John’s Tai-Blog @ Camp Tai ChiTai Chi and anything I can relate to Tai Chi … like life

A Tai Chi Fool, or A Fool For Tai Chi?

Occasionally I like to poke fun at things, like me for example.  I do a lot of talking - writing really - about tai chi.  If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you probably know I view myself very much as a student of tai chi.  I know I don’t have all the answers.  I do however have some strong opinions.

I think tai chi is best thing since sliced bread, or since tai chi came first maybe the other way around, but you get the point.  Tai chi is pretty cool stuff.  I’ve recently been reading the updated version of the book, Chi Running.  Being a former leisure runner who seemed to often hurt myself, I gave up running several years back.  Since then I’ve found I really miss the times I’ve run on park trails and other beautiful places.  I enjoyed taking in the scenery as I ran so I’m excited about this Chi Running stuff.

I also think tai chi is everywhere in everything we live.  You just need to look for it.  There’s a lesson in opening a heavy door, another in picking up a gallon of water, and there are lessons in running.  Danny Dreyer, the author of Chi Running, has really thought through his approach.  Simple exercises are the best in my mind, and he’s really worked at keeping things simple.  There’s a lot to Chi Running, and like tai chi, it’s based on a set of clear and basic principles.

I invite you to look at something you do every day and see if you can discover the tai chi lesson within it.  There’s an old saying, “It’s better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”  I do more than enough talking on this blog so you probably know where I stand with this saying.  For now I leave you to your own devises and with the profound words of the infamous faux-losopher, Bob Tzu. 

“Now I’m in a box.”

Pythagoras said, “A fool is known by his speech, and a wise man by his silence.”

… Pythagoras never met a mime.

Your thoughts?
John

P.S.  I found this foolish pic here:  http://nortelinsider.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/fool-me-once-shame-on-you-fool-me-twice/

Tai Chi and The Cost of Living

For some people the cost of living seems to be inordinately high.  When you look at them, it’s as if they’ve paid out a pound of flesh each and every payday for quite some time.  Other people, although they might appear to be advancing in age, don’t seem the least bit phased by the passage of time.

What I’ve noticed watching people over the years is that attitude seems to be the most important factor.  I’ve seen people who smoked, drank and ate fatty foods who could keep up with someone half their age.  I’ve also seem people who never smoked, wouldn’t think of imbibing, and ate only the healthiest of foods almost all the time, who couldn’t keep up with the average person, 10 years their senior.  The healthier the person it seems, better the overall attitude, and the more they laughed… at everything.

I know you’ve heard me say this before, but it’s the same attitude I find in people who stick with tai chi.  They can laugh at themselves and the longer they stick with tai chi, the better their attitude and the younger they seem to be.  They move with more grace and that grace seems to seep into their attitudes.  Now I’m not saying, “study tai chi and one day you’ll magically be transformed into a happy person”, but tai chi does influence people over time.

I recently saw the “The New Karate Kid” and I could see the influence of attitude in the characters as well.  The bad teacher, with an attitude I never once witnessed in China, looked older than his years.  The teacher who lost his way also looked old and worn down, yet as he came back into the world of the living using kungfu, he became more youthful.  He remembered what life was really about and kungfu helped him recover.  Kungfu and tai chi are sister arts by the way.  Even the “bad kid” looked older to me than the other kids.  My observation has been that older people with this type of attitude seem to have to really work at staying in shape and wear their bodies out at an early age.  That’s a high cost for living life.

So what am I really getting at here?  Even though I doubt anyone reading this post is this extreme, if you’re feeling worn down and older than your years, give tai chi a try and let it give you back some of the life you’ve been paying out.  Tai chi slows you down and it paradoxically teaches you to move faster than you ever thought possible.  It refills your chi reservoir and makes it easier to have a better attitude.  After all the better we feel physically, the better our mental state naturally becomes.

I think it’s important to remember the alternative to growing old is dying, so you may as well enjoy the process… no matter what your age.  Today I leave you with the profound wisdom of a deceased humorist.

“I haven’t heard of anybody who wants to stop living on account of the cost.”  ~  Kin Hubbard

Your thoughts?

John

Stressful Tai Chi

Tai chi is commonly used to combat stress, yet stress is not necessarily the enemy.  This reminds me of when I started studying wilderness survival.  When I was cold and standing in the wind I would tighten my entire body and then begin to shiver.  I was told, “The wind is your brother.  He can’t hurt you if you don’t fight him.”  So I relaxed and I felt better.  Tightening does little to actually warm us other than leading to shivering, which does warm us a bit but uses more energy than it’s worth.  Our bodies will work to keep themselves warm without our conscious help.  If we use too much energy by stiffening and shivering we drain our body’s energy reserves, and our bodies, with depleted reserves, loose heat even faster.

I can hear some of you saying, “Yea that sounds great, but what about wind chill?”  For most of us that’s definitely a concern.  Did you know though that an Eskimo can withstand much colder temperatures, and often without buttoning their coat all the way up or even donning their gloves?  Why is that?  Could it be they’ve learned to respond to temperature differently?  I think that’s the case.

As a kid when I moved from the Deep South to the Midwest, and then to New England, I had a difficult time adjusting to the cold.  I still prefer warm weather but now I can deal with it.  It just doesn’t bother me all that much once I’m used to it.  I found I could spend long periods outside in single digit temps, and colder, with little problem.  Before I learned to relax I would become very uncomfortable and my fingers and toes would begin to hurt from the cold.

We need a certain amount of stress to function properly.  Doctors tell us our bodies need physical stress to maintain bone density and muscle mass, and our minds need to be challenged if we’re to stay sharp.  Tai chi teachers often tell us to relax; yet this is not always the best advice.  Relaxing conjures the image of laying back in a hammock, letting the hammock support us completely.  When practicing tai chi we still have to support ourselves.  I think a better description is to be loose with energy, meaning to use only as much muscle as needed to hold proper body structure.  If we loosen up, even a little, we’ll loose our alignment.

Just like using too much muscle, we focus too much on stress.  The act of focusing on what we don’t want, such as stress, creates more of what we don’t want.  Focusing on lifting our arms when our attention should actually be on our hands causes us to use more muscle than necessary too.  This is very much like when we focus on every little detail of exactly how we want something done; our focus creates more stress.  Most of the time we would be better off focusing on the outcome we want and letting the details fall into place as things progress.  Often there will be improvements we could never imagine before we began.

Humor is another key ingredient.  Students who stick with tai chi always seem to have the ability to laugh at themselves.  Those who stick with it don’t take themselves too seriously.  Laughter’s a great stress reliever.  If we could carry this same attitude into our daily lives we could dramatically reduce the amount of stress we experience.  How many opportunities do you think we’d find to laugh at ourselves, at how foolish we’re being?  We are very funny people.

So if you haven’t already, take your lessons in tai chi and start applying them to your daily life.  Use only as much focus as you need to perform the task at hand.  Let yourself make mistakes.  Who knows, you might occasionally discover even better ways to do things.  I make some of the best mistakes now, ones that make my life easier.

Your thoughts?

John

P.S.  I found this pic here:  http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mike.mccluskey/1/1263329877/tpod.html

The “Tai Chi Repsonse”… not To Be Confused With “Reaction”

For many tai chi students it takes a while to get their heads around the idea of responding to their partner.  I think of it as reacting, but faster.  I’ve been told to wait for your partner to attack then counter before they finish implementing.  I can’t really say I have this down yet either.

I think this is a skill that requires some faith to develop too.  You have to pretend you can do it before you actually can in most cases.  I think this relates back to our adult need to understand things intimately before we can accept them.

If you were to write a couple of paragraphs about being able to understand something you know almost nothing about before you could do it, the argument would begin to fall apart.  Trying to figure something out first gets even harder if you don’t believe it’s possible.  How many times have you been able to understand something before you learned how to do it?  It seems to me the understanding of anything, always came after I learned how to do it.

As human beings we are multi-sensory learning machines.  We learn through practice, through doing, and the magic component is action.  I was recently watching Jamie Smart talk about this very thing, and can you believe it, it got me thinking about tai chi?  How odd.

I remember learning to ride a bike as a kid.  I didn’t give a rat’s you know what about understanding how it worked.  I just wanted to do it.  I fell down a few times, got back up, brushed the dirt off, and once again trusted my Father to hold the back of the seat until I told him not to.  Then one time I said, “OK, you can let go.”  I looked back and saw him smiling… from a really long way off.  The realization that I’d been riding on my own shocked me so much I fell right over.  Then I got up and did it again.

What happens to us between childhood and adulthood?  We go from saying, “Hey I wanna learn that.  Lemme try.” to saying, “I wanna learn that. Let me figure it out first and then I’ll be able to do it.”  The “let me figure it out plan” never works.  We still have to learn through doing.  Maybe it’s a way of building up our courage, the way a couple of drinks makes us better dancers.

I wish I could bottle up that childish enthusiasm so I could have it on hand when a particularly timid student wants to get it all figured out before they’ll make a run at it… hey, I think I’ll start work on that right now!  See ya!

Your thoughts?

John

Your Car Keys, A Key To Successful Tai Chi Practice

Meta physicians have been saying it for millennia, “Everything comes from the mind.”  Whether you buy into it or not, there’s truth to this old adage.

How many times have you seen someone so focused on what they believed, they couldn’t see what was right in front of them?  A perfect example of this is someone who can’t find their car keys.  When we can’t find our keys we usually say to ourselves something to the effect of, “I can’t find my keys.  I’ve looked everywhere and I just can’t find them.”  The subconscious mind hears this and says, “If you say so.”  Then someone else walks over to the table you’ve already looked on 3 times, picks up your keys and hands them to you.

Your keys were there all along yet your mind obediently blocked them out.  How does this apply to your tai chi practice?  Well, I’m so glad you asked.

You see, when you tell yourself a story your subconscious mind takes you at your word.  When you tell yourself “I can’t do that”, your mind says, “You’re the boss.”  So when you try that difficult move your subconscious mind keeps you honest and doesn’t let you do it.

I’m sure at this point a few of you are questioning this, and that’s as it should be.  I can hear a few of you saying, “Wait, you mean all I have to do is say to myself, ‘I can do that’ and everything will be just dandy?”  Well, no that’s not exactly it.  The real key is belief.  You not only have to say it, but you have to believe it too.

This can be tricky stuff, just like finding your car keys when you’ve already looked everywhere and you’re running late for work to boot.  You have to find a way to convince yourself you can find your keys, even before you really think you can.  The best way I know of is repetition.   Yep, good old fashioned brain washing.

The funny thing about the mind is, it’s not all that bright.  If you tell it the same thing over and over with emotion, sooner or later it will accept it as truth.  That’s why logic works so well; did you catch that?  I was talking about emotion and tied it neatly into logic.  Logic is often nothing more than building a case for a particular viewpoint.  Sometimes the most logical argument is completely off base, yet people buy it.

So how can you make this work in your favor?  It’s easier than you think.  Tell yourself, I’m getting pretty good at this.”  Then start looking for little ways in which you’re improving.  Look for the smallest bit of evidence and when you find it, say once again “I’m getting pretty good and this.”  Look for more evidence and tell yourself the same thing again.  Before you know it you’ll begin to believe it, and sooner than you might think you’ll actually be pretty good at it.

Give this little exercise the old college try and before you know it, you’ll be impressing your family and friends with your remarkable tai chi skills.  Your thoughts?

John

P.S.  I found this pic here:  http://www.topspeed.com/cars/police-cars/ke2339.html

“Why Does Tai Chi Have to Be So Damn Slow?”

Tai Chi has to be so damn slow so the dog doesn’t end up with your ice cream cone.  Yes it really is that simple.  Now I can hear some of you saying, “What in the world is John talking about now?”

When you move quickly you tend to move in a habitual manner.  You move in the way you’ve always moved.  When you move slowly you notice things you don’t notice when moving quickly.  Moving slowly, you move into the role of teacher… on at least some level.

When moving slowly it’s easier to notice how it feels to move in this way, or to move that way.  As you notice how it really feels to move slowly in this way, you naturally try moving in other ways too.  Moving slowly gives you options, options you didn’t know you had.  Exploring new options while moving slowly allows you to relax and find the way that feels best, in other words “the way of least resistance”.

Remember though, just because you find a way that feels better doesn’t mean you’re done.  All it means is that you’ve improved the way you move, a little bit.  The more you move slowly the more you learn; the more you learn the better you get; the better you get the more freely you move; the more freely you move the more you remain loose; the looser you are the easier it is to move slowly; the easier it is to move slowly the slower you move; the slower you move the more you learn, and on and on it goes.

The goal in tai chi is to remain loose while maintaining proper structure.  Whey you remain loose while maintaining proper structure you create less resistance, and less resistance means you move more quickly under speed.  In other words, moving in more efficient ways makes you looser and faster.  So practice your tai chi slowly and you’ll find you have better reflexes at important times… like catching the dog before he starts eating your ice cream cone. 

Your thoughts?

John

I’m not against the dog having ice cream, I just think he should have his own so I can be free to enjoy mine.  I found this pic here:  http://www.rlapl.org/kids/?p=240