It will not have escaped your attention
that we are entering a new millennium and in
the first year of the new millennium, the Rising Dragon Tai Chi
School will be 21 years
of age. It also happens to be the year of the Dragon in Chinese
Astrology. That is pretty
cosmic don’t you think!?
So what is this new phase and what does it mean to ”Come of Age”?
To be a player of Tai Chi Chuan, whatever
your style, certain stages of evolution are
required. In addition, for that Tai Chi Chuan to be considered
Rising Dragon Tai Chi
there is an additional phase.
Whatever style you choose you need to learn
the sequence - without this you cannot
begin to go deeper, so our first priority as teachers and students
of Tai Chi is to provide
an opportunity where the sequence, the movements of Tai Chi can
be learnt. From
RDTC’s point of view the next evolution is perhaps the most
important and it is this
stage that most, if not all others leave out.
The Form is but an empty vessel and what
we want is to play it, like we would play a
piece of music or an instrument. Any teacher of music or dance
will tell you that it is
the ability to illumine the piece that gives it the magic. The
great performers of the
world naturally have this ability, to breathe life and spirit
into the notes on the page. It
is the same with the Form. Just to do it is not enough. Sooner
or later you will become
bored and move on to the next thing. It is not until it becomes
personal, a creative
expression of who you are today, that you engage with the practice.
Discipline works
for a while, the initial enthusiasm works for a while, a new sequence
works for a while,
a new teacher, a new Tai Chi outfit, all of these work for a while
but sooner or later
they fade and once more it’s an empty vessel. I sometimes
think that people don’t
practise out of wisdom because they instinctively realise that
what they are doing is not
the real thing. It is a practice that comes from force and they
know somewhere that that
invitation does not include themselves in the practice.
So we need to practise in such a way that
does include us - to make it personal, to
study not practise if you like. To feel a move from the inside.
Instead of forcing our
way through we honour and ride where we find ourselves. If we
are bored, we do
bored Tai Chi, if we are tired we do tired Tai Chi, if we are
energised we do energised
Tai Chi and so on. This shift from outer to inner, from discipline
to study, from force to
invitation is what gives the moves that taste of magic. When you
see someone play the
Form from this place you feel the engagement with the moment and
with the muscular
flow of a body moving in space.
In many ways the real excellence of Tai
Chi, the art of the technique, is impossible until
this illumination is touched on and owned. If the practice doesn’t
nourish you sooner
or later you will leave it. For it to change your life it needs
to touch you personally. It’s
obvious isn’t it? This is Rising Dragon Tai Chi. The dragon
has risen and it’s you.
We in RDTC are looking to facilitate this
point of meaningful movement because we
know that once this has been touched, the movement will teach
you even if we never
see you again. But whilst you walk with us what is the next step?
Well obviously the principles of Tai Chi,
those of Body, Mind and Heart, the Rooting,
Sticking and Yielding of it, the soft embodied strength, unwrinkled
mind and engaged
heart of it. This is covered a lot in classes and in previous
writings so I want to address
the progression further on in the evolution of Tai Chi Playing.
Playing Tai Chi has been likened to surfing.
The surfer rides the wave, the wave is a
physical sign of the dynamic moving through the water. The Tai
Chi player rides the
posture, feeling the whole body in movement and that is a physical
sign of the dynamic
within. For example you can lift the arm using muscles which has
nothing to do with a
dynamic movement or you can swing the body so that the arm raises
without having to
use the arm muscles. See the difference?
Every posture in the form has a dynamic
that it rides. It has a dynamic that fills it and
allows you to relax into it and ride it, just as when you feel
the centrifugal force
swinging the arm up you can let go of the arm and relax further.
The shift from 90% muscular force to 90%
dynamic is crucial in the development,
whatever style of Tai Chi you follow and represents a huge evolution
in what we think
we are doing. By practising this we train ourselves to follow
and ride the flow, and in
life this allows us to relax and not waste energy through fighting
and forcing Life’s flow.
Tiredness comes from fighting, aliveness comes from joining.
As we join one dynamic to another, as we
join one posture to another, that wave passes
and fills posture after posture. Through the use of circles, that
wave of dynamic is fed
into the next series - one wave on another building in strength.
If you watch the sea
you will see how when one wave catches another it makes an even
bigger wave. In the
Tai Chi player the concentration is on this inner wave rather
than the outer posture.
The inner intention rather than the outer desire.
This physical wave creates an energetic
wave. You could say that it pushes before it a
pressure wave and just as the focus shifts from sequence to principle,
from principle to
posture from outer posture to dynamic, there is a further shift
from dynamic to energy
or Chi.
By now the mind that is looking is far
more concentrated than when we first began and
it is able to feel the whole body/mind in one go. Through this
ability we are able to first
feel and then stick to this pressure wave of Chi. It becomes a
study in dynamics and
energy. Anyone in business will tell you that to be successful
is not just about being
good at what you do although it helps, it’s the application
of the dynamics and energy
to the Form of that business.
I was able to windsurf pretty much straight
away because of my training in Tai Chi. I
understood the application of dynamics. I was once given the controls
of a small plane
for a few hours and the instructor was surprised by how good I
was. I felt the plane and
moved appropriately through the controls. What they call “beginner’s
mind” is a mind
uncluttered by doubt which just allows us to do it simply and
that usually means
successfully. Then we try to repeat it by emulating what we did
last time -we are now
manipulating through desire and we miss it. In a way the practice
of Tai Chi is about
understanding this lesson and through the process of learning
this amazing art we
relearn how to have beginner’s mind. We come from the inside.
What better way to move in this new millennium
than by allowing this shift to the
inside. To move through your life, first of all, feeling for the
nourishment that is always
present. To feel this it needs to be personal. We relax and feel
the movement required
and follow it finding that point of stillness. When two cars are
going 70 miles an hour
there is no movement. A heavy motorcycle is quite light at the
balance point. When
that point of balance is found we can then begin to lead and intend
and guide it the
way we want it to go.
In the martial sense if an object is coming
at me at 70 miles an hour and I join with it at
70 miles an hour there is a point of stillness and its direction
is revealed. If I then lead
that movement away from me at 70 miles an hour + 1, they will
follow and be
deflected.
How to get things done in this new time,
without force? Be Tai Chi. More and more I
am Tai Chi and what comes out of me has less force and is more
in tune and I am less
tired. I become a servant of Life’s dynamic and in joining
it I can make it my own. I
make it personal.
So from the sequence to Life, the move
is from the inside out, feeling for the dynamic,
joining it and then like a musician following a piece of music,
allowing creativity to
make it a personal expression.
To live in harmony is a great calling and
from my perspective the shift in our evolution
from the old millennium to the new millennium is a shift from
the outside to the inside.
What better model to practise this with than the one we have,
Tai Chi Chuan and what
better School to do it with than this one? I thank you for being
a part of it.
Back to index page: Winter 1999