Tag: tao

8mm of Learning

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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.  

Practicing Tai Chi

Jacob3 Comments

Practicing Tai Chi is not just moving through the forms of the tai chi set.  It’s not just practicing the other Taoist Arts, foundations or meditation.  It’s not just coming together and finding our connections, relaxing and working with one another.  Practicing Tai Chi also includes how we interact with people throughout our lives.  It is our exchange of energy with the environment. It is respecting the spectrum of yin and yang aspect of all things.  It is achieving balance throughout our lives and by balance I mean the appropriate amounts of different things, not equal amounts.  Everything to it’s own accord.  It is knowing thyself and our particular balance of self to others and self to environment. It’s our personal biz integrating with the biz of those in our lives. Practicing Tai Chi is about continuous and incremental change as we progress along the path in our particular life.

What we are now is not what we were seven years ago.  In that time our bones have completely replaced themselves through normal biological processes.  We are not what we were a month ago when we had an entirely different liver.  We think we are the same as we used to be physically, psychologically and spiritually in the past.  We are not and we will not be what we are now in the future.  This to is practicing Tai Chi.  It is the wisdom of our unique situation as individuals and as conscious beings.  In this wisdom we are practicing Tai Chi with the rest of humanity whether they know the tai chi set of movements, Tae Kwon Do, Jeet Kun Do, football, Catholicism, Wicca, Islam, weight lifting, working, retired, schooling or whatever we may do.

Exchanging energy, changing throughout our lives, and practicing the forms and rituals we do is the grand ultimate.

Out of Nothing, we Emerge

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Yang is clear and Yin is murky; Yang moves and Yin is still.
Starting from the root and flowing to the branches, it gives rise to the myriad things.
Clarity is the source of murkiness, movement is the foundation of stillness.
When people can be constantly clear and still, heave and earth return to their places. . . .

. . .Although it is called attaining the Tao, in reality there is nothing to attain;
But in order to transform people, it is called attaining the Tao.

These are some lines from the Taoist scripture of Clarity and Stillness.  There’s additional information about how we are entangled in desires, cravings and ideas about banishing them.  I’ve found some truth in the words within this particular scripture in my personal studies and experiences.

In the movements of martial arts, stillness arises after a lot of practice.  The first time I experienced stillness emerging out of movement is after a day full of tai chi practice at a workshop when I was tired and past the point resistance. I found I hold my body in ways to prevent opening myself to others.  After a lot of tai chi I learned to relax in ways unbeknownst to me before.  My interactions with people became more authentic and open.  Connections were more readily made. I found a stillness I had not known before.  I liked it.  I spent years chasing the experience attending workshops, learning new forms, giving more of my time, meditating and the like.

Then, life hit and I started a family project.  Now practicing the art forms for hours at a time is a luxury.  Even so, I retain the stillness within.  This leads me to an understanding of sorts. Practice is a vehicle to transform us just like the concept of the Tao.  Ultimately there’s nothing to attain.  Stillness is something to be uncovered within ourselves.  Sharing my experience with others in and out of the Taoist arts has lead me to understand stillness is something under the daily routines, our quest to be a hero or heroine, our religions, our gods and even under the god that rules them all. These things are not paths up a proverbial mountain but to the still point within where everything else dissolves leaving us alone in our our truest experience of reality connected with everyone and everything around us.

Joseph Campbell talked about finding that still point in our minds where things drop away. From this perspective the peak of the mountain is where all the paths up the slopes vanish to reveal our experience in it’s rawest form with no strings attached, no religion, no deities, no sense of ‘other’ committing us to the myriad things. Our movements and wandering in life beget stillness.  Out of stillness, all of our movement, interactions and understanding emerges as the forms of our life.

We practice forms to discover stillness.  Once found, our cultivation of stillness allows our forms to emerge.  Stillness is the root of clarity, movement, transformation and ultimately the Tao.