seem to suggest that particles can be linked in pairs (or groups) in such a way that the state of one inherently implies the opposite state in the other.

    Consider a pair of electrons.

    Upon measurement, an electron particle is found to have a clockwise spin. That measurement, the determination that Particle A has a clockwise spin, allows us to predict, correctly, that Particle B will have a counter-clockwise spin.

    It’s as if the particles are able to communicate, or interact, almost instantaneously, even across great distances. Albert Einstein himself, who was rather perturbed by the idea that particles could have this apparent ability to affect one another, described it as “Spooky Action at a Distance.”

    This phenomenon has sparked much discussion, debate, and experimentation that is still ongoing to this day. Modern Science is trying to make sense of what seems to be physical proof of a notion seemingly understood thousands of years ago.

    Out of the Void (Wuji), we arrive at polarity, or Taiji (TaiChi). Where there is Yin, we can be assured of Yang. To find one is to imply the other.

    Modern Science has allowed us to demonstrate, observe, and verify, down to the smallest scales imaginable, that this notion of TaiChi is in play.

    What the Ancients understood as being The Way, Science is grappling with Today.

    Our Knowledge is catching up to Truth!

  • Remember

    There is no standard.

    Do as much as you can.

    Do as much as you want.

    Do as much as feels right in that Moment.

    Even the most acrobatic yogi on Earth may just lay on the mat some days.

    Have goals, but let go of Expectations. We come to the mat to take the small steps. The giant leaps are actually little surprises that often show up when we least expect them.

    If a certain posture or physical achievement is your goal, Practice with all due diligence.

    If your goals are not so physically inclined, Practice with no less Intention, but know that, of course, your work may look a little different than the Athlete or Dancer.

    Our Practice is inherently unique based on our own objectives and experiences, but what we all share when we roll out the mat is Being, Here, Now, with The Breath.

  • Technology Loop

    Ever get stuck in a so-called (as shown on Portlandia) “Technology-Loop”?

    Compulsively switching back and forth to different devices and apps and other tiny distractions. These often very tiny tasks, by virtue of being endless, keep us so very busy.

    I myself had just moments ago turned off my smartphone to dive into a Digital-Detox and immediately realized I wanted to play the drums to some music and the phone was powered on again, not more than a minute into the endeavor.

    But, true to the Technology-Loop, I now find mySelf Here on this site; though I am hopeful that in just a moment I will be rocking out.
    After I read this tweet.
    Uffda.

    Technology isn’t Bad.
    Just use it wisely.
    be Mindful.