This is a story about my body. It is a story I am learning more about even as I tell it. As it concerns my body there is no beginning and end. I have already been born and so far I am not yet dead. Therefore it begins and ends in mid-air, in the middle.
The body is renewing itself and healing constantly, so this is a transitory tale. As for the title? My thumbs are indeed very naughty. During my Chi Gung and Tai Chi they often decide to go the opposite way to my intention. I would like to take them aside and talk to them. It is said that the thumbs represented ego and will. During Tai Chi Jian (sword) we cover them, and I have started to cover them in other classes too. I believe my thumbs hold a big clue for me and my body, like the envelope in Cluedo, I haven't seen it yet but I know it's there. I just have to figure out how to get it out.
So I will begin by looking back a few years to the beginning of my Tai Chi practice. I had been bounced around doctors and was feeling very disillusioned. I had thought medicine could fix everything, and I realised how limited western medicine is. I thought I would put my faith in alternative medicine, and when an osteopath I was seeing recommended Chi Gung, I thought I would give it a try. Now I realise that I was putting my faith in my body, which I had previously felt had let me down. Here is how it started...
Chapter 1: Chi Gung; the gap between Art and Life.
I began learning Chi Gung with Simon in 2002. I had just been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Chronic Myofascial Pain. After a lifetime of suffering the symptoms and struggling to get a diagnosis, it was a massive let down to find out I had not one but two rare illnesses, which 99% of doctors knew nothing about. In 26 years, the only doctor who knew enough about my illnesses to treat me at all, advised me to construct my own recovery program.
It was at this point I turned to Chi Gung; it had been recommended to me by an osteopath I saw for pain relief. Entirely cynical about any type of treatment by this point, I read the blurb that described the benefits of Chi Gung and scarcely believed a word, particularly the line about how it could "improve your immune system". 'What if you don't have one?' I thought to myself.
Looking back now, I realise it was not the idea that it would benefit me or that it might actually help me get rid of the pain that made me try Chi Gung. That had, in my mind, become fantasy. It was my stubbornness, my refusal to give in and allow the 99% of doctors I had been (mis)treated by to be right, that led me to it. And I was desperate. At 21 years old, I was studying Art at University watching life literally pass me by and overtake me as I couldn't keep up. Pain had become such a huge part of my life that I could no longer distinguish it as a separate sensation. It was always there overwhelming me. My mind was dulled by fatigue and it was as if my own knowledge had been locked away from me inside my own brain.
The first few sessions were incredibly hard for me. I was hypersensitive (one of the symptoms of Fibromyalgia) and simultaneously completely lacking in awareness of my own body. It was a frustrating time, but I remember my sleep changed for the better almost immediately. I thought I must be getting it wrong for it to be so hard, but Simon reassured me that I was doing fine. It got harder. Finally my frustration grew to the point where I asked in the middle of a class why it just kept getting harder. I remember vividly Simon laughing and telling me it was starting to have an effect.
He was right. My body felt better, and as my awareness grew I began to treat my body better. The real revelation of how much it had changed me happened when I came down with 'flu. Usually a 'flu bug could easily keep me bedridden for a month. The doctors had told me that my immune system worked, it was just busy with everything else I had going on. So, when a 'flu bug came along I went under and stayed under for a long time. This time, as I felt it starting to get a grip on me, I dragged myself out of bed using energy from god knows where, and went to Chi Gung class. When I got home, I was exhausted and slept. Two days later I could go to University, a week later at the following class, I had no 'flu symptoms. It might sound usual for someone else, but for me, it was a miracle. I had to admit to myself, every single thing the blurb had claimed Chi Gung could do, had happened. I had been doing Chi Gung for 4 months, once a week. After this I tried to do it every day.
Gradually my life got better, and by this I mean I actually got to have a life. I had energy to go to University and to occasionally see friends. It was during this first year of studying Chi Gung that I created the video installation "Transformation of Ignored Things (part 1)". This piece was a huge turning point for my work as an Artist. It was also my first piece of work to be publicly exhibited.
After doing Chi Gung for a year, I decided to go part-time at University. The strain it was putting on my body just wasn't worth it, and learning Chi Gung helped me to take responsibility for how what I was doing affected my health. What I would have regarded as a failure to be like everyone else before, became an achievement. I had progressed to the point where I realised I was in control. I was not forcing myself to do things I thought I should be doing. Through Chi Gung, I became aware that the only person imposing these demands on my body was myself. Ultimately I realised that what was making me ill, was me.
It was great to realise that I had control over my body, whatever illnesses or events might occur, I was not the subject of them; I am in fact in charge of them. Now, when I feel pain, I embrace it as advice from my own body. I think to myself, what am I doing wrong? More importantly, I know I can fix it. And I have my guardian angels Simon and Cher to help.
Chapter 2: The Lapsing Ego
After complaining about my naughty thumbs, I was given some Chinese chiming metal balls to play with. There are two ways to use these, by turning them round in your hand keeping them in contact or keeping them apart. Either way, the idea is to not make any sound as you move them evenly. Keeping them apart was easy, keeping contact was not. Doing either backwards showed me how little I must move my hands in that way to be so stiff.
"If life is push hands, and the whole body is the hand" as Cheng Man Ch'ing said, then perhaps my hands are a little example of what was going on in my body and mind. The yang was strong, the yin was buggered.
Here is where we formed a plan of action to explore this on all fronts. I like to think of it as working from the inside out, the outside in, and spending a lot of time in between. The combination of life coaching and classes combined so many different types of learning, I have grown immensely this year. The ego that was taking charge, using "shoulds" to make myself ill, has more often been put to the side. Learning more about peripheral vision was interesting, as it's impossible to let my ego be in control, there is no conflict. The "shoulds" are slowly being replaced with "wants", which is a lot more fun.
What's surprising is how simple it makes life.
While this was going on in my Chi Gung and Tai Chi practice, I was commissioned to do an installation at a Buddhist Centre. Working as an Artist in an environment where you are encouraged to leave your ego at the door meant focussing on deeper motivations, and I became aware of the filters I had been using in my working practice.
Chapter 3: Spiralling
If my thumbs are an illustration of how myself as a whole has changed, the word that springs to mind is spiralling. Rather than be stuck in a rut of repetition, in moving back and forth through cycles, spiralling allows us to be progressing all the time whilst learning from the past as well as looking to the future. In Tai Chi my naughty thumbs have learnt to spiral more than move backwards and forwards, and the spiral has a deeper connection into my body, the root goes deeper and the movement is as a whole, instead of being so separated.
Spiralling can take so many forms, it appears in Tai Chi all the time, it appears in Spiral Dynamics, and it appears as an approach to life. In Spiral Dynamics, the ability to be able to gain learning from different stages of the spiral, to be connected to each level at all times, also allows for expansion within the spiral. A spiral can grow, as a shape it is not defined by it's outer edge. It is inherently connected to movement.
In viewing life as a spiral, you allow yourself to keep processing the past, the present and the future. It is a fluid approach, with space to expand on any event at any time in relation to it.
Conclusion
This year can be summed up for me as learning to evolve from cyclical repetition and trying to break habits, progressing to gaining the perspective to view life as a constant learning process. Rather than working through life as a series of problem-solving stages, I have begun to open my view of life, with each segment an opportunity to learn and a place to return to if I need to learn more. In September, I thought my thumbs were naughty, doing the opposite to my body. My thumbs have been useful as an illustration of what was happening in my body and in my life.