My philosophy of Taiji
Cross section of the human brain.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health-you-asked/it-true-you-can-live-without-brain
My thinking here is influenced by my early training as an evolutionary biologist and later career in evidence based medical research. Apologies to any physicists out there for my sketchy use of terms relating to energy and mass.
I don’t do mindfulness…
Mindfulness is the cognitive skill, usually developed through meditation, of sustaining meta-attentive awareness towards the contents of one's own mind in the present moment. Mindfulness derives from sati, a significant element of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and is based on Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan meditation techniques. Though definitions and techniques of mindfulness are wide-ranging, Buddhist traditions describe what constitutes mindfulness, such as how perceptions of the past, present and future arise and cease as momentary sense-impressions and mental phenomena. Individuals who have contributed to the popularity of mindfulness in the modern Western context include Thích Nhất Hạnh, Joseph Goldstein, Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Richard J. Davidson.
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness
I don’t do meditation either.
I can see that performing actions repetitively can put you in a trancelike state, that could be calming.
Maybe one goal of mindfulness is to consciously and deliberately reduce your heart rate.
Having such control sounds like it could be a good thing, but it is not what I am going for when I am practicing Taiji. I am looking to elevate my heart rate a little, to exercise just a little.
I believe that I need to focus, to concentrate, and that if I don’t, I can drift off and start doing my movements wrong.
I can also see that to get good, or be good at Taiji, you might want to be the opposite of ‘mindful’ or ‘conscious’ of your movements as you want them to flow unconsciously and without thought. I also know that learning Taiji or Qigong can be stressful and frustrating at first, because you worry that you are ‘getting it wrong’ or ‘can’t do it!’. Students will want to progress beyond the point where their practice is stressful, and to where it becomes rewarding.
When is it rewarding? Well sometimes I dream of selected Taiji moves and am excited at the next opportunity to train or to teach. Something about endorphins going on there? 😉
I like the idea of being ‘aware’ of what my body is doing and what state it is in. Is my posture correct? Are my shoulders dropped and relaxed? What is my weight distribution? How is my breathing? Sometimes I draw my attention and focus to these aspects of my movement.
I am not expecting my Taiji practice to directly affect my mental health, I want it to improve my physical health. If there is a positive unlooked-for side effect of reducing anxiety and stress, I’ll take it.
I also don’t talk about ‘chi’ or ‘qi’…
In the Sinosphere, qi (/ˈtʃiː/ CHEE) is traditionally believed to be a vital force part of all living entities. Literally meaning 'vapor', 'air', or 'breath', the word qi is polysemous, often translated as 'vital energy', 'vital force', 'material energy', or simply 'energy'. Qi is also a concept in traditional Chinese medicine and in Chinese martial arts. The attempt to cultivate and balance qi is called qigong.
Believers in qi describe it as a vital force, with one's good health requiring its flow to be unimpeded. Qi is a pseudoscientific concept, and does not correspond to the concept of energy as used in the physical sciences, with the notion of vital force itself being abandoned by the scientific community.
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi
I talk more about biomechanics, momentum or inertia and how you can use your posture and motion of your body to deliver force or power.
I think of ‘qi’ much like we once thought of ‘phlogiston’…
The phlogiston theory, a superseded scientific theory, postulated the existence of a fire-like element dubbed phlogiston (/flɒˈdʒɪstən, floʊ-, -ɒn/)contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek φλογιστόν phlogistón (burning up), from φλόξ phlóx (flame). The idea of a phlogistic substance was first proposed in 1667 by Johann Joachim Becher and later put together more formally in 1703 by Georg Ernst Stahl. Phlogiston theory attempted to explain chemical processes such as combustion and rusting, now collectively known as oxidation. The theory was challenged by the concomitant weight increase and was abandoned before the end of the 18th century following experiments by Antoine Lavoisier in the 1770s and by other scientists. Phlogiston theory led to experiments that ultimately resulted in the identification (c. 1771), and naming (1777), of oxygen by Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier, respectively.
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory
Or ‘humourism’…
Humorism, the humoral theory, or humoralism, was a system of medicine detailing a supposed makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Ancient Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers.
Humorism began to fall out of favor in the 17th century and it was definitively disproved in the 1850s with the advent of germ theory, which was able to show that many diseases previously thought to be humoral were in fact caused by microbes.
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism
Both theories were attempts to explain the workings of the world around us or the human body to the best of our ability at the time. Since our understanding has changed and we have learned more, those theories no longer fit the observable facts and have been rightly discarded.
Having said that, you might hear me talking about ‘gathering energy from the ground, and gathering energy from the stars’. It’s meant very much symbolically, perhaps like poetry, and as a nod toward the tradition.
Whilst I am philosophising, my current thinking is that the human body (and all life) evolved due to natural selection and was not ‘designed’. In this way, our skeleton’s, muscles, ligaments and tendons may be well suited, or ill suited, to certain postures and moves. The skill in any practice of movement, whether it is dance, athletics or martial arts, is therefore recognising and working within the functional limits we have been dealt by evolutionary processes.
If new information comes to light, I’ll be happy to reconsider.
Wrapping up - my philosophy of Taiji is not hand-wavy, woo-woo Taiji, I am interested in the traditional martial applications of Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua and hoping to get health benefits by studying and practicing them.
I have only just started my journey.
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Image Credits
Buddha head- https://www.tarrdaniel.com/images/buddhism/statues/buddhahead.jpg
