Taiji Class Notes #8

Taiji and Qigong Day at Arnold Arboretum

Hi all, I’m back after a weekend off.

I actually missed a class so I could spend the weekend with my family, unfortunately I forgot to ask someone to take notes. That’s why I don’t have an entry for 4/11/09.

We had a good class with 9 people in attendance.

The basics

• Warm up
• Coiling Qigong
• Centering
• Applications within Centering.

Coiling Qigong

We performed the Jou, Tsung-Wa variant of the Coiling Qigong set.

Centering

We had the usual several rounds of Centering. While watching I noticed a pattern in some of the people I observed. There wasn’t a lot of direct connection between what people were doing and the Taiji solo form. Now I know that the form can be viewed as a guide or mnemonic for learning applications. Expecting a direct correlation between the theory of Taijiquan (i.e. the Solo Form) and the practical applications found in Push Hands is foolish. I suppose I wanted to see a more varied repertoire of responses coming from the people in the class. So we evolved the drill from Centering to Centering with applications of Grasp the Sparrows Tail, Twist and Turn the Body Deflect Downward, Perry and Punch. The big things that I got out of the exercises were;

• people forget to break the root of their partner and
• people don’t fully utilize the power of the lower body.

Since we have gone over these topics in previous posts I am going to let the topic slide for the moment here and move on to something that came out of the discussion.

“No Shape, No Shadow…”

No shape, no shadow.
Entire body transparent and empty.
Forget your surroundings and be natural.
Like a stone chime suspended from the Western Mountain.
Tigers roaring, monkeys screeching.
Clear fountain, peaceful water.
Turbulent river, stormy ocean.
With your whole being, develop your life.

Certainly many of you recognize this poem/song from the Taiji Classics; the class began a discussion of the concept of “No Shape, No Shadow”. I asked the group what the passage meant when we talked about having No Shape, No Shadow; after a halting start the group decided that the phrase meant giving away nothing about yourself to the opponent (No Shape) and giving no hint of your intentions for tactics (No Shadow). I essentially agree with this opinion and we left the discussion at that point. It is very interesting to note how that opening phrase fits into the rest of the poem. It is the first statement of what the poem tries to evoke and the whole poem leads up to the final line, “With your whole being, develop your life.” This thought of a total commitment to self-cultivation points back to Taijiquan’s Taoist roots. I find it amazing that you can look at this poem as a metaphor for learning how to fight or a teaching tool for the Taoist path to enlightenment.

I’m going to spend a little time giving my thoughts about the lines in the poem. Please take it with a big grain of salt I am far from qualified to interpret poetry of such depth. I want to give my take on what some of the lines mean to me. I am also sure that going to Dr. Yang’s commentary on the poem is immensely more valuable. I hope I simply don’t parrot what he has said already with greater authority and eloquence.

No shape, no shadow.

When dealing with an opponent the more you know about him and his intentions the better off you are; conversely the less you give away about yourself and what you want the more effective your tactics can be. When I push hands with people I try to avoid deciding how the match will go. Taijiquan is reactive each movement flows out of the opponent’s actions, readiness is all.

Entire body transparent and empty

When I am really practiced and on my game I get sense of the meaning of this line, from the waist down my body seems to disappear. I loose the sense of my legs intervening between my Dan Tian and the ground. All I feel is my Dan Tian and my root. The can occur in both stationary and moving Push Hands. Regrettably, perhaps I never experience this in form practice. I have always preferred Push Hands or two person weapons drills to any solo form.

Forget your surroundings and be natural.

When I Push Hands correctly I lose track of things; sometimes even myself. I focus on the other person and what they are doing. Occasionally I get a sense of where every part of their body is and what it is doing. I can pull a great deal of information from these moments; how they will attack, where the holes in their defenses are and where I need to be to get the most out of the moment. The insights gained are generally a surprise to me (my everyday walking around self). They bubble up out of the gestalt of the information stream that I absorb while Pushing Hands. My responses are always better when “I” get out of the way and let my body react “naturally”, as it had been trained to do.

Like a stone chime suspended from the Western Mountain.
Tigers roaring, monkeys screeching.
Clear fountain, peaceful water.
Turbulent river, stormy ocean.
With your whole being, develop your life.

I really can’t say a lot on the next four lines so I ‘m going to jump right to the last line of the poem.

With your whole being, develop your life.

What value does a life have? How does one look at one’s life and what standard do you use? Is it wealth or family or friends; is it the number of accomplishments or success in your chosen field, women loved, mountains climbed? When you “develop yourself” what are you doing? I am not trying to answer that question for anyone other than myself. I find that I grow when I face my fears. We all have things that frighten us; my wife, Jeanine, likes to tease my about my fear of clowns, coulrophobia. (Really though, I ask you, has anyone ever seen a non-creepy clown?) I work with a guy who has a fear of zombies. But I think the fear that has driven me is a fear of failure. So as a result I didn’t do a lot of things when I was younger. If you never try you can’t fail, of course the adult in me now knows that if you never try you never succeed either. I think this kind of fear has a lot to do with my weight problem; being heavy is a built in excuse for to get out of things. “I can’t try out for that team; I’m too fat! I won’t make the cut.” “I could never ask her out, I’m too fat, she’d laugh in my face.”  “I couldn’t apply for that job, I’m not qualified enough.” Finding YMAA helped me face many of my fears. Taijiquan exposed me to the ideas of Taoism and to a lesser extant Buddhism.  One of the big things I got out of looking at both of those Faiths is the requirement for introspection. You can not follow either of those paths blindly and you have to face yourself to move forward. Now at this point in my life I am trying to get rid of the fear I have left in me so I can really live. Life is so sweet now, with my family and friends, that fear is something I have to face and move beyond. I owe it to myself not to miss the joy possible in my own life.

What answers do you come up with when you ask yourself hard questions?