LIFE AS GRAPPLING
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.
