Synchrony…more and less

(from Snopes.com)

Those of us that write about the internal arts – in particular, tai chi – have a tendency to be VERY SERIOUS.  That is because these activities are very serious indeed.  But that is not to say there are no light moments either.  Like life itself, the sober aspects of practise are given an extra weightiness when contrasted with gentler, more whimsical dimensions.  In return, we treasure the airier moments as most welcome respites from conscientious daily practise.

After all, if the journey is always grinding and labourious why make the trip?

Recently, I have been thinking about how training of the solo forms is heightened by group practise.  Each person is unique in size and shape, temperament and energy.  Coming together to move in synchrony is like a concert orchestra playing together.  When all are in tune and moving together there is a harmony of many voices of movement.  Tai chi at such times becomes a Song that is greater than the tune of any one individual.

It takes a while, sometimes a long while, to get to the point where a large class can move as an organic unit.  Particularly in beginning classes, there is usually someone who moves the wrong way or steps improperly.  The error may be slight but it is still there.  If everyone else is moving well, the missstep can be glaring.

The point is that we are all beginners at one point or another.  We are always learning.  Learning better tuning.  Improving our timing.  There is always more road ahead.  Though we may seem accomplished and polished to the less experienced, we know better.  If anything, it is our lack of perfection, that makes training so poignant.  There is something profoundly poetic in organic beings seeking to resonate with the eternal cosmic energies.  Earthly imperfection rolling in fits and starts to something grander.

Such is the way of things.  Taking this truth into our hearts makes the trip that much more precious and imbues us with humility.  And leavens us with gentle humour.  After all, aren’t we all at one point another just piglets gussied up to appear as tigers?  We may clothe ourselves to appear majestic but each of us has a bit of the oinker in us.

Working together, as in concerted practise, our flaws cancel each other out.  Our individual strengths blend and bolster one another.  We become something more together than each of us alone.  With focused intent tempered by good humour we rise above our porker natures.  We may even transcend the realm of the noble beings.  If only for a while, our view is from Above, where pigs and tigers seem as one.

Maybe they always were.  And us along with them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Year of the Monkey

By some reckonings, we just rolled into the Year of the Monkey.  It is 4714, as the ancient Chinese measured the passing of the years.  Here on the western prairie we have been having a “warmer” winter than in recent years.  Earlier this week, on Lunar New Year’s Day in fact, it was 30 degrees warmer than the same time last year.

I’m not sure what to make of that fact.  I’m not sure what to make of a lot of facts.  You would think that as the years go by a person would get a certain broader perspective on things.  I’m not aware of such wisdom coming upon me.

There IS a certain broadening of the knowledge base – “In this kind of situation, do this. When with those kind of people, do that.” – but that’s not quite the same as wisdom.  We need perspective in addition to experience.  We need that perspective to ferment, to see if it lasts.  To see if it has merit in the long run.  Such is the nature of personal wisdom and a meaningful life philsophy.

Given no great insights at the moment, I will nonetheless make the possibly useful New Year observation that there seems to be a lot of change in the air.  “Flux” is the operational watchword of late.  Even in our little studio, people come and people go.  Not like in the old days when a person was in for the long term.  Now, they come and go like the seasons.

Life is change, as the Ancients observed.  We never step in the same river twice.  It might seem like it but we don’t.  It seems things change faster now than they did before.  Or maybe it is just me.  When we were younger, summers seemed endless.  Now, the years seem to go by faster than the months of our youth.  Change.

Tai Chi is the embodiment of change.  The forms involve ceaseless transition from one posture to another.  Our own practise evolves; with luck, it becomes broader, deeper, richer.  It is a comforting – some would say healing – process of natural change, unlike what happens out in the day to day world.  THAT kind of change is chaos.

So, it was a happy moment when I came across this old footage of Prof Cheng Man-ch’ing and some of his New York students.  There are demonstrations of the solo form, graceful sword work, group practise, and applications.  The Professor and his group radiate a certain serenity.  One can only think they were fulfilling themselves at some deeper than average level of experience.  Extending, connecting, sharing.

It was change but there was also a sense of…permanence.  Or perhaps more accurately, a sense of the eternal.  A glimpse of a greater realm, if you like.  Movements and practises that have come down across the centuries.  Changing outwardly and yet, in terms of principle and essence, unchanging.

I give thanks to whoever posted that old film of the Professor and his people.  It was a gift to be able to visit with them again.  To see them as they were; to see them play in the cosmic ether of change.  To receive the gift of their practise once again.

A new year has to begun.  This phase of the Great Process unfolds.  I have seen too many cycles to think the unfolding will be all to the good.  Whatever comes will come, agreeable or not.  We can nevertheless hope for good, to be sure.

The internal arts are good paths to a better way.  For those of us on those paths, let us be conscientious.  Let us persevere.  Even when the winds may be against us.

Happy New Year.