I came upon a science question that helps me to express some of what I have learned: What is North of the North Pole?
North of the North Pole everything is South
One way that I experience Tai Chi is as a way of exercising my body, being healthy, healing bodily aches and pains. This is the experience of Tai Chi that most of my friends understand. All my friends talk about healthy eating, exercising, bodily aches and pains. There are lots of items in the papers and on TV discussing health, diet. Understanding Tai chi as being only about keeping my body healthy and having a perception of my body as parts (muscles, organs, bones) all fitting into my skin, keeps my awareness and learning within familiar terms. Providing this answer only brings me back to socially acceptable understandings of my body, of what being healthy means, what I understand my body to be, and the reasons for being healthy.
With this understanding and application of the form, my understanding and experience remains within what I am already familiar with and what I already know. In between my practice I feel better, I have more energy, feel more, and I have greater enjoyment in what I do. Further exploration along this path has enhanced my awareness of how these changes interact with other aspects of my life. For example what habits in my thinking, behaviour and feelings, sustain my previous physical and emotional health? When I have stopped at traffic lights I have experienced many emotions included annoyance, impatience, distraction and even calmness. A friend pointed out that I was learning while at the lights and that what I was learning was the behaviour that I was practicing. I now practice being calmer.
And how do I deal with these patterns when change is taking place? Equally what changes in my thinking, behaviour and feelings do I need to make in order to sustain the changes that I want?
North of the North Pole is the North Star
As my Tai Chi practice has continued I have become familiar with phrases and terms such as: dropping my weight, structure, awareness, and connective tissue. I have also seen a Tai Chi practitioner stand in a relaxed upright steady posture while another person exerts a lot of force without moving or exerting force as resistance. At the same time the Tai Chi practitioner can make small gentle movements and the other person will be moved away. Initially I understood these words, phrases and experiences in ways that were already familiar to me. I knew that something different was happening and at the same time I continued to look for things that I was already familiar with. For example I thought of weight as various muscles holding something heavy up, and dropping weight was those muscles letting that heavy thing go. My present understanding is that when I experience weight, muscles are tense and they do not need to be. Dropping my weight is then a process of continually softening muscles rather than holding and letting go. In the same way in the examples of the practitioner and another person, I tried to understand the process as one of upper body muscles becoming firm and pushing or resisting. My present understanding is that certain stances and structure improve the body’s ability to absorb and transmit force, and that throughout that process the muscles remain soft.
Rather than extending my familiar patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour into new areas, Tai Chi has increased my understanding of these patterns in new ways. I used to imagine moving someone by pushing that person on the chest and then generating force through my upper body and through the muscles of my arms. I still have the same body, muscles and nerve endings and they are all still connected in the same way. Through my practice I am learning new ways in which they are connected and how they flow together to generate force in ways that I would not previously have imagined.
North of the North Pole is the end of a particular map
North/South are maps or grids and may not apply once off the planet. As my practice of the form continues, my awareness of my body, habits, changes etc increases. Continued practice enables me to have new experiences and to have choice whether to continue familiar patterns of experience or to explore new ones. This also extends into the moments in between my practice. As I move, interact with people, increase my awareness, I am becoming more aware of when I respond with my own favourite maps or understandings rather than to what is actually present. In my practice my muscles have become softer and expanded more. As this softness and expansion has extended beyond the moments of my practice sessions, I now notice when my posture tightens, habitual movements occur, and I can choose whether to continue them or to use that moment to practice more Tai Chi.
This also raises for me the question of how new maps or understandings can be obtained. I have found that doing my practice has helped me to understand principles such as softening, retreating and expressing force. As I have been aware of those principles in my continued practice, I have then increased my understanding of my own practice. It has intrigued me to discover that as I have continued practicing my understanding of what two other practitioners are doing constantly changes even though they may be doing the same exercise each time.
What is North of the North Pole?
This is my own current understanding of Tai Chi. For me the purpose of ‘What is North of the North Pole?’ or ‘What is Tai Chi?’ is to generate a particular state of openness and awareness. The question shows that the boundary of a map of understanding has been reached and it is possible to develop new understandings. And maps. There is no final point or thing, only an ongoing process. My practice of the form gives me very physical examples of principles and process that can be applied in many ways.
Tai Chi provides me with an entry point to my increasing awareness of habitual patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour. I can then choose to utilise them or change them. Practicing my form with awareness has increased my awareness and sensitivity during the moments between my practices. This includes my awareness of my environment and of people around me. As my muscles have softened I have recognised tensions where muscles tightened out of habit and unnecessarily. Increased softening has been accompanied by those muscles now becoming more soft and relaxed. In the same way I have noticed habitual thoughts and memories that occur repeatedly and unnecessarily. At those times, by softening muscles that I have noticed becoming tense, I have also notice a lessening of those thoughts and memories.
In practicing my form while my muscles have softened, they have also become stronger, my structure has improved, and my body awareness has developed and become much more sensitive. I have retained this during the moments between my practices. This in turn has been accompanied by my increasingly noticing habitual movements and tensions in my body. When this occurs it makes me more aware of the overall context in which it is taking place – the way I am responding to my own thoughts or memories, or responding to situations around me.
I have learned that much of what I thought I knew – how weight flows through my body, what muscles generate strength, how force travels through my muscles – is different to what actually takes place. What I have greatly enjoyed is learning the processes that are actually taking place and how to continue exploring them.
For me Tai Chi is a form of poetry that can express many aspects of the same moment and be constantly understood in new ways.
