Tag: suffering

Why Practice?

Jacob1 Comment

Why practice your form of particular martial arts, meditation, silent retreat or whatever relaxation techniques? We practice to apply the principles we are taught.  While practice does bring benefit in reinforcing our learning, the true benefit lies outside of the practices and in the practical application of what we learn as applied to everyday situations.  Applying the essence of the art forms we learn to our interactions and experience has the capacity to lessen the suffering of both ourselves and others.

We develop situational awareness and understanding of our influence on what’s happening when we take the time to observe ourselves, our behaviors and more importantly the thoughts driving us in any given situation. We develop the capability of observing without judgement and more specifically without fear of loss and how we think others are judging us through the the art forms of martial arts or meditation.  This allows us over time to recognize the transient nature of our thoughts and emotions.  Thoughts come and go.  It’s our focus on the thoughts making them recur over and over until we generate the dis ease that filters into our body, awareness, and attention.  Emotions are the energy we experience in response to the unfolding moment including both external and internal realities.  When we hold onto our emotions and the thoughts they generate, we create the altered reality we generally experience in our daily lives.  This leaves us to ride the waves of our experience or get crushed by the force of them.

Practicing meditative or a martial art chips away at the mental and emotional structures we build up over our lifetimes. Practice begins to lessens the waves or at least the destruction caused by the major waves impacting the shores of our soul.  Reflecting on the essence of our practices allows us to simplify the practice into things we can apply moment-to-moment and not just to the situations of our art forms.  Our interactions slowly change to more manageable situations.  We find the emotional trauma and suffering doesn’t last as long.  Anger, sadness or happiness come and go just as the thoughts we witnessed in our practices.  Herein lies the true benefit of practice.

We bring about more life satisfaction if we can reduce how long we hold on to the anger, sadness or other things that make us suffer.  Reducing the suffering in our lives in turn provides an example for others to follow.  This is the pebble we drop into the stream of life having the potential to lessen the suffering not only of ourselves but those we interact with.  We help others by maintaining our calm and center during the storms we encounter day to day.  Instead of stressing out, we can simply adapt to the ever changing moment benefiting both ourselves and others.

When we apply what we learn in our practices in this manner, we move from practicing when we set time aside to do so towards practicing all of the time we are awake.  This impacts others even when we are not awake and thus we connect with something beyond ourselves when we turn our lives from practice into an art form itself.  May we all enjoy the practice of making our life into an art form.

8mm of Learning

JacobLeave a comment

Eight millimeters is a significant misalignment between the sacrum and lumbar vertebrae. How do I know this?   It’s the underlying cause of not being able to practice tai chi for over seven months or unable to walk more than fifty feet on the most painful days even with the narcotic pain medication, nerve desensitizers and muscle relaxers. Life in the past year has been a struggle to say the least.  When you can’t even walk a few hundred feet to go see your daughter sing in a choir in front of hundreds of people at a winter festival, it’s pretty obvious something needs to be done.  The inability to enjoy and partake in family activities was the last straw.  It was not long after that moment of laying down in the car waiting for my family to return from the winter festival that I went under the knife.  I had my fifth lumbar and first sacral vertebrae fused. I was literally screwed and glued.  It was an excellent decision.  There has been practically no sciatic pain since the surgery.  There’s occasional tingling in my foot or hip the doctor says could be the nerve recovering or my body figuring out how to move as my vertebrae fuses.

I used my practice of tai chi, understanding of physics and physiology to respect my limitations for months leading up to the surgery.  The form gave me an opportunity to explore and understand the rhythm of nerve conduction from my back into the butt, down the leg, and across the foot to the big toe. Slight misalignments sparked the pain while the simplest adjustment relieved it.  When I was unable to move within the form, I used my practice of mindfulness and intent from the Taoist arts to help me relax and maintain as much functionality as possible.  The practice of mindfulness emerging from decades of tai chi enabled me to perform my regular activities at work and home as I got into the drug cycle.  As my situation deteriorated, my understanding of the spiritual aspects of tai chi helped me take support when needed.  I allowed family and friends to help me here and there.  I didn’t feel bad, or at least too bad, when I had to take time to rest, sit down or nap in the midst of getting Thanksgiving dinner to a bunch of guests.  I used the practical nature of the art form to build supporting devices like a stool with rollers to keep me cooking for the family.  I used damn near every opportunity to learn just as we do when practicing the Taoist arts.

Tai chi is more than fifteen minutes of movement.  It is a way of moving and relaxing with all movement and thoughts throughout the day. When the sciatic flared up, the tai chi form became something I was unable to perform.  My tai chi practice became what it needed to.  I learned from my condition and worked within my constraints to retain as much heath as possible.  However, towards the end of the year, my movements became so restricted there were few options.  Life is movement and thus my life was disappearing out from under me.  I used the meditative aspects of tai chi to maintain my center and not get lost in the misery and suffering of pain or the side effects of the significant medications.  Pain, disability and addiction are amazing teachers.  And herein lies the art of tai chi.  Opening ourselves what Master Moy told us, “to learn tai chi from anyone, even those who do not do tai chi.”  Furthermore like the originator of tai chi did, Chang Seng-Feng, it is up to us to observe the nature of things, learn what we can, and most importantly apply it to our practice.  Learning from our environment both internal and external and applying what we learn daily is the essence of tai chi.

Side note: I almost called this post “Suffering 8mm” but looking back any suffering along the way were stepping stones of discovery.  Focusing on suffering is not the way or at least that’s not my experience of the Tao.