Tai Chi is sometimes described as “moving meditation”, but this is pretty throwaway description if you don’t know what meditation actually is. Different people have different ideas about meditation; maybe you think it’s one the following;
- Chilling out
- Finding yourself
- Getting enlightened
- Attaining the Dao
However, meditation is nothing more than this: paying attention. Tai Chi is “moving meditation” because we want to pay attention to every single aspect of our practice. This may sound difficult, and in a way it is. As in seated meditation, in the beginning we may not be able to notice anything at all about the practice! Possibly we are too concerned with performing the movements, or maybe we’re too busy feeling confused. Maybe our legs or shoulders hurt, or we’re tired or hungry. This is entirely normal, but it’s only scratching the surface. Once we become more comfortable with the movements, then we can start paying attention to our practice. It’s also very simple, because the requirement itself is simple. Just pay attention, and watch how things change.
Once we stop worrying too much about how to execute the movements in Tai Chi (or any qigong exercise), we can start to notice where we are carrying excess tension, and can start to let it go. This is similar to how in seated meditation we start to notice how we hold on to our thoughts, not because we want to, but because it’s a habit. It’s tricky in both cases, because for a while we find ourself in the situation where we detect that we’re tense or holding (on to) something, but we can’t yet let it go. Even when we can, we discover that we just become tense again. However, there’s no sense getting upset or disappointed about it – this is part of the process of learning, and you have to notice your habits before you can do anything to change them. The more you do something, the better you get at it. Therefore, the more you practise tensing up, the more tense you get, and the more you practise relaxing, the more relaxed you get.
We can start to notice our posture while practising. For many, and maybe most, people the quality of their posture never even crosses their mind, let alone the idea that it could contain deficiencies. However, your posture is a reflection of the way you’ve treated your body over the years, and a measure of the extent to which you pay attention. Young children generally have excellent posture, because they’re not yet old enough to have accumulated posture-changing habits. As they grow, however, they copy their parents and their peers, and you can see even relatively young children starting to stand or walk in a certain way. I’ve seen very young girls wearing shoes or boots that provide no support for their feet, and already their knee position is starting to go. This is the start of flat feet, knee pack and back and hip problems as they get older. I saw one youngster being walked to school by their elder, and they had the exact same inwards inclination of their left knee. It was a little weird to see.
Changing our posture also requires us to pay attention. The changes will be incremental – maybe we just relax our shoulders down a little, open the space between our shoulder-blades a little, and straighten the tops of ours heads a little, but this is enough. Continue paying attention, and you can become more relaxed and have better posture. Note that there’s no contradiction – we look for effortless good posture. Admittedly, some Tai Chi practices such as Zhan Zhang (Standing Pole, or Standing Like A Tree) can cause students discomfort when they attempt to hold good posture for anything longer than a few minutes. However, as we practice, and pay attention, our ability to hold good posture increases and the effort required decreases. The requirement is to be natural and pay attention.
I should point out that “being natural” isn’t a simple as it may sound. Your reaction upon hearing this may be, “If all I need to do is be natural, then I’m already a Tai Chi master while I sit on the couch!” This isn’t quite right. How can you know when you’re being natural, or standing naturally? Consider animals. They stand, walk, run, in a very natural way (actually it’s all they can do – there’s no “very natural” about it). Sure, some animals posture when threatened or when courting, but afterwards they go back to moving the way they did before. Human beings, on they other hand, have free will. Clearly it’s very useful, but it also allows us to override what would be natural movement, and instead we stand and move in unnatural ways. Discovering what is natural, and in particular what is natural for your own unique body, takes study and practice. Eventually, when you practice Tai Chi, you won’t feel like you’re doing anything special at all – and that is something really special.
I started this post talking about paying attention, and while I wrote I was most amused to notice how difficult it was to both write and watch Masterchef on TV at the same time. At least I was paying enough attention to notice.
Interesting- thanks. Masterchef??