HEALING AND MARTIAL ARTS BLOG

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 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.

The power in Tai-chi-Chuan sparring comes from relaxation with a minimum use of muscle tension. This contrasts with “hard” or “external” styles. The power of the punch, for example, originates in the foot as it presses into the ground. Each joint expands sequentially from there so the force emanates upward. The force moves through the leg and hips and then directly to the elbow and fist, bypassing the upper body. The upper body sits loosely on the lower body. To the extent that the upper body tenses, this detracts from the force that moves out into the opponent’s body and increases the amount of force that stays in the puncher’s body.

At the moment of impact, the body must not tense up any more than is minimally necessary to maintain the firmness of the body’s structure (including the punching arm). Any tension beyond that point decreases the amount of force moving into the opponent. Your fist is not completely tensed up as you strike.

In the fraction of a second it takes to impact, your body must perceive the balance and alignment of the opponent so that your body can re-align itself to take the opponent’s situation into consideration. Your body aligns itself to deliver the most effective punch according to the alignment of the opponent. Your muscles and joints must re-align, all at the same time, instantly. And of course, your body must have the knowledge of how to sense the opponent and re-adjust. If your body were stiff, you would sense nothing and not be able to re-adjust.

Your force must move out equally into the floor, through the foot, as into the opponent. In external styles. the tension of the body is used as the “floor”. You punch out from your own tension. In Tai-chi-Chuan, the actual floor is used as the floor. This releases the body to be flexible and responsive.

As the front part of your body expands to deliver the punch, your back must relax and sink into the floor. Your front cannot expand if your back doesn’t relax. And if you expand your back and front at the same time, you just lift yourself out of your root (your connection to the ground). There need to be an equal amount of you sinking as expanding.

In this way, your center remains still, and the stillness of the center is necessary for power. It is like jacking up a car to change a tire. If you place the base of the jack on marbles or on slippery mud, it will slip and the car will fall down. If your center moves about, the structure of the body cannot remain aligned to deliver the maximum power.

Even the arm itself remains relaxed until it makes contact. Only then does it tense and only enough to prevent the collapse of the arm. The arm does not create the power. The body creates the power. Any attempt to add more power by using the arm muscles to punch actually cuts off the body’s power.

So relaxation is a vital ingredient to developing power in sparring. And in life, relaxation allows the body to remain strong and not be worn out. Your training in sparring helps you to deal with life in a more realistic way. You no longer feel you are battling your way through life.