Tai Chi is a Fighting Art.

I've taken the following from my own comments in a social media forum regarding the true nature of taijiquan and why people in the west refuse to acknowledge the martial aspect of the art, which, some of us feel, means your practice of taiji is incomplete... "In western culture, value tends to be placed on the "bigger, better, stronger, faster, meaner, nastier" in practically everything if you really think about it, but perhaps especially with martial arts. Internal arts, or "soft styles" just don't LOOK mean enough to the western eye.
On the other side of it, the kind of people that get into "alternative healing" and such in western culture are often also vegans, pacifists and other such types. These people spend a lot of time training their brains into this "harm none" mentality to the point that they literally do not see the violent potential in these slow and graceful movements found in arts like taijiquan, it just looks "pretty" and like "moving meditation" to them. There is no shortage of published material out there, books, videos, internet articles, etc, that reinforce that misinformation, so even if you confront them with the truth about taijiquan, they can easily relieve their cognitive dissonance with a quick Google search.

The fact is, slow, deliberate movement as seen in practicing taiji forms actually builds lean, flexible muscle, and greater fine motor control. THAT is why it's practiced in this way. Bulky muscle as seen on body builders and boxers makes you slow and limits mobility, so it just doesn't work for taijiquan. Look at some of the more martial styles of taijiquan and you will find more short, fast movements intermingled with the slow and graceful. That's the all important "fa jing" or "explosive power" as seen in the famous "one inch punch" or the rapid punches of wing chun. Many have never even heard of qin-na (chin na) which is a grappling art meant to accompany taijiquan.

Yes, there are health benefits if taiji practice. Bring the qin-na into it and, guess what? You end up learning acupressure and tui na by proxy. The ability to heal yourself, your training partners, and even potentially your enemy once subdued was actually an integral part of many traditional arts. It is looked down upon as "weak" or "girly" by the harsh and patriarchal west, but self care is to self defense as an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure, as the saying goes. Furthermore, consider the psychological implications of dominating your enemy so completely as to break their body, then show then how you can put it back together again. That's dominating the SPIRIT, which subdues them much more completely, not to mention makes you look real good in court."

Meditation; a conversation between opposing minds

"To help clear the fog, for my dear son" was the recommended forward to this piece, suggested by a woman in tears from the revelation she had just received.

This is the product of a heart to heart I had with someone who has never meditated, never thought herself capable of meditation, and who was in desperate need of it. Plagued by worry, automatic negative thoughts, traumatic memories which could be triggered by anything (in this case it was finding note from a former roommate followed by seeing a soap pump) which would send her into a cascade of emotions that almost always resulted in one of two things; a complete loss of motivation for the remainder of the day, or a senseless argument with loved ones about something unrelated as a means of venting her pent-up feelings.

Her mind is practically the opposite of my mind. She lives in the tangible, I deal with the esoteric. When it comes to decision making, she is an optimizer (one who focuses on the details of a decision to find the most beneficial choice in every possible way) whereas I am a satisficer (one who seeks the solution which satisfies the most fundamental and impending needs of the situation). When plagued by something as intangible as her own consciousness, her remedy has been to find something tangible to focus on in a vane attempt to drown out those thoughts. This, of course, does not solve the problem, because those thoughts and feelings never get processed, therefore they will just return again and again until they do.

She came to me with this problem, and said she did not even know what to ask or say besides "Help." If only we could have recorded the whole conversation... Yet I shall endeavor here to put forth the key points.

"Your problem" I told her "is you have developed a habit of these thoughts, and they are like a poison to you. Essentially, what you have described to me, is like saying 'I saw some soap and I had to smoke some crack. I had no choice in the matter. I couldn't help it. I just saw the soap and suddenly- crack' when all you really have to do is put down the crack!"

"I guess that's why when I can't sleep I would look at stuff on Ebay, trying to find something to make me happy and stop all the things that make me hurt." she replied.

"So what you are telling me is that you know the crack is bad for you, so you thought it was a good idea to use heroine, because crack makes you like THIS" -I clench my fists, grind my teeth, and widen my eyes as I shake and look around like a madman- "and heroine makes you like this" -I drop my limbs like dead weight, lean my head back and grin stupidly-

I then continued; "You can't fix one chemical dependency with another, and that's all emotions are, just hormones, chemicals, produced by your body."

"But I can't stop myself feeling that way because of these thoughts" she said desperately.

"And thoughts" I explained, "are nothing more than electrical flashes in the brain."

I pause for a moment to come up with another scenario for her.

"You have experienced a static discharge before. Did in ruin your life? Was the experience so devastating that you could no longer function? No, you just shook it off and went about your day. That's all these thoughts are, just static in your brain."

"It has been a while," she started, "but in my old car, the doors would always shock me getting out. I got so used to it that I started running my hands along the door to try and discharge the static from being in the car, to avoid getting shocked" (I neglected to explain here that maintaining contact with the door was in fact *not* "discharging" but rather holding onto the charge so as not to get shocked, a poignant metaphor when you think about it) "I guess that's what these thoughts are like, this habit is my way of trying to avoid being shocked." she finished thoughtfully.

"You are not your mind. You are not your body. You are not your emotions or thoughts, or even sensations. You are above and beyond these things. If you are anything, you are a consciousness, and everything the mind thinks or the body does is a product of that consciousness. The consciousness is not produced by the brain, rather what the brain does is produced by the consciousness." -I said to her.

She responded; "So it is like the glass around a light bulb; The light comes from the bulb, and without the glass sealing the vacuum around the filament, it can't produce light."

"No." I replied. "In that analogy, the bulb would be the skull. The filament, the brain. The consciousness is the light itself, or, better yet, the electricity which produces the light by way of the bulb and its parts."

-This caused her eyes to "light up" and I could tell we had a break through.

"You and Caegan" (my son) I explained to her, "think you cannot meditate because the thoughts that crop up in your head whenever you sit still, but it is people like you that need it most of all."

She and I had spoken previously on meditation. She even tried suggesting things from time to time "do this" or "practice that" she would say "and it could be like a form of meditation" -I referenced these conversations for the next part;

"...that's where you are confused on the finer points of meditation" I explained. "When you focus on a thing, that is more like contemplation, and it can be a very useful tool, but real meditation is about no thought. This is what I have tried to explain to you both so many times before. The thoughts will be there, but you don't have to make them a part of you."

This is where I lost her. "I feel like I am staring at a point that I cannot see." She said. "It is like how there used to be no such concept as zero. How it was like maybe only a thousand years ago or something that they came up with the concept of a place holder. That's how I am feeling right now. You are telling me a thing, but I just can't see or conceive of it."

I attempted to mask my excitement as I seized this perfect opportunity; "Okay," I said, as I made a big 0 with my two hands, pressed together at the fingertips. "This is zero." I said as I moved in closer to her and put my hands right up to her face, creating a circle around her eyes. "This is where you are" I told her, then stepped back, keeping my hands in the same position "and this is meditation- it is simply taking a step back. 'oh look at those thoughts and emotions over there' how much more clearly they appear when they are no longer the subject of such intense focus"

I paused to give her a chance to speak and make sure I didn't upset her by getting in her face like that. She said nothing, so I continued;

"That's how meditation works, it helps you to train your mind to take a different perspective on things, so that next time you see a soap bottle, or a note in someone else's handwriting from an unpleasant period in your past, you can have those thoughts and memories without drowning under the cascade of emotions. It isn't about controlling your thoughts, it is about not letting them control you."

This planet is covered with literally trillions of living things, most of which go their entire lives just existing. Eat food, drink water, expel waste, and breathe. That is literally all that is required of any living thing. It is only humans which insist on over complicating things, and it is only humans who are plagued by the very nature of their existence. Grass doesn't give a damn when it grows or dies back. Grass has never wanted to watch T.V. and has never even conceived of complex and ludicrous concepts like "bills" -so for a measly 5-15 minutes per day, just be like grass. Sit there, absorbing sunlight and breathing. Life can be simple. We choose to make it complicated. All too often we get inundated by our own illusory lifestyle and lose sight of the simplicity of being. Meditation is our return to zero. It gives us perspective and dissolves delusions. The things that make us anxious or depressed are mostly of our own creation. Even when they came from another source, or were out of our control at the time, meditation reminds us how to exist in the present moment, where those things exist only as static in the mind. Meditation allows us to "re-tune" our minds so we can deal with the here-and-now, laying the stepping stones for a better future, without worrying so much about what we are building, or if we are building it right. You lay the path brick by brick, and if you focus too much on the path behind, or the road ahead, or someone else's structure, you can't lay your own bricks with the care and precision of individual intent and focus. By and by you will find yourself on an unstable foundation. Be here. Be now. Just be...