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!

The Left and the Right

As I begin teaching myself the left hand form, after all these years, I find that I am still a beginner.

The Time Traveler

In order to teach, the teacher appears and demonstrates, but then must leave in order for the student to inhabit the body and copy the mirror image of the teacher’s form from memory. This is necessary because, like the proverbial time traveler, it seems that I cannot inhabit the same time and space twice at the same time. That is, I cannot meet myself.

It seems that the student is required both to carry the memory of the teachers’ performance, and to actively translate that performance into one’s own moves. This feels entirely new to the student. This is a truly miraculous exhibition of one’s ability to concentrate and to hold the memory of the complex movements clearly in one’s mind, performing them, as it were, from that memory, clearly held, at the same time.

Like anything new, this gets easier with practice. But it seems incredibly difficult at the start, and requires some faith in the process to even begin.

Enough, or More?

If you ask people “What do you want?”, Some would say “I want enough to have a good life.”. Others would always say “More.” no matter how much they have.

The Dalai Lama told us that we should always be satisfied with our material wealth, and never be satisfied with our spiritual growth.

A Letter about Terrorism (Paris)

November 15^th, 2015

Hey D,

Not much I can say about Paris. There are crazy people everywhere, and my way to make things better is to just try to be, and help others to be, more sane. This hopefully balances things a little more.

There is already more than enough hatred and anger in the world, and I hope that if we can reduce that, things will get better.

 The details beyond that are up to each individual to see their own part. Some may see opportunity to actively fight terrorism and they should do that. For most of us, in our everyday life we may be able to fight the causes of such extremism by creating good will and a better future for all without the need to destroy lives, which seems a terrible waste.

I have recently read 'Dance of the Furies', by Michael S. Neiberg, about Europe and the outbreak of World War I. It consists of the first hand accounts, letters, and diaries of ordinary people who wrote about what was happening then. It seems that in every country, including Germany, most of the people were convinced by the powerful that they were being attacked and threatened by others, and had no recourse but to fight.

 I see some scary parallels today. These terrorists obviously believe lies about us. Certainly there are more humane options than terrorism and maybe perhaps there is a way to help all people to see more of the humanity in others and to see these other options.

It's certainly not easy or always even possible. Many may never even want to give up their anger and hatred. But much progress has been made in places like Ireland, for example, where many thought things could never change.

These are just musings about possibilities, and maybe very unrealistic, but the alternatives might be very bleak.

Best Wishes to All,

Daniel