HEALING AND MARTIAL ARTS BLOG

Healthy skin is an important part of staying young and avoiding the normal process of aging.  The ancient Chinese Taoist healing systems describe a secret training specifically used to keep the skin young.  It is an important part of Tai-chi and Zookinesis training.  Since lung tissue originated from skin tissue in fetal development, proper breathing is essential for healthy skin. 

The dynamics of the transition between the in-breath and out-breath are considered to be especially effective in preserving young skin.  I will describe this training below in a way that anyone can practice on their own.  A full program of rejuvenating the skin would also include a special type of massage I call “Zookinesis Massage” or “Tai-chi Massage”.

Following are some simple descriptions about use of breath to rejuvenate and preserve the skin.  You would practice this breathing for five minutes at a time, twice a day.  These suggestions assume a basic training in Tai-chi and its principles.  In Zookinesis training, this is called “Dragon Breathing”.  Mythology is used to describe internal processes.

1. As you breathe in, bring your attention to the inside of your whole skin, as if your skin was a balloon and the incoming air fills the balloon evenly.

2. At the uppermost point of the in-breath, prepare to breathe out by relaxing all the muscles of the body (especially the back). 

3. Just before actually breathing out, take one extra in-breath very quickly and then breathe out.  Even though you think you have breathed in completely, there should be a little more space in the lungs to get that extra breath in.  The extra in-breath comes as you are relaxing the muscles of the body.

4. Then breathe out slowly and continue to relax the body.

5. Take one normal breath in between each “Dragon Breath”.

6. Just before breathing back in for the new “Dragon Breath”, relax the bottoms of the feet, the lower back and the glute (butt) muscles as well as the back of the head.

Pointers:

It is important to relax all the muscle of the body near the surface of the skin as you are finishing the in-breath and are about to breathe out.  This includes the skin all around the head (especially the top of the head) and neck, your back and front of the body.

As you are about to breathe out you should feel as though energy from your surroundings are falling back into the center of your body and then down into the earth. 

When you are about to breathe in, fill the lower part of the lungs first.  Your belly and lower back will expand.  Then fill in the middle and upper part of the lungs.  Fill the back of the lungs as well as the front so that the whole torso expands.

This process will bring energy (“chi”) up from the earth, through your body and out the skin.  It is very important to allow this feeling of energy to move through the skin as you take that extra breath.  Release the energy that has moved through the skin.  Let it go! 

The energy that remains within the body will then sink back into you and down into the earth as you breathe out.  This in turn, will draw more energy into your body from the environment

This movement of energy through the skin keeps it refreshed and energized. 

This process is called the “Dragon’s Breath” because when you transition between the in-breath and out-breath, the relaxation of the muscles causes a feeling of the breath “igniting”.  You feel instantly supercharged.  This is why you must take a normal breath in between the “Dragon Breaths”.  The normal breath calms the energy.  Going from charging the breath to relaxing the breath is an important component of this training.

When you are receiving Tai-chi Massage you are practicing this breathing.  The masseur paces his massage according to your breathing.  This allows the flow of energy in and out of the body to penetrate all the body’s tissues, reversing the aging process throughout the body.  It greatly magnifies the effect of the “Dragon Breathing” to reverse the aging process of the skin.

Another effect of these practices is that the eyes become bright and energized.  You can see the vibrant energy in the eyes of a person involved in this training.  It creates a feeling of emotional calm yet an energized, positive outlook on life.

Dragon breathing is easy to learn and takes very little time to practice. It is also a safe practice.  Before you begin this practice, feel the quality of your skin.  Then feel your skin again every month to notice the improvement.  Also pay attention to the improvement in your attitude, your energy levels – your general outlook on life. It is sometimes hard to remember what you used to feel like before this training

Push Hands is the most effective way to get in touch with the inner workings of your body, to learn to perceive and use internal energy, to perceive the dynamics of consciousness itself and to unite mind and body into a powerful and efficient system.  The original type of Push Hands exercise was a type of two person chi-gung. I list below some of the Push Hands principles for those who want to use their practice to develop internally.  These points will be especially meaningful to those who already practice Push Hands.  For those who have not yet learned this wonderful exercise, this will give you some insight into its flavor.

The exercise begins with the two partners facing each other with one foot forward.  Their forward feet are right next to each other.  Their arms are connected and the goal is to push each other over.

1. Aligning Heaven and Earth.  The earth is solid.  Heaven is gaseous.  Align the body in such a way that all of your weight sinks into the earth.  The legs are heavy with weight and the top of the body is very light.  The hips are in-between so they feel rubbery.  The hips connect the lightness on top to the heaviness on bottom.  There is a tendency, when force is applied to you, to tense up on top, bringing your weight upwards.  Think of yourself as a pyramid.  You have a wide base on bottom.  Your head is like the point of the pyramid.  When someone pushes you on top, your chest for example, they feel that there is nothing there; that most of you is underneath their push.

2. Connective Tissue.  Absorb their push into your connective tissue (ligaments and tendons and fascia).  Think of yourself as the bowstring of a bow.  The bow itself is between you and your partner.  When your partner pushes, he is pushing back the bowstring.  You then release that stored force from your center (your tan-tien) as the bowstring releases, (adding your own internal energy and the force from your legs and hips).  This is just like an arrow shooting out from the center of the bow.  Remember that the bow itself (the structure of your body) must remain firm.  The bowstring (your connective tissue, ligaments and tendons) is all that bends.  It is also important that all of the connective tissue of your whole body bends equally, just as the bowstring bends equally throughout its length.  As to how to direct the partner’s force to just these tissues of the body, a competent teacher is necessary to help you learn this principle.

3. No Telegraphing. When you are about to push, don’t telegraph your intentions.  This means that you don’t raise up your force to your upper body as if to say, “I am about to push you.”  There is a psychological impulse to prepare for the push.  You must remain in an aligned position throughout the Push Hands so that you can push at any moment from where you are.  Needing to prepare for the push means that you are not aligned at that moment.

4. Notice Telegraphing.  Watch for this telegraphing activity in your partner.  As soon as he prepares to push, push him at the moment of preparation.  His force will be top heavy at that moment and he will be easy to push.

5. Don’t Resist.  Don’t tighten up if you feel your partner is about to successfully push you.  It is better to get pushed than to tighten.  The whole point of this exercise is to learn to remain relaxed, to neutralize the opponent’s force through relaxation and to issue your own force with a relaxed mind and body.  You are only cheating yourself if you tense up to avoid getting pushed because you will never learn real Push Hands.

6. All Force is Your Force.  Don’t think of the force of your partner as “his force” pushing against you.  Accept all force as part of your own energetic system and realign your body to distribute that force equally throughout your body.  If you remain even in this way at every moment, his force will have no effect.  You are like the ringmaster of a circus.  You are coordinating all the acts so the show runs smoothly.  Similarly, coordinate all the forces you feel (gravity, momentum, the partner’s force etc.) so that nothing gets jammed up.  Don’t think of the partner’s force as an attack but just as force that needs to be aligned and balanced within your energy system.

When you do any chi-gung exercise it is important to balance the chi, not only within your body but with the chi of your environment as well.  It is dangerous to hold chi just within your body and isolate it from the environment.  Push Hands teaches you the importance of balancing your internal forces with outside forces. 

7. Use of the Joints.  Receive your partner’s force within all your joints as well.  Don’t deal with his force as one attack but absorb the force into all of the joints of your body.  In this way each joint will be dealing with only a tiny fraction of the original whole force.  That will be much easier to deal with.  When your joints and the connective tissue, ligaments and tendons are all dealing with his force, what seemed like a powerful push now seems like a bunch of tiny pushes that are easy to neutralize.

8. The Floor is Under You.  When you push, there is a tendency to freeze part of your body (usually your back) to serve as a solid floor from which to push.  Your back should remain relaxed and flexible.  Use the real floor itself as your ground.  Position yourself as a wedge between your partner and the floor with no frozen part of the body in between.  There is also a tendency to freeze your attention in order to push.  This is a difficult issue to learn about on your own and requires a competent teacher.  Buddhists call this “the round of birth and death” (of the attention).  It is similar to the issue of “telegraphing” (#3 above).  You feel you must solidify your attention in order to act.  Push Hands teaches you to maintain the fluidity of your body and of your attention at all times and to use the solidity of the ground beneath you.

9. Remain Stable.  Don’t lean on the partner.  If you try to thrust your weight into the partner, he will just turn to the side and you will fall down.  Always remain stable within yourself.  The applications to everyday life are obvious.  Force issues from the ground up with the sequential expansion of each joint.  In this way the force moves in an upward and forward direction, uprooting the partner.

10. The Tan-tien is the Top of Your Force.  As the force issues from the ground upward, it moves into the Tan-tien (just below the navel in the center of the body) then out to your pushing elbow and into the partner.  You force should never rise above elbow level.

11.  Yin and Yang.  The Yang part of the body is the back and the outside of the legs and arms.  The Yin part is the front and the inside of the legs and arms.  Yang force can only move through the Yin parts of the body.  Imagine a ceramic water pipe.  The ceramic is the Yang part, the structure of the pipe.  The empty space inside is the Yin part.  Water can only flow through the empty space, not the ceramic.  Your pushing force should only move through the front of the body and the inside of the arms and legs. 

12.  Breathing.  It is common to breathe out when pushing.  I teach that you should breathe in.  Imagine that you are a balloon.  When you breathe in the balloon expands, pushing the partner.  Try sitting down in a chair and then standing up.  When you sit and relax, you tend to breathe out.  When you stand and are ready for activity you tend to breathe in.  Breathing in is active and breathing out is passive. 

It is important to breathe into the lower abdomen only and not into the upper chest.  Breathing into the upper chest will bring your force upward and it should rather go forward and outward.  Breathe equally into the belly and the lower back so that the whole center of the body expands.  Remember that a balloon expands spherically.  In this way you will not need to tense your back.  The breath will provide the solidity.  This is why breath is called “the soft bones”.  Breath provides solidity so that the body can remain relaxed.

13.  Maintain Your Connection.  Make sure that the connection with your partner through your arms and hands remains steady.  Keep that pressure constant even though the pressure should only be “four ounces”.  You may have a partner who is extremely tense.  In that case the pressure should be four ounces lighter or heavier than his, depending on whether you want to lead him into you or away from you. 

14.  Control from Your Center.  Lead your partner into your center.  From there you can make slight adjustments in the angle of your hips to lead him off balance.  If his force is connected to your center then you are controlling the action from the center of your body.  Imagine you are picking up a heavy metal pipe.  If you pick it up from one end, it seems heavy.  Pick it up from the center and it seems light because it is balanced. 

When you connect the partner’s force to your center and work from there, you need much less effort and movement. 

15.  Eyes in the Belly.  There is a tendency to “view” the interaction from the head because that is where the eyes are.  I teach that Push Hands should be done with closed eyes so that you are concentrating on the feel rather than the sight of the interaction.  This also allows you to center your attention in your belly rather than keeping it in the head.  Once your attention is centered, the whole body will become centered.

These are some principles you can bring into your Push Hands practice to make it a form of chi-gung rather than a pushing and shoving contest.  When it is done properly, Push Hands can easily take care of the “pushers and shovers”. More importantly, it can be a great tool for healing and learning to live your life more effectively.  (See our “Push Hands – the Heart of Tai-chi Training” dvd).

Chi-Gung is a type of Tai-chi exercise that heals the body by strengthening the flow of internal energy (“chi”).  It is important to appreciate the way chi-gung works in order to practice it properly.  We see examples of the energizing force of nature when we see flowers turn to and reach towards the sun as the morning warms up.  The flower “knows” that the sun is its source of energy.  “Reaching” for the sun is a large part of what allows it to grow.  We know of course that reaching for the sun is a chemical process and can be explained on that level.

We can use this example of a flower to better understand the training of chi-gung.  Your mind (attention, consciousness) can be likened to the sun.  Your body can be likened to the flower, let’s say a tulip.  When we see a bunch of tulips, all opening up and reaching for the sun in the morning, we can imagine each tulip as a part of the body.

When you pay attention to a part of your body in your practice, that part will naturally “reach” for your attention.  Attention and the physical body are naturally attracted towards each other.  In a natural state they are completely integrated with each other but in our modern world our minds are focused on our thinking mechanism.  This is so much the case that the terms “mind” and “thinking” are synonymous.  We can hardly imagine the mind doing anything other than thinking.   

We have withdrawn our attention from the body so that almost all of it can be used in the thinking process.  But the body longs for attention, which is a form of energy, just as the tulip “longs” for the sun.  Without the sun the tulip will wither and die.  Without the energy of attention the body will degenerate.  When we practice any form of chi-gung you are called upon to pay attention to each part of the body, to release any excess tension there and to allow the body to expand with the in-breath and relax with the out-breath. 

Your attention is not fixed in the head or in the thinking process but rises and fills the body with the in-breath and settles into the ground and condenses with the out-breath, creating an ebb and flow like the tides of the oceans.  This releases your attention (your mind) from a fixed position in the body (your head) and from a fixed process (thinking).  Now attention becomes fluid, functional and connected to all parts of the body. 

At the point when your attention meets a part of the body you breathe in, that part opens and stretches, just like the tulip, and the body receives the energy of attention.  When you breathe out, that part of the body relaxes.

There are yet greater sources of energy than your own attention.  There is the chi of the whole flow of nature.  As each part of the body reaches for your attention, it also reaches for this greater flow of energy.

In the chi-gung practice of Zookinesis we are taught that when the body opens up to your own attention, this also allows the body to receive the greater flow of energy from nature.  You are breathing in, expanding the part or parts of the body you are working with and bringing your attention to that part of the body.  When your attention is no longer locked up in your head, but releases and flows to that part of the body, you will feel a greater source of energy that comes flowing in and energizes both your body and mind.  You then feel connected to all of nature. 

This is not a mysterious process but a natural, biological process.  It is our natural, healthy state. 

When your mind and body are connected and the chi energy of nature is allowed to flow, your mind and body start to heal on all levels.  It will heal physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. 

You may have heard that practicing chi-gung by yourself or with an inexperienced teacher can actually lead to internal damage.  The main reason for this is the apparent lack of understanding of the dynamics of attention.

There are two basic modes of your attention – yin and yang attention.  Yang attention happens when you forcefully push your attention towards part of the body.  In yin attention you allow your attention to settle and to be absorbed by that part of the body.  This is an important distinction though it often takes many years of practice to fully appreciate the difference. 

In our culture we almost exclusively use yang attention, except perhaps, when we listen to music.  We allow music to take our attention away.  We willingly let our attention travel on the magic carpet ride of music because we know how good it makes us feel. 

When we pay attention to a part of the body in our chi-gung practice we need to use yin attention. As the body opens on the in-breath it will pull on energy within your body, trying to absorb it.  This will create a movement of energy towards that part of the body.  Allow your attention to settle into that flow of energy, merge with it and be pulled into the body. 

At first the student hears these instructions but can’t make sense of them.  He or she has to be led step by step through a series of internal experiences.  This gradually builds up a feeling “picture” of what is going inside the body.  The teacher explains the principles of chi-gung and what these inner body feelings are according to those principles.  A whole new world opens up for the student as he realizes that the quality of his internal world directly affects how he interacts with the external world.  In this way, chi-gung can greatly improve his everyday life.

Students often fear the fluidity of the attention.  They feel it is like a loss of control of their fixed-pointed minds.  This is why chi-gung practice is slow and gradual and connected with physical movement.  The movement exercises allow you to retain the feeling of control while allowing your attention to become fluid. 

There is also a fear of the greater flow of the chi energy of nature. You may fear losing control when you experience a force greater than yourself. When you realize that this energy is healing in nature, that it connects you with the flow of all life on this planet, you can lose your fear. 

This greater connection to life is physically felt in a very concrete way.  When you feel it you immediately remember having experienced this state of being, even if it has been many years since you felt it last (perhaps as an infant). 

You must then end the conflict between the fixed-pointed, thinking mind and the mind that is connected to the body.  These are not really two separate minds but are two ways in which the mind can work.  Your body obviously continues to work while you are thinking.  The blood doesn’t suddenly stop flowing.  Yet your thoughts can influence the health of your body.  In many disciplines the emphasis is on thinking the “right” thoughts to keep you healthy such as in the many “positive thinking” teachings.

With chi-gung, the emphasis is on allowing the thinking mind to think and allowing the rest of the mind (the “Body-Mind”) to work properly.  We can allow our attention to completely fill the body while at the same time allow it to fill the thinking process.  If the attention is fluid it can operate in many ways at the same time.  If it is fixed-pointed it can only operate well in one mode.  It is only the fixed-pointed mind that hurts the body by pulling the energy of attention away from the body.

When the body is filled with the energy of your attention and of chi from nature, it grows strong and healthy.  You feel that you are part of the whole world and no longer isolated.  Your body is no longer a big lump “down there”, carrying around your brain, but it feels like a vibrant, energized, alive being which it truly is.

My van was filled with boxes of animals I had just picked up from the airport.  After bringing them into the facility I opened the largest and heaviest box first.  An eight foot long monitor (dragon) lizard emerged and began walking towards me.  I slowly backed up to a corner of the room and he followed, his eyes fixed on mine and his long tongue flicking out at me.  My heart pounded and I could feel my attention compress into a tight spring. 

The dragon slowly climbed up my legs and pushed his snout right into my face, continuing to stare.  My mind jumped around from one thought to another, one plan of escape to another but my body was frozen.  Suddenly the huge lizard lost interest in me and slowly investigated the facility.  I was still frozen and could only watch him to assess his mood.  He returned, his heavy, dry body brushing up against my legs and then he sat down on top of my feet. 

I laughed spontaneously and, surprising myself, sat down beside him.  The lizard adjusted his body and now lay across my lap.  The animal shipper later informed me that this had been someone’s pet but it had started to eat the family’s chickens, which they raised, as many people do in Southeast Asia.  So they gave him to the exporter.

I had completely misread the dragon’s intentions when he first came out of the box and remembered the intense reaction of my mind and body.  Over the next few days I realized that I related to the world around me the same way I related to the lizard.  I saw the world as a huge beast threatening me at every turn and my mind and body were always coiled up like a spring.  My attention froze, adhering to the imagined threat like a fly adhering to flypaper. 

The sudden release of my frozen attention in the case of the lizard helped me to realize that freezing the attention can be a damaging behavior pattern.  All of us learned to freeze our attention as children so that we can learn to think.  We think one thought at a time in a linear sequence adding up to sentences.  If our attention were allowed to stay in its natural, expansive, flowing state it would be hard to think in words.  We would fear the loss of focus.

Unfortunately the skill of thinking and talking has frozen the attention so that it is now difficult to allow our minds to relax.  Yet our spirits yearn for the natural state in which our attention fills the world around us and fills our bodies.  In such a state my mind could have made a connection to the dragon lizard and sensed its intentions.  I wouldn’t have thought of it as a dangerous beast but as an individual and immediately gotten to know him better.

While we yearn for the original free state of the mind we also fear letting it go.  The result is that the mind is jerked from one state to another, resulting in racing or spinning.

Zookinesis teaches that the mind’s usefulness is its adaptability and pliability.  In a harmonious state of mind, its quality is soft, like clay which can be molded, but not too watery in which case it could not retain its new shape. 

Fear tends to harden the attention like firing pottery in a kiln makes it hard and brittle.  When my fear of the dragon froze my body, my mind felt like a drop of oil. splattering and bouncing around on a hot frying pan. When I realized my foolishness, my attention relaxed, softened and connected to the lizard. 

I learned to soften my attention with the other animals and they became calmer and it seemed, happier.  When a difficult situation arose in daily life I used this same approach of relaxing my attention and letting my focus soften.  The situations seemed less threatening because they could no longer cause me to freeze.  I understood that my impression of the world around me is a reflection of my own internal state.  That internal state is controlled by the balance of a focused (condensed) mind (yin) and a relaxed, expansive mind (yang).  In that balanced state I can be creative and free of fear.

Fear of the power of the world around you deprives you of releasing the power of creativity inside of you.  I soon learned to play with the dragon lizard (a water monitor from Thailand).  His playfulness and mine blended and we were both enlivened.  If we can experience our lives as the playground of our creativity and trust in the power of our creativity, we will no longer be ruled by fear.  We will be able to soften our hardened focus of attention.  Our minds will no longer race and spin but will fill the world around and within us.  We will feel completely connected to the living world. 

I believe that the hardening and deadening of the mind has led to the deadening of the natural world.  It has allowed us not to feel how we are connected to life itself because we feel only connected to our rigid pattern of thoughts.  That allows us to destroy nature because we don’t feel the consequences.

The fluidity of the Tai-chi forms and Zookinesis exercises are like water added to dry clay, softening it.  They heal the body and mind.  Animals can sense the state of your attention.  My wife and I went to a cooking demonstration.  A cat saw us, ran past the four rows of people in chairs in front of us and jumped right into our laps. 

When I was doing research in Panama a troupe of woolly monkeys used to pass by the mess hall of the researchers every morning.  I would make sure go greet them and several would come down to the lower branches of the trees.  I held my arm out to them and we patted each other on our backs and they made little noises.   The other researchers would laugh when they saw this.

 A mind that is connected to the natural world around you and inside you doesn’t spin.  You can release your mind past your little bag of thoughts and you can allow the living energy of the world inside of you.

The process of meditation returns us to our natural state.  Our culture and our own minds have weaved many tales of who we are, where we came from and how we must conduct our lives.  Yet within us, there is a direct experience of our biological nature.  There is also an experience of our connection to the rest of nature.  These direct experiences are overshadowed, in modern times, by the stories we have been told about who we are. 

The direct, natural experiences are like a small child who constantly tugs at his parent’s clothes to get attention.  The adults keep talking to each other and ignore the child. 

Meditation is the act of yielding to the tug of your biological nature.  It is like water sinking into the earth.  As it sinks, the water enlivens the earth, allowing life to flourish.  As your attention sinks back into your body, and then into your connection to the rest of nature, the body, mind, emotions and all the other parts of a human being, become enlivened.  You realize that you are not just your thinking process.  You are not just your opinions.  You are not just your job title.  You are the experience of life itself.  This experience is often lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday living. 

Imagine you are walking through a carnival.  The carnival barkers (the people running the games) call out to you to put a dollar down to throw a ball to knock down some bottles or to throw a dart to puncture balloons.  As you walk, each barker shouts at you loudly to get your dollar. 

Life is like this.  The story our culture tells you is that your choice in life is to decide which game to play – which barker to yield to.  You may yield to the barker of buying the latest fashions or the newest cars.  The barker’s job is to convince you that you can only be a good person, you can only be satisfied, if you yield to him.  That barker may also be selling a religion or a political party. 

When you experience your biological nature, the barkers no longer have any hold on you.  They are merely people yelling at you. 

So people ask me, “How should I meditate?”

While sitting meditation is popular, I have found the best form of meditation for me is natural movement.  This may be Tai-chi, Zookinesis or any other form of activity based on the movement of animals.  Even watching animals in nature is a wonderful form of meditation.  When you imitate an animal’s movement you participate in its flow of energy (chi) and that heals you.  Dance serves a similar purpose. 

As the body moves, the mind (attention) moves along with the body.  Body and Mind flow together and become united.  The connection of body and mind heals a basic rift in the fabric of your spirit.  By experiencing the interpenetration of body and mind, you become more sensitive to the possibility of being part of a larger “body” and a larger “mind” – that of nature.  You become aware of movements of energy, movements of consciousness that flow through you.  You no longer feel isolated. 

Rather than your body and mind battling each other, you experience integration.  This affects your relationship with other people resulting in a less combative feeling.  In this way the practice of meditation can lessen the conflicts between members of a society resulting in less animosity and a more enjoyable way of life.  At the same time, each person is more of an individual.  Rather than tying your identity to the stories of the society you identify with the experience of your own individual nature.  The stories are then seen as creative expressions of deeper truths rather than as shallow facts.

I was inspired to write about meditation this week because of the Christmas holiday and the many television shows about Jesus and the history of Christianity.  It always seemed odd to me that all of the focus of these programs were on what happened rather than on what he taught.  The same could be said of other ancient religious figures.  Nowadays Jesus’ teachings are laid out in beautiful detail in the Gnostic Gospels.  They are amazing in their clarity and beauty.  Yet it seems that all people want to discover from these documents is whether Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. 

I think that our culture has become shallow in many ways.  We seem interested only in the gossip, the soap operas.  In the martial arts we are only interested in techniques rather than principles.  We think of Tai-chi as a six lesson course to memorize a series of movements rather than as a life long dedication to health and awareness.  And I have never been able to figure out why in heaven’s name, is a perfectly good pair of pants or shoes suddenly out of style. 

This past summer my daughter told me she finally had it with my lack of style.  She bought me a new bathing suit.  When I looked around on the beach it was true that no one was wearing the style I had been wearing all these years.  There was a new style that looked like a pair of baggy walking shorts.  My daughter told me that this new style had been around for a few years and I never noticed the change before.

Apparently your biological nature does not warn you about style changes.  It tells you about how to stay healthy and happy.  It tells you about your connection to all people and all life.  It shows you how being violent to others (physically, emotionally or intellectually) is really being violent to yourself.

Meditation really serves to remind you who you really are.  We need to be reminded from time to time.

Tai-chi is considered to be a “spiritual” practice and many people wonder how a physical exercise can be called spiritual.  While most people begin their Tai-chi practice to improve their health and to reduce stress, they soon learn that there is much more to this ancient exercise.  As a child, you may have opened the back of a watch (when they were made with gears and mainsprings) and were amazed at what you saw.  You gradually came to understand how the watch worked and may have even embarked on a career as a mechanic or engineer.

When you understand the mechanisms that control how you behave as a person you can be more creative with yourself and improve those mechanisms.  We gain our basic skills in working with the body until every joint and muscle becomes relaxed, alive and conscious.  You feel alive like you never felt alive before. 

When you practice a Tai-chi form, you feel that each part of the body has a will of its own and wants to do the form.  As in a music band, one member may play part of the song a little differently and the other band members, hearing this change, go along with it and support it.  In the same way, part of your body may want to move differently and the other parts are consciously aware of this and support that creative change.

The result is a consciousness or feeling of self, which is evenly distributed throughout the body and not just located in the head. In some disciplines you are taught to eliminate the ego or feeling of self.  In the Tai-chi approach you just share this feeling of self with every cell, organ, muscle and bone in the body.  You become a cooperative community of living individuals who all feel they are part of the same “tribe” (which is you as a whole person).

How would this world be if all people felt they were part of the same tribe?  In Taoist theory, how all the parts of yourself relate to each other determines how you as a whole, relate to other people.  If a whole culture is taught to believe that we live in our heads and in our thoughts and our bodies are just a dumb machine, then that affects how that culture relates to other cultures.  If the head just orders the rest of the body around and doesn’t care how the body feels, that affects your relationships with other people.

When we practice the Push Hands exercise (described in detail in several other articles below), we quickly learn that if we forcefully try to push the other person over, this locks us up and actually allows the other person to push us more easily. 

If you use force, you have the attitude of force in your mind and your opponent can use that attitude to defeat you.  In a similar way, if you are the type of person who is always trying to get away with something, to take more than you give, then you are actually more susceptible to get scammed.  The internet spam emails only work if you think you are getting something for nothing.

That is why, in our practice, we always try to have even exchanges with people, to not cheat them and to not be cheated by them.  In Push Hands, where the other person comes in to push, we yield.  But we move into the part of their body which is inactive.  The balance of yin and yang is maintained but the result is that we always feel empty to the other person and we can always move into them to push.

The other person learns that if he is tense and has an aggressive attitude, then his body is really dead.  It is dead to awareness.  It is locked.  The attitude of balance always leads to maximum awareness.  The attitude of maximum aggressiveness leads to a deadening of awareness.

In this way we learn about the mechanisms behind our behavior.  We learn about balance of aggression and passivity.  We learn what deadens our consciousness and what enhances it.  We learn that the relationships with other people or with how we deal with situations, mirror the relationships among the different parts of ourselves.  If our minds are aggressive towards our bodies, we will probably be aggressive to other people.

If we think of our bodies as lowly, we will probably think of other people as less worthy than ourselves. 

Spirituality is about relationships.  It is the recognition that all life is connected and you are not more part of life than another person, another animal or plant.  Tai-chi allows you to feel that.  It speaks of the experience of “chi” (internal energy or biological energy) that connects all life. 

Some of the practices of chi cultivation require that you move your chi around in various ways, which are supposedly better than the way it is moving now.  My teachers taught me that the secret of chi cultivation is quite different and it is an important lesson in spirituality.

The body, they say, knows how to move chi.  All you can do is to interfere with chi.  By making you practice moving chi along certain pathways, you remain within an aggressive frame of reference with regards to the body.  You are whipping it into shape.

My teachers taught very differently.  Through the Zookinesis and Tai-chi exercises they taught me how my frame of reference interfered with accomplishing the task.  If I tensed up to push them I was just locking myself up and becoming ineffective.  Yet to me, pushing meant tensing the body as much as you can.  They taught me to send a pulse of energy through the body from the feet up, like a whip which remains loose as it strikes.  That required a completely different frame of reference. 

The typical student who learns this method will start with a pulse at the feet and then when the thought comes into his mind, “Push Now!” he tenses up, blocking the pulse and deadening his body.  Instead he has to release the pulse into the other person, not push his tension into the other person.  He should really say “Release Now!” and relax. 

This is the same approach in learning a Tai-chi form.  It takes a long time to really learn the movements but at some point you must release the form to the body and let the body do the form.  Your usual sense of self just sits back and watches.  You don’t eliminate the sense of self.  That sense of self becomes the audience that can appreciate the creativity of the body.

Gradually the body, mind, emotions and all other parts of yourself become equal partners in your life.  There are no bullies within you.  Then chi flows naturally all by itself and “you” sit back in wonder.  You understand your connection to the rest of life.  You understand how all the parts of your body communicate with each other so that your actions in life become effortless and effective.

When you encounter a situation your first thought is of balance – active balance.  All parts of you are alert but relaxed.  You see the situation and the people in that situation clearly.  Just as you can now see inside yourself you can see inside them.  You understand something of their internal relationship which is reflected externally and you know how to use the principles of Tai-chi to your advantage, without taking advantage of them. 

While Tai-chi is not a religion, there is a morality – the morality of balance.  There is an empathy of understanding for the torture many people live with because you yourself extricated yourself from that internal torture.  In this way, you see that there is a spiritual path in life. 

It is not the path of maximum power of one part of you over another or of one person over another.  It is not about thinking this as opposed to that.  It is the path of discovering, understanding and then releasing useless behaviors and allowing the body, mind and emotions to function naturally and in harmony with each other and with the community of life.

The key is to let go.  If your attention is now mainly caught up in your thoughts and emotions, let your attention move into the body as water moves into a dry paper towel.  If you feel your attention ready to combat another person, first let it flow into that person and learn how that feels.  You may think that if you connect with another person in this way you are being too “new agey”.  People say, “We must be tough to live in this world.”

Remember that Tai-chi is also a martial art.  The full name is Tai-chi-Chuan (The Grand Ultimate Martial Art).  One of the most important parts of the skills of Tai-chi fighting is for your attention to remain connected to the “opponent” and to flow with him.  Flow away from his strikes and into his open areas.  If your attention disconnects from his body you are in trouble.

When your chi and your attention are connected to the situations and people around you and you remain relaxed, you are in a powerful position.  You know how to respond at each moment.  Spiritual doesn’t mean weak.

Chi is the biological communications system of all life.  When you become aware of that system you have acquired a new sense.  You can understand the mechanisms behind your behavior and the behavior of others.  At that point it is easy to let go of useless behavior patterns because you just get bored by them. 

The spiritual path of Tai-chi eliminates self destructive and ineffective behaviors as light eliminates darkness.  You don’t beat yourself up about your problems or force yourself to change.  You just see how silly the ineffective behaviors are and you can laugh at them.  There is a lot of laughter along this path.

Your body does not need to degenerate as you get older.  In fact, it can continue to get stronger, more flexible and more agile throughout life. The exercise systems of Tai-chi and Zookinesis explain how to keep the body young and avoid aging altogether.

According to Chinese medicine, all the cells and organs of the body communicate with each other through a system of biological energy called, “chi”.  They know how to regulate their activities according to the activities of the other cells and organs.  This system of chi is not isolated within the body alone, but is connected to this same energy that serves as the basis of life throughout the earth.  In this way each cell and organ is aware of the environmental conditions in the area and can adjust its activities according to changes in weather and time of year.  In this way the body can stay in the optimum internal condition for health. 

The loss of flexibility is another factor associated with aging.  Connective tissue (fascia) surrounds each organ, bone, muscle and the body cavities.  It provides an interconnected, flexible web that allows the body to act in a rubbery manner.  Its looseness, for example, allows the rib cage to expand when you breathe in.  If the connective tissue were to lose its elasticity your breathing would become shallow.  This would result in a poorer exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen and the cells would be oxygen deprived.

Tighter connective tissue interferes with joint mobility so that your movements become stiff.  The proper flow of blood and lymph requires movement of the body.  When the body can’t move properly, the blood and lymph cannot do as good a job at getting rid of body wastes such as lactic acid and carbon dioxide.  The body remains constantly filled with waste.

Aging is also the gradual dissociation of the mind and body.  As children we relish in movement and using energy.  As we get older we move less and think more.  Our thinking is not connected with movement (as described in previous articles) and so becomes a world within itself.  Gradually we “live” more and more in our thinking and not in our bodies. 

The thinking mind becomes the center of the flow of energy and the body is deprived of energy, creating an unbalanced situation.  According to Chinese medicine, both an excess and a depletion of energy is harmful.  Too much chi burns the mind out.  Too little chi allows the body to deteriorate. 

Yet if we live in our minds we have no sense of perspective about the balance of energy.  Most people cannot even feel chi let alone know how to balance this energy.  This is why Zookinesis explains that consciousness itself is another type of energy, which also has dynamics and qualities and which needs to be balanced as well.  Only by becoming aware of the dynamics of consciousness (or what I call the “dynamics of attention”) can we ever hope to affect the balance of chi.

Consciousness (attention) is what makes us aware.  The unique perspective of Zookinesis is that consciousness is not isolated within the body.  It is a universal energy, much like gravity that pervades all things.  As it flows through each of us, this energy takes on its unique flavor.  The physical stiffness of the body tends to distort the flow of attention and created the imbalance of attention.  The exercises reveal this relationship between the tightness of the body and the imbalance of attention so that it becomes obvious. 

We can then notice how, with each relaxation of the body, the attention becomes more balanced and more connected to the body.

The result is a complete integration, not only of your attention with your body, but of your attention with the greater flow of consciousness of the world around you.  You feel less isolated.  You also feel less vulnerable because you now can see this interconnection and can understand how to strengthen yourself and prevent the deterioration of your mind and body.

You can also understand how these factors of deterioration affect other people and cause their behavior patterns.  This allows you to be more empathetic to them.  A student recently asked me how I can stand to live in this world when I see the destructive behaviors of other people.  When you see things from a healer’s perspective, all the anomalies you see are an education.  They are not aggravating but are just interesting and educational. Yet, I do feel sad, knowing that healing is so easily available yet so many people will live their lives in misery.

In both Tai-chi and Zookinesis, it is essential to understand and to feel how the connection of your consciousness to the general flow of consciousness around you is essential to prevent aging.  It is so easy to see the bad things of the world and to withdraw, not wanting to be connected to this world.  You then feel as if it’s you against the world.

The clear flow of consciousness and chi through your body is essential to prevent aging and to keep healthy.  The exercise of Push Hands allows you to practice extending your energies into another person and to allow theirs in.  It is set up as a battle, each trying to push the other over, so that it duplicates what you perceive as your life situation.  You are battling against the world.  Yet you learn in Push Hands, to connect the flow of force of the opponent (or partner) into the flow of forces within you so as to end the feeling of battle.  If you stiffen up against him, he will easily push you over.  If you absorb his force, combine it with your own and flow back towards him, you become more effective.

You learn that by ending the feeling of battle you become effective.  Your strength lies in allowing yourself to connect with the rest of the world.  You can then enjoy life.

The world will still be the same crazy place it was but you can see the mechanisms behind the behavior of people and cultures and not get trapped in them.  Instead of identifying with a particular world culture you identify with the long line of people throughout history who were aware of these mechanisms.  They were able to free themselves from the destructive habit patterns of the people around them. 

Imagine yourself in a smelly, mucky swamp.  You curse having to walk through this mess and concentrate on the smell and the muck.  Soon you discover beautiful birds and insects.  You feel the warm breeze and smell some flowers.  Your attention is gradually drawn to the beauty of the swamp until even the smell and the muck seem an integral part of that beauty.  You then enjoy being part of this scene.

In the same way, the world we live in is, to a large extent, the result of what we pay attention to.  The news on television calls your attention mostly to the negative and horrifying part of our society.  Yet the Public Broadcasting programs call your attention to the beauty.  How do you feel after watching the news?  How do you feel after watching  nature programs?  What factors in our society direct your attention to its horror? 

The question of aging really is about your power to remain young and healthy.  Having control over what you pay attention to is vital to prevent aging.  This does not mean that you become oblivious to the problems of our world but that those problems don’t destroy you.  You must regain control over the dynamics of your attention and the balance of energy.  This is where you start in Tai-chi and Zookinesis.

I know that in modern times Tai-chi has become just memorizing a series of movements and Push Hands has just become a shoving contest.  This is true even in China itself.  But the movements and the pushing are just the surface level of a very deep and beautiful teaching.  The teaching of “immortality”, as it used to be called, is about how to stay young and healthy and thereby actually extend your lifespan. It teaches you how to become connected to the world around you so that your consciousness may remain connected to the world even after your body dies.

Don’t give in to the images of aging.  Don’t let those images implant themselves within you and direct your consciousness.  Instead look to the agility, strength and beauty of wild animals and of athletes and allow those images to direct your consciousness. 

I teach seated Zookinesis exercises to a local senior community.  When I began six years ago, they could barely move.  Now we are beginning to do seated acrobatic movements.  Each time I show them what exercise we are working towards, they laugh, feeling they could never do that.  Yet a month or two later, they easily do the exercise.  Most of them are over 90 years old.  I think Zookinesis has given them a new perspective of what they are capable of.  They are now headed in a positive direction – stronger, more flexible, more relaxed and more connected to their bodies.  When you live your life in this positive direction, you are already immortal.

The issue of death can lead us to a more powerful way to live our lives.  We know what happens to our bodies at death.  What happens to our consciousness (or what I call, “attention”)?  We fear death as if it were not already part of us.  Yet the death of the awareness of our bodies, of the consciousness of each cell and organ, is death we carry with us.  The death of our direct awareness to our connection to nature already places us in our graves. 

We are like travelers towards the destination of death, carrying our death with us.  In this way we bring death to death.  Rather, bring life to life. 

Strengthen the consciousness of each cell, organ, muscle and bone.  Strengthen the connection of that consciousness to the consciousness of the earth herself.  Bring life to life and you will be powerful.  When you increase the body consciousness (“Body-Mind”), you travel towards life. 

We all know how to “thread consciousness” through the eyes of a baby.  We talk to the baby and make facial expressions.  The baby’s consciousness jumps towards you.  It is like threading a needle and pulling the thread through the eye of the needle.  We can do this within our own bodies as well.

When you hear beautiful music, the music threads your consciousness through your body into the world of sound.  When you fall in love you thread consciousness through each other.  We are weavers of consciousness.  When others think we die, we know that we have weaved the last of ourselves into the web of life and have become that web. 

The issue of life is not the length of life or our wealth but the beauty of the tapestry we weave ourselves into.

The way the martial art of Tai-chi approaches grappling is very applicable to daily life.  The pressures we face on a psychological, emotional and spiritual level are the way life grapples with us.  When common sense is applied to grappling we can easily deal with the strongest opponent.  Rather than fight back against the pressures we examine the nature of those pressures and neutralize them. 

In one technique we can imagine the pressure as a line drawn through the body.  The line starts at the opponent’s hand or arm, where he is applying the pressure and then continues in the direction of the pressure.  Each of his hands or arms is exerting a pressure and each has a line.  You imagine where those two lines will meet within your body and then relax that point.  You only need to relax about one inch of muscle. 

When the point at which the pressures meet relaxes, the opponent’s force is neutralized.  The skill is to relax just that exact point and to not relax more than about an inch of muscular area.  Once the opponent is neutralized, you can do what you want with him.

The meeting point of the pressures shows you how you resist the force of the opponent with your own tension.  You are then more easily able to let go of the resistance.  The opponent depends on your resistance to control you. 

Yet the remaining muscles of the body maintain their firmness to keep the body’s structure intact.  You do not simply collapse your body but strategically relax only the meeting point of the lines.

In our everyday lives we are faced with many pressures – financial, emotional, etc. The meeting point of those pressures show how we fight against the pressure.  If we imagine ourselves as victims in a world battling against us we will wear ourselves out.  We can just as easily ask ourselves, “What is this pressure telling me?  Why am I battling against the pressure?” 

I have found that the reason most people feel pressured in life is that they are unwilling to change as they go through life.  Perhaps they feel they are entitled to a certain high standard of life and resent having to control their spending.  “The other guy can buy these things so why shouldn’t I be entitled to do the same?”

Perhaps you demand certain patterns of behavior from other people.  After all, you are entitled to be treated in the manner to which you would like to become accustomed.   You want the world to conform to your expectations and it usually doesn’t. 

The Tai-chi solution is to make changes from the inside out.  Gain control over your lifestyle before trying to gain control over the rest of the world.  If you can improve your health and your knowledge, your relationship to the world will change.  If you become more aware of your body and end the isolation of the mind and body characteristic of our culture, you will become more powerful.  If you understand how the advertising industry affects your emotions and how other institutions of our society try to control your behavior, you will be freed from their pressures. 

When you notice your frustration, your anger, your sadness, you can then more easily see how these pressures control how you feel about yourself.  Anyone basing their feeling of self worth on the pressures of others who want to control them, is “building their house on sand” which we actually do here on Long Island.  That’s why the wealthy homes on Dune Road get washed into the sea every few years.  When those homeowners expect the taxpayer to rebuild their homes for them or to re-build Dune Road, they are not following the principles of Tai-chi.

There was a time when cultures were based on the warmth, closeness and sharing of small communities.   The world most of us live in seems cold and isolated.  We do seem like victims thrown into a world foreign to our basic natures. 

We could turn cold and accept that the rest of our lives will be a miserable battle.  Or we could build a small community of people – friends and family – and create the kind of culture we would like to live in.  We can do this by starting with ourselves and imagining our own selves as a community.  There is the emotional part of us, the mind, the body and all its individual parts, the will, the internal energy, our memories, our habits and other parts.  Each of these is energized and actively participates in our every action. 

Ancient cultures provided a teaching called “The Elements” which helped people to develop a harmony among all these parts.  We don’t have this teaching in our modern world.  By participating in training such as Tai-chi, Zookinesis and Yoga, which are based on the teaching of the elements, we can create this harmony within ourselves.  That can serve as the basis of a more harmonious attitude and pattern of behavior in our circle of friends and family. 

Whenever you feel a “point of pressure”, use that as an opportunity to shift and adjust something in your life so as to make that pressure irrelevant. 

Before we are about to attempt anything, the attention assesses the body, mind, will – all the “elements” – to see if you are prepared to accomplish the mission.  If your attention feels that you are not ready, it will cause you to hesitate or stop trying.  By building your inner strength you feel more prepared and are more willing to try new things.  You no longer consider a new challenge with fear.  Your attention assesses your elements and finds them strong and ready.  This creates an entirely new attitude which leads to success.

Even though we may be dealing with a mental or emotional challenge, the attention assesses the body’s physical condition to determine if you are ready to deal with the challenge. Is each part of our body flexible and strong and is it filled with our awareness?  Our intellectual way of interacting with each other in modern society is a more modern form of behavior.  Our biology still works on a physical “flight or fight response” mode.  So in order to feel confident to tackle a modern type of interaction, we still instinctually assess our physical readiness. 

When we are grappling, we also need to assess the partner’s readiness.  We need to use our attention to assess his body. His grappling behaviors will come from his own sense of physical readiness.  We need to be more aware of his readiness than he is of his own.  This is the skill that push hands provides to us. 

We can also block the ability of his attention to assess the readiness of his body.  This can easily be done by constantly shifting the meeting point of your two lines of force on his body.  His attention may be able to assess if he is ready to deal with any particular pattern of pressure but if that pattern shifts slightly and regularly, his attention will be worn out quickly.  You don’t want to shift it enough to throw your own body off – the smaller the shifts the better.  As you practice this you will begin to vividly feel how his attention panics and his body tenses when you shift the pressure and how his attention tries to re-assess the situation.  The grappling game is then played on the basis of attacking his attention rather than his body.

Another important principle in grappling is “Let Yang be Yang and Yin be Yin”.  This is an expression from Zookinesis training.  It means that the Yang energy, which is expansive and energizing, should be allowed to fully express itself.  The Yin energy, which is grounding, should be allowed to fully express itself.  Imagine walking a dog on a leash.  The dog pulls you forward and you tug back on the leash to control the dog.  If you let the leash go, the dog would run as fast as he could and feel very free and happy.  You would be able to relax.  Letting go of the leash is “letting Yang be Yang”.  Relaxing is “letting Yin be Yin”. 

Don’t pit yin against yang as when you are holding the dog back.  If you do that throughout your life, one day your Yang energy will give out and your Yin energy will implode within you causing death.  Rather, allow each energy its full expression and in that, seek balance.

Grappling is different than the dog on the leash situation because the grappler’s force presses inward.  In this case, seek balance by your yang force filling the yin areas of the opponent’s body.  This balance evens out the opponent’s superior physical strength.

Allow your Yin force to be grounded by his physical force, bringing him into your foundation.  This is “letting Yin be Yin”.  Allow your response to originate in your foundation to destabilize his alignment. 

His Yang energy is now in your foundation so you can upset his whole body from there.  Let him feel the pressure of the volcano in your foundation as Yang energy builds, and the endless depth and power of the magma about to erupt.  His force will be burned with only scattered cinders remaining and you will be in control.  Then allow your Yang energy to be Yang.  It will erupt by itself.  You don’t need to force it.

The mistake many grapplers make is to turn Yang energy into tension.  In this case your Yang energy jumps within your own body, hardening it.  Rather, allow your Yang energy only to jump within the opponent’s body, leaving your body as relaxed as possible while still maintaining its structure.  You will need very little physical movement.

Remember also that expanding Yang requires an in-breath into the lower part of the lungs.  You should not breathe out or bring the breath upward when Yang leaps out. 

All of this requires a great deal of training of course.  But the result is that when you are faced with everyday life you respond the way you are trained.  You don’t get rattled.  You simply assess your own balance of energy, the other person’s balance and make the most advantageous response which is usually the simplest.  You let the other person fill their bodies, minds and emotions with Yang energy while you remain balanced.  And you don’t wear yourself out by pitting Yin against Yang.  This keeps you young and energized.

The internal martial arts train the student to become more powerful in his everyday world, not just in fighting itself.  They were a way of encoding ancient secrets of keeping your body and mind young throughout your life and developing magnified vitality.

The first principle is the use of minimum movement.  While you duck away from a strike, you move only an inch away from the opponent’s fist.  When you strike, you tense your arm only as much as needed to prevent the arm from collapsing.  Your power comes from the sequential expansion of your joints and muscles from the ground up.  The power is a surge through the body and the body as a whole stays still. 

In everyday life you change your perspective from reacting to the negative qualities of other people to letting go of the “handle” that other people seem to have on you that allows them to affect you with their behavior.  Your mind and emotions become like a still lake.  The lake reflects the scene around it but is not disturbed by that scene.  In the same way, you are fully aware of all that is going on around you but you have dropped the internal mechanism that makes your “internal waters” choppy.

This does not result in losing your emotions.  It just means that your emotions don’t get churned up because of the behavior of other people.  You are still affected by the beauty around you and your connection to nature.  The result is that you can be the calm in the middle of the storm and clearly see how to be effective in any situation.  In our modern world the “storm” never seems to end.

In grappling, you can maneuver the part of the body the other person grabs while keeping the rest of the body calm.  Your whole body is not thrown by the force of the opponent.  If he grabs your arm, your arm joints, including the shoulder, move and rotate to deflect his force.  If he grabs you from behind, a small shift in the hip joint can break his connection to the ground (his “root”) and allow you to throw him. 

Your body becomes a collection of many parts and you have control over each part individually.  When confronted with force you don’t tense up the whole body.  Instead you direct his force through your body into your own root and use it to strengthen your foundation.  Once the opponent’s force has been drained in this way, you can throw him.

In our everyday lives we have many “parts”.  There is the physical part, the emotional part, the mental part, the spiritual part, etc.  The study of how to keep all those parts in balance is called, “The Elements”.  In this training we learn to be a “passive observer” (of our own behavior) as if we were an audience member watching a play.  We ask ourselves, “Does our behavior make any sense?”  Then we play the part of the director and adjust the script.

In this way we don’t have an investment in any particular pattern of behaviors.  We realize that we are not those behaviors – that we are so much more.  We are a beautiful, natural creature connected to the rest of nature.  So much of what wears us out in everyday life is our investment in a set of behaviors that hurt us.  Even though we know that our addictions and negative behaviors hurt us, we feel they are us and we don’t want to change who we are.

The key is to learn who we truly are – not a set of damaging behaviors but an incredible interaction of many parts, all of which are connected to every other part of nature.  We learn to become like an orchestra conductor harmonizing many instruments to play a beautiful piece of music, and that music is our lives.

When I listen to Public Broadcasting programs of the oldies groups, I am still amazed at the talent of those groups.  It used to be all about the music.  While there is still talent to be found now, it is more about the money now.  I don’t hear the kind of talent there used to be (or at least that kind of talent can’t seem to get commercially successful).  We use a lot of throw away products now that are cheaply made.  Is that what is happening to our lives? 

Even our religions, which are supposed to guide us, are more cheaply made.  If you are a member of this religion you will go to heaven.  If you are a member of any other, you won’t.  So religions are based more on the fear of going to hell than on spiritual development.  That to me is “cheap” religion.

The cheapening of lives wears us out.  When we yearn for value in our lives, to develop ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, we continue to grow and improve throughout life.  We become healthier, stronger, smarter and happier.  The quality of our lives reflects the quality of our products and our art. 

Martial arts are called an “art” because they really train you to improve your everyday life.  The internal martial arts teach you how to let go of unnecessary movements and behaviors, to stay calm in the midst of turmoil and to become intimately aware of the balance of your “parts” so that you stay in harmony within yourself.  They teach you that sparring is not a struggle but the art of remaining calm and centered and yet effective. 

You strive not to conquer the opponent, but to conquer your own ineffectiveness.  You learn that your power comes from your awareness of what is going on around you and your stillness – reacting only as much as is necessary.  In this way you don’t wear yourself out by living life as a great struggle. 

As the minutes and hours go by in your life ask yourself if you are enjoying those minutes and hours.  How much of the day is spent being aggravated and worried and how much enjoying life?  Isn’t it worth investing time to change that proportion?  Life goes by quickly and time can’t be recovered. 

While ancient knowledge can’t help us with modern technology it can help us change that proportion.  It can help us stay healthier and more active throughout our lives, enjoy each day and become more effective.  That is the kind of technology some of the ancient cultures were good at.  While Tai-chi and Zookinesis may seem just like physical exercises or a martial art, they really teach so much more.  They are a treasure of ancient knowledge.