Spiders, Snakes and Tai Chi

I was just reading an interesting article on LiveScience.com.  It was about our animal instincts: the knowledge we have, that we either don’t know we have or don’t know how we came about it.  I see this kind of thing in tai chi all the time.

Whether we realize it or not, we all have pretty similar abilities.  Aside from those rare few who can touch their tongues to their noses, our bodies and what we are actually capable of remains very similar from person to person.  Now I know some of you are saying to yourselves “John’s not paddling with both oars today”, so allow me to splain myself.

Richard Bandler and Dr. John Grinder discovered that, with the right mental strategies, you could teach anyone to do what anyone else could do, assuming of course they weren’t limited by some physical difficulty.  The world is filled with people who have limited physical resources, yet have achieved things everyone else thought was impossible.  Spud Webb, a professional basketball player in the 80′s & 90′s, comes to mind.  Because of his short stature he garnered little interest from college scouts.  This despite consistently impressive performance on the court all through high school and his early college years.

When Mr. Webb joined the ranks of Earl Boykins and Muggsy Bogue, as the third shortest player in the NBA, he measured in at a full 5’6″.  (He was a grown man by then so he didn’t get any taller either.)  I remember watching the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk contest where Spud Webb walked away with the trophy.  Spud and a student of his, Nate Robinson, are the only two NBA players under 6 feet tall to have ever won the competition.

John Bandler – remember him, the mind over matter guy – experimented with hypnosis and placebos to help people heal in a number of ways.  He didn’t bother with the sugar either.  He just gave people empty capsules and told them, under hypnosis of course, that he was giving them empty capsules.  He also gave them the suggestion, “the more you think about the fact that you are taking placebos, the better they will work.”  When they woke up he handed them the empty capsules and said, “These are placebos and they’re particularly effective for your condition.”  This worked so well in fact, that when Bandler and a partner tried to market their brand of placebos, the FDA shut them down.  How’s that for a great example of, “I’m here from the government and I’m here to help”?

By now I imagine you’ve forgotten all about the LiveScience.com article haven’t you?  We’ll let’s get back to it.  The article is titled “Fear of Spiders Can Develop Before Birth” and deals with our ability to learn from previous generations.  Not by reading grandpa’s diary, but more like sleeping with a book under your pillow before the big test, and then acing the test without ever having cracked the book.  Pretty cool stuff hey?

Well, with students I sometimes ask them to feel the energy in their bodies.  Often I get, “I doesn’t feel nuthin’.”  Yet, when I ask them to imagine it and then tell me “what it would feels like if’n they coulds”, or better yet where it starts and ends, they can almost always describe it with remarkable accuracy.  I even point to the wrong part my own body just to make sure they aren’t saying what they think I want them to.  Then I ask them to pretend they’re feeling it as they move, and viola, their movement improves dramatically.  Wha’s up wit dat?

Given the right techniques and mental processes, we can all learn to do what we already even do better.  We may not all be Spud Webbs in the rough, but we can all do much more than we realize.  Yea, that includes you too.

Your thoughts?

John

P.S.  Now go read the LiveScience.com article:  http://www.livescience.com/animals/fear-of-spiders-100218.html, you’ll like it.

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