Some Thoughts on Push Hands

As we put together components such as mindfulness (Being Present), balance, awareness of weight shift (Stability), and the technical understanding of some of the mechanisms by which movement from the center is facilitated (The Circle and the Square), applications such as Push Hands (Tu Sho, or two person T’ai Chi), may take on a new relevance as exercises aiding an enhanced understanding of the big picture, that is, our connection with the world around us.

In an immediate sense, some relevant components of our world might be those attributes which connect us in the immediate present with that world. Some useful descriptive terms for this discussion present themselves to our awareness as we move through space. They are useful in that they help to bring us into the immediate present. 

Some terms which come to mind are gravity, balance, and so on, but also, surprisingly, to help us maintain our perspective, Infinity (most distant horizon, in Time, Space, or thought), and Impermanence (that which makes everything precious).

Like a Zen Koan, perhaps at this point I will leave these thoughts unfinished and allow you, the reader, to carry the ball forward toward your own personal goal lines.

The Agni Yoga Teachings suggest that one might wish for one :

May your God be with you.

Blessings to All for the New Year!

Living In Two Tents

An Indian (Native American) walks into a psychiatrist’s office. He says “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Doc. Sometimes I feel like a wigwam, and sometimes I feel like a teepee.” The psychiatrist says “I know what’s wrong with you. You’re two tents.”

One’s position in the political situation of our country, on either side, somehow seems similar to our Indian’s dilemma. In the one tent, it is easy to become polarized and to take a side. (My own inclination is against bullying.) On the other side, as a healer and teacher, or even as a good human being, I perhaps shouldn’t say that I’ll only work with people who think like I do. 

The Buddhist Bodhi Satva vow, to work for the enlightenment of all beings, seems to preclude this. When someone asked the Dali Lama if he hated the Chinese, he said “There are too many of them to hate.” Indeed, there must be a path toward compassion available to everyone. 

A famous Sufi teacher, a baker by trade, once said that “Dough is dough”. He demonstrated this by asking his disciples to bring those of all cultures and beliefs to his classes, and it was said that all benefitted. (from the teachings of Idries Shah). 

Indeed, this dichotomy between knowing right from wrong, and yet still accepting people with different views of what is right and wrong, can easily cause one to be “too tense”, as was our Indian friend.

The belief that even one brought up in a culture promoting hate and fear may benefit from examples of compassion may yet unite us and foster the evolution of compassion. No one is expendable.

From the teachings of that venerable martial artist and sage, Master Po (When you can take the pebble from my hand, grasshopper….from the TV show Kung Fu), “Does the same sun not shine on all of us?”.

When Kwai Chang Kane was about to walk through the snakes in the pit (an episode in which he offered to trade a tyrant’s fears for someone’s life), he recalled in the ubiquitous flashback to his childhood lessons, that “Even snakes know heart. If one can truly become one with them, what animal would attack itself?”. 

Our problems arise when we divide parts of humanity into “self” and “other”, and lose sight of that which we all share.

Namaste

The Circle and the Square

Years ago, a T’ai Chi student who had come from New York and was studying with the Chows told me that he had heard that there was a teacher in Miami who could make the circle into a square. He was referring to Mr. Chow.

My understanding of this concept has come full circle, as it were, and I now find it useful and perhaps productive to look at this intersection more closely. The relationship between rotation, exemplified by the turning of the hips, and the reciprocal forward and backward movements manifested by the extremities, the arms and legs, hands and feet, may be viewed as the heart of this process.

These movement patterns may be likened to the transformation and transference of power which takes place, in both a steam engine, and in an internal combustion engine. In both cases, the reciprocal movement of a piston is first translated into the rotation of a wheel, and is then often transferred again into the forward or reverse movement of a vehicle.

As the hip is rotated, and one side of the hip is moved forward or back, the arm/leg is propelled either forward or back. This movement is, in the form, combined with a concept which has been described as stillness in motion.

Stillness in Motion

As the hip rotation propels the hand or foot forward, (I will use the hand here to simplify this description. It may also be applied to the foot and ankle), there is an opposite and equal rotation of the wrist, synchronized with the hip rotation, which serves to maintain the hand (fist)’s alignment with the surroundings. This may be seen in the elegant simplicity of movement that often characterizes good T’ai Chi. This is similar to the movement of a carpenter’s wrist as he/she saws a cut in a piece of wood without binding the saw blade in the slot cut by the blade.

In the form, where movement is originated from the center, as the hip turns and propels the shoulder forward, the hip rotates inward toward the center of the body, the shoulder rotates out in a complementary movement, and the wrist straightens in another complementary rotation. When the hip rotates outward and brings the arm back, the shoulder rotates inward and the wrist bends as the fist approaches the dan’tien (The body center, just below the belly button).

These complementary synchronous movements may also be seen just after the first cloud hands, when the outward hip rotation is balanced by an inward rotation of the ankle, as the foot is retreated in a straight line, also manifesting the appearance of stillness in motion.

This juxtaposition of rotation and linear movement, executed in perfect harmony, allows movement from the center to be translated into movement of the body, or of the body parts, through space. It is good T’ai Chi, because the whole body is involved in relaxed, balanced movement originating from the center.

Stability

When the weight is centered over one foot, either the right or the left, the balance is stable. This may also be described in terms of the front or back foot. Turning, when in either position, in balance, that is, without moving the weight off of the center, is relatively easy. 

When the weight, or balance, is moving between the two feet, turning often creates a subtle movement of the center. When this happens, muscle strength is required to maintain the balance, and this muscle tension may impede the flow of energy through the body. 

That is, this tension may block the connections between the various parts of the body. This inhibits the integration of movement from the center. 

Mrs Chow would refer to this condition as “Floating”, or “Being double weighted”. When this occurred, one was not grounded, or stable.

 She would demonstrate this by easily pushing one off balance. Greater size or strength was of no avail in opposition to the diminutive Mrs. Chow’s abilities. To make this even more obvious, Mrs. Chow wore heels which I’m sure made her performance even more difficult. She made it look easy. 

The opposite of this condition was referred to as “Sitting well”, and exemplified well grounded balance.

The practice of “Sitting well” allows one to deflect great strength without opposing it with equal strength, and renders strength without balance ineffective. Force applied to one who is sitting well is directed elsewhere, either into the ground, to the side, or otherwise channeled away from the intended target.

In a similar way, one might T’ai Chi one’s way through life by deflecting what life sometimes throws our way, not by the use of force, but rather by balance and integration. 

Being Present

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else”  

- Emily Dickinson

When we are really attending to a task, it is possible to forget, even for a little while, all of our usual distractions that often keep us from giving it our very best effort. Further, this process of prying us away from the many addictive habitual thought processes that often clog our consciousness may provide a space within which growth and healing is immensely facilitated. Such attending to our immediate situation is often called meditation. 

By focusing on what is here and now, we become free of much that clutters our mind. Our minds may then practice operating at optimum levels. This can then be applied to any new situations that arise. It allows us to be prepared not by carrying a larger and larger list of solutions with us, but rather by cultivating the ability to create solutions as they are needed. 

T’ai Chi is such a meditative process, and may be developed to higher levels by attending to one’s balance, and also, by attending to the task of creating all the movements from one’s center. This requires a lack of energy blocks between the center (hips/spine/shoulders) and the extremities (arms/hands/fingers, and legs/feet/toes). These energy blocks may be described as muscle tension, required whenever we are not in balance, in order not to fall as we proceed through the form.

The balance and relaxation and movement from the center needed are all present in each moment. Focusing on these aspects of our form brings us fully into the present moment. It is like paying attention to the breathing in sitting (Vipasana) meditation and it allows our consciousness to reside fully in the present. This process may begin when we become comfortable with the form and no longer find our minds busy attending to lists of instructions about body part positions and movements.

As we become more aware of our present condition and environment we are much more able to work with situations as they arise. Of course, Practice makes Perfect.

The Sword of Manjushri

By cutting through the self/other dichotomy, prajna, the wisdom which is not confined by knowledge or concepts, may allow us to see more clearly the world as it is, unfettered (or at least, less fettered), by the filter which is our ordinary mind.

When we practice our T’ai Chi, Ideally it brings us fully into the moment. Our awareness of our surroundings is direct and not filtered by our verbal mind. The commentary which we usually run in order to organize ‘our’ thoughts and ‘our’concepts, and so on may drop away. That which creates the separation between ‘us’ and ‘our stuff’ then has a chance to become less relevant. 

Without this extra layer of organization, we may see more directly and clearly that which is, and the solutions to the problems created by this complicated format may sometimes become evident. They shine clearly within the elegant simplicity that remains.

This often begins when we become familiar enough with the form that our attention is freed to move from the memorization of the body part positions, and is then free to attend to the body’s balance. 

This works because awareness of the balance is immediate and non-verbal. Our consciousness moves from the verbal, left brain list of positions into direct, non verbal, right brain awareness of immediate sensation.

This process begins with balance and other internal factors, and later may grow out into the environment and related external connections, out to infinity. At this point it fosters transcendent awareness and growth, allowing what might be considered a spiritual connection to evolve.

The thief left behind, the moon at my window.  -Ryokan

The conceptualization process may drop away as we become immersed in the immediacy of our form, and we may begin to notice in startling clarity such things as the moon at our window.

Such a perspective brings with it a powerful healing energy. This may be likened to what happens to our computers: increased speed and efficiency when we clean out unnecessary files and programs on our hard drive, (or solid state memory, in the newer computers).

This is not to suggest a path of renunciation or an ascetic lifestyle. It is rather a way in which we might benefit from utilizing more streamlined software within our processing apparatus.

Blessings and Thanks Always.

The Move Before

Often when we have difficulty acquiring a new part of the form, or perfecting it, the cause of the difficulty may be found in moves just prior to the part we wish to perfect. A therapist is trained to look at events occurring just before a dysfunctional response when seeking the cause. In the same way, we might seek to improve the quality of our responses to that which life brings us by looking at the proximal causes of a less than perfect response. 

Meditative practices can sometimes give insight into the mechanisms of these processes and engender growth. In this way our T’ai Chi practice may also benefit the quality of our lives far beyond our T’ai Chi practice.

Just as in life, when we might sometimes attempt a task without first doing our homework, or attempt a performance without practicing it before performing it on stage, a little preparation can be of great value.  It has been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. 

Developing the habit of looking a little further back in order to have more to work with as we create our future can be of great benefit.

When the foot is not turned enough before a turn, the hip rotation after the turn is then not enough to be in an optimal position to execute the next leg movement. In this case the problem occurs not one but two steps before the obvious problem movement. That is, the incorrect foot movement leads to an incorrect hip position, which then makes the following leg swing either difficult or impossible to make in balance correctly.

 This then requires tense muscles to compensate for the lack of balance, blocking the Chi flow and proper working of all the parts together.

This is often seen both in the first turn after the third round hand and again after the second ‘snake creeps down’, after the third round hand. 

Other examples may often be seen in situations where the weight is not completely shifted into place before a movement requiring balance is executed. This can sometimes be seen as ‘not sitting well’ and having a vertical ‘bounce’ when performing ‘cloud hands’.

If these verbal technical descriptions of movements are not clear, the concept of looking at the movements, body position/placements, or balance just prior to the difficult part may still be greatly useful to you if you apply it to any part of the form that you are having difficulty with.

Thanks Always,

Daniel

Creating New Pathways

Neurogenesis

If we exercise parts of our brain which are lazy, either in the activity of learning something new, or in that of relearning something we have lost through either aging or disability, we can sometimes through effort, learn how to do either that which we have lost, or how to do new things which we have never done before.

This creative process is not easy. It requires not only repetition (practice), but also a Herculean effort of the attention, which seems sometimes for us to border on the extreme edge of what is possible, and barely within our range of ability.

Each time I attempt to solve a problem, this may be encountered. Whether it be in something as mundane as a carpentry repair, or in seeking the best possible outcome for a personal, social, or political situation, the possibility of achieving excellence might always be found.

For me, this is encountered in learning to create music, and in teaching myself to perform the left hand, mirror image of the T’ai Chi form. Both are practices for which I seem to have neither aptitude nor ability, but in which I seem to slowly progress through repeated effort. I am not athletically gifted, but with continued effort I also have become a much better swimmer.

This progress, although slow and difficult, has given me a faith which I attempt in my personal and professional life now to share with those whose brains might possibly be healed through a similar process of effort and will. An example comes to mind. Several years ago, while on tour, Gloria Estefan’s tour bus was in an accident. The doctors said that she would never perform again. She was back on stage within a year.

It might seem that much can be accomplished if we only try. Every attempt to do something new may be considered as a creative endeavor. This creative process, like much in life, is one of the highest gifts we might attempt to attain as human beings. I think sometimes that maybe this is what is meant by the concept of Humanity being made in God’s image.

Blessings to All,

Daniel

Relaxation

In my swim class a few months ago, the fastest swimmer in our class, who had been recently studying Yoga at a very high level, told me that she had started to improve immensely by relaxing as she swam. This reminded me of something that Mrs. Chow used to say:

Relax and Concentrate - Mrs. Chow

When I heard Mrs. Chow say this oft repeated statement, my first thought was, “How can one both relax, and concentrate, at the same time?” 

Concentration seemed to me to be the opposite of relaxation! It seemed to require intense effort and focus. The very Idea of doing both at the same time was for me a Zen koan, and did not lend itself to an easy interpretation.  

As my understanding grew, it became obvious that if I thought of her statement as “Relax and pay attention”, the three words might engender the very heart of the practice of T’ai Chi.

Relaxation and Balance

Recently I was working with a student in class who had a lot of prior experience in martial arts, but was having difficulty in acquiring the form. This same aphorism seemed to apply. I worked with him on the basics of Balance, and explained how one couldn’t relax without first being in balance or one would fall over. 

This seemed to be a turning point for him. The T'ai Chi form, which he had worked on extensively, finally started to come into focus and begin producing the Chi energy at a much higher level. An awareness of his balance seemed to come into play at a new level. 

He was able to relax, and as the parts began to be more able to connect and work together, the larger organism became more coherent, and produce a new energy.

The energy blocks created by his tenseness began to dissipate and his effort and study finally began to pay off. 

(This would not have been possible without his prior effort and excellent teachers up to this point, I was just able to give him his next step.)

Namaste,

Daniel

Ecological Growth

Everyone seems to have unique strengths and deficits, and sometimes our work is to minimize those deficits. No one to whom I administer the various ability and achievement tests in my neuropsychological testing work does perfectly across the board, in all areas. In working with our deficits, it might be useful to realize that our deficits are ecological.

In psychological terms, this means that they are usually there because they serve, or once served, a useful purpose, or solved some problem for us in our scheme of things, and that is why we opted to have them. In removing them, no matter how dysfunctional they may seem to the rational mind, we must take this into account or else they are often replaced by other symptomatology.

Removing those deficits without dealing with their cause is not ecological.  That is, since they serve a purpose, something else must replace them, or we must outgrow that need or insecurity. If we don’t, we run the risk of their being replaced by other solutions to the unresolved problem.

This is a natural process which may take place in many of us who see growth as a positive outcome, even if it requires a path which is not always easy. It’s sometimes like traveling straight up the mountain with a four wheel drive vehicle rather than taking the road, which circles the mountain many times to provide a more gradual and gentle path. The concept of reincarnation, of accepting our situation this time, and coming back to deal with it another time, might be just such an analogy.

Situations in which our health is involved may sometimes involve this kind of mechanism. “If I had an ailment which prevented me from having a particular competency, I wouldn’t have to do this.” Most of the time these unconscious reasonings are not rational, and again, if the underlying problem isn’t resolved, the behavior or condition may seem extremely difficult to remove. 

These root causes often go back far beyond the usually blamed proximal causations, and might stem from early childhood rather than, for instance, a less than perfect job. Working with elderly family members, caregiving tasks, etc. can sometimes trigger what at first seems to be dysfunctional behavior or conditions. These solutions to some of life’s problems may make a kind of sense from a viewpoint of desperation in dealing with an untenable situation.

Although these concepts might not be the sole or main cause of some neuromuscular (what used to be called psychosomatic, but is now recognized as actual physical, long term stress related problems), they might be seen as at very least, contributory factors more often than one would expect.

In the past, before cellphones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), computers, and the internet, people’s lives were often interspersed with periods of “down time”. These natural periods of unscheduled time, during which the “day residue” of unresolved input might be processed or in some ways dealt with, have, in recent years, become less and less prevalent. Nowadays it has become even more important to make sure we have sufficient periods of quality time in our lives, be it exercise, meditation, or other relaxing pursuit.

Again Thanks and Best Wishes,

Daniel

Falling Through Space

(I wrote the following piece several weeks ago, and, upon rereading it , thought that it might be a little obtuse for most readers. But I offer it here for those to whom it might be useful.)

Recently my friends and students have asked me to look at other practitioners of Eastern disciplines. I have observed two different forms. Both utilized a kicking out in which after the kick, the player falls toward the extended foot until it lands. Until now, I saw this as a weakness. Falling, being out of balance until the foot lands, seemed to require a tensing up of muscle groups in order to maintain equilibrium. The body must tense up in order to control the fall. This creates energy blocks to the flow of Chi through the body which would inhibit the higher integration of the organism…

A radical thought has come to me – (These practitioners are, after all, masters.): What if one could fall, and not tense up, and use the fall, the energy of gravity, in a positive fashion? (Existing in the moment, without fear or tension, one might move through space with internal integrity.) Without the external ground, as when the water crashes down in a Pipeline, to use a surfing term, the water is allowed to return and to fuel the next wave. 

Another example: In constructing an Amateur radio antenna for field work, when it is not practical to connect an earth ground to the other side as a counter balance, one may either construct a balanced dipole, with both sides contained within the antenna, or attach wires of appropriate lengths to the other side of a monopole to act as counterpoises for each frequency band used.

This concept of falling without tensing might allow for the creation of a Zero gravity T’ai Chi in Space. It might seem to require one’s replacing Fear with Faith (or Knowledge) in order to not tense up. The application of this principle in other domains than the physical might be usable to explain in functional terms the concepts of, for instance, Tantric Buddhism, in ways more amenable to Western science.

Getting back to the practical, any time one is out of balance, one is committed to the completion of the move, and is thus vulnerable to attack based upon this predictability. Thoughts on the nature of impermanence might generate the idea that we are always falling through our lives without the actual control we usually assume. 

We might in this way give credence to a zen attitude toward suffering as illusory, based as it is upon the illusion of control, (easily disproved sometimes by events beyond our control). These thoughts might give comfort in traumatic situations, but are, however, not necessarily relevant to our studies. Practical situations often require practical solutions.

Thanks to All,

Daniel

The Two Systems

Overview

Our bodies have two ways by which all the parts are connected and able to communicate between the separate parts. This allows for cooperation between all the parts and facilitates the creation of a metasystem in which the whole can be more than a mere sum of the parts.

The system that Western science usually assumes to be primary for humans is the nervous system, including sensory mechanisms, the nerves which connect those sensors with the brain, the brain itself, and the nerves which then allow transmission of commands generated out to the muscles, etc.. Also included are many feedback mechanisms, and other products of our physical evolution.

There is another, often dismissed system, the direct physical connections between body parts, and the actual physical energies and waves which are a product of external and internal stimuli and movement. This system might be described in terms of the flow of Chi, and only comes into play when the energy blockages created by tense, locked areas are not present within the body, which block the flow. 

We may find it useful to discuss these processes in terms of ‘Standing waves’, ‘Size and frequency of waves’, and ‘Chi energy as a natural product of those factors’.

Treatise

There are two systems available within the human body that can be used to coordinate the movement of all the parts into a unified whole entity. Western science is very familiar with the nervous system, including the sensory receptors, various connective nerves, the brain, (or CPU), and the various connections to the musculature by which movement is effected. This system works by means of chemical reactions between the various parts, which take finite amounts of time for each reaction to complete, (see Science and Sanity, Count A. Korzipski). At the junctures of each nerve ending, whether at the dendrites/axions or within the brain, etc. This system, upon which our Western understanding of the physics of the body depends, is limited to the speed of these chemical reactions.

The direct physical connections between the various body parts may also be utilized to conduct actual physical shock waves between the parts. But for this system to be activated, a lack of energy blockages (created by tension, locked muscles, etc.) is required. If my shoulder is tense, this disconnects my arm from my spine, etc.. When, as by the practice of T’ai Chi, a relaxed state characterized by a lack of these blockages is achieved, actual physical waves may connect all parts of the body and all parts are directly synchronized by this physical interaction between all of the parts.

A musician would not be able to play their instrument with tense fingers. An Olympic swimmer would not be able to move efficiently through the water with locked muscles. Similarly, the beneficial operation of such a direct, immediate connection of all the parts, not limited by the relatively slow speed of the chemical reactions upon which the nervous system depends, may only operate when the body is in a relaxed, fluid, state, such as that created by exercises such as T’ai Chi.

The water in the ocean moves only a few feet, but the tsunami wave may carry immense energy thousands of miles.

Standing Waves

Each movement of T’ai Chi may be seen as a stretching which may transform the body into a more fluid state within which actual physical waves may travel. These waves of energy may coalesce into standing waves, the frequency and related/associated wavelength being determined by the physical size of the component parts and of the size of the entire body. 

The scale of the human body also allows for a close enough similarity of scale between people to transfer this energy to others, facilitating healing, knowledge transference, and so on. These standing waves connect all the parts and create an environment within which extremely high levels of integration/cooperation is facilitated.

This environment may then allow access to outside energies with which it resonates. Through these real, physical processes an energy source may be accessed by which the whole may seem to become much more than the mere sum of the parts of which it is constructed.

Concepts such as Tesla’s free energy from space, miraculous healing, and so on, might become explainable in the terms of Newtonian physics through this mechanism of energy transference by resonance. This is no more miraculous than the wireless charging of my electric toothbrush.

The Music of the Spheres

and

Fluidity Within

In order to play the music flawlessly, a fluid state within the practitioner would seem desirable. In order to swim flawlessly a fluid state within the swimmer would seem desirable. In order to perform the T’ai Chi flawlessly, a fluid state within the player would seem to be a trait to be desired. 

When one lets go of their past and future and resides totally within the performance, it becomes flawless by its’ very nature. It is a perfect expression of the present moment and any flaws are transformed into perfect expressions of that which is.

The causes of our debilitating tensions are often found within the extra baggage from past and future moments, which are not real in the present moment. When we let these go we may find that the perfection attainable becomes a useful referent with which to gain a new perspective on these debilitative tensions, and aids in their dissipation when we later encounter them.

When we remember the music of the spheres that is encountered at such moments, this may create a certainty of oneness (generated from the experience). This allows a great transformation, and is a form of enlightenment. 

Happy New Year to All!