CRITICAL MOMENTUM
June 9th, 2011
There is a point in every practice where the benefit you receive exceeds the effort you put in. At the beginning there is a lot of effort as you learn the principles and condition the mind and body. But then the creative energy of the mind and body begins to take off on its own and lead you. At that point you need to yield to your own creativity.
You can feel this principle with the compression and expansion of the body. As you breathe out in your exercises, your body sinks and compresses into the legs and into the ground (the root). As you breathe in, the body expands and the energy is propelled into the environment. There is an in-between point where this expansive energy (Yang) surges and begins to “leap” out of you. At that point you allow each muscle and joint of the body, as well as the connective tissue, to be pulled by that expansion and stretch. Just when the Yang energy is released out of the body, you begin to breathe out and the muscles, joints and connective tissue begin to relax. This cycle brings flexibility to the body and serves as an “energy pump”.
Our everyday lives can wear us out and the last thing we feel we need is another activity that requires effort. But Zookinesis and Tai-chi can serve as energy pumps. At the beginning you certainly gain flexibility, relaxation, emotional calm and other aspects of physical and mental health. Yet you have to put a lot of practice into it. But soon the benefits you gain each week far outweigh the effort.
An important key principle of the energy pump is that the critical momentum, the point at which you yield to the expanding energy, takes place constantly in your life. It does not just happen at one moment in your life. There is positive energy all around you that can pull you out of lethargy. Some of that energy is natural and some is the creativity, the art of we humans.
If you can be on the lookout for that expanding Yang energy, you will find it everywhere. You will know how to yield to it because you have practiced this kind of yielding in your exercises. You will also recognize what is positive and what is negative energy because of how it feels when you yield to it. Does it lead to more relaxation, health and creativity or less? Does it make you more energized or just more crazy and frantic? You will gain skill at what to yield to and what to walk away from.
One of the great benefits of a practice such as Zookinesis and Tai-chi is that you can take an incident in life and analyze it in your practice. If your interaction with another person went bad, you have the sensitivity to know the dynamics of how it made you feel. You can then practice those dynamics in your exercises to develop greater skills and greater understanding of yourself. You have a framework that can be used to understand your life. You will understand how the positive, creative energy you developed through your practice, can be connected to similar energy in your environment.
This will pull your life in a positive direction, calling on the positive qualities within you. It will allow you to be more “open” because you are clear about when to be open and with whom. When the energy or the people around you are not good for you, you don’t need to close up and tense up. You are so familiar with the principles of connecting that you can avoid connecting with bad influences without completely closing up.
This brings more lightness to your life without making you vulnerable. You will learn that other people can “pull” on that energy and that is not a good thing. If they pull your Yang energy out of you, it depletes you. If your Yang energy emerges out of you of its own volition, that energizes you. Your practice teaches you to discern the difference between the two and to protect yourself from being depleted.
So a simple practice like compressing the body on the outbreath and expanding on the inbreath, can permeate your life, giving you new insights about how to live more powerfully.
My books, Movements of Magic and Movements of Power are mostly about how to take your practices and use them in your daily life. Tai-chi is not just about memorizing a series of movements; it is about creating a critical momentum of positive energy that can transform your life.
