We’ve been on break this past week - so I’ll take time in this week’s blog, to encourage everyone to plan to attend our next seminar with Jan. She’s coming to town April 24-26 and I hope we can all work on some of the 88 - the Yang Style Attack and Defend Form. Wherever you are in the curriculum study, the 88 is a great two- person dance in which you can learn more about the inter-relationships of the postures found in the barehand routine and also simply enjoy the lively give and take of this tai chi energy exchange. And as always - core principles will be examined and improved. I hope you can attend.

And for your current practice - here is a little preview of fundamentals I look forward to looking at more closely upon my return - yes? So we all know the waist moves distinct from the hips and we are all working on this all the time - making sure we stay in the hip track, and sometimes carrying the waist, sometimes moving it relative to the hips. The fundamentals are always worth practicing over and over. So we’ll keep at it and let's dig in even deeper to the relative movement of the waist - 4 ways - (1) rotate (most common, around the spine as an axis), (2) tilt - up, down, left, right, etc., (3) translate - what about moving the upper part of the waist -ribs, say left, right, forward and back, relative to the hips, and finally (4) shrink or expand. WOW. Waist Articulation. Easier to see in person, but for now….play with it. In your stretching, warm ups and in your form. You really have to know where hips and waist are to play with all this - it is a great thing to bring into your study of the 108. Of course, don’t forget the 10 essential principles either!

Ok, my theme this week is “ it’s a by-product” It seems the best way to achieve my goal is to, as I am sure that Lao Tsu said a long time ago, do without doing. And it is a tricky balance after all - the advice is not to stop doing and somehow let hopes and wishes accomplish the task. Nor is to do, do, do, just do it! Somehow it is about doing and also not doing. Something from my notebook this week perhaps illuminates this idea.

Neutralization: abandon the idea of neutralizing in these drills. Neutralizing is a by-product of the procedures - there is no point in the procedure when Sam says “and now neutralize” No, he says, “connect, receive, drop the elbow, turn the waist” but he never says “and now neutralize.”

We neutralize our partners force by the very process itself. Indeed it is when we think we are neutralizing or we try to neutralize that we actually start pulling and hooking and avoiding and evading and everything but neutralizing. Do by not doing.

There are of course other examples in Tai Chi where the outcome is the result not of doing what we think we see being done, but rather learning, and understanding and practicing certain elemental components of the art, which when done properly achieve the desired effect. Another example Sam noted in class - To the outside observer, Tai Chi appears quite circular. The arms appear to move in circles, the shape of the body is round - but if you try to move circularly ….well that is what you have - somebody trying to move circularly, and not really having much effect. Tai chi movement is actually quite direct - the shortest distance between two points is a straight line after all - and Tai Chi is an art of efficiency and effectiveness. So the practice is all about the line - the circles we see and even experience when landing on emptiness are the by-product of practicing the fundamental elements.

Of course, as in tai chi - so in life…..this weekend I had the good fortune to travel with my friends Simon and Mary to visit the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon at Teotihuacan and to meet Tlakaelel, Simon’s teacher and friend. Since I was a child, I always wanted to see pyramids and experience first hand their power and energy. On Sunday I was able to climb the Pyramid of the Moon just after sunrise and facing the setting half-moon practice Guanqifa or pouring qi method. And then I climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun and was greeted by the sphere of the rising sun about three quarters the way up - bold, blinding, beckoning - such a concentration of solar power I have never felt before. Amazing. And then meeting Tlakaelel and seeing the indigenous healing center he has created north of the pyramids, and hearing him talk about his peoples’ vision and how he shares that with the larger world, gave me the chance to finally close a chapter of my life that began 17 years ago on a reservation in South Dakota. And with the crossing of paths, quite possibly a new door has opened. How did all this happen? That’s right - I believe it is all a by-product - a by-product of finding a way to follow my heart in the study of tai chi.

Do without doing - it is not easy - to convey, much less to do. And therein lies the rub…..for now, I am sticking with the fundamentals, working hard to sustain myself and support my dreams, and taking the advice of every elder I have ever met from Aunt Aileen to Tlakaelel……

This week in the intensive we worked on rhythm and I got the blues. That is to say we studied sabre and moving step. In the mornings, we studied the sabre with its battlefield-hacking quality - slashing, thrusting, limb-removing - a gory and heavy, single-edged blade. It’s a great big knife is all. With skill it can be used with precision and great variation in its result, however no matter how I try to look at it- the sabre just seems so brutal.

Of course, tai chi is a martial art, so this is part of the study, ….but …what benefit to me, really, today? This is a perennial question for martial artists in the 21^st century. None of us will be using sabres on battlefields - nor do we want to - I know that I am studying the use of this weapon for a different reason. Despite the apparent irrelevance of such a brutal weapon, life in the 21^st century can sometimes feel quite brutal. Sometimes - no matter what we do - cancer kills someone we love. Sometimes, no matter how much we love them, our children are murdered. Sometimes fathers rape their daughters and mothers abandon their sons and there is no reason other than that the fathers could and the mothers couldn’t any longer. Indeed, life can be quite brutal. 

Does learning to wield a sabre change any of this? No, not in the ways that first come to mind.  But in the practice, if I pay attention, moving with the sabre does change me. It gives me a chance to bear down into it, to clear the way through it, to push through, to thrust forward and ultimately slash my way out of it; to lash out in all directions, to jump and kick with a really loud slap, to spin full circle and create a whirlwind of fire and rage, and gradually, slowly, let it all go and begin again. For no matter how sometimes brutal it can be, ultimately in our heart of hearts we know that life is to be lived and loved and let go of easily when it is time.

Mind you, it is not just the weapon itself, but the moving with the weapon in the ways that it demands that allows the transformation from hopelessness and senselessness to a feeling of possibility and reason. Moving is key. It is not enough to contemplate the sabre - I must move with it - and move the way the sabre requires. Everything has it’s own rhyme and reason. It seems I learned something this week about the power of movement, that I had not really focused on before.

Movement creates rhythm - and rhythm conveys mood. I really got this lesson in the afternoons when we’d come back together again and with bare hands, we’d connect face to face, arm to arm and begin walking. First following each others steps and then gradually moving closer and walking into each other’s space with a cover step pattern. In the follow step kind of walking the timing is 4/4 timing ….1,2,3,and,  1,2,3,and,  1,2,3,and. …  In the cover step kind of walking it is 3/2 timing….123,123,123,….the first is like rock and roll or a marching band, the second is a waltz, a minuet. I began to understand better some of my emotional reactions to the moving step work, as Sam explained the role of rhythm and the different kinds of moods that different rhythms can convey.

It got me really thinking about the sabre form and I realize that for me, practicing that form is my way of singing the “brutality blues” - with all the redemptive qualities that listening to or singing the blues can have. And after humming the brutality blues all morning, no wonder the afternoons when we would start to march together to a common drum and gradually take off in our own little minuets left me feeling a bit moody. Rhythm and Blues - we worked on rhythm and I got the blues. And I am glad.

With this question my tai chi journey was launched. The question struck deeply at the time -and I knew immediately the answer was no, not really - and I trusted that any teacher of any art that knew to ask that kind of question, had a good shot at teaching me the skills I would need to change that answer to yes.  

A few years later and many, many miles further - my answer is closer to yes - at least I have moved from my structure actively constraining my intention, to a place where I can honestly say that my structure, while if not fully supportive, at least has opened up toward alignment. And, now the question deepens.

This week in the Yang intensive, I found myself latching onto a couple of references Sam made to the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 17, in which it is noted that

The best governance is one in which the people all feel that they did it themselves, not because they feared the leaders and were coerced, or because even they loved their leaders and wanted to please - but that the leaders created the conditions for success, and success followed, naturally. To me, this is like the idea that one’s structure can support one’s intention.

Physically, if my hips and legs and feet are clear and distinguished from my waist and hands - then I have a base to support my upper body, and if my waist can move freely, I can express my intention. This was that first lesson in the martial arts classroom. And tai chi is all about internal power and energetic - that magical mystery stuff, right? - so, again if my intention is to use internal power and energetic to accomplish something - what structure supports that? That’s right, we have all heard it - relax! Internal power really is on the inside of us, and if we are too tense to feel it or let it flow, we will not have access to using it. In this case, we create the conditions for energy to flow, and then let the energy express itself.

Or, in the more complicated situation -suppose I wish for my partner to take a step in our push hands practice - there are of course, many ways to accomplish this - the two most common approaches are ask them ( verbally or otherwise) and if that fails, shove them (forcefully, or otherwise). But tai chi and Lao Tzu would have us find another - a middle way. Create the conditions for them to move, and when they do, they will feel as if they did it themselves, naturally. Of course, this is no easy skill - but it can be learned and tai chi partner work is a great place to begin the study.

Begin with the four-hands backward-timing circle, experiment….initiate changes into the circle - of course, you have to know the circle before you can change it - but start simple, introduce a stop to the circle - what conditions must you create so that your partner feels as if stopping was just the most natural thing to do. Resume, in the same direction - or change direction…..can your partner, with as much skill and knowledge as you have - still not know that you created the conditions for the change they experienced. This is one place to start - there are many more. For now, have a go…..and see where it takes you.

And maybe, just maybe the key to my perpetual dilemma in life is in here too - maybe a little less focus on intention, and more on the conditions and structure, relax, open up and let the energy express itself. We’ll see….for now…..