Tai Chi As A Practical Healing Experience
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Taiji: movement in grounding.
Let us begin with some funny observations proving that we are living contradictions. We are a walking contradiction, because we need two opposites in order to walk: a left and a right leg. We are a talking contradiction because, well, who is not familiar with saying one thing and turning around doing the diametrically opposite? And finally, we are a breathing contradiction, because we need the opposite movements of inspiration and expiration to live. Even though at first glance they appear to be mutually exclusive, particularly the movements of walking and breathing clearly show that balance and health can only be obtained by an endless pendulum-like dance between opposites.
In Chinese Taoist philosophy, the yinyang symbol represents this dance of opposites: the continuous movement from the black fish into the white fish into the black fish ad infinitum. Yet since they form a perfect circle, the two opposites together form the complete whole, or unity, in which they ceaselessly alternate in their infinite dance. This can easily be observed in natural phenomena (besides walking and breathing) like cycles of waking and sleep, day and night, the tides, the coming and going of the seasons, and the phases of the moon for instance.
The same principle becomes more difficult to absorb when it is applied to abstract terms like good and evil or pleasure and pain, especially when a culture encourages us to obtain the positive (good, pleasure) and avoid or eliminate the negative (evil, pain). That one-sided perception of life enhances the belief that it’s actually in our power to do so, and the more that belief becomes anchored in someone’s psyche, the more confusing life becomes when positive things are not obtained, and when negative things are.
The endless pendulum-like dance between the opposites pleasure and pain as the whole of what we call our state of being. Notice that the joker, who can play any role, fully understands the dance. Image: GDJ
It is no wonder, then, that our confusion grows to epic proportions by the ever more rigid belief in the total governability of life. In our contrived, abstract world, where every pair of opposites seems mutually exclusive, we get taught to exclusively adore the positive and fear the negative. But, if the dance of opposites in nature shows us every day that they actually complement each other, how is it that we tend to become terribly confused and anxious when we face it in ourselves? For how can opposites in the natural realm be complementary, while in our human, abstract realm, they appear to be mutually exclusive? Why do we have to fight and conquer evil, while nature is not fighting and conquering the dark of night?
You see that this confusion raises silly questions and silly responses. Fear of the dark, which is pretty irrational, for instance, causes vast amounts of electricity to be wasted on street lighting from dusk ‘til dawn, in an attempt to create an illusory belief that we can completely control every aspect of life. Yet, if the opposites of breathing in and breathing out teach us anything, it’s that as soon as the balance between any pair of opposites is lost, so are we. So how, then, can we as individuals overcome this paralyzing confusion, which breeds so much anxiety as a result of the one-sided view that ‘good must conquer and prevail over evil’?[1]
For starters, to be a human being means living in a dualistic world, a world of opposites. We cannot make the word ‘pleasure’ meaningful if we cannot compare it with something we have experienced as ‘painful’, nor can we make the word ‘good’ meaningful if we cannot compare it with something we have experienced as ‘evil’. Just like in breathing, these pairs of opposites arise together, and in their ceaseless alternation form a whole where the one cannot exist without the other. Integrating all opposites into our life is therefore healing, because it means: becoming whole.
Two opposite poles forming a whole. Image: stokpic
However, as reasonable as this sounds, it will probably not strike a chord if it doesn’t connect with something we have experienced ourselves. If our strong conviction states that ‘good is good and evil is evil’ and we’ve never experienced something conducive to its opposite, statements similar to the ones above will never leave the realm of academic – or bookish – learning. Hence, they will be worthless, because knowledge can only turn into wisdom when we actually experience something to bring learned knowledge to life.[2]
Could it be that we are looking for a way to really experience for ourselves how literally every pair of opposites, be they natural or abstract, are two sides of the same coin? If so, then we can again turn our gaze towards China, for if the yinyang symbol is the mental representation of the dance of opposites, then taiji (太極) is its physical expression thereof.[3]
When watching people practicing taiji (or qigong), two features can easily be observed:
1. In taiji movements, the arms and legs are either moving away from the body or are returning to it;
2. In spinal rotations, the trunk either turns away from the center towards the right or left, or it is returning from either side back to the center.
That might sound obvious. Yet what makes taiji stand out as a method to really experience for yourself the continuous going back and forth between opposites, is that it focuses on actually becoming the pendulum yourself. When you push your arms forward, at some point they are fully stretched and you can’t push any further. The push then turns into its opposite, a pull, where you return the arms in the direction of your body. It’s impossible to indefinitely move your arms (or legs) away from your body, nor is it possible to indefinitely move them back. Pushing at some point inevitably has to turn into its opposite: pulling. Then, together the pushing and pulling form a whole in which they continuously alternate, they are the yinyang of arm movements.
Arms pushing out and pulling in; the yinyang of arm movements being expressed in taiji.
We can apply this principle to every moving part of our body, just as it’s quite obvious that it’s impossible to indefinitely and exclusively breathe in, or only breathe out. Every inspiration at some point inevitably has to turn into its opposite, expiration, and together they form the everlasting alternating yinyang of breathing.
Now in taiji, which means ‘supreme movement or dance between opposites’, we can group all pairs of opposites under one heading: giving and taking. When we give someone a present our arms reach out to that person, and when we take food our arms move back towards our head. That notwithstanding, the reciprocity of giving and taking becomes even more obvious in the process of breathing.
While breathing in you take air from your external world and extract oxygen from it, which is then transformed into carbon dioxide while moving the body, and given back to the air around you on every outbreath. The latter is in turn taken in by vegetation, plants and trees and stuff, and transformed into oxygen and given back to the air. Subsequently, we and other animals then take that in again while breathing in. What we observe here is the inseparability between animals and vegetation who are both part of an infinite loop of giving and taking, where the one can’t go without the other: forming a whole.
Therefore by connecting the movements of the body and breath to the opposites of giving and taking, taiji places emphasis on their inseparability and unity. This works as follows:
* Giving movements comprise of our limbs moving away from the body, or the trunk turning to either side from the center, and is accompanied with an expiration (breathing out);
* Taking movements comprise of our limbs moving back towards the body, or the trunk turning from either side back to the center, and is accompanied with an inspiration (breathing in).
In an equation, it looks like this:
Giving = pushing out + breathing out (or: trunk rotating to either side + breathing out)
Taking = pulling in + breathing in (or: trunk rotating back to the center + breathing in)
In taiji practice, concentration on these equations will then playfully enlarge your awareness of the inseparability of all pairs of opposites. You gently become more receptive to the notion that every contradistinction can only exist when both poles are present, and that if one is eradicated, the other will simultaneously vanish. We all know what happens if we frantically try to stop breathing out for the sake of breathing in. So, if we frantically try to eradicate evil for the sake of good, or death for the sake of life, well…you get the picture.
So, then, how is the integration of opposites beneficial for you as an individual? The answer is so simple that it’s often overlooked: you stop being anxious. Once you know with every fibre of your being that you are a human being, and will therefore experience pleasure and pain in the same way that sunshine and rain continuously alternate, you will see that your tendencies to frantically try and obtain the one while avoiding the other will slowly disappear. Your whole attitude towards life will become much more relaxed, because you’ll begin to understand the silliness of excessive seriousness. Moreover, a boatload of energy which is not wasted anymore on managing your pleasure and pain (and the anxiety that comes with it) now becomes available for you. Therefore, if you know how to integrate opposites, you get power!
Demonstration of the grounding and simultaneously moving power of taiji. Image from acupuncture-goldcoast.com
It can be said that taiji is a very practical philosophy. Through the practice you come to literally feel, experience, and become aware of how the flow between opposites is actually a flow of energy. In becoming aware that it’s moving continuously between poles like heaven and earth for instance, that energy flows through you as if you’re a giant funnel. Awareness of all that energy makes it available to you.
Remember, taiji is really about you! It’s about discovering how you breathe, how you move, how you sound, how you physically manifest yourself, how you feel. Taiji is really about rediscovering something in yourself, and that can only happen through experiencing yourself. Master Huang Chungliang proclaims rightfully that it’s not something that should be superimposed upon you, which happens quite a lot because many teachers have a tendency of going very quickly into the details of its choreography. Naturally the choreography is an important part of taiji, but the main thing is that you make it your taiji. That means that instead of trying to exactly mimic a master, you use the taiji moves to investigate how your body moves, where your limits are, and how you get to feel the energy flowing through you. Only then taiji has the potential of becoming wholesome, and utterly joyous!
Jolly practicing,
Erik Stout
[1] Naturally, the question immediately arises who should decide what is considered good and evil. Moreover, if people overtly proclaim to be ‘good’ as opposed to others whom they refer to as ‘evil’, they either consider themselves evil and don’t want to face it, or, which is worse, they are not aware of their own evil (or dark) side. It’s this category of people who have a tendency to become powerful figures with a knack of terrorizing their subordinates, blaming them for their own thus-far repressed and unconscious ‘evil’ (Cf. Erich Fromm, The Anatomy Of Human Destructiveness & several works of Carl Gustav Jung).
[2] For instance, if you’ve never eaten a banana in your life, you can read thousands of reviews and descriptions on how bananas taste and obtain much knowledge on them, but only when the banana is actually eaten and tasted, can all that knowledge be turned into wisdom. Wisdom can only arise when cognitive, objective knowledge is combined with emotional, subjective experience (which is another nice pair of opposites).
[3] In the West, taiji is better known as tai chi. Taiji is the official Chinese name, which I found out the hard way in China because no one understood me when I tried to explain that I was learning ‘tai chi’.
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