Teachings of Bob Klein

NEW BEGINNERS CLASSES STARTING

2010-07-30T14:46:00Z

We usually create new classes for beginners each September. I need your input about which classes you would like and at which times and days. Class #1 – Tai-chi Yang Short Form. The slow, relaxing movements most people think of as Tai-chi. Class #2 – Chi-Gung (Zookinesis) – Simple exercises based on animal movements to restore full flexibility and functionality of the body. Increases energy and eliminates stress. Tones muscles all over the body and strengthens joints. Class #3 – Stress Reduction. Seated stress reduction exercises with meditation at end. Class #4 – Kung-fu Exercise. Aerobic exercise based on the fluid, flexible system of Tai-chi-Chuan. You can “vote” for which classes you would like and on which days and times by writing in the “comments” section on the left or you can email me at bobklein@movementsofmagic.com

TAI-CHI WEEKEND - A GREAT SUCCESS!

2010-07-14T15:47:00Z

The Tai-chi weekend festival at Bruce La Carrubba’s 23 acre home in Wantage, New Jersey, was an incredible success. Many talented teachers provided a choice of three workshops on Tai-chi per time period, so that it was difficult to choose which to attend. I taught the internal aspects of Push Hands and the Tai-chi Tiger Chi-gung. I met one of my first students, Joe, who learned Tai-chi from me (and later from others) when he was a teenager. I hadn’t seen him for over 25 years. He is a Tai-chi teacher now and presented one of the workshops. The Tai-chi Festival is not only for students to learn, but the teachers learn from each other. I was especially happy to see David Chandler (from Conn.) and Jay Dunbar (from N.C.) who I hadn’t seen for a while. And it is always such a pleasure to see Bruce again. He is such a sweet, genuine, simple and deeply spiritual person that it is wonderful just to be around him. While he puts in tremendous work to provide this wonderful weekend for all of us, he says that he “just mows the lawn and pays the taxes.” Bruce was a student of Jou, Tsung-Hwa, who provided the original Tai-chi farm weekends but Jou was killed in a car accident. Bruce then continued the tradition at his home and dedicated the weekends to Master Jou.

It is a shame that there can’t be more weekends like this around the country. Would you, the readers, be interested in a Long Island Tai-chi weekend, with workshops all day and a chance to meet other Tai-chi people? If we could get enough people to attend, we could rent a facility, provide meals and great teachers. Bruce’s weekend is in July. Perhaps we could have one in the Fall. If you have any ideas or suggestions about this, please write to me in the “comments” section on the left side of this blog.

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

2010-06-28T14:41:00Z

In many cultures the circle is a symbol of power. The circle can represent seniors giving their lifetime of knowledge, wisdom and skills, back to the next generation. In our culture, the emphasis is on constant change, and the knowledge and skills of the past are not as valued as they used to be. The circle also represents the constant renewal of the life-giving properties of nature. The ceremonies of many cultures welcomed each new season and celebrated the cooperation of human and nature. Imagine spending time welcoming each new day and each new season, rather than plunging headlong towards each year’s vacation or towards retirement. Celebration of the cycles of nature becomes an important part of the culture, as important as inventing faster computers and new cell phones is in our society.

I think we have all noticed that in one generation, people have become faster, louder, more frantic and less fulfilled. While we are told that fulfillment depends mainly on improving the economy and inventing even faster and more powerful equipment, we can also examine how repairing the cycles in our lives plays a part in our psychological and physical health.

One of the purposes of the Tai-chi forms is to allow the body to move in smooth, unbroken circles. This heals the “rush, rush, rush” modern attitude, and allows us to feel comfortable and relaxed in our bodies. I have noticed, in my years of teaching Tai-chi, that most people do not feel comfortable in their bodies. When you do not feel comfortable in your body, you do not feel comfortable among other people. You feel unsettled and not centered.

The smooth, flowing Tai-chi form also heals the attitude that life consists of always rushing to finish the next project. We have to run faster and faster, to get more and more done, so we can be happy at some unknown time in the future. The form gives us a few minutes each day to just be relaxed, happy and content in the beautiful feelings of the body, mind and emotions flowing with the cycles of nature.

In a society dedicated not to the cycles of nature, but to constant rushing, the form, or the Zookinesis exercises (or whatever similar practice you are involved in) becomes the daily ceremony reminding you that everything is alright because you are always part of nature. It reminds you that the ancient wisdom of our connection to nature is still relevant and in fact, is vital to our physical and psychological survival. By keeping you healthy in many ways, these exercises keep the circle unbroken. They remind us that it is often the simplest things in life that are the most fulfilling.

TAI-CHI PARK FESTIVAL - JULY 10-11

2010-05-29T17:12:00Z

The yearly Tai-chi Park Festival is a celebration of Tai-chi, of Jou, Tsung Hwa's birthday (founder of the original Tai-chi Farm) and a chance to take incredible workshops with many Tai-chi teachers in a beautiful mountain setting. Wandering among forest trails, you will find small groups of people learning Tai-chi forms, chi-gung, martial arts applications and the principles of healing. A stream meanders through the 23 acre property in Wantage, N.J. and each little practice area is set up like an ancient Chinese garden. It will be held this year on July 10th and 11th. There are five workshop times per day and several choices of workshops to take per time slot. The price is $60 for one day and $100 for both days, per person. For more information, you can contact www.taichipark-masterjoustunghwa.org and click onto events. The email address is TAI-CHIPARK@HOTMAIL.COM This beautiful celebration is a continuation of the dream of Master Jou, Tsung-Hwa to have an outdoor natural area where people from around the world can gather to share their knowledge and skills about Tai-chi. His original Tai-chi Farm attracted over 800 people a year, mostly teachers and their students, but everyone was welcome. This year I will be teaching Push Hands - its application to everyday life and its ability to transform your health and awareness. I will also be teaching Tiger Chi-gung which emphasizes the connection of mind and body and the ability to twist and maneuver like a tiger. It is an excellent set of exercises for keeping the body young. I hope to see you there.

FEELING TIRED WITH CHANGES IN THE SEASONS

2010-04-13T15:13:00Z

As we move into Spring you might expect to become more energetic. Yet many people feel tired at the change of each season. The Spring brings pollen and even if you are not allergic, your body fights against pollen’s foreign protein and this requires a lot of energy. This points to one of the most basic principles in Chinese medicine. The body is like an ecological community, with each of its types of tissues like the many different species of plants and animals in an ecological community. As the Spring changes the face of the landscape, so it changes the face of our internal landscape. In modern times we try to maintain a constant environment in our houses to overcome the changes in temperature, humidity, etc. outside. Yet, no matter how much we control our environment, our bodies and even our minds and emotions are at the mercy of environmental and seasonal changes.

This is why many cultures have festivals for each season, welcoming these changes and preparing us emotionally for the fact that we are entering a new phase of the year. We can do the same, for example, by spending a day in a park for no other reason than welcoming the Spring, or spending a day planting seeds.

We may like to think that our bodies are machines that we own, but the Tai-chi perspective (and that of most ancient cultures) is that the body, mind, emotions and spirit are all interweaving living energies. The impression of ourselves as a single identity is a reflection of the relationship among all those “elements”. When that relationship becomes rigid (because we cling to a rigid identity), we cannot adapt to the changes in the seasons of the earth or the changes in the seasons of our lives.

Rigidity leads to battling against the changes in the environment rather than adapting. There is an old story about a Zen teacher walking with his student in the woods. They saw an old man fall into a rushing river and the student was about to run to save him. His teacher stopped him. The student asked, “Why are you stopping me from saving that man’s life?” Soon they saw the old man emerge downriver unharmed. His teacher said, “That man is a Zen master. Where the river flows in, he flows in with it. Where it flows out, he comes out”.

The quality of the Spring is to "lift" up the sluggish parts of yourself which were lying dormant in the Winter. Your sleeping spirit has been wakened but is still groggy. As the flowers blossom, your spirit will be affected in the same way. The inside of your body is affected in the same way as the flowers. It will take time for the stem to push its way through the earth but soon the plant becomes vibrant and beautiful. Give yourself time to flow with the energies of the Spring. Allow your “elements” to adapt and participate in those changes so that your internal environment becomes vibrant and alive.

REVIEWS FOR "THE DOUBTING SNAKE"

2010-03-18T01:45:00Z

“In the tradition quickened by the Celestine Prophecy, Bob Klein takes us to places at once far away, intimate, strange and familiar. The beauty is in the lush regions, cultures and cosmologies it describes, and in the invisible realms it remarkably and simply illustrates. The warrior within each of us in invited to: Wake up; deeply see and listen; remember what reality is really made of; and honor, cultivate and harness our connectedness, consciousness, power, and history in order to reinvent our culture in a Golden Age.”

Michou Landon, Shasta Magazine

“The Doubting Snake depicts a colorful world full of wild animals that take an active part in guiding Steve to his truth. Filled with mystery, laughter, and insight, this book is a pleasure to read as we accompany Steve on his incredible journey to self awareness.”

Karen Porter, Indicator Magazine

Note: See information on "The Doubting Snake" by clicking onto our "Online Store". You will see this book listed on the left side of the page.

BECOMING ALIVE AND CONSCIOUS

2010-03-04T03:26:00Z

One of the greatest benefits of practicing Tai-chi and Zookinesis is that you experience life more intensely. Your body seems much more alive. Your senses and your mind are sharper. You can feel the living energy of your surroundings. Students often say, “I never realized I had hips before,” or they can finally feel their backs and how flexible they can be. They feel part of the world of life around them because they are more aware of the life inside of them.

There is a Zen expression, “The inside and outside are made of the same flesh.” When you change inside, the world around you seems to change as well. And so I am going to suggest an internal change of perspective that may help to change the way you look at the world around you.

Within the body are trillions of minute processes within each organ, cell and even within the parts of the cells. Most of them take place at speeds and with precision unimaginable to us. It all takes place without our great intelligence or leadership. Yet we don’t usually think of the body itself as conscious.

With all this intricate precision the body is capable of, when I ask a student to just move an arm or the hips in a simple movement, the student feels very awkward. It may take months until he can move that part of his body with even basic competence. And yet he feels more intelligent than his heart or liver, or than a single cell.

We are amazed by the complex interactions of many species and habitats. If we look out at the cosmos we see great precision and complexity in the interaction of planets, stars and galaxies. And yet, as individuals, struggling to get through life, understand its complexities and even move with a minimum of grace, we feel as though we are the only intelligent globs of matter in the universe.

Many ancient cultures, though, believed that consciousness was a natural force, part of every animal, plant, rock and habitat. We now call them “animists”. They felt that the force of intelligence was the unseen mover in all the activity of the universe. It was not a “God” based perspective but simply included the force of consciousness along with what we now would call the four forces of the universe (gravity, electro-magnetic and strong and weak nuclear forces). They searched for the forces of intelligence and creativity in their surroundings and so felt a bond with every animal, plant and rock. They searched for the forces of creativity and intelligence within their bodies to keep these forces strong so they would remain healthy. To them, consciousness was as much part of their world as was matter. Matter did not create consciousness.

Now, what does this have to do with health – the main subject of this blog? If the inside and the outside are made of the same “flesh” (as in the Zen saying) and you look at the world outside of you as if it was dead, then you tend to become dead inside as well. When the science of physics looks at the world as dead objects moving about, then the science of medicine looks at the body as unconscious organs and cells, functioning automatically. By removing the possibility of consciousness from everything in the world but our brains, the world and our bodies become dead to us.

This is not a religious perspective. What would be the point of praying to something? You are conscious and everything else is conscious. What is praying to what? It is simply a way of bringing life back to our world, including to ourselves.

As we now move into the Spring season, try to feel the energy of life intensifying. Feel not only the warmth of the sun, the sound of the birds and the smell of the flowers, but the “feeling of the intelligence of the world.” Let the warm intelligence of Spring penetrate your body, your feelings and your mind. Realize that you are not separate from the rest of life, either as a glob of matter, or as a center of consciousness

NEW DVD's FOR SENIORS AND PEOPLE IN WHEELCHAIRS

2009-11-12T01:47:00Z

Two new senior exercise DVD's are available in the Zookinesis series: 1. Chair Exercises for Flexibility and Strength and 2. Chair Exercises for Weight Reduction. Visit the "Online Store" and click on the "Health and Fitness" section on the left hand side. The new DVD's are at the bottom of the list.

LIVE IN YOUR BODY

2009-11-11T18:46:00Z

The universe takes place all by itself. Our body functions all by itself. Between the two we sit, and wonder how to interfere with these processes. We want both the world around us and the world of the body inside of us to give us what we want – more money, more power, more respect, etc. The inside and the outside are like our two parents, who we try to manipulate to give us more of everything and to let us stay up past our bedtimes. And yet the world seems so hard to manipulate. Our bodies seem, at times, even harder to control.

This is the basic “attitude of battle” we set up with our inner and outer worlds. Tai-chi and Zookinesis training reminds us that we ARE our bodies. It reminds us that we evolved as part of the world around us. The world’s weather, climate, environment, fauna and flora, geology etc. affect us on very fine levels, down to our very cells. And so it is really hard to say where “we” end and the “environment” begins. The very realization that we are our bodies and we really are our environment, helps to eliminate the “attitude of battle”.

From the realization that we ARE our bodies, we can begin to live in our bodies. Tai-chi and Zookinesis training helps you to really feel every part of yourself, restoring awareness and health to every cell. You no longer fight your body or neglect it, you live in it; you ARE it. You no longer fight the world but feel part of it and flow with its cycles.

Your consciousness extends within to the finest levels and also extends around you. Just as all the cells of your body “feel” they are part of you (because they work cooperatively together), you feel part of the biology of the world.

And sitting between those two levels of awareness is the feeling of yourself as an individual – your social identity, your thoughts and opinions. This level is like a gatekeeper who doesn’t chase away people who want to walk through the gate. He is amiable and allows the free flow of people to and fro. He is aware of each person going through his gate and greets them in a friendly way.

Similarly, you can become aware of the influence of the cycles of nature on your body. You can become aware of how your own behavior affects those around you and the world as a whole.

When your life is no longer a battle, you calm down and can more easily let go of patterns of tension, anger and resistance. These will be replaced by a more acute awareness and the ability to adapt to each situation to be more efficient. Stress will be reduced without reducing your effectiveness in life. You will be healthier and happier.

When your gatekeeper is friendly, the “towns” on both sides are more cooperative.

Yet it takes a lot of training just to become aware of the “attitude of battle” and learn how to let it go. The question is, “Do you want to be in a state of battle for the rest of your life or do you want to start doing something about it?”

THE DESTRUCTIVE FORCE OF HABITS

2009-08-21T17:43:00Z

The healing principles of Tai-chi identify habits as one of the most destructive forces leading to the deterioration of the body. These principles explain the underlying cause of those habits and how to resolve them. We all know that drug habits and eating disorders are destructive but there are more fundamental levels of behavior that we are only dimly aware of.

One of my students recently realized that an old behavior as a child permanently shaped how he uses his attention. He has a “lazy eye” and had to concentrate in a certain way in order to make the images in his eyes, while reading, merge into one image. This extreme focusing of attention became permanent and required a great deal of energy. As an adult he forgot about what he had done because it just became part of who he is. The behavior threw the mechanics of his body way off.

When Tai-chi students practice “Push Hands” they tighten up their bodies and raise their centers of gravity, the exact opposite of what is required. In this exercise each partner tries to push the other one over. Push Hands requires a loose body and low center of gravity so that you can’t be pushed and so that your own push emanates from the ground and shoots out like a whip.

The students soon realize that they bring their energy and attention up because their eyes are at the top of their bodies. They feel their force needs to emanate out of where they’re looking from. This habit is subconscious until the practice of Push Hands reveals it.

We have many ridiculous habits formed during childhood, which make no mechanical sense. Or, the habits make sense only for limited uses but become permanent and are used all the time.

As a teacher, I am amazed by the habits my students discover as they practice Tai-chi. By cleaning out those habits we release tremendous amounts of trapped energy and can feel much more relaxed and happy. We also can avoid the subconscious habits building into even more destructive habits such as drug abuse.

The difficulty in letting go of habits is that, to a large extent, we identify ourselves as our habits. These can be habits of movement, of thinking and of emotion. The habits become an image of us, rather than our true, free, creative selves. We tend to solidify our habits and defend them because we feel we are defending ourselves. Even the groups we belong to such as political parties may be a reflection of our ingrained habits.

This jams up our creativity, our thinking ability, tightens the body and sanctifies patterns of behavior which were created during childhood, when we really didn’t understand much. The result can be a whole society based on patterns of behavior created during childhood and institutionally maintained.

The greatest political power any individual can have is, as the Beatles said, “Free your mind instead”. Examine the fundamental habits of your life and allow your creative spirit to heal you. Tai-chi and Zookinesis practice was specifically designed for this purpose.

AUTISM AND TAI-CHI

2009-07-26T21:36:00Z

Several of my students over the years have worked with autistic children and have had great success in applying Tai-chi and Zookinesis principles. Our discussions of their experiences have led me to an understanding of autism that I believe can benefit everybody. I view autism and the so called “normal” state as two extremes of human consciousness.

To understand this it is important to understand the dynamics of our attention (our consciousness) according to Tai-chi principles. There are two types of attention – yin and yang. And there is a biological energy called “chi” that energizes all living things. You can think of chi as a glass of water. You can swirl the water with a spoon but you cannot really see the water move. Think of yang attention as a small jar of ink. The jar restricts the ink to a certain shape. If you hold the jar in the water you still cannot see the movement of the water. Yin attention is attention that is released. If you pour the little jar of ink into the swirling water you will see the ink swirled about by the swirling water. By inference you can see how the water moves. When you allow beautiful music to “move you”, your attention is yin. When you are reading a book you concentrate your attention from word to word. That is yang attention.

Most of us are in the yang attention mode almost all the time. We can move our attention around and manipulate it. We can be clever with concepts. But we don’t really feel as much as we could because our attention doesn’t seep into the world around us and make the energy (chi) in our world visible to us.

I believe the autistic child’s attention is almost all yin. His behavior is controlled by his connection to the world around him and to the experiences of his body but he has trouble focusing his attention to a specific goal. When you focus your attention you cut off its yin quality because you are containing and manipulating it rather than letting it go to flow as it pleases. This flowing yin quality is very fulfilling but doesn’t allow you to be goal oriented.

Our approach to dealing with autistic children who are at one extreme of the quality of attention is to force them into the opposite extreme which we are most comfortable with. My students take a different approach. They have spent many years learning how to blend yin and yang attention in balance so they can feel and be aware and yet can direct their activities. So they are not at the extremes of the qualities of attention anymore but are somewhere in the middle. They “meet” the child from this centered, balanced quality of attention and in a non-verbal way, ask the child to meet them there. By understanding the situation of the child’s attention, they can participate in that quality to begin with and then gradually move him towards the center.

The students tell me that sometimes parents of an autistic child have gone through three or four counselors over several years but with no success. The Tai-chi trained counselor can meet the child and have a great deal of success even the first day. When the parents ask how the counselor how he could effect such a change in such a short time, my students cannot really explain themselves because the parents don’t understand Tai-chi principles. The students themselves understand the process very well but their methodology is not the “accepted” methodology so they have to just say nothing.

By understanding the extremes of the qualities of attention it is easier to understand the middle. Both yin and yang attention are important and need to be blended in the right proportions. Tai-chi and Zookinesis training is based on that principle.

NEW CLASS BEGINNING - TAI-CHI AND ZOOKINESIS

2009-06-16T13:17:00Z

A new class in Tai-chi and Zookinesis exercise has begun Thursdays at 7pm. All are welcome! You can contact the Tai-chi-Chuan School at 631 744-5999. The school is in Sound Beach, Long Island (Sound Beach is located between Rocky Point and Mount Sinai). Taught by Bob Klein. Price is $75 per month.

GREAT WEALTH AND POWER

2009-05-31T16:19:00Z

The many ancient cultures I have studied all seem to agree on the secret to obtaining great wealth and power. They also agree as to how we have been robbed of our power as individuals. Even nature, herself blatantly reveals this power to us.

When I used to travel through the jungles of Central America to study animals, my favorite animal was the red-eyed tree frog. This crazy frog is about three inches long, bright green with white spots. Its sides are banded yellow and blue. The inside of its legs and arms are bright orange. Its eyes are bright red with a bright gold lace pattern. Normally it stays curled up on a branch, showing only the green and white, which is a camouflage.

If an animal tries to grab it, the frog jumps, opens its arms and legs fully and leaps onto a nearby branch. The predator, faced with a moving flash of color, throws its attention to where he expects the frog to land, several feet away. Red-eye’s trick is that it sends the predator’s attention far away while it actually curls up on a close-by branch. In this way it control’s the predator’s attention.

The secret to great wealth and power is the ability to control peoples’ attention. The secret to your own happiness is to understand that process and not to be controlled.

We all know that packaging sells a product. Many companies have spent most of their initial start up money on developing packaging. Celestial Seasonings tea is an example. The manufacturers fight each other to have the stores place their product at eye level which makes it easier for you to grab the product and plop it right into your shopping cart.

We are trained to pay attention to the packing. It is much easier to make pretty packaging than it is to make a good product.

The key to great power and wealth, though, is not in manipulating people to buy your product. It is really in being able to discern the packaging from the product when it comes to who you are as a person.

In any ancient system of training such as Tai-chi and Zookinesis, you find that you have many behavioral habits, in movement, posture, thinking and emotional patterns. These patterns have been picked up throughout your life until you think of them as being part of yourself. Eventually the patterns become your very identity.

We learn in the Push Hands exercise, for example, that the body is so finely designed that it takes very little effort and movement to toss your partner several feet into the air. It is only the extraneous movements, such as tensing up your shoulders as you are about to push, that subvert your own efforts. In an attempt to feel powerful (by tensing up), you are actually robbing yourself of power.

In the thinking process, we are used to thinking in words. We may have an initial “jolt of thought” but can only understand the inspiration if they are translated into words. A Zookinesis student would practice paying attention to the initial jolt of thought and refrain from translating it into thoughts.

He does this because the words are only a label of the real thought, which is much more complex and complete. By being aware of the actual experience of inspirational thinking and not merely the labels (packaging), he has access to the full power of the inspiration.

We learn in Tai-chi that the body is a conduit for the energy of nature. A student will soon feel tremendous energy flowing through him which enlivens every cell of the body and heals the body. He soon learns that we, as a society, have been taught to become disconnected from that energy and even to deaden ourselves so that we don’t experience it. Once filled with energy, we no longer regard the body as just packaging for the mind, as a vehicle to carry the head around. The vibrancy of the body, the balanced joy of the emotions and the inspirational thinking process all work together in a more powerful way.

Then you will be more effective in everything you do. You will understand that wherever your attention goes, your life follows. If it goes to its energetic connection to the vibrant energies of nature, to the experience of sharing your life with the human community, your life will be different than if your attention goes to the bright, flashy representations of value.

Yet, being in a more powerful, aware, integrated state, impervious to manipulation, you will be more successful in the material sense as well.

The development of your attention has been recognized as the key to success throughout the ages. My novel, The Doubting Snake, is an attempt to express this in an entertaining way. The specific training of the attention is hidden in the story line. Many ancient texts can be better understood as attempts to express this same idea. As the hero of The Doubting Snake asks:

“And if both the sorcerers and the people who run our modern societies have such power to affect peoples’ minds then what hope does the ordinary citizen have?”

HOW TO AVOID ATTACK

2009-05-27T18:44:00Z

Tai-chi-Chuan teaches you how to avoid attack on the street and to make it difficult for a sparring partner to defeat you in class. Even if you are not strong or are not used to fighting, there are ways you can thwart the attacker’s efforts.

A mugger is looking for an easy attack on someone who won’t or can’t fight back. He mugs for a living and doesn’t want to get hurt “on the job”, just like anyone else. The mugger must assess the physical abilities of his victim as well as the victim’s state of awareness.

There are three qualities you can develop to lessen the chances of becoming a victim. The first is the alignment of the body. If your body is not aligned properly you are probably not involved in any physical activity that requires coordination. The mugger can sense this. Any training, such as Tai-chi, Zookinesis, Yoga or Pilates can teach you the proper alignment of the body. Even the use of such physical therapy aids as the foam roller will improve your posture. This will also improve your overall health.

The second quality is the fluidity of the body. If your body is stiff and tight, you probably can’t move very well and certainly can’t run after the attacker. A person who walks fluidly and is well connected to the ground may offer the mugger trouble. If your body seems bouncy and alive you may have the energy to run after him. The training methods mentioned above as well as such activities as trampoline work will bring that fluidity to the body. Trampoline, Zookinesis and the animal forms of the martial arts are especially good at adding that bounciness to the body.

The third quality a mugger looks out for is awareness. If you are aware of what is going on around you, you can prepare for an attack. Strong awareness also shows that you have had some training, as the awareness of most people is very dead. All of the above training helps with awareness, especially the Push Hands exercise of Tai-chi, sparring in general and the Zookinesis exercises.

In a classroom situation there are ways to thwart the sparring partner as well. Most fighters concentrate on the opponent’s fists and feet and sometimes elbows and knees as well. But they don’t concentrate on the space between the sparring partners. Proper Tai-chi training teaches you to move into the open spaces so that the opponent is jammed. You should be more interested in the spaces between you than in the strikes of the partner. Let his strikes trigger you to move into the open spaces where you can easily deliver your own strikes.

This requires that you don’t keep moving forward and back as with most styles of fighting. You stay in and don’t allow the partner space to move or even time to relax and catch his breath.

Another way to quickly tire out the partner is to make his attention move rapidly. Most people have very weak attentions. While a properly trained martial artist has a “field of attention” so that he can deal with many things going on at a time, most have a “single-pointed attention” which can only be in one place at one time. That person’s attention has to jump from one place to another and it gets tired.

So you should strike to different parts of the body. You can punch the legs as well as the head and body. You can integrate kicking with the punching rather than using kicking for a while and then switching to kicking. Add a little bit of grappling as well, just for a second or two, here and there and then go right back to punching and kicking. If your partner cannot predict what you will do next, his attention is uncertain and wears out quickly.

Keep the body fluid. Allow your hips, lower ribs and elbows to rotate in small circles and allow the head to reflect this movement. This will allow you to respond quickly and will make it difficult for your partner to aim. It will require his attention to follow your movements and most people cannot do that for long.

These are but a few simple ways that proper Tai-chi training can teach you to be uninviting to attackers and to make it difficult for an attacker to defeat you.

TECHNIQUES TO REVERSE AGING

2009-05-17T16:10:00Z

Tai-chi approaches to health and healing is based on preventing and reversing the aging process. It is based on understanding the underlying causes of the deterioration of body and mind and providing simple exercises to stay young and active. The principle of Yin/Yang describes how babies have mainly “Yang” energy which is expansive and growing.

As you get older, this energy becomes more “Yin” or contractive. The connective tissue surrounding all your body cavities, bones, muscles and organs, shrinks and loses its elasticity. Your mind becomes less free flowing and creative and hangs onto fixed ideas and patterns of behavior. Even the bones condense and lose their flexibility.

Exercises such as the Zookinesis Age Reversal Exercises and Tai-chi Forms directly affect the underlying energy of body and mind, which is called “chi” or “internal energy”. They maintain the balance of yin and yang of the chi energy so that it can expand or condense when needed. The result is that you maintain a state of vibrancy and health.

The idea that an underlying energy creates or affects the physical world is common among many ancient cultures. The Tai-chi and Zookinesis exercises are designed to keep chi energy even throughout the body. As we age there is a tendency to condense this energy unevenly and that distorts the posture and shape of the body. It can also affect our emotional state and dull our senses.

A student of these exercises is taught to perceive the pattern of chi in his body, to understand how it has become distorted and to use the exercises to return the energy to an even state throughout the body. The result is fewer aches and pains, less tension and a more positive, relaxed attitude. Your body can feel more and you can appreciate every moment of life more.

The improved state of health gives you a better quality of life and can actually help you live longer.

So the next time you feel bad, ask yourself, “Is my chi too condensed or uneven?” Relax your back so that the chi flows behind you. Relax your hips so the chi flows through your center. Relax your legs, your head and shoulders so that the chi can flow up and down through the body. In this way you can become more alive.

Try this exercise the next time you feel bad or tired: Imagine chi energy flowing through your chest and neck area towards the area in front of you at an upward angle of twenty degrees. This energy comes from behind you, flows through you, upward and forward at a fast pace. After a few minutes of this imagery exercise, notice how you feel.

Both mental and physical exercises can have a profound effect on our health. Tai-chi and Zookinesis are storehouses of such powerful techniques.

WELCOME THE DRAGON OF FEAR

2009-04-18T16:04:00Z

Fear is like a dragon, chasing us and trying to grab us. It controls our behavior by making us run away from it. Zookinesis and other Taoist training provides a way to turn fear into power and joy. Fear is the closed door to the palace of beauty. We do not run away from it but open it.

The next time you experience the sensation of fear (from whatever cause it may be), focus on that feeling. Pay attention to how it feels in each part of the body. Get to know the dragon of fear.

Fear is just a sensation. It may include tensing up muscles and a change in breathing, among other things. When you are faced with a fearful situation, notice how each part of your body reacts and changes. Don’t try to interfere with these changes; just notice them. Be the scientist, studying your own feelings.

The result of this exercise is that each experience of fear will allow you to learn more about yourself. Therefore, welcome these learning opportunities.

I was taught that whenever I felt fear I should thank the fear for visiting me because it gave me an opportunity to learn. In this way you will become friends with the dragon because you are treating it in a respectful way.

The Gospel of Mary (one of the gospels not included in the Bible) describes this process very well. In this gospel, Jesus’ disciples asked her what was the basic teaching that Jesus was trying to convey. She answered that it is about recognizing your attention, your consciousness which she called the “soul”. There are many distractions in everyday life such as sights, sounds, emotions and thoughts. Each tries to capture your attention. The distractions wear your attention like clothes so that you think that your attention is just part of the emotion or thought. In fact, in modern times when we talk about paying attention to something, we really mean thinking about it. Mary said that once you can perceive the energy of attention itself and realize that it is part of you, the distractions can no longer capture your attention. At that point you are free, in a spiritual sense.

Fear can easily capture your attention. So can great thoughts, bright lights or loud sounds.

Your attention is so valuable that advertisers pay millions of dollars for advertising time just to capture your attention. Your attention is the commodity that television is selling to their customers, which are the advertisers.

And so there are the “Three Statements” in Zookinesis training. These statements encapsulate the training that allows you to be forever free of fear:

1. “Attention is not the same thing as what you are paying attention to.” This means that attention is an energy that has qualities and dynamics. Too often it is simply captured by every distraction so that we no longer are aware of attention itself.

2. “You are attention.” At our most basic essence, we are attention itself. In modern times, we feel that attention is a by-product of the chemical and electrical activity of nerves in the brain. In this way we think of the physical world as creating consciousness. In the ancient world, consciousness and physical matter were equal. One didn’t create the other. You are attention as much as you are your body. But attention was considered to be the most basic part of a human being because everything other than attention itself is what you are paying attention to. It is as if attention were a person inside a house who was looking out of a window. Everything that person sees is not him; it is what he is looking at.

3. “When you know yourself, you know God.” God is considered to be the creative force in the universe. Creativity is considered to be the dynamics of attention. It is what moves your attention from one thing to another. Your behavior can emanate from creativity or it can emanate from the distractions capturing your attention. In the case of creativity affecting your behavior, your behavior is a positive force, expanding from within. (And so it is called, “Yang” and is associated with growth and change.) In the case of the distractions controlling your behavior, the control starts from outside of yourself and condenses your attention into the distraction. (And so it is called, “Yin” and is associated with decay and a locked, frozen state.)

Living a spiritual life requires that your own creativity be at least as influential on your behavior as “outside” distractions (which can include frozen, locked thoughts and emotions.) As your creativity gains power, your emotions and thinking mind will become more creative. What you once experienced as the dragon of fear now becomes the dragon of your own creativity. It is simply your own internal power.

And surprisingly, releasing the dragon of creativity is the greatest fear of all. Once you gain control of your life you have no more excuses. You can’t blame everyone else for your problems because you now are a powerful, creative person who can make changes in your life. You can boldly go where fear did not allow you to go before.

The main reason this is fearful is that the dragon of creativity is, well… creative! You don’t know what it is going to do next. Your life may change and you don’t even know how.

But having your behavior controlled by fear and being captured by every distraction is not a human way to live. It makes us victims. It makes us robotic. And it sucks out the joy from our lives.

The next time the dragon of fear grabs you, welcome it, thank it and examine your body to see how it feels. And then laugh!

HOW SICK ARE WE?

2009-04-05T17:10:00Z

My doctor told me that it was unusual for a 60 year old man not to be on prescription drugs. That shocked me. Apparently most people my age take several drugs on a regular basis. Does this mean that we are an advanced society because we have invented so many drugs or a very sick society that we need so many drugs?

I recalled a monkey I knew in the jungles of Panama. He was the head of his tribe but was badly battered from territorial fights or perhaps from encounters with predators. Three fingers were missing from one hand, two from the other and he had only one eye. Yet he still was the alpha male of his monkey troop. What he lacked in body parts he made up in attitude.

One day a potential Tai-chi student walked into my studio with a severe affliction. He was able to walk only by leaning over and holding his knee with his hands, inching his way forward. As soon as he made it into the studio he sat down, exhausted from the fifty foot walk. I thought to tell him that he would never be able to learn Tai-chi but I would never discourage anyone who was willing to try. At first he did the Tai-chi Yang form while holding onto two chairs, which I re-adjusted for him with each movement. He could only last for two or three minutes at a time and then had to sit down. To make a long story short, he learned the entire sixty movement form without holding onto chairs, the tiger form and the staff form, which are very vigorous. He also learned the Push Hands exercise and was quite good. In this exercise you stand facing each other and try to throw each other off balance.

After a few years he told me that he was very discouraged. He practiced the forms for an hour a day, then did Yoga for fifteen minutes, worked out with weights for forty five minutes and then practiced chi-gung for another fifteen minutes. So what was the problem? He told me that after all this he was so tired he had to stop and sit down. I reminded him that he used to be tired after two or three minutes and could barely stand up without holding onto something. He had gotten so used to being healthy that I guess now he expected that he could leap over tall buildings at a single bound.

To some degree we can determine whether we slide down the slope of increasing sickness or lift ourselves up to greater health. It largely depends on whether we focus on our ailments or our potential. This is not to so say that we don’t all have some legitimate medical problems. While modern medicine makes our lives better with great advances, it can also make us lazy. We reach for the pill or the operation rather than trying exercise first.

Many doctors will encourage their patients to try exercise to alleviate their problems before trying drugs but unfortunately many people don’t want to be bothered with the exercises. It is easier to pop a pill down their throats. But remember that each drug has side effects and you may start taking drugs to alleviate the side effects and then more drugs to alleviate the side effects of that drug and so on.

I am suggesting that if your doctor suggests exercise rather than drugs then you probably have a caring and knowledgeable doctor. While the television ads push you to ask your doctor for drugs, I suggest you ask him or her for exercise alternatives.

Your body and mind are powerful when they work together cooperatively. Even if you do take drugs, exercise itself can help to alleviate the negative side effects. Drugs can only really help your body cure itself. But the body also needs good food, rest and exercise.

ANOTHER EXCERPT FROM "THE DOUBTING SNAKE" NOVEL

2009-02-11T15:49:00Z

Kano tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a movement beneath some dead branches. "That is a paca. Go and get it."

I walked over to the spot and discovered a paca which seemed to be full grown - about 25 pounds. But as soon as I approached it, the little brown, creature ran away for a few yards and then froze. Again and again I approached it and just as many times, it bounded away.

Finally I gave up and walked back to Kano. "We have to set a trap first," I said.

Kano merely walked over to the paca, reached down and picked it up. He held its belly outwards with his arms under its front legs. Then Kano put the creature down and it bounded under some nearby branches.

"Kano, why did you let it go?"

"So you could catch it. I'm teaching you to catch paca."

Again, I tried and failed. I could hear Kano snickering. I guess this was good for him to see. He must feel mentally inferior to me and seeing that he does possess some skills which I do not, must make him feel better.

"What did I do wrong, Kano?"

"You didn't catch the paca."

"How were YOU able to catch it?"

"Because I know how”

"Then tell me how to catch it."

"You just walk over and pick it up."

"But when I walked over, it ran away."

"You scared it."

"How come YOU didn't scare it?"

"Because I wanted to catch it."

"So did I!"

"Then you shouldn't have scared it."

What a situation! Kano knows a skill which I would like to learn. Yet he doesn't have the intelligence to explain it to me. I tried once more.

"Kano, listen to me. When you walk over to the paca, it doesn't run away. When I walk over, it does. Obviously, we're doing something different. What?"

Kano thought for a moment and said, "You are scaring it away and I'm not scaring it away. That is what is different."

"O.K. I understand that. Now what can I do differently so it won't get scared?"

"Don't do anything differently. You can just walk over and pick it up. You can walk over any way you want, just don’t scare it."

Kano walked over to the paca once more to demonstrate. He skipped part of the way, jumped, twirled around and walked in various strange ways. When he reached the paca, he bent down and picked it up as before.

I had heard that retarded people are good with animals. The animals seem to be able to sense the retarded person's helplessness. Perhaps Kano's disability has actually helped him out in this case, although I don't know how altruistic a paca can be.

The "empty one" insisted that I keep trying. I wandered about, following the creature for almost an hour, but could never come within thirty feet of it.

Finally Kano picked the creature up and brought it to me. He suggested we keep it as a pet and told me he thought it was cute. It was a strange creature with a narrow face, a pudgy rear and slick fur. I petted the creature and talked to it.

"Why are you so frightened of me? I only want to eat you.” I laughed yet I felt a tear come to my eyes. It was certainly not because of sympathy for the paca. I feel very comfortable with the idea of eating meat. Perhaps my subconscious remembered some painful event which was evoked by this situation. Kano released the paca and once again it bounded for the bushes.

"I thought you were going to keep it as a pet?"

"Do you really want to?"

"Sure!"

"Alright, you get it and bring it home." Apparently the paca had grown used to us as I had no trouble picking it up this time.

As we walked back to the hut, Kano said that we could really stuff ourselves on that much meat.

"What do you mean? Are you going to eat it after all?"

"Of course. I only said that stuff about keeping it as a pet so you would walk over to it with a friendly feeling. I taught you how to catch it."

"Kano! How could you? That's not fair."

"Not fair? Why isn't it fair? I said I was going to teach you to catch a paca and I did. That's fair."

"But there are morals here. The only reason I was able to catch it was because I thought of it as a pet. And now, in a way, I'm lying to the paca. That's not fair."

"Lying to a paca? I don't know about such things. I neither lie to paca nor tell them the truth. I just eat them."

EXCERPT FROM "THE DOUBTING SNAKE"

2008-12-22T15:54:00Z

The next morning at breakfast Kano took a small portion of his meal and threw it away. He did this at every meal. I always assumed there was dirt on that portion. But his persistence in this behavior finally caught my curiosity.

"Kano, why do you do that?"

"So you have noticed me sacrificing my food. The food is what builds our bodies. One day we will have to sacrifice our bodies. So it is good to sacrifice a piece of each meal. This way, we are always ready to sacrifice things.

"Why think in such negative ways - death and sacrifice?"

"I am a happy man, am I not?" I had to agree that if Kano was nothing else, he was happy.

"And look what I have sacrificed. Do you know what I have sacrificed? I have sacrificed my understanding."

"What do you mean you've sacrificed your understanding? Did you, yourself do that?"

"Yes. I sacrificed my understanding just as last night you gave up trying to figure out how to get home. I once understood things, like you. And yet, I couldn't find my way home. Then I gave up my understanding and now come home with ease. And I am happy.

"I have a place to sleep, food to eat and friends with whom to pass my time. When the mood strikes me, I sing and at times, I cry. I don't know enough to do otherwise and I am happy.

"I am happy whether I laugh or cry, for even in sadness there is joy. I am happy to be a man, to be a living creature and when I call out to the forest, she gives me what I need.

"She sends me a butterfly to hold, but when it decides to leave, I let it go. She gives me food, but when I am finished with it, I let it go in the outhouse.

"When I see her beautiful sunset, I let it go and night arrives. When I have enjoyed the dry season for half the year, I let it go so the rains may come and the plants will grow.

"And when this life comes to a close I will look back at all the wonderful things that have happened to me. I will know that my joy in life would not have been possible without knowing how to let go of just those very things which brought me joy. And so it will be with joy that I die."

THE DOUBTING SNAKE by Bob Klein is now available on our "Online Store". Click onto the link in the upper right hand area of this page. You will then find the novel on the left side set of links on our online store home page (www.movementsofmagic.com).

THE DOUBTING SNAKE - A NEW NOVEL

2008-11-23T18:24:00Z

The new novel, The Doubting Snake, by Bob Klein has just been finished. It is based on the adventures of the author in the jungles of Central America and on his decades of training in healing by teachers of traditional healing. While this book can be read as a light-hearted adventure novel, it also contains the full depth of Mr. Klein's teachings you find here on the "Community" site. Following is a summary of The Doubting Snake. The pre-publication edition is available from the "Online Store". (Official publication date: 4/1/09). A tab for the novel is on the left side of the home page.

The ultimate battle of sorcery and science – an ecological adventure into the jungles of Central America. The allegiance and sanity of Steve, an American scientist, are tested after he is lured into a conspiracy to destroy modern civilization. Romance, martial arts and jungle survival all reveal the perspective of tribal cultures trying to survive in the modern world.
Steve’s perception of the world around him and of who he really is, turns inside out as he is initiated into the tribal world. Now, armed with the knowledge of their power to destroy the modern world, does Steve help the tribe or destroy them?
The Doubting Snake explores how we have separated ourselves from nature, from each other and from our own hearts. It teaches us how to recover our earliest hopes and dreams and bring them back into our lives to empower and heal ourselves and the planet.

HEALING TAI-CHI MASSAGE

2008-11-22T20:07:00Z

TAI-CHI MASSAGE is a powerful type of healing that frees you from habits of emotional and physical tension, even those that have plagued you for a lifetime. The masseur uses principles of Tai-chi as he moves individual parts of your body in relaxing, flowing Tai-chi movements. You are lying down on a massage table as in other types of massage.

As one part of your body, a shoulder for example, is moved through fluid, circular patterns, you can easily let go of muscular restrictions and the mental tensions that create them. Once that part of the body is freed, then gentle pressure is applied, also in slow, Tai-chi-like patterns. The slowness allows the body to feel comfortable letting go of its tensions.

Even if you don’t do Tai-chi yourself, the Tai-chi Massage allows you to gain the benefits of this ancient exercise while the masseur does all the work. It also allows people who do practice Tai-chi to feel the principles directly. They can then apply the experience of the Tai-chi Massage to the Tai-chi exercise itself.

Each part of the body feels as though it was freed from a type of jail, whose bars are made of tension. You will then feel the body starting to heal itself and self destructive habits lose their power over you.

You will be amazed about how much of your energy was used up by that tension. Now, freed of the emotional and physical tension, you have energy to spare.

If you watch the beautiful wild animals you can appreciate how graceful and fluid are their movements. And yet we humans are also designed to be graceful animals. Most of us have lost the relaxed fluidity of our bodies due to stress. Our bodies harden and deteriorate. Tai-chi Massage reverses the degradation of the body and returns us to a natural state.

For further information you can call 1-888-9TAICHI (1-888-982-4244) or email info@movementsofmagic.com with your questions.

THE ILLUSION OF PHYSICAL PAIN

2008-09-24T16:34:00Z

One of my students was in such agony from a punch to his shoulder that he had to sit down, shaking his head from side to side. Yet I only gave him a light tap. The reason that he felt the light tap as a powerful blow gives an important clue to Tai-chi as a martial art and as a healing art.

I struck him at the moment he was about to punch me. At that instant his attention condensed into his punching arm. By striking the area where his attention was condensed, I shattered the attention. Only a light tap was necessary to disrupt the attention because his attention was so condensed.

The instant shattering of a condensed attention is so disruptive that people usually interpret the experience as physical pain. Yet when my student actually thought about whether his shoulder really hurt or not, he realized that, not only didn’t it really hurt much, but it didn’t hurt at all. There was no real physical pain. It was all psychological pain interpreted as physical pain.

In our culture, we are taught to condense our attention into a single point in the head. This is because our eyes are on our head and we are so visually oriented. When our attention is locked into one part of the body or into a habit of thinking or acting, the attention is not really functional.

One of the main reasons Tai-chi trains you to be fluid in your movements is to develop a fluid attention as well – one that can move, vary in its qualities and dynamics. This is essential in fighting but also in living one’s everyday life. The more rigid you are, the less functional you are and the more easily your attention can be worn out or broken.

When practicing a Tai-chi form, allow your attention to sink down into the ground, as if you are a lotus plant, floating in a pond with your roots deep into the mud below. As you breathe in, your attention flows up through your stem (up the body) and into the lotus flower, which is within the chest at the sternum (breastbone) level. Continuing to breathe in, the lotus flower opens and so the front of your body flows up and then opens out to the sides, like an opening flower.

The opening flower then lifts your head which is the center petals of the lotus. Breathing out, the front of the body sinks, the sides of the chest drops to the center and your attention returns to your roots.

This process will bring fluidity to your attention so that it can never be frozen again. Frozen attention makes you vulnerable and ineffective. As the reality of life tugs at your attention and your attention resists the tugs, life seems like a struggle. You feel as if you are at your “wit’s end” because the requirements of the dynamic mobility of your attention is greater than its actual abilities.

Once attention is freed from its rigidity it instantly has all the energy it needs. It becomes more balanced and easier to move – just like the needle of a compass. The needle is so balanced that it can spin around easily. But if you move its fulcrum even a tiny bit, the needle will fall over and not move at all.

Breathing as if you are a lotus flower is a very valuable form of meditation even while standing still (as long as you allow your body to sink down and expand upward as described above). As we get older there is a tendency for our attention to condense (yin condition). The lotus flower meditation helps to prevent this aging process.

Remember that what you may interpret as frustration, anger and even physical pain, may just be the result of a rigid attention which not up to the task of functioning properly in our complex modern world. My student could barely stand up at first because of the “pain” he was experiencing until he realized that it wasn’t pain at all but rather, the shock of a suddenly opened attention.

SELLING WATER BY THE RIVER

2008-09-01T17:52:00Z

The Zen expression, “Selling water by the river” means that you already have all you need to be fully healthy and active. All a teacher can do is point out to you, skills you already have and health that is already inside of you. Our modern culture teaches us to lock up our skills and our health. It seems to take a lot of effort to make ourselves unhealthy.

One of the most effective exercises you can do to unlock your health is to move your hips. I have taught thousands of people over many years and almost all of them came to me with locked hips. All the muscles in that area, including the lower back and the gluteus muscles were frozen.

The hips connect the activity of the upper body to the legs. Whenever you step, the weight of the upper body should smoothly sink into the legs. When the forward leg presses up so you can take a step, that upward force should flow through the hips to the upper body. In this way the forces the body experiences are always gentle.

With locked hips the upper body meets a solid floor at the hips instead of at the real floor below you. So those forces reverberate throughout the torso. The forces generated by the legs also hit the bottom of the hips and reverberate down the legs. It is no wonder that so many people have hip replacements.

Any activity that moves the hips gently and in all directions can greatly improve your health. Elvis Presley was a health innovator in that sense. The chi-gung system of “Zookinesis” emphasizes movement of the hips and of course the hips move slowly and gently in the Tai-chi forms.

While “loose lips” may sink ships (a World War 2 saying), loose hips relax the whole back which then relaxes the shoulder area and the neck. There is a Tai-chi saying, “Align the body with heaven and earth”. This means, among other things, that the legs which are closest to the earth should be the densest, just like the earth. The upper body which is closest to the sky should be the lightest. The hips should be in an in-between state, relaxed yet strong, which results in a rubbery quality. The result is strong legs with a flexible and relaxed upper body – perfect for the martial arts and for maintaining health and vitality throughout life.

When students are finally able to move their hips they say, “I feel for the first time that I actually have hips”. I suggest that as they do a form, that they drop the lower front ribs to the front of the hips as they sink and breathe out. As they breathe in and rise, they should relax the rear part of their lower ribs towards the back part of the hips. The lower ribs then act as a see-saw. This starts to bring the mobility of the hips into the upper body. It also helps to eliminate a lot of back pain. If you try this, it is important to keep the rest of the upper body stable as you “rock” the lower ribs towards the hips. Each rib can move independently and separating the activity of the lower ribs from the rest of the ribs is important in bringing mobility to the ribs.

This all may seem very difficult to achieve but it is the natural way the body works. I almost feel as if I am getting away with something as I teach this because it is something that every living creature should already know (and all species but ours do know). It is almost as if I am teaching people how to see by telling them to open their eyes. But in this case I am asking the students to open up their inner eyes – their ability to feel and use each part of their body. How much sickness and misery could we avoid if we all opened up our inner eyes?

RE-DISCOVER YOUR DREAM

2008-08-24T18:10:00Z

When I first began studying Tai-chi and Zookinesis, the 1960’s were in full bloom. The theme of the times was to try something new. The music, Eastern traditions such as Tai-chi, exploring space, love-ins and all of the social movements gave us hope that a new world was about to emerge. There was an energy among people, a concept that we could and should create our world rather than just complain about it.

It may seem that we are now back to the “grind” and the 1960’s is long dead. Yet there were hundreds of thousands of people who sought to retain that creative energy throughout their lives. I have met many people who, each in their own way, try to bring that peaceful, creative energy into their communities.

Yet there is no getting away from the fact that the theme of our times is survival. It feels as though time, money, energy and creativity are in short supply. Is it possible for people who lived through those times to bring back the excitement, the vigor of their youth?

According to Zookinesis principles, creativity is the most important factor in reviving our health and energy. When you are involved in the creative process, something you are excited about, energy somehow comes to you and you forget about all the aches and pains.

Your creative energy and your renewed enthusiasm for life then charges up people around you and ignites their creative energy. It doesn’t matter if you paint, write, do Tai-chi, play music, etc. Bringing a creative activity into your life, if even for a short amount of time per week, is very healing for yourself and your community.

More than fifteen years ago I wrote a novel about my experiences travelling in the jungles of Central America and never got around to writing the last chapter. So there it sat. I recently completed “The Doubting Snake”, re-doing some of the novel based on my last fifteen years of teaching experience. It has done wonders for my attitude and feeling of health.

Have you stopped doing something creative because you “didn’t have time” or because you think you lost your skill? Some people have the idea that if they cannot be great at what they do, they shouldn’t do it. They tie control over their lives to other peoples’ opinions (or the expectation of their opinions). We pay people to make music for us. We pay people to play sports for us. Music and sports were invented for everyone. They are not a contest but part of the enjoyment of life.

I believe that as a society, we have forgotten this. We have, to a large extent, become parts of a machine and not part of the energy of creativity that is the basis of life itself. We are, like the star trek “Borg”, part human and part machine. The question is, are we becoming more machine or more human. This is a choice each of us can make. We can make it every day and every week.

Dobby Gillis, in the “Dobby Gillis Show” (many years ago) once said, “Have a dream and live it.” Are you living your dream or have you forgotten what it even was?

“The Doubting Snake” is about the re-discovery of your dreams. I have found that just by remembering your dreams, you can bring new energy into your life.

Why not spend just a half hour a week doing something you would never have considered, something from your dreams long past, something positive and creative?

THE TAI-CHI PARK FESTIVAL

2008-07-14T15:40:00Z

The Tai-chi Park in Wantage New Jersey, is a memorial to Tai-chi Master Jou, Tsung-Hwa. A festival is held each year with many teachers and workshops on all aspects of Tai-chi. The spirit of this weekend event is like a big Tai-chi family reunion. We all teach each other.

It is held on a 23 acre property with hills, valleys, and a large stream and is completely wooded. Areas within the woods have been set up for the workshops. A simple, healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner are provided so you don’t have to leave the facility to eat (unless you want to). This past weekend, July 12 and 13, the entire two day program cost only $100. Obviously no one was making money on this event. All the teachers contributed their time for free.

I taught Tai-chi Tiger form and Zookinesis Age Reversal Chi-gung. Teachers put on demonstrations each day. Jean and I demonstrated forms and push hands. At one point one of the organizers of the event asked me to get a weapon. Several of the teachers would stand in a circle and on cue start sparring with each other with the weapons. I grabbed a sword and entered the demonstration area. Another participant who had done this before leaned over and told me, “The way this works is that if you get a finger cut off, just continue until it ends. We will pick up the finger later.” Just before, someone had simply withdrawn a saber out of its scabbard. The blade lightly brushed by her fingers, she got cut and had to wrap her fingers in bandaids. I was a little hesitant to get involved in this but in the end the demonstration went very well and no one lost any fingers.

As you meander through the paths cut through the forest, you may see a cutout silhouette of Jou, Tsung-Hwa or even a photo of him, poised here and there. You might come across a red dragon seeming to emerge from the earth. It is really a delightful place and always takes place on the weekend closest to Jou’s birthday, July 13^th.

We did a lot of push hands, talked a lot about the old days of Tai-chi and some of the old teachers, long since past. The Tai-chi Park festival is the best way to be part of the larger Tai-chi community and to learn from other teachers. I will be sure to announce next year’s event a few months prior and provide information about how to sign up.

Bruce, the owner of the property and Christopher, the organizer deserve a great deal of credit for providing this facility for the Tai-chi community. Even more importantly, they have been somehow able to preserve the friendly, relaxed, low-key the spirit of Tai-chi in the midst of a modern “rush-around” world. Just imagine a festival in which everyone is smiling, happy and relaxed. Don’t we need that at least once a year?

BATTLE OF THE TIGER AND DRAGON

2008-07-09T21:06:00Z

The battle of the dragon and tiger is a common theme of Chinese art. Hidden within these drawings is the secret of how to access power unknown in the modern world, especially the power to heal, to find great joy in every moment of life and to free yourself from control by other people.

The tiger represents external (Yang) power such as physical tension and force over other people. It is like the angry response to the actions of another person. Unbalanced anger and tension can affect you by raising your blood pressure and freezing the movements of your body. Yet a tiger in reality is very flexible and relaxed, even when fighting. I can attest to the fluidity and relaxation of wild cats due to my many years of experience importing and working with wild animals.

The tiger is not completely external in its power. It blends the external, physical force with internal fluidity and relaxation, which is Yin power. Yin or internal power is represented by the dragon. Its very depiction in drawings is of a long, swirling, graceful body yet you can see that it has great power. The dragon is the power of internal awareness. When your attention is completely connected to your body, when you are fully aware of the dynamics of your emotions and thinking mind and can keep them in balance, you possess a power that is unstoppable. If you are acutely aware of what is going on inside of you, then it is easier to understand what is going on inside of other people. You can see their internal dynamics clearly and thereby be able to avoid being controlled by them.

In martial arts, fluidity allows you to explode your force from your root in the ground (the weight of the body sinking through the legs), up through the hips and out your striking fist or foot. Your force is explosive, penetrating the outer layer of the opponent (their skin, bones and external muscles) and explodes within their body cavity.

If you are a healer, you can extend your own attention and internal energy (“chi”) into the person receiving your massage, for example, and take control over their behavior of tensing up their muscles. This allows you to be more aware of and have more of an effect on their bodies than the patient has of his own body. You can then teach the patient how to become more aware of his body and gain control over his own healing.

Yet if you become too relaxed and your mind becomes too unfocused, you can become “wishy washy”. You might become too easily controlled by others. The tension of the patient might cause you yourself to tense up. You might lose your drive in life. So even the dragon needs some “tiger energy”.

Think of the dragon hiding in his lair – a deep cave within a mountain. It is a vast, empty cave yet you can smell and feel the presence of a dragon within it. While the dragon is hidden in emptiness you dare not disturb it.

The tiger’s home is the forest itself. He wanders about and when tired, just lays down and sleeps right there. The tiger’s power is “in your face” while the dragon’s power is hidden.

Yet to be a whole, powerful person you need to blend the two kinds of power. The teachings of Tai-chi and Zookinesis use movement to train you to blend external and internal power, not only physically, but in relationships, in business and in your approach to life.

Using relationships as an example, the external power would be how you view the other person using your senses. How do they look, how do they talk, how do they feel, etc.? Yet we all know that there is an invisible connection between people which we call “chemistry” and it is not only sexual. It is a connection among all people. Much of how we react to someone is a result of the feeling we get through this connection. This would be the “internal” connection that is not obvious. It is the job of proper training to make this connection as obvious and clear as the other senses. You will then discover a whole new world of dynamic activity of “chi” which is the energy connecting all living things. Once you understand this energy and how it relates to the “external senses” such as sight, life becomes a lot easier and more effective.

So the battle of the tiger and dragon is not really a battle but a constant dynamic blending of our external awareness of the world and the internal awareness that is missing in modern cultures.

In the articles below you will find much information about how to develop this awareness but of course, a competent teacher is also necessary.

You may already realize that your personality is more Yin or more Yang. You may pay more attention to what is going on inside of you or more attention to external activity. You may be more passive or more aggressive.

Your power as a human being is at its maximum when the internal and external power is most balanced. A person who is mainly external wears himself out. A person who is mostly internal has a hard time organizing himself to actually get anything done.

In the drawings, the tiger’s and dragon’s eyes are both wide open as they stare at each other and you can feel the energy flowing between them. It is this magnified energy, flowing between Yin and Yang, that we can tap to become powerful.

Rather than a battle, it is a dance – the dance of life itself – the dance that empowers life. Ancient art encoded great principles of ancient teachings even before there was written language. A teacher who is part of a direct lineage of training understands the principles behind the outer appearance of the training. Tai-chi forms, for example, are not just a question of memorizing a sequence of movements. Each movement is a deep reserve of layer upon layer of meaning. These exercises are the ancient libraries, but you have to know how to read them.

And so Tai-chi and Zookinesis exercises are like the dance of the tiger and dragon. They are right there in the open but their true significance and power lay hidden.

HOW TO SEE EVEN MORE ARTICLES

2008-07-06T13:50:00Z

Remember that you can click onto "blogs" above (at the top of this page), go to the end of that page and then click onto "Next Page" to see even more articles.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR SKIN YOUNG

2008-06-25T15:53:00Z

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” but which is properly called “Dragon Massage”. In Zookinesis, mythology about the dragon is used to explain the techniques of preserving the skin.

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.

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 “Dragon 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.

You should start to notice the effects after just two weeks of practice. Remember that if you have any questions you can use the “forums” above, call the Tai-chi-Chuan School at 1-888-9TAICHI (982-4244). or email us at info@movementsofmagic.com

PUSH HANDS WORKSHOP

2008-06-17T13:25:00Z

A Push Hands workshop will be held at the Long Island School of Tai-chi-Chuan on Saturday, Sept. 27^th. This two person exercise is the heart of Tai-chi training. This workshop will focus on the use of internal energy (chi), incorporating all the Tai-chi principles, the application of each of those principles to daily life, neutralizing force directed against you and uniting mind and body.

We will also explore how Push Hands training is essential in learning “internal” martial arts and learn to apply the techniques and principles to self defense. The early evening will be reserved for open Push Hands practice.

This all day course will be taught by Bob Klein, his wife Jean and will be assisted by the senior students of the school. Price of this workshop includes lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant.

$75 for the full day workshop ($125 if you register after July 31^st). You can contact us for more information at 1-888-9TAICHI (982-4244) or info@movementsofmagic.com. Give us your contact information and we will mail or email you all the details. Registration will be limited to allow for more attention to each student.

This course will bring you well beyond the beginning “Push Hands Forms” (repeated series of movements), allow you to practice this exercise spontaneously and to perceive the pattern of your partner’s attention so you will know his intentions before they manifest into action.

You will learn to detect the state of readiness of each of your partner’s muscles and joints and take advantage of gaps in his attention. Attention exercises will be taught to greatly increase the strength, agility, resolution and stamina of your attention. It is safe to say that the perspective of Push Hands you receive here, you will get nowhere else.

PUSH HANDS AS CHI-GUNG

2008-06-15T17:26:00Z

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. 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 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.

CONCLUSION:

These are but a few basic principles of Push Hands. I have found it to be the most powerful tool for inner transformation. The Long Island School of Tai-chi-Chuan will hold a Push Hands Workshop on Saturday, September 27^th. It will be all day with open practice in the evening. (Cost $125 or $75 if paid by July 31^st). My wife Jean and I will be teaching, with our senior students helping to instruct. You can call us at 1-888-9TAICHI (982-4244) or email us at info@movementsofmagic.com. We will then send you more information. The size of this workshop will be limited so that we can give full attention to each student, as each will be at a different level of experience.

HOW CHI-GUNG WORKS

2008-05-02T13:13:00Z

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 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.

END THE MIND'S SPINNING AND RACING

2008-04-21T01:27:00Z

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 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.

ESCAPING FROM OUR CAGE

2008-04-18T14:58:00Z

The source of joy in our lives does not come from external circumstances but from our internal state, according to Tai-chi and Zookinesis principles. We have created our own cage of fears and assumptions that blocks us from our full share of joy in life. Through proper training you find that there are areas of the body that are dead to your awareness. The body seems dull and clumsy rather than a finely tuned, intricate mechanism. Your attention seems sluggish and small rather than expansive, detailed and agile.

Proper training in these disciplines begins with bringing the body and attention (consciousness) back to its original vibrant and powerful state. You first learn to be aware of every muscle and joint in the body, how each feels and how each works. Students find that they are using far too much effort and movement to accomplish their tasks such as the Zookinesis exercises or Tai-chi forms.

As an example, self defense students usually respond to the opponent’s strike by trying to block the strike out of their way. This requires the force of their own arm and results in their arm knocking into the striking arm of their opponent and getting bruised. Through proper training the student learns to duck away from the strike and deliver their own strike into the opponent’s unprotected areas. He can also lightly touch the incoming strike, adding more momentum to it by pulling the striking arm in the direction it is already going. This throws the opponent off balance. The student can then easily throw the opponent to the ground or strike him. In either case you are using far less effort and energy than blocking.

In the Push Hands exercise, described in many of the articles below, the goal is to push the partner off balance while maintaining your own stance. Beginning students tighten their shoulders, raise their bodies and push with their arms. This is very ineffective yet it makes them feel strong. They feel their own tightness and think they are strong. Soon they learn to sink their bodies, relax their shoulders and use their legs and hips to power the push. The arms become like shock absorbers, remaining slightly firm and springy. Yet the arms themselves do not push. The power of the push comes from the action of the whole body. The result is a lot more power and a lot less effort.

These physical examples are used to illustrate the types of situations that each of us face in everyday life. Few of us get involved in the martial arts or will even encounter a physical conflict. Yet how many of us can avoid the daily psychological stresses in our jobs and family lives?

By practicing how to deal with physical conflict in a controlled setting such as a Tai-chi class, we can apply the principles you learn to these everyday situations. You learn to remain relaxed yet powerful.

As an example, notice how your shoulders rise and tense up during the day. First notice the feeling of the shoulders when you first wake up and then after you come home from work. There is no physiological benefit to tensing up the shoulders. In fact this can lead to headaches, tiredness and add to depression. It is just a habit. You can’t punch someone who is giving you a hard time and so the tension builds up inside of you. Many people say that they just can’t help it. But through Tai-chi and Zookinesis training you discover the very psychological mechanism that makes you tense up. You uncover the internal “control panel” for bad habits and learn to turn them off.

You must be willing to change. Many of us feel that we are our habits. We resent the idea of changing. Yet these habits will kill us. In a sense, we identify with these “angels of death” as if they were the basis of our identity.

With proper Tai-chi and Zookinesis training we learn to identify with our creativity, our health and our feeling of joy. We feel as comfortable letting go of destructive habits as we would letting to of a “hot potato”.

As our bodies and our attention (consciousness) become more relaxed, powerful and joyful, this inner state affects our emotions as well. We find that the aggravations and angers we previously had were not effective in improving our lives. In fact they only served to hurt our bodies, minds and spirits. While it is difficult to let go of our self righteousness (because we feel that we are the perfect example of all that is right), this feeling seems silly after awhile. After examining all our faults – our tensions and poor mechanics of the body and mind – we can hardly fault others for the same problems. We understand the problems within ourselves and can better empathize with these same problems in other people.

Yet we can only work to improve ourselves. Complaining to others about their problems is useless. If you clear out your own problems you can serve as an example to others without lecturing and complaining.

There is so much beauty in the world and there is so little time to experience it. Why orient your attention to anything other than that beauty. You start by clearing out the debris in your own internal state to reveal the beauty that is already there. The sun “wants” to come in through your windows. All you need to do is keep the windows clean. Tai-chi and Zookinesis exercises fine tune our internal state so that the beauty of nature can always shine through.

It is amazing how, just by learning not to tense up in reaction to external circumstances, our lives can change so much for the better. By loosening up all our joints and allowing our bodies to become flexible, we can overcome depression. Such negative emotional states are a reflection of the internal state of the body and the attention. Attention is a biological state of complete awareness so that every cell, muscle, bone and organ of the body feels fully alive and you feel connected to the rest of nature.

The internal disciplines evolved during the time that people moved from living in nature to living in artificial surroundings such as cities. Our natural biological state was being caged by the physical and cultural surroundings. Tai-chi and Zookinesis helped people to live in such artificial conditions and yet retain their original natural power and joy. Remember that even though there is cement beneath your feet, there is living earth under that. We cannot let the concrete beneath us and the square walls around us imprint their artificiality on our spirits. Whether our spirits are caged or free is a choice each of can make, as long as we have the tools to remain free.

LEARNING FROM ANIMALS

2008-04-12T01:09:00Z

The animal importing company was like my second home. After school and on weekends I took care of monkeys, parrots, anteaters, hedgehogs, pythons, dragon lizards, tarantulas and dozens of other species. The animals were my family. Many had been there for so long that they were now fully grown.

These animals were imported from areas that were being destroyed. They were sold to people or organizations that were studying how to breed them in captivity.

At the same time, I went to New York City as often as possible to study a form of chi-gung based on animal behavior – a system I now call “Zookinesis”. The reason I was chosen to receive this teaching is that my mind and spirit had already been formed to a large extent by the animals I worked with. I spent more time with them than with people.

In this chi-gung system you learn to copy the patterns and qualities of internal energy (chi) of various animals. By experiencing the large variety of patterns of chi you learn to appreciate the dynamics of chi. You can then use these dynamics in healing.

I soon began my own animal importing company and decided to live in the animal compound. There were always problems and you had to be right there if an animal got loose or was sick. I soon saw fewer and fewer people and more and more animals.

When I began learning Tai-chi I could relate the movements and qualities to many of the animals I worked with. When I learned Push Hands and the self defense sparring of Tai-chi I practiced what I had learned in class with the animals. They enjoyed it and I learned a lot from their response.

It was important for me to learn Tai-chi sparring. When I would unpack a shipment of new animals I never knew what to expect. The shippers often included unexpected animals or ones that were larger than what I ordered. Opening the orders meant getting attacked by many animals that were in a bad mood. I had to get them into their cages, protect myself and make sure not to hurt them. I often got the worst of it.

But as I learned the behavior patterns of each species I could use Tai-chi and Zookinesis principles to control them and calm them down.

At a certain point I realized that I lived in a different kind of world than most people. The very make-up of my mind and spirit was the sum of all the animals I worked with as well as the effects of my training. This made me feel isolated. So I searched for traditional teachers of other cultures that understood this relationship between the human spirit and the spirit of animals, cultures such as Native American, Celtic and others.

Through readings I found that the idea of learning from the spirit of animals was widespread in the ancient world. Ancient people felt they were an intricate part of nature.

Yet I found that in modern forms of chi-gung and Tai-chi, the practice of learning from animals is missing. The only remnants are in the animal forms or such chi-gung practices as “The Animal Frolics” which are stylized imitations of animal movements. But this is no substitute for working directly with animals.

There were five other large animal importers at that time in the New York City area. Most Saturdays I visited one or two of them to see what new species they brought in. The owners of these animal compounds would discuss their new animals with me. If I found the animal especially interesting I would get a few in to work with them. I spent three summers in Central America, canoeing through the rivers to see animals in the wild and visit the remote people who lived deep in the jungle.

At the end of each trip I felt that I wanted to stay there permanently but my teachers were up in New York and I still had a lot to learn.

After graduating from college I worked as a travelling teacher of ecology around New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, bringing some of my collection of animals to each school and discussing the importance of protecting the environment. I saw how excited the students were, how their eyes lit up at each new animal and how much they wanted to touch and hold them. There was an innate need to be connected to nature and I provided that to the students of each school at least for one day. After 20 years, I had presented the programs, called “The Animal Man” to over one and a half million students and teachers.

The yearning of children to connect with animals is the same yearning for each of us to be connected to our own bodies. We have become strangers to our own bodies. The body seems to us like some big, awkward thing down there that carries our head around. With Tai-chi and Zookinesis we learn to feel each part of our bodies and to understand how to use the body properly. Through these exercises each part of the body feels alive and awake. You can feel healing taking place as the body becomes more conscious.

In the sense of the consciousness of the body, we are not as smart as other animals. It is only our thinking ability that is superior. But we have sacrificed the consciousness of the body for the thinking process.

Zookinesis teaches you how to balance both forms of consciousness so that they work together. The “Body-Mind” and the thinking mind are no longer at war.

My Zookinesis teachers emphasized that, just as there are many forms of consciousness among different kinds of animals, there are many different perspectives in the cultures and thoughts of people. We need to respect the different ideas and attitudes among people just as we need to respect the consciousness and the very right to live of animals. If we have the attitude that only our own thoughts are correct then we may become disrespectful and even violent towards other people. If we feel that we are superior to animals then we may feel justified in destroying their habitats and even entire species.

They emphasized that one reason it is important to spend time with animals is to appreciate that each species is a perfect part of the web of life of nature, that violence to bodies or to consciousness destroys all of nature.

If we can repair the damage to our own bodies and to our own consciousness, we are actually helping to repair all of nature.

My two Zookinesis teachers were the last of their line. They escaped from the Cultural Revolution in China to pass on their teaching here in the United States. I was chosen to be the next teacher in line because I was the only person they knew who had access to wild animals. It was certainly not because of any innate talent on my part.

I knew that it would be impossible to teach Zookinesis if I required my students to spend long months in the wild with animals. And so I combined Zookinesis training with Tai-chi to create a training system that incorporated all of my experiences into a simple, cohesive training system.

The way my students most commonly describe their experience of this process is that they realize they have hips or they have a back or some other part of their bodies. What they mean is that they now actually feel the aliveness of those parts of the body. They are connected to their own bodies. Their minds and bodies blend together so that both work at maximum efficiency. Their behavior is no longer controlled by awkward behavior patterns, by fears, by excess movements or by the racing of the mind. They are no longer blind to what is going on inside of them.

When they catch themselves at ridiculous behaviors, they laugh at themselves. We call that “The Dragon Whips its Tail”. There is an animal mythology that goes along with Zookinesis that makes it easier to understand. In this case the laughter helps you to whip away the ridiculous behavior as if you were flicking away a fly. You realize that you are filled with self destructive behaviors and the laughter keeps you from getting angry or depressed about it.

For example, when we get stressed, we often tense up our shoulders. Of course this behavior doesn’t help you deal with the stressful behavior. It only makes you feel worse. Through Zookinesis, Tai-chi and Tai-chi massage, all these harmful behaviors are exposed and we can more easily let them go.

Finally our bodies and minds feel free and clear, like a natural animal. We no longer feel caged by our own tensions and fears. The vibrancy of nature is felt in every cell of our bodies and we feel how we are connected to the rest of life.

TAI-CHI IN THE OLYMPICS

2008-01-04T16:28:00Z

Tai-chi will be an Olympic demonstration sport this year in August at the opening ceremonies. Tai-chi forms, push hands and full contact fighting will be on world-wide display. This is likely to bring Tai-chi to the forefront as a healthy exercise and martial arts system. My teacher’s son, Max Chen, has made the Olympic team so be sure to watch him compete.

You will not only see the slow Tai-chi forms, but more acrobatic forms as well and even multi-person forms using ancient weapons. In these forms the participants perform a choreographed battle with the weapons swiping within an inch of the other person’s head and body. Many people do not realize that Tai-chi is a martial art. The full name, “Tai-chi-Chuan” means, “The Grand Ultimate Martial Art”. During the Olympics you will see how the slow, flowing movements of the commonly known forms translate into the very fast flowing movements of the martial arts. The goal with the slow forms is to gain awareness and control of every muscle, joint and nerve of the body so that your movements are intricate and exact. Then when you move quickly you will be very efficient.

You will also likely see demonstrations of hundreds of people practicing forms in absolute unison dressed in ancient costumes. This will probably be the most colorful and dramatic Olympics in history.

There is an entire city in China called, “Wushu City”, completely devoted to teaching Tai-chi and Shaolin. While China repressed its ancient practices for many years, it has lately encouraged and welcomed its past. This year’s Olympics in China represents a complete dedication to showing the world how Tai-chi and related practices can bring the vitality of youth back to all of us and provide us with a challenging sport as well.

At the Long Island School of Tai-chi-Chuan, we are dedicated to providing training in both the health exercises and the martial arts of Tai-chi. We will be opening up classes in Olympic training for anyone interested in competing in the next Olympics. (Call 1-888-9TAICHI for information or contact info@movementsofmagic.com).

You will also see people practicing “Chi-Gung” in the Olympic coverage. These are simple exercises to develop the flow of internal energy (chi) in the body. This is the biological energy that sustains, strengthens and connects all the cells and organs of the body. As chi deteriorates, the body deteriorates. Chi-gung restores and strengthens the flow of chi so that the body regains its youthful strength. This school teaches a particular form of chi-gung translated into English as “Zookinesis” or animal exercises. It is an early form of chi-gung based on the flowing movements of animals. Zookinesis not only restores the flow of chi but restores the flexibility and springiness of the body, resulting in a very positive, uplifting feeling of calm inner strength. It can be done from a standing or sitting position.

There is a very good DVD (or video) available to introduce people to Tai-chi and shows 20 Tai-chi teachers performing the various Tai-chi exercises. This program is called, “The Best of American Tai-chi” and is available on the “Online Store” on this site. It explains the basic principles of Tai-chi and will help you understand what you see in the Olympics.

Keep in mind that Tai-chi isn’t really about competing with other people but rather a steady improvement in your own health, vitality and mental clarity. Some people feel that competing in Tai-chi is a contradiction in terms. I have found that Tai-chi competitions are very friendly and enjoyable with every competitor rooting for the others. I’m sure you will enjoy watching Tai-chi at this year’s Olympics.

MEDITATION

2007-12-29T03:07:00Z

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.

WHY IS TAI-CHI SPIRITUAL?

2007-12-12T04:05:00Z

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 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.

IMMORTALITY

2007-11-16T15:50:00Z

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 programs like “Rhythm and Blooms” or other 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, almost four 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.

DEATH

2007-10-23T19:21:00Z

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.

LIFE AS GRAPPLING

2007-09-30T00:39:00Z

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.

LIFE AS AN INTERNAL MARTIAL ART

2007-08-19T14:38:00Z

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.

FUNDAMENTAL CAUSES OF ILLNESS

2007-08-01T15:49:00Z

At a certain point any healing teacher looks back over all the clients he has healed and asks, “What are the main problems causing poor health among all these people?” Is there a fundamental change in our lives that can heal all people at once?

In my experience as a teacher of Tai-chi, Zookinesis age reversal exercises and massage, I have been astounded by how disconnected people are from their bodies. Their understanding of proper body mechanics is way off and the result is that they are constantly injuring their bodies.

This is actually very understandable. In ancient cultures a student would learn from his teacher in an apprenticeship position. He would be practicing his craft while the teacher taught him – learning and moving at the same time. Action was coordinated with using the mind. In our culture we learn to freeze our bodies by sitting in a still position while we learn to think. Then when we go to a gym class there is little thinking and only action. We have learned to separate the movement of the body from the movement of attention in the process of thinking. So when we are about to think we automatically prepare ourselves by freezing our bodies.

When the dynamics of the body and the dynamics of attention are separated, it is as if a large knife cut you in half. Attention normally energizes the body. The body’s dynamics ground the attention. The attention/body split de-energizes the body and the attention as well.

We are left with a very different type of thinking – that of imagining that we are split into two people and one person is talking to the other. This is the constant mental chatter that all of us are too familiar with. Many cultures teach sitting meditation to clear the mental chatter. When Bodhidarma, a Buddhist monk, first came to China, he found the monks there sitting all day in meditation. Their health was very poor because they didn’t exercise. He taught them to exercise and from these basic exercises the martial art of Shaolin was born.

There is no point in fighting against the mental chatter because you are then just creating a battle. By teaching the body to move and to be mindful of that movement, you are re-joining mind and body. This mind is not the talk-chatter type of mind but what is called, “The Ancient Mind” or “Body-Mind” which is attention joined to the body. This can eliminate a fundamental cause of illness in our society and it is the basis of such teachings as Tai-chi, Zookinesis and other forms of chi-gung, Yoga and even modern Pilates exercise.

Our methods of education are not the only causes of illness. When I ask people in class to tense up a muscle, they can do that with ease. But it is very difficult for them to relax a muscle. Tensing involves sending a signal through the nervous system to the muscle. When you relax you just stop sending the signal. It would seem that it is easier to stop doing something than to do it. In Tai-chi this is called, “not doing”. It really means “not doing anything you don’t need to be doing”. As people learn a Tai-chi form or Zookinesis exercise, the movements are quite simple. Yet they struggle to learn them. The process of learning involves more of “not doing” extra, unnecessary things than it is to learn the actual movements. You learn to do each movement in its simplest, easiest form with no excess movement or intention. The result is an effortless flow as if you were a cloud drifting in the sky.

And yet people feel they need to whip their bodies into doing the movement “right”. They use excess movement and tension and their thinking minds are buzzing with worry about how they look and what others might think about them. Their minds and bodies are in a great battle. Yet when they finally learn the movements, it feels as if they are not even doing them because the body and mind are so light and effortless. In this state the body is constantly re-energized yet relaxed. The mind is calm yet very alert and responsive.

As a teacher I am most excited by teaching people who want to become teachers. I can get them involved in much more advanced training. People ask me, “How do you have the patience to teach beginners?” Teaching beginning classes involves going over the same basic training again and again. Yet teaching beginners gives me a great insight into the most basic causes of illness and the most basic problems in coaxing people into a better state of health. I can clearly see the resistance people have to letting go of their lifetime of destructive habits. They feel those habits as being who they are. If I suggest that they change the habits they feel that I am challenging their identity.

So identity is the second fundamental problem to heal on a cultural level. After all isn’t much of the cause of war that this guy feels he belongs to one group and has to oppose the other guy who is a member of another group? We may fear belonging to the wrong group because we may not get to heaven. The groups fight with each other about who has the only right philosophy.

On an individual level we may identify with our thought patterns, tension patterns and emotional patterns. Patterns are fixed and not creative, not adaptive. It is the rare individual who identifies with his or her creativity. Creativity is not fixed and it is adaptive.

When we identify with fixed, rigid patterns, our bodies become rigid. When we go to a Tai-chi or Zookinesis class and are taught to relax and let our bodies move fluidly, this may seem like a challenge to all the fixed, rigid patterns of our lives. It is a challenge to our identity. This is what makes learning these arts so difficult. We resist healing ourselves because that may undermine our habits of injuring ourselves, habits we have identified with.

What a teacher must do is to get the student to appreciate the beauty and fulfillment of his body moving properly and his attention becoming more creative. Rather than putting the student down for being incompetent, the teacher should take a more positive approach and show how beautiful the body can feel and how calm the mind can feel. When you are in this state you truly feel connected to nature. Your skin is not so much of a boundary anymore because you feel the natural energies of nature flowing through you. Those energies then heal you.

As a simple example, you may feel gravity as a force pulling you down. Yet if you yield to gravity, allowing all joints and muscles of the body to relax a little, your body becomes properly aligned and your movements become easier. If you relax both your chest and your upper back at the same time, you will notice that your head pops up into its proper place because of this alignment. Gravity becomes a force that relaxes and aligns you and because of this, actually energizes you. You no longer battle against gravity but use it to energize and heal you.

You can think of gravity as a masseur, massaging you. Your muscles can fight against the pressure of the masseur’s palms or fingers or you can yield to them, allowing the muscle to relax. Many people are uncomfortable about massage precisely because it is designed to eliminate the rigid body tensions which a person identifies with. But the result is that your identity itself is cleansed. You now identify yourself with the healing process of your body, with your awareness of life around you and with your creative attention. The type of massage I practice is called “Tai-chi Massage” or “Chi-gung Massage”. It is not the type in which the masseur just pushes your muscles around as if to fight against their tension. It is a gentle, slow massage which coaxes the body to relax and allows the person being massaged to become aware of the process of relaxation. In this way that person becomes more connected to his own body and the internal battles gently melt away.

One by one, all the battles of life are transformed into sources of healing. Your life becomes much easier and more effective. As a teacher, I can only work with a few people at a time. The instructional DVD’s listed in the “Online Store” on this site can reach even more people. But I think that the real healing transformation of our culture will happen when people take the principles of Tai-chi, Zookinesis and other such training, and incorporate them into other fields. In this way these principles can permeate into our everyday way of life. Who knows what creative ways people will find to use their own experiences in healing to heal others?

THE PUSH HANDS PARTY

2007-07-23T17:02:00Z

During our “Push Hands” party this Saturday, many issues came up. A new student wondered about the “magic” of the use of chi (internal energy). Several asked why we breathe in when we strike in the martial aspect of Tai-chi while other martial arts styles breathe out when they strike. This brought to mind what my chi-gung teachers taught me when I mentioned that some chi-gung teachers teach you to move the chi in the “microcosmic” and “macrocosmic” orbit in the body.

They asked me if I thought I was God. They explained that the body itself knows how to channel the chi properly and the only thing I could do was mess up that flow. They said that what they were teaching me was to stop messing up the flow of chi and then the chi would flow just fine. They explained their view that in the West we love to push and shove things around to fix them. This was true of even Chinese teachers in modern times. But what good does it do to shove your chi in what you are told is the “correct” movement when you are still filled with habits of pushing chi around in improper ways. You would just be creating a conflict between your different habits of shoving, some supposedly good and some bad. Just stop shoving the chi around, they suggested.

The student who wondered about the “magic” of chi wanted to be able to knock someone down at a distance by holding up his hand. There are several ways to approach this issue. The main point is, why do you want to be able to knock someone down? What are the inadequacies in yourself that cause you to want to be able to knock other people down? The second point is that these teachings require very detailed, long term study. The mechanics of chi are very exacting and specific. The relationship between chi and the physical body takes years of study and practice to understand, feel and master. When the term “magic” is used, it generally means, “How can I do this without any effort on my part?” It is a sign of laziness. You just want to be able to use a magic word, for example, and not put in the years of study. So a real student would need to examine his tendency toward laziness. Magic is only magic when you don’t understand the mechanisms behind the result.

I met a couple of teachers who claimed that they could knock someone over at a distance. They even demonstrated it on their own students. But onlookers insisted that he do the same with them. The teachers did not want to demonstrate their skills on anyone but their own students. After much insistence these teachers did try to demonstrate this “chi at a distance” on others but failed.

The point is that this chi at a distance is a training exercise. The student must be very sensitive to the teacher’s chi. When the student feels this chi, he allows his body to move according to the characteristics of the chi he feels. The chi doesn’t knock him over but the student cooperates via his reaction to the chi.

There is great magic in chi training. It is not the magic of seeing great things and not know how they happened. It is the magic of being able to see simple things and know how they happened. When an experienced teacher practices his form the onlooker will see the slightest movements with barely any effort. A beginner at learning a tai-chi form will use exaggerated movements and seem to use a lot of effort and tension. Most onlookers will think the beginner’s tai-chi is spectacular because it is big and “loud”. The experience teacher barely looks as though he is doing anything and is not very exciting. Magic in this case would consist of being able to see the incredible control of internal movement (within the body) resulting in such slight external movement (movement of the body in space) of the experienced teacher. Magic is the ability to see the great in the insignificant. It is the ability to let go of all the habits of tension, mental patterns and chi blockage to arrive at the simple, natural state of being. Magic, in the real sense, should not be a compensation for feelings of inadequacy that appeal to your laziness.

Another discussion later in the day centered around this question: Should you lead the student on by promising great magic (in the sense that the student understands it) in the hope that he will eventually get and appreciate the real training? There was a story told by the Buddha. A man came home to find his house burning with his three little girls inside. He called out to them, “Come here at once. I have wonderful presents for you.” When they came out they were upset that there were no presents. But the father just wanted to save his children.

For my part, I cannot play games like that. I have to tell the students the bare truth. My feeling is, “What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” The result is that I have few students but they are wonderful students. It may take them a long time to “get” things but they understand that I am not playing games with them. I don’t give them any room to hide in fantasies. There is nothing wrong with fantasies but I prefer to leave that to Hollywood.

Another point that was brought up dealt with acupuncture points. I was taught that every point on and within the body is an acupuncture point. Every cell and even every part of every cell is a center for the transformation of energy. The acupuncture points that you see on the charts are just useful points for healing purposes. If you work a specific point it will have a specific result. But this doesn’t mean that only those spots marked on the charts are acupuncture points. I believe that in any good Oriental healing school this point is brought out. But the students often fail to appreciate or even to hear it. Many such students think that chi only runs through the meridians and not everywhere throughout the whole body. My teachers emphasized that chi must flow through every organ and cell of the body.

I showed a chart I had made to bring out what I felt was an essential point to understand the principles of tai-chi and of chi-gung. If you truly understand the chart, a lot of the tai-chi principles will make more sense.

The chart basically explained that there are two substances in the world and two forces (according to these principles). The two substances are matter and consciousness. These substances are part of everything in the universe. This means that consciousness flows through all matter and is not just a by-product of chemical reactions of the human brain.

Consciousness expresses itself differently depending on what it is flowing through. Yet the consciousness within a plant is the same “stuff” as our own.

The two forces in the universe are the yin force, pulling towards the center (gravity) and the yang force, flowing outward from the center. Both forces work on both substances. When we speak of the yang force in terms of matter, we use the term, “chi”. When we speak of the yang force in terms of consciousness, we use the term, “creativity”.

In its most fundamental state, matter and consciousness are one and the same. But the two forces “play” at creating an apparent separation between the two (the yang force separates matter and consciousness). The variation of influence of the yin and yang forces on the two substances at any particular moment is one meaning of the yin/yang symbol.

This is the same as an artist who steps away from his canvas to get a better overall view of his painting. When matter and consciousness appear to be separate, we have a stronger feeling of self or individuality. When they merge, when the force of gravity takes over, the two blend together. Your consciousness (which I call attention) and the world around you merge and you loose track of time and even of yourself.

When you relax, the force of gravity allows your body to sink to its center (the tan-tien). Since the earth is so large and exerts such a large gravitational force, our center then sinks to the center of the earth. This is called, “sung”. It is translated as “sinking” but more specifically it is the sinking of every point in the body into its center (tan-tien) and also the sinking of the center of the body to the center of the earth. It is yielding to the gravity of both the body itself and of the earth.

In this way when you yield to gravity you seem to merge, not only with the earth but with your body and with all the natural surroundings. I learned these principles while learning Zookinesis and that made learning tai-chi much easier to understand.

So now let’s get to the issue of breathing in and out. When you breathe in, this corresponds to drawing energy upward from the earth and expanding. Breathing in is yang and expansive. Breathing out corresponds to yielding to gravity and sinking into the earth. When you expand, energy flows outward which results in the punch or kick or push. When you sink you absorb the opponent’s force and ground it or circle it around back to him. At the moment of impact your fist “feels” the alignment of the opponent’s body. This created a trained effect in your body to line up all your joints in such a way that the upward, expansive force is directly aimed at the opponent and the opponent’s resistance is absorbed by your body. This re-alignment of the joints takes just a fraction of a second and takes a lot of training to accomplish. But it allows us to use the ground as our “floor”, to expand upward from the ground. In hard style martial arts, their own body tension is used as the ground from which the punch issues. So their body tension fights against the strike and only a fraction of their potential force is released. The only tension used in tai-chi fighting is in our movements and just enough so that the arm (or leg or elbow etc.) doesn’t collapse when we strike. We want an exponential explosion of force shooting into the opponent. This can only be done when the body is as relaxed as possible. Hard styles breathe out and then hold their breath when they strike to achieve the maximum tension of the body. That’s why they’re called “hard styles”.

I am playing with the idea of opening up our parties to outsiders. The parties provide a full day of training and practice and a ready supply of good food. If you would be interested in future push hands parties or other get-togethers focusing on specific aspects of training you can contact me at bobklein@movementsofmagic.com

TAI-CHI FOR MUSICIANS

2007-05-30T21:25:00Z

A newborn is completely dependent on the people around him or her. The behavior patterns of the people around him gradually imprint themselves on his behavior. At a certain age he begins to exert his independence to break free from the control others have over him.

As an adult we must balance our connection to our surroundings with our creative individuality. The skill of creating this balance is key to our power and fulfillment in life.

A musician in a band, for example, must have skill both in playing his instrument and in allowing the other band members to play his instrument through him. In this way there is a balance between synchronizing his playing with the others and creatively leading the music.

Each musician “gives life” to his or her instrument and feels that his fingers, his breath (depending on the instrument) and even the instrument itself have a life of their own. He feels that the instrument is playing itself and interacting with the “aliveness” of the other instruments.

In this way playing in a band is similar to raising a child. There is a struggle between the feeling of control and the desire to let the instrument or child have a consciousness of its own. At a certain point you feel that you can just sit back and let the instrument play itself. At a certain point you can allow the child to control his own life (maybe when he is in his thirties).

When you get involved in any relationship you go through this same process. Each person has issues of controlling or letting the other person control and they hopefully learn to blend together. You reproduce your early childhood with each relationship.

So the quality of your success in balancing letting in external influences vs. developing your independence as a child will greatly affect all future relationships.

It may be difficult to remember how you developed as a child. Children’s memories are recorded as “states of being” not as events in time. Accessing each type of memory requires a different mechanism of your attention.

There is an exercise you can do that shows you how to use your attention to access childhood and even fetal memories. I use this exercise to prove to my students that there are indeed dynamics to their attention. In order to perform a specific conscious act you must use a specific dynamic of attention. These dynamics are the “secrets” that ancient teachers taught to their advanced students. It is a large part of Zookinesis training.

To do this exercise requires that you have some basic awareness of the feeling of attention itself and its movements. It may take years of training to get even to that point.

So here is the exercise. First remember a specific event in your life that happened at least two years ago. Spend one minute remembering the event and when it happened.

Next remember a state of the body. It can be sad, happy, surprised, relaxed, agitated, warm, cold – any specific state. It must NOT be related to any specific event or time. Feel that state for about a minute.

Next do each again but this time notice if your attention moves up or down and if it relaxes and opens up or if it compresses. Use the same event and body state as you did before. Write down what your attention does for remembering the event and for remembering the state of the body. The results should be the same for everyone as long as you are familiar with what attention is. You can read many of the lessons on this site to learn about attention.

I will not tell you what those dynamics are for this exercise so I don’t prejudice you (but you can email me and I’ll let you know).

If we can become aware of these dynamics we can develop skill in their use. We can use this skill to become much more aware of the world around us and how to interact with it. We will see aspects of our everyday world we were not aware of before.

Infant and fetal memory can be accessed easily so we understand how we tried to make sense of this world and fit into it. Some of the solutions we came up with were useful and some ineffective. To what degree do we shut out the world around us and how does that affect us? To what degree are we too vulnerable and how does that harm us?

Once we gain awareness of these mechanisms, the awareness itself is the solution to the problems. It is as if someone’s eyes were shut and he kept walking into things. He spent his life remembering where everything was so he wouldn’t bump into them. But the best solution is to just open his eyes.

Learning about the dynamics of attention is like opening your eyes. Then you can easily balance the interplay of letting influence in (Yin) and exerting creative influence out (Yang).

There are exercises to develop each of these two parts of the balance. When you practice your Tai-chi form, initiate each movement from the center of the body – the hip area. Then let the movement flow outward through the legs, the torso, arms and head. This will develop the outward flow of creative energy (Yang). Imagine that you are in a pond and someone drops various sized and shaped rocks into the center of the pond. The dropping of each rock is like an initiation of movement because it creates ripples in the water that flow outward.

For the Yin aspect of this dynamic, allow the legs, torso, arms and head to yield to the initiated movement and reproduce its quality of energy. You will be like the water itself that yields to the force of the falling rock.

The water on the surface of the lake is completely smooth at first as the water is relaxed. It is like a musician who stays in the proper stance to play his instrument. He is not grabbing the instrument with tension as if to protect it from the influence of his band members. He does not feel territorial about his instrument but holds it in a relaxed and open way.

On the other hand, his stance is not sloppy. That would interfere with transferring his creative energy to the instrument. He is open and connected to the other players influence but also connected to his instrument so that it is receptive to his influence.

He is open and receptive to his entire history of development as a human being because he knows how to remember. So the quality of his music is expressive of his entire life.

He can see how his life can really be described as a quest to learn about this balance of the dynamics of attention. It is about the development of his soul.

When you know your soul the audience knows it, whether you are a musician or just a regular person interacting with another person.

Your soul is really the musician playing you and it plays all day and night. For that reason it would be very helpful it if played well.

PUSH HANDS FOR CHRISTIANS

2007-05-12T22:20:00Z

Lessons from a student’s cultural background can often be used to help teach the Push Hands exercise. The story of Jesus provides a great opportunity to explain the principles of Push Hands. Though I am not Christian I try to learn about my student’s backgrounds and experiences to explain the training in terms they will understand.

For those not familiar with Push Hands, this is a two person exercise in which the partners face each other with their front feet next to each other. The goal is to push the other person over. The natural tendency is to use physical force – muscle tension. But the muscle tension makes the student even more vulnerable to a push. If he were soft and yielding, he could let the partner’s force flow by. When he is tense, he must take the full impact of his partner’s push.

Most students have tense backs. There is a band of tension across their shoulders and another band of tension up and down their spines, including their necks. When their partner pushes them, this band tightens up, they lean forward as if to resist the push and this, of course, makes them more vulnerable.

I suggest that they imagine they are carrying a cross on their backs, like Jesus carrying the cross to his crucifixion. The cross is made of the horizontal tension across the shoulders and the vertical tension along the spine. Consider my pushes to be like the Romans, hammering Jesus to the cross with nails. As long as you carry the cross I will continue to “nail you”. The only solution is to let go of your cross. Allow the back to relax so that I have nothing to nail you to.

In this way my force will simply move your body. You may turn, shift back or rotate your shoulder joint, allowing my force to flow by. While the students understand their situation, it is amazing how difficult it is to “let go of their cross”. The cross of tension is the result of the attitude of meeting force with force.

In the days of Jesus, the Roman Empire occupied Israel, as it did most of the “known world”. Rome made the roads safe, from China through India, Greece, Israel and Egypt. There was great commerce at that time because the trade people were not afraid of being robbed along the roads. They could travel from city to city safely. With this trade came the trade of ideas. Each culture shared its philosophy with the others and there was a flourishing of philosophies.

Many of the Jews believed that the Romans should be chased out of their country. These Jews (the Zealots) not only killed Romans but also Jews who felt comfortable with the idea of Romans running the municipal activities. There was civil war.

Jesus’ view was that you could not win meeting force with force. Rome was a mighty empire. Rather, by elevating the spiritual awareness of each individual Jew, this would change the very nature of the relationship between the Jews and the Romans. Without this inner development, each power would conquer the other only to be re-conquered time and time again.

But if an entire population is elevated to a higher state of consciousness, its relationships to other people would always be to its benefit.

Push Hands is based on a similar principle. When the partner pushes you, receive the force and transform it. You can dissipate it by letting it flow through your body into your “root” (into the ground). You can circle it around back to the partner. You can compress his force, add your own and bounce the combined force up, as if the partner were pushing against a trampoline. In this way you are creative with the force. You don’t just fight against it. But to do so you need a great deal of awareness. You need to let go of ingrained patterns of behavior based on conflict. And you need to do all this in real time (within a fraction of a second).

In what ways do we carry a cross in everyday life and allow others to “nail” us? Can you feel that cross on your back, wearing you out?

When I practice Push Hands I look for that cross on my partner’s back, the resistance ready to fight with me. Although our eyes are closed during this exercise I can easily feel that pattern of tension. My partner leans in towards me with his head hanging down. If I were to step away he would fall down. He conducts himself only in relationship to my force and thus depends on my force to hold him up.

Can you notice any times during the day when your head hangs down and you lean forward? If you do, then let go of your cross. Stop resisting the world around you. This means that you stop interpreting life as a battle you must tense up against. When you drop the cross you also drop the feeling of battle.

In the story of Jesus, he was resurrected (some say physically, some say spiritually). He is heard from a few times by his disciples and then is never heard from again. Why? Once you are “resurrected” from the “dead” (when you stop living a story of battling your way through life) then the story is over. You just go on with your life.

At first, life may not seem as exciting if you are not fighting your way through it. But soon you discover other forms of excitement such as the very joy of being alive. You discover the fulfillment of joining with others rather than battling with them.

Push Hands can be such a joy. You can join the intricate world of consciousness within each part of your body with that of the partner’s body. Your energies can unite. You still play the game of trying to push each other over but it is a joyful game. It is a game that teaches you how to unite with others by letting go of all the little “crosses” inside the body that resist connecting to others.

You learn that your real power is your awareness which allows you to transform the partner’s push into your play. When you bring the element of play and creativity into your life you can create the story of your own life. Your life will be lived from that story rather than from the violence of the people and situations around you.

THE KEY TO POWER

2007-04-11T14:17:00Z

The key to progress in the internal martial arts is to recognize the three forces at work behind your techniques and your power. There are two “intelligent” forces at work that have power and one which depletes power. The depleting force is all the habits within the muscles and nerves which are based on fear. These habits have their own agenda which have nothing to do with your task at hand.

The powerful, intelligent forces are your intentions and the body’s own consciousness. Internal training requires that you connect your intentions to the body’s consciousness. For most people the body’s consciousness has been so suppressed that their intentions are connected only to the forces of habit. In this case your intentions are side-tracked by the emotional agenda of your entire life.

A common example is that when we spar we like to feel powerful. Most people feel powerful when they are tense. The tension makes them feel solid. Tension however, slows the body down and makes joint movement difficult. That person’s sparring becomes awkward and based on emotional anger and fear. He is, in fact, countering his own power.

The body’s natural intelligence (Body-Mind) is based on the biological structure and function of each part of the body. This intelligence can be felt as strongly as the fear-emotions which are usually lodged within each part of the body. When your intentions are connected to this natural intelligence your actions are “clean”, smooth and effective. Yet you feel “empty”. You feel as though you didn’t do anything. This is a feeling I call, “nothing”. When I teach Phantom Kung-fu I emphasize that the students should seek that feeling of nothing at all times. At first they don’t trust that feeling because it doesn’t feel “powerful”. Yet when they are in that state they are indeed powerful, fast and effective.

At this point they need to re-adjust what they consider to be the feeling of power. The feeling of “nothing” becomes their new feeling of power. They come to rely on using the experience of the natural intelligence (Body-Mind) as their reference point rather than relying on anger or other emotions.

People ask me, “How does the Body-Mind feel? How do you know when you are feeling it?” I explain that it is like smelling a hint of freshly baked bread as you walk down the street. You follow that smell because you know there is a bakery nearby. Your nose automatically aligns itself with that smell and your body automatically follows it. Where your nose points, your body follows.

As we approach the spring season the body naturally begins to stir. We emerge from the winter’s hibernation. At this time of year it is the easiest to “smell” the stirrings of the body’s intelligence. This is called the “stirrings of the dragon” in Zookinesis mythology.

Imagine that you come upon a huge cave. You smell a dragon and even see its footprints around the cave. You peer into the cave’s entrance, not daring to venture in. You can imagine the power within that empty cave. Then you begin to hear the rustlings of its waking. What do you do then? Do you run away or stay to watch it emerge? That depends on how connected your intentions are to your fears.

Most of us would quickly cement over the entrance to the cave and invest our energy adding layer after layer of cement to make sure the dragon doesn’t escape. Yet that dragon is our own power. Why in the world would we hide our own power? The key to answering that question is to ask, “Who are we?” Are we indeed that dragon, our natural intelligence or are we the patterns of behavior based on fear? If we are the latter, then the emergence of the dragon would surely endanger us. Part of my work as a Zookinesis and Tai-chi teacher is to tell you that you are not your fears. You are the dragon. The dragon’s actions are not based on fear and are therefore not destructive. When your intentions are connected to your natural power then you are not destructive.

Yes, you punch or kick with great power but it is not power borne of anger and fear. It is power borne of competence. It is a relaxed, comfortable power, not an agitated power.

Once you understand these three parts of you – intentions, natural power (Body-Mind) and fear-based behavior patterns, you can start to differentiate them in each of your actions.

Your intentions house your training. For example, if you want to avoid getting hit by the sparring partner’s punch your intentions would be to block if you are in an external martial arts style and to evade if you are in an internal martial arts style. Your intentions tell you what situation you are in and how to respond. With the external styles an intruder is entering your space and you need to remove him from that space. With the internal styles force is flowing by you and you are naturally pushed aside by that force. You gently accommodate your alignment to allow the force to flow by while remaining in an advantageous position with the sparring partner. In this case sparring is not a matter of conflict but of realignment to maintain harmony and balance. This is, in fact, the way the body is structured to behave.

When the dragon emerges from its cave, stretches and warms up in the sun, you can then ride it into the clouds. Your intentions are clear and connected to your inner power. You can do anything.

This is the training of Tai-chi and Zookinesis. Take advantage of the spring season when the dragon begins to stir. Avoid cementing the entrance to the cave and in fact, break down the old cement (the body’s tensions). Allow the fears within you to flee when they hear the stirrings of the dragon but realize that you are not those fears. Give each fear a piece of cement to carry away with him. Remain at the entrance of the cave to greet the dragon.

The sun is used as a symbol of the energy of consciousness which flows through all living things. It unites all life on earth. When you feel the warmth of the spring sun it is easy to allow your fears to melt and to allow the dragon to emerge. All the natural parts of you become united. Then you realize that the feeling of “nothing” is really everything in your training.

SPARRING LIKE THE OLD DAYS

2007-03-26T14:02:00Z

I recently had the opportunity to spar with my original instructor, Tom, in Grandmaster William C. C. Chen’s school in New York City. It was like the old days again and reminded me why Tai-chi-Chuan sparring is so different from other styles. We flowed in between each other’s strikes, slipping each other’s strikes to the sides.

I also sparred with a young man who was practicing for the tournaments. He seemed hesitant to strike me with full force. I had to just stand there and ask him to keep hitting me as hard as he could to convince him I would not break. When you are used to sparring with full force, the little taps that some people give you can be annoying. You need to know that the partner is at least trying to hit you with full force so you are sure that if you felt just a tap it was because you successfully neutralized his strike.

One of the main features of Tai-chi-Chuan sparring is that your full focus of attention is inside the partner’s body. His strikes are just brushed aside. You don’t focus on them because you don’t block them. Rather, you are fully aware of the spaces between you and him and slip your body into those spaces to evade the strikes. From there you can deliver your own strikes. Whoever is the master of the spaces controls the sparring.

The strikes emanate explosively, exponentially increasing in force as they move outward, like a cannonball being shot out of the cannon. As quickly as they shoot out, they bounce back into place setting up the next punch. Each strike has the full force of the body behind it and the power comes from the legs and hips.

Any strike has to have a solid base to shoot out from. In Tai-chi-Chuan that base is the floor. In most styles of martial arts the base is the body’s tension. Strikes emanate from the tense back and shoulders. The strikes are not bouncy and explosive but are used like battering rams. The body cannot slip into empty spaces because it is needed to serve as a “floor”, a base for the strikes.

By using the real floor as the base you free up the entire body. You can stay within the striking distance of the partner but remain “invisible” because you “exist” only within the spaces. Once you leave the spaces, to block for example, you are exposed. The orientation of your sparring strategy is then tied to the partner’s tensions and force (if you block) rather than to the empty spaces which allow you to move, and to the body of the partner, which you strike.

Another strategy of some styles is to hold the arms in front of the body and face at all times for protection. In Tai-chi-Chuan we allow the arms to flow and be functional. Although they remain close to the body and face, they are allowed to creatively interact with the partner. If the arms are held rigidly, then you can just punch his hands into his own face. You can also strike the sides or the top of his head. I can tell you from much personal experience that full strikes to the sides and top of the head are very effective. The striker must use a loose fist when striking the skull so he doesn’t hurt his fingers. Since the strike is explosive, the force is not just felt at the surface but penetrates the head and body.

If your partner holds his arms in front of his body you can feel free to strike his arms. The arms can only take so much before tiring from the beating. You can certainly add grappling and just pull the arms away so you can punch or kick. Pulling the arms also destabilizes him so that you can more easily deliver a strike to the legs. (We usually kick mostly to the legs and a bit to the midsection. Kicks higher than that make the kicker too vulnerable).

It is important to notice where the partner is focusing his attention. If he if focused only on your torso, for example, you can punch his legs so that he will no longer be sure that your strikes will only be coming to his upper body. The legs can only take so much striking. Usually when you spar with kicking, the partner cannot focus only on the torso and head because his legs are constantly being kicked. Yet many styles kick mostly to the torso and head so the partner doesn’t need to divide his attention. He can disregard the lower part of the body. Tai-chi-Chuan uses this vulnerability by striking the legs, torso, head and arms so the partner must keep his attention on all these areas. We train to develop our attention, as described in many of the other articles in this section, so we are comfortable with an expanded and sustained attention.

As we are aware of the pattern of the partner’s attention, we focus our strikes to areas of his weakest attention at that moment. This requires us to develop the sense of attention so that we can perceive how strong his attention is at any point in the sparring area. We keep our bodies in the areas of his weakest attention so it is difficult for him to hit us.

My wife Jean also had the opportunity to spar with Tom and she enjoyed it. We vowed to practice sparring more with each other. We each have not sparred for many years. This is because fewer and fewer people are interested in traditional training anymore and we ended our sparring classes. When they find out that they must first learn a Tai-chi form, the Zookinesis chi-gung exercises and push hands before sparring, prospective students lose interest. They can go to a martial arts school down the block and start sparring after only a few months. These schools also offer colored belts, while Tai-chi-Chuan, and my own fighting system, Phantom Kung-fu, do not offer any belts.

The internal systems at my school require that you let go of tensions, inefficient behavior patterns and bad attitudes before beginning sparring. Most people get involved in martial arts to reinforce their behavior patterns and attitudes, not to go through a transformation.

After the class, Tom and I talked about the “old days”, when there was much more excitement in the martial arts and when people were willing to experiment with alternative approaches and ideas. The traditional schools used to be filled with students. Part of me is waiting for those days to return but I know that you can’t just wait for the times to be right because life will be over too soon. And wasn’t the lesson of those more creative times that we each need to create our own lives no matter what is going on around us? The “eternal flame” of the traditional training is fed by continued practice. Jean and I continue to visit Grandmaster Chen’s classes whenever we can to remind us of that.

WAKING UP THE BODY

2007-03-06T00:51:00Z

More about my trips to Central America...

We had to go into the town of Chepo because someone had brought me a dead margay. The margay is a small wild cat and the fellow had heard I was interested in animals. He thought I wanted them for the skin. I explained that I was looking for live animals but he got very angry and insisted that I buy the cat. Carlos had heard about this and came to town. He started arguing with the guy but in the end suggested that I buy it as long as the man understood that I didn’t want any more dead animals.

Carlos then brought me to Chepo in the canoe taxi because he knew someone who would buy the dead margay from me. We landed at Capitano where we took the little bus (pick up truck with side rails) to Chepo. The bus left us off at the center of town where the main road from the capital ended. While Carlos went off to sell the cat I wandered around that area.

I had been used to the slow pace and quiet of our little jungle town and had forgotten how busy and noisy the city was. I was overwhelmed. Yet this was nothing like New York. Compared to my original home Chepo was a little hick town. I noticed that the personalities of the people were very strong and they spoke loudly. Everyone wanted to voice their opinion about everything.

I wandered by the auction house where cattle was displayed and auctioned off. I liked the smell of cattle and horses. Every few minutes a car would speed by raising a huge cloud of dust. None of the roads were paved and it was still the dry season. I couldn’t understand why they drove so fast when they could drive through the whole “city” in a few minutes.

Carlos found me and after buying some supplies, we had some fried chicken at a roadside eating place. Carlos commented on how busy the city was. He made a motion with his hands like the wind of a tornado and then opened and closed his fingers to imitate people talking so much. I told him that all this commotion was making me feel bad and I felt bad already because of the margay incident.

We went back to Capitano but the tide wasn’t in enough for the taxi to leave the dock. Carlos argued with the boatman for a while and then paid him some money to bring us back anyway. Within a few minutes of the trip we had to disembark and pull the canoe over the rocky small river leading to Rio Chepo. The water was too shallow. The stones on the river floor were killing my feet. We had to pull the canoe about a half mile and had to hold on tightly because the small rapids were trying to pull the canoe away from us.

By that time the tide had come in enough so we could get back in the boat and we returned home. Carlos had me follow him back to his hut up in the hills and I must have complained a lot about my feet. That just made him laugh. When we got to the hut he made a small fire and we both stood by the fire, warming our feet.

Suddenly he said, “That was some workout for our feet!” and he slapped me hard on the back. I felt as if I were passing out but had the unusual sensation that I was in my feet and ankles. I was in the parts of me that were in pain and were being warmed up by the fire. The rest of me seemed “up there”. I thought of “getting back up” as that seemed were I should be but I had no means to do so. There was no one left up in the mother ship to beam me up. Yet I was able to stand upright and not fall.

After a while Carlos helped me to sit down and gradually I came back into my head. Carlos then slapped my feet as if to wake them up and my attention jumped back down. He turned to look at me and my attention went back up into my eyes.

Carlos asked me, “Where is your home?” and I automatically said, “Long Island”. He laughed. “Where are you now?” he asked and I replied, “Panama”. He laughed again as if I were an entertainer keeping him amused.

Carlos asked, “Are you in your head or in your feet right now?” I understood what he meant and told him I was all right. “I didn’t ask you if you were all right, I asked you where you were.” I felt myself about to sink back down into my feet again but fought to stay “up”. Half of me fell down and half of me stayed up. I was in my feet and ankles and in my head at the same time. This confused me so much that I just didn’t know what to do.

Carlos looked at me up and down. A small dog came over and also looked at me up and down. Carlos looked at the dog and the dog barked in such a way that he seemed to shrug his shoulders. He sniffed me, looked at me in the eyes, walked away and I would swear that he shook his head in confusion and grumbled.

Then Carlos started rubbing my belly which I thought was an inappropriate thing to do, but only half of me thought that. The half that was in my feet started moving up to where I was being rubbed and when “it” got there, Carlos slapped my belly once. At that point I recalled the hustle and bustle of Chepo. That scene superimposed itself on my whole body. I understood that there was a lot of hustle and bustle within my body and mind and immediately felt uncomfortable, like I wanted all that busyness to stop immediately. Carlos laid me down near the fire and my body warmed up. I could feel the air on the other side of the fire starting to cool down for the evening. At this point the part of “me” that was in my feet and ankles and that had spread to my belly, also filled my torso and joined the head part of my attention. My awareness was now in the whole of my body, and my body quieted down. It felt like the busyness had been absorbed by the earth.

The smell of dinner soon absorbed all of my attention and I very slowly got up. I felt as if I were breathing into every cell of my body, that the air and the earth merged and created me at every moment. I breathed in very deeply as the smells were wonderful.

Tree frogs began singing all around us and I could feel their songs inside of me, as when you feel the vibrations of music when you sit in front of a large speaker. The frog songs were very delicate and yet I could feel them as if each part of my body were like a tuning fork being vibrated by them.

When I finally sat down to eat, the smells and taste of the food were overwhelmingly satisfying. Yet it seemed to be the same beans & rice, chicken and chopped vegetables that were the usual fare here.

I thought that it would be hard to go home to Long Island, to face the busyness and have my body vibrate to the hustle and bustle. I understood how the environment outside duplicates itself inside of our bodies and hearts. And I began to understand how the forces of nature merge to create you.

We suddenly heard the howler monkeys begin to howl. The people at this hut and in several others along the trails shouted in unison. Then we went back to eating.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF ATTENTION, CREATIVITY AND THE PHYSICAL BODY

2007-03-05T17:04:00Z

We understand that play is a natural behavior of many animals. Puppies and kittens understand that they aren’t really trying to kill each other. They understand make-believe. They also understand reality as when a large animal runs after them, growling loudly. Play is not to be taken literally but is good practice for reality.

Play teaches you to perceive clearly and for your body to react quickly. It develops a lively connection of attention to the body.

Our civilization uses this understanding to trick us. It uses play, not to develop a connection of attention to the actions of the body, but to words. As we become more and more lethargic, ideas replace the body as the arena of action. We live in the world of ideas. This changes the role of the body, and by extension, the whole physical world in our creative process. Lately the new close relationship between our play, or creativity, and words, our thinking process, has changed. The role of the body and then words is being replaced by machinery. When you watch children play video games, to what is their attention connected? It is hardly connected to the body or even to ideas. It is connected to computer screen images.

This slow progression heads in one direction – to disconnect attention from the body and the physical world and to connect it to factors than can be manipulated by other people. It is hard to manipulate someone’s body. It is easier to manipulate their ideas. But if their attention is connected to machinery, you can control the programming even more easily.

The advertiser’s job is to move people’s attention in the direction of more manipulation. The teacher’s job is to move the attention back to ideas and to the physical world.

When you manipulate symbols – a national flag for example – you are trying to control peoples’ behavior. In most cases this manipulation is not for the benefit of that person. It is for the benefit of the manipulator.

There are many human histories. There is the history of wars and politics. There is the history of the condition of the average person. There are labor and social movements. Histories of religion, philosophy, arts and science fill university curriculums. But really, they are all the history of the attempted manipulation of attention to control behavior.

It is the history of storytelling – the story of who we are, where we came from and why we are here. If we feel we belong to one group that is opposed to another group, we have conflict. People can be made to fight other people because of the story of who they are and where they came from.

Zookinesis teaches us how our attention becomes controlled by the stories we are told. It teaches us to understand the dynamics of attention itself so that we can notice when and how it is being controlled and regain that control.

In order to do this it is important to understand what attention is and its relationship to the body and the physical world in general.

Zookinesis considers that what makes each person an individual is the way our creativity “plays” with the energy of attention. It is similar to the way we “play” with the energy of gravity in the way we move. Attention is the consciousness behind the eyes and ears. It is that which is aware of thoughts and emotions.

There are two forces controlling attention. One is the various distractions that we encounter every day. They mold our attention into their shape. The other force is creativity which is the playfulness that makes each of us unique and is part of our biological heritage. Any individual may be more influenced by the distractions or more by creativity. People with OCD (obsessive, compulsive disorder) are almost completely controlled by their environment. They are drawn to the strongest distraction at each moment. People who are completely controlled by their creativity we may call “airheads”. They are hardly connected to the world around them but only to their ideas and fantasies. The job of a parent or teacher is to balance these two forces in the child or student. The point of balance between these two forces is called “the gate” in Zookinesis. The goal of the training is to become “the gatekeeper”, that is, to be fully aware of and control the balance of environmental influences and playful creativity on the flow of attention.

The role of a teaching, such as Zookinesis or Tai-chi, is to provide the student with the skills to maintain that balance. To what degree do you allow yourself to be molded by the influences around you and to what degree do you step outside of those influences and “create your own story”?

At the advanced level of any teaching, the student begins to perceive “who” it is that is learning, controlling this balance and creating the story. Religious people would call this “union with God”, meaning that you perceive the source of your own creativity. You understand your uniqueness and yet your complete connection to all other people and forms of life.

You cannot do this by handing over your attention to any particular dogma, whether a philosophy, religion or any teaching. You can use these vehicles to develop the balance of external influences and creative influences on your attention, but you do not allow them to fully mold your perspective. There are many vehicles on the road but in the end you need to step out of the vehicle and get to your destination.

Ancient religions and other teaching were based on “the elements”. This was an early form of psychology. You became aware of the influences of your body, your thinking mind, your will and your emotions and the balance of these factors in each moment of your life. Your goal was to keep the “elements” in balance. The result was that you became aware of the fifth element – “spirit”. Spirit was the force that connected all life together, or what we would call “chi” in Taoist philosophy. When you achieved the balance of the first four elements it would be as if you were standing in the middle of a spiral staircase and could look all the way up and down the stairs. Spirit is all the activity that you see going on. Each level is a level of life or consciousness. Your next goal in these teachings, was to explore all the floors. The final step of training was to be aware of all the levels of consciousness at the same time so that you are a fully conscious being.

This is the basis of Zookinesis training. You first become aware of the dynamics of your physical body. In order to do this you have to allow your attention to connect to all parts of your body. This requires working on the flow of attention and letting go of any blockage to that attention. You gradually become aware of that part of you that directs the flow of attention (creativity). Now when you practice the exercises, you are not just shoving your body parts around. You are lightly manipulating the flow of attention in your body and that, in turn, affects the movements. Your efforts and movements become lighter and lighter and yet more effective and powerful.

Through physical exercises, Zookinesis achieves a “spiritual” end, that of true self awareness. You can then examine the “play” of your life to determine in which ways that play is positive or negative. You can create a different play or story for yourself, one which is more healing for you and for others.

It all starts with realizing that consciousness itself is a force that connects you to the rest of nature. It flows through your physical body and animates it. Chi is the biological activity that results. Creativity is the way we play and is a natural behavior of many species. We humans “play” with our attention and create stories. We then build our civilizations on the foundation of those stories. The physical and mental structures we build seem so solid and everlasting that we forget the “play” behind them. When play, or creativity is no longer a part of each “element” of our lives, then we become deadened and our physical, mental and emotional health suffer. Our “will” gets out of balance and we get angry when we don’t get our way. That is why I like public broadcasting programs so much. They explain how creative people and cultures changed their world and their ideas. They show how our own present situation is the result of this flow of the history of creativity. Then we can take our part in that history and ask ourselves how we can become more creative. We realize that rather than being just a member of a race, religion or nationality, we are a member of the creative force of life.

LEARNING TO FEEL

2007-03-04T20:02:00Z

Another episode of my experiences learning from the people of the jungle forests of Central America:

Carlos came down from the hills to our little “town” early in the morning. Eduardo handed him a cup of coffee and we all waited for the cow to be milked for the cream. When Eduardo’s son came running over with a bowl of cream, he spilled a little into each of our cups. Carlos told me that he wanted me to come with him to his cousin up the river so as soon as the coffee was finished we began to walk up the trail alongside Rio Chepo.

A couple of hours later I asked Carlos how long it would take to get there. He asked, “What difference does it make how long?” I suggested that we could get there quicker by taking the canoe taxi which was a dugout canoe powered by a motor that took people up and down the river. He said, “So?” I explained that back home in the U.S. we tried to find the quickest ways to do things. He turned and kept walking and reminded me that I was not home anymore.

On the way we met a troupe of howler monkeys in a tree. Carlos extended his arm and several of the monkeys came over to him and they patted each other on the back. I was surprised. He motioned to them to pat me on the back and two of the monkeys actually shook their heads, “No” as if that was out of the question. But Carlos convinced two of them to climb over to me and pat me. They then quickly retreated into the tree as if they had just survived a daredevil act.

We then went up a trail away from the river and into the hills. I was a little worried. I knew that there was a little store along the river trail and I was hungry. I asked Carlos if there was a store along this new trail. He assured me that this was not a shopping trip. When I told him I was hungry he simply said we would have something when we got there and that was that.

We passed a few huts along the way and they were starting their evening cooking fires. When we stopped at one hut I could see a little stream about fifty feet away. Carlos sat down and began talking to the people, two men, two women and a few children. They were not speaking Spanish but I understood that Carlos was explaining who I was – a zoologist from America who came to study reptiles.

One of the men came over to me and started speaking but I didn’t understand him until he asked, “Don’t you speak English?” I told him I wasn’t expecting anyone to speak English so I wasn’t prepared to hear it. He told Carlos what I had said but Carlos said he knew enough English to understand me. They both looked at each other and nodded and Carlos told me to just sit by the fire and relax.

An hour later both men came back and told me they had bought some cold soda from a nearby store that had a gas powered refrigerator. They mixed it with some juice and gave me the mixture. “You said you were hungry,” said Carlos. I didn’t feel they were very good hosts. A glass of juice and soda after a whole day’s walk?

They then brought me about ten minutes up the little stream and told me to sit on the earth. Carlos said that Hector was good at explaining things. That’s why he brought me here. “Hector can explain things in English,” he said. I asked Carlos why they use Spanish names for themselves when they are Indians. He explained that they were “modern” Indians and needed modern names.

Hector told me that I have to learn to hear the “old” language of the forest. I am expecting to hear a “modern” language from the forest. I told Hector that I don’t expect to hear any language from the forest, unless he means the noises of the animals. He told me to just sit there and remember that I couldn’t hear his English because I wasn’t expecting to hear English. There was some type of communication that I could hear or feel from the jungle that I wasn’t expecting. He then left.

I was still hungry and the juice and soda didn’t satisfy me much. In fact it was making me a little sick. I must have fallen asleep and when I woke up I was still sitting on the earth. It was very dark and I didn’t see Carlos or Hector. I began to worry that a jaguar or other animal could attack me. My specialty is the reptiles and I certainly wouldn’t mind a big boa crawling nearby. But I wasn’t that familiar with jaguars.

The sounds of tree frogs and howler monkeys began to die down and all that was left was the sound of many insects. It was an intricate orchestra of sounds and became louder and louder.

Suddenly I became aware of the presence of an animal off towards the right about fifty feet away. I couldn’t see it but my whole body responded to its presence. My whole attention was focused on where I thought it was and dared not to move or I would give myself away. But I somehow realized that it knew I was there. My belly began to ache and pound. My fear grew to such proportions that it became a huge presence of its own right in front of me. I could not help but concentrate on that fear. I forgot about the animal I thought was there and felt that I would be consumed by the fear itself. Sharp pains and aches filled by belly.

When I heard a branch break I suddenly remembered the animal and realized that the fear had become a separate issue from the animal. Fear fed the pain in my body and the pain fed the fear. The two became partners against me. Now the animal itself, which triggered the fear, didn’t seem so threatening.

I realized the idiocy of allowing fear to grow out of proportion, as if it were a real thing and was able to let it go. The pain in my belly subsided. All that was left was the feeling of strong connection from my belly to some unseen animal in the forest. There was no fear left. I thought that there may actually not be any animal there but soon heard twigs breaking as the animal moved away and our “connection” broke.

My experiences seemed very odd and then I fully understood the problem. For some reason I was afraid that I experienced a communication with the animal that I could not see. It was as if my sight needed to identify the animal that my “belly” felt and my sight itself became afraid.

I now felt a very complex interaction of the forest with the center of my body. Slowly my body became warmer until it felt as though I had no skin and was completely connected to the forest and aware of every part of it. I didn’t need to see because the information coming in was, if anything, more detailed than what I could know with my sight.

Hector suddenly appeared, pulled me up by the arm and walked me back to the hut, where everyone was sleeping. He explained that I was afraid of the “old” parts of me, the parts that could “hear” the forest. I asked him what those parts were and he replied, “The parts that can hear the forest”. I wanted to know what specific parts of the body he was talking about but he shook his head and said, “Even when you know I am speaking in English, you can’t hear me! You felt those parts tonight. I sat behind you the whole time. I could see you speaking to the jaguar.”

I asked him if it were a jaguar why it didn’t eat me. “He was talking to you. It wouldn’t be polite to eat you.” He laughed and then said that jaguars don’t eat people. Hector suggested that I pay attention to how my whole body felt the forest so that I could be as comfortable with the night as with the day. “We have senses for both the night and the day. People fear what they can’t see because they can’t feel. They have been taught that feeling is the devil. So they have a battle inside themselves. What they see fights with what they feel. Silly, isn’t it?”

He pointed to a plate of chicken, plantain, rice and vegetables on the table and finally let me eat. Before going to bed he said, “Carlos wants you to stop fighting against yourself.” I stayed up a couple of hours more because I didn’t want to lose the feeling of the forest. The next morning I awoke on the patio floor. The feeling of connection was gone and I was extremely tired. Over the next month, more lessons would drive home this new sense of talking to the forest so that the feeling would never leave me again.

Listen to Master Klein's Audio Lessons!

2007-03-02T16:23:00Z

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THE ULTIMATE REALIZATION ABOUT THE POWER TO HEAL

2007-02-10T21:54:00Z

All of this training culminates in a single, powerful, all revealing realization that brings power and vibrant health back to your life. You understand the source of your power as a human being and how to channel that power in your life. I will describe this realization and how to use it. The basis of this realization is the relationship between consciousness and the physical body. Imagine a glass of water sitting on bone dry earth. Sitting on the earth is a little seed. The glass of water has two eyes painted on its side as if it were looking at the seed. This is the situation most of us are in.

In this situation it is obvious that if the seed ever were to grow into a plant, the water in the glass would have to be spilled so that the earth could absorb it. The desiccated earth is our bodies. The water is our attention (our consciousness). The seed is the aliveness and power inside of us.

We have objectified our attention. We think of it as our eyes looking at something. The whole approach of Zookinesis training (or any Taoist training) is to understand that attention is not the eyes. It is an energy just as gravity or electromagnetism is energy. Our bodies have evolved within the environment of these energies. Our bodies are even pressurized with about fifteen pounds per square inch of pressure, to counter the tremendous air pressure around us. In every way, our bodies have evolved as a response to the energies around us. In the same way, our minds have evolved in this environment.

Consciousness (attention) is an energy in which we have evolved. Yet we think of it as our eyes looking at something. We objectify attention as if it were in one place looking at another place or thing.

We know that the water, in the example above, needs to be absorbed by the earth. The water sitting in a glass does not help the seed. The water must lend its very nature and substance to the earth to create life. In the same way attention must be absorbed by the body so that every part of the body can become “moist”. The attention “knows” how to be absorbed by the body. The body “knows” how to absorb the attention. To let the body absorb attention, you must let go of attention rather than holding it rigid. The rigidity of attention makes the body rigid. Rigidity separates attention from the body.

That is why we practice to relax the body and to relax the attention – so that the two can merge.

When attention and the flesh merge, tremendous power and awareness floods a person. At first this may feel threatening. “How could poor little me have such power?” The tendency is to “objectify” the power, to call it God or the Devil or a spirit channeling wisdom through you. We project our own power onto images we have learned just as we originally objectified attention itself by thinking of it as the eyes.

When attention is absorbed by the body you realize your connection to the source of attention. You can perceive the energy of attention in the world around you. While the world you perceive is the same old world, it seems very different, very alive. Your body feels very alive and you feel yourself beginning to heal. You feel each cell like a baby bird desperately calling out to its mother for food. Each cell of the body wants to receive the energy of attention and calls loudly for it. You begin to hear those calls or rather you feel the body trying to absorb attention.

People whose bodies are especially disconnected from their attention will try to absorb the attention of other people and can be very draining to those people. When you hear them talk, they sound like baby birds squawking.

We naturally know how to pull attention from people. This is important to strengthen the attention of babies. In Zookinesis it is called “Threading Attention” as if through the eye of a needle. Everybody tries to get the baby to look at him and respond to him. This strengthens the baby’s attention. The baby connects its attention to our own behavior patterns. We innately know how to do this. It feels good.

But if you are trying to absorb other peoples’ attention because you are internally disconnected, that doesn’t do you or the other person any good.

When people objectify their attention to an unusual degree and are unusually disconnected, their attention will be concentrated directly in front of their faces. They will have a “crazed” look. Some of those people make very good salesmen because the customer is accosted and overwhelmed by the salesman’s energy and they will buy anything to end the assault. This is really a form of violence. I believe that violent people are very disconnected and their behavior results from a misdirected attempt to reconnect themselves. But since they objectify their feelings they will attempt to connect to other people, often in very inappropriate ways. They are desperate and don’t know how to heal their disconnection. If someone displays a quality they know is missing inside of themselves, they will act almost as if the other person stole this quality from them or they resent that the other person has what they don’t have. The violent person has become lost from himself and doesn’t know his way back.

Zookinesis training is the way back. The exercises are specifically designed to allow the absorption of your attention into your body. (“Spirit Breathing Workouts” DVDs. Catalog #’s HE-24D and HE-25D. “Zookinesis: The Laughing Dragon Exercise” HE-28D). The books, Movements of Magic and Movements of Power explain the whole process.

So the great realization mentioned at the beginning of this lesson is that attention is not located at a specific point such as the eyes. It is an energy that needs to permeate the entire body. When it does, this connects you to the same energy of attention which permeates the entire earth and all of its inhabitants.

How do you use this connection to make your life more powerful? To explain this, remember that when the attention is rigid, this makes the body rigid. Patterns of the attention affect the body. On the other hand, behavior patterns in the body, such as patterns of tension, affect the attention. When they are separate from each other, they are like two sets of patterns fighting against each other. Once they are connected, they are just moist earth – they are organic – and life can begin to grow.

When you are connected to the larger energy of life, then your patterns affect that energy. If your patterns are violent they will have a negative effect. But if you are healed, then you can use the patterns of attention as a rudder, to steer your life in a positive direction. As a simplified example, if you hold the image of what you want your life to be like, you will see your present situation in terms of how to achieve your goal. Your choices will steer your life in the desired direction.

On a deeper level, if you maintain a positive image of what you need in life, that image will resonate in other people and in general, in the energy of attention around you. The ability to affect the larger energy of attention to help your life depends on how connected your attention is to your body. This is the great benefit of the Zookinesis exercises. Without that connection, you just struggle. You can’t beat the whole world into submission to accede to your demands. But you can connect with the energy of consciousness (attention) that permeates the world. Each act of self healing will be magnified by that connection. When you try to heal others, your efforts will likewise be magnified by your connection. Life becomes easier and a lot more effective.

Some people make the mistake of just trying to use what is called, “The Law of Attraction”, that is, to send out those images of what you want, but without first connecting their attention to their bodies. This is utterly useless. It is only when the attention and body merge, when you stop objectifying attention, when you become fully connected to the larger energy of attention, that you can have any effect.

Some deserts only receive a few inches of water every ten years or so. But as soon as it rains and the ground becomes moist, a thick carpet of colorful flowers appear within days and the desert comes to life. It is like a miracle. The Zookinesis training is like this. Before this training, you are like a desert and then soon your life blooms with beautiful colors.

HOW TO MAKE THE BRAIN POWERFUL

2007-01-28T18:24:00Z

Only a fraction of the human brain is used in modern times. We have moved our focus of attention away from those parts that make us powerful and coordinated physically and which allow us to channel the biological forces of nature through our bodies. This leads to lower vitality and premature old age.

When we practice Tai-chi and Zookinesis, it is essential that we stimulate the entire brain, including what is called the “reptilian brain”, or “primitive brain”. Rather than being primitive it is an essential part of the brain. We gradually enliven all parts of the nervous system which, in turn, enlivens the entire body. The result is that our very perception of the world around us is sharpened. We can perceive deeper levels and finer details of our senses and bring back senses that have been allowed to become dormant.

The process of bringing power back to the brain is most vividly experienced in the Push Hands exercise (a two person exercise in which each person tries to throw the partner off balance. This has been described in detail in other “weekly lessons”.) But you can use the techniques of Push Hands in everyday life in ordinary situations.

As we practice Push Hands we experiment with “seating” our attention in various parts of the brain. As an example, we concentrate on the lower rear part of the brain which is the reptilian brain. As you are about to push the partner you may notice that your attention jumps forward which causes your entire body to lunge forward. This allows your partner to turn to the side and allow you to fall forward.

The dynamics of your attention can pull your own body off balance. An important principle in Push Hands is to keep your attention centered. You generate the force to push the partner through “internal” movements of your body. This consists of moving individual joints and muscles in relationship to each other but now allowing the whole body to lunge back and forth. The result is similar to break dancing moves in which the body undulates, sending waves of force through itself, but the body remains in a centered position.

This can only be achieved when your attention is centered. If your attention is concentrated in only certain parts of the brain, the frontal lobes for example, then it is already off center. You are already off balance as far as your attention is concerned and then your body copies that pattern of poor balance. The body reflects the pattern and quality of your attention. If your attention jumps around a lot, then your body will exhibit excess movement.

You can practice spreading your attention throughout your brain in the Push Hands exercise, your Tai-chi forms, Zookinesis exercises or any other activity. This practice will enable you to keep your attention full and balanced in the brain in your everyday interactions with people. I guarantee that you will amaze yourself with how calm and powerful you feel when you keep the reptilian part of your brain energized in interpersonal interactions.

Rather than paying attention to the reptilian brain from the frontal lobes, try having the reptilian brain as the seat of attention and looking out from it. Make believe that right in front of the reptilian brain there is a window and you are looking out that window. The window is in the middle of the brain (back to front) and at the bottom of the brain. You may feel both your body and your breathing relaxing. You will feel more connected to your surroundings and more secure.

This exercise does not cut off your frontal lobes (the intellectual part of the brain) but includes them. Your attention will feel more centered within the entire nervous system. The quality of your attention will be more relaxed, sharper and stronger. Your body will be able to respond more accurately to the changing condition around you. You can see that energizing the reptilian brain is essential for practicing Push Hands. It is also essential for living a more powerful and effective life.

You begin to look at the dynamics and qualities of attention in other people as if you were a healer diagnosing a patient. Your understanding of these qualities in others gives you a deeper understanding of their resultant behavior which in turn, gives you more options of how to respond to them. If they are off balance, then you own balanced state can help them to become balanced. Their attention responds to the qualities of your attention as one tuning fork vibrates when another one next to it is sounded.

On the other hand, you can avoid having your own attention thrown off balance by the unbalanced state of their attention. You see the underlying mechanisms of the interaction and can avoid the pitfalls.

It’s amazing that simply by bring the focus of your attention to a different part of the brain and “looking out” from there, you can change the whole dynamic of your personal life. It is so easy to try and the results are so obvious.

This is the type of training you would receive in what is called a “mouth to ear” transmission of teaching, such as Zookinesis. This means a tradition that is taught from teacher to student through long term, disciplined training, rather than from books or shallow training. There is a whole world of such training methods.

Once you become comfortable with looking out from the reptilian brain, you then create other foci of attention. Examples - a point on the palm between the third and fourth finger and one inch down, the point on the bottom of the foot at the rear of the ball of the foot and centered between the left and right side, the coccyx bone and the tan-tien (an area just below the navel in the center of the body).

You concentrate on these spots to either energize or relax them as you do Push Hands. The patterns of energizing and relaxing in these areas create different alignments of the body and affect the flow of forces through the body. This allows you to send force out into the partner while keeping the body still. The result is that the partner is thrown back and it doesn’t seem as if you did anything.

If you could not access the reptilian brain then you simply could not create and coordinate these multiple foci of attention because your attention would not be centered. This is part of what is known as “Taoist alchemy” which is the basis of Tai-chi and Zookinesis. Taoist alchemy is the inner work to bring back your mind, body and spirit to full functioning.

From that inner point of view you can perceive sources of energy that are normally invisible to us. You realize that our culture is not built on a foundation of “whole brain experience” or what I call “whole body attention”. Anything outside of this cultural perspective is considered to not exist. And so, while we may have perceptions and feelings of these sources of energy, we need to ignore them in order to feel emotionally secure. We need to feel part of this culture. It is like a child grabbing onto his parent’s leg, fearing to venture too many steps away.

The mouth to ear training allows you to take those steps and to understand the inner experiences which you have ignored up to now. In this way a whole new world is revealed which allows your life to make much more sense. Your culture, which previously caged your perceptions, now is seen in a wider context.

You can begin this training by yourself simply by massaging the rear of your head several times a day to make it easier to pay attention to. Remember that the goal is not to pay attention to the rear of the head from the front of the head. The goal is to “seat” the attention in the rear of the head (as an exercise) and then to eventually fill the entire brain with attention so that the attention is balance.

Paying attention to the rear of the head is only the first (but necessary) step.

I’m sure you will have many questions and comments about this type of training. Feel free to use the “comments” section to the left of this article for your questions and comments or the “forums” section at the top.

THE SECRET OF CONSCIOUSNESS

2006-12-22T17:18:00Z

During the winter months, I take the goldfish from my outdoor pond and bring them to a large fish tank in the basement. I didn’t dig the pond deep enough to be able to leave them out over the winter. As I watch them swim around I wonder if they are aware of the medium of water they are swimming in. The water supports them, protects them and allows them to move.

We are also moving within a dense medium – air. While we can’t see it, the pressure of the air around us is over fifteen pounds per square inch. Several miles of air above us press down on the air around us, making the air at sea level very dense.

Yet we are not usually aware of air unless it is a windy day. Then we can feel the air on our skins and can see dead leaves and trash flying around. We are aware of the effects of air even if we are not directly aware of the air itself.

Without an atmosphere life could not exist. Without water, fish would suffocate, dry out and die. There is another medium which is equally as vital to life as air and water and equally as hard to see. This is the medium of consciousness. While most people can’t perceive consciousness directly we can see its effects. In fact, everything we are aware of is the effect of the medium of consciousness.

I am writing this subject as this week’s lessons for an important reason. Many people have told me that they are seeking spiritual development or self awareness or some kind of inner training. There is a tendency in modern times to think that there is some trick or secret to be learned that will immediately lead to enlightenment or spiritual awareness. So they repeat phrases to themselves or listen to motivational speakers repeat various clichés. If they only hear the right phrase or repeat the right magical spell, they will be transformed.

My take on this is that any kind of training must begin with the awareness of the medium you exist in, the mechanism that you are as a human being and how this mechanism has been designed to work in the medium. Fish have fins so that they can swim in water. They are not just decorations someone placed on them. Animals have muscles and bones so they can use leverage to work with the force of gravity, which is another medium. Reptiles developed a thick scaled skin to avoid drying out in the medium of air.

We can understand how our bodies have evolved to work within various mediums. To understand our minds, emotions and other inner aspects of being human, we need to understand the other mediums in which we exist.

We can know consciousness by the dynamics of our attention. I have discussed this in other lessons. I believe that there is no secret phrase or idea we can think about that will lead to a significant transformation of our lives. But awareness of how our minds, emotions and other “inner” parts are designed to work in the medium of consciousness can’t help but to restore our full potential and vitality.

One of the Chinese Zen (Chan) masters witnessed a group of Buddhists arguing about a waving flag. Some of the Buddhists said that the flag was waving. Others said that it was actually the wind that was waving. The Zen master told them that it was their minds that were waving.

The wind and the flag show how you can perceive an invisible force by watching a visible objects reaction to that force. The force was the movement of the air. In the same way the movement of the flag created an effect on the minds of the Buddhists. The thinking mind and the consciousness are in the same relationship as the flag and the wind.

If you were to see a flag moving but didn’t know about the wind you would wonder, “Why is the flag moving?” In the same way, my first koan (Zen question) as a child was, “Why does one thought follow another in a particular pattern?” To understand this you need to understand the relationship between thinking and consciousness. They are not the same.

The movement of consciousness does not necessarily have to result in thinking. It can lead to the movement of chi (internal energy). It is said that consciousness leads, the

internal energy follows and the body then follows that. The saying actually is translated as “mind leads” but this mind does not mean thinking. It refers to attention itself. I use the term “attention” very often in my writings instead of “consciousness”.

Our attention is often ripped and pulled this way and that by the influences around us, like the wind waving the flag. When we are seeking spiritual development, or whatever glorious phrase is used, we are usually trying to bring our attention more under our creative control. We want our creativity to be more of an influence over our attention than the external forces such as advertisers or peer pressure.

So spiritual development is really about perfecting the relationship of creativity and attention. In Taoist philosophy creativity is referred to as the “Yang” force and attention as the “Yin” force. Creativity is active; it is the shaper. Attention is passive; it is the substance, the medium that is shaped.

What we are trying to discover in our training, is: to what extent is what we perceive a result of what is actually there and to what extent is it a result of how our attention is shaped and affected by the forces around us. We are trying to get a clear picture of our lives and the world around us.

Telescopes are placed high on mountaintops because the atmosphere interferes with the light coming into the telescopes. This light is distorted by the miles of compacted air which is usually in a state of turbulence. The higher up you go, the less air and the less distortion.

That is why silent meditation is part of any spiritual practice. The thinking mind is like the miles of air. It is usually in a state of movement which distorts your perception of the world around you. The key is to see things as they really are.

Then you can work on your forms, your push hands or, in other systems, on your rituals and really know what you are doing. You can do your healing such as Tai-chi Massage and really see the problems within your patient about how his creativity and attention interact and how that interaction affects the body. When these factors become clearly visible, then you can easily see how to use the techniques you have learned to correct those problems.

There is another saying that if you put a frog into hot water it will jump out. But if you put it into room temperature water then slowly heat the water up, the frog will not notice the slow increase and will eventually get boiled. We are in a similar situation. We cannot see how the influences around us control our thinking minds, how this affects or interferes with the dynamics of our attention and how that degrades the body. Our whole system gradually degrades until we are in a sorry mess. The solution is to become aware of this whole process.

One of the reasons I love Tai-chi and Zookinesis so much is that it so clearly explains this whole process and gives you a clearly defined, step by step process to use for your training. There is no mysteriousness. Yet there is an appreciation for the process and an awe of the process. It is similar to a car fanatic who loves his cars and knows every detail about how they work. He will spend an enormous amount of time repairing and improving his cars while people like me would rather just send it to a mechanic and only if it really needs fixing.

This winter solstice is unusual. It is also the time of the new moon. The mythological significance of this is that now we look forward to both an ever increasing length of day and an ever increasing brightness of the moon. This is considered to be the best time to work on any practice that gives you greater awareness (light). That is the way ancient people understood things. Our inner world should be in harmony with the dynamics of nature around us. If we can see, understand and predict the patterns of nature, we will then know when to plant, when to harvest, etc.

If we can see and understand the forces “inside” of us, then our training will be more effective. Rather than just making the mind more “windy” by repeating clichés to ourselves or trying to discover the “correct” ideas, we can quiet down the wind and perceive our basic nature and how our nature is designed to work in the medium of consciousness.

THE SPIRIT WORLD

2006-12-12T15:55:00Z

The concept of a spirit world, common to almost all pre-industrialized cultures, lies at the heart of developing and learning to use internal energy (“chi”). Zookinesis explains this concept very simply. We humans have senses that we do not use anymore. The way we have been trained to use our attention no longer allows those senses to function.

If we were to fully develop our attention, all of our senses would work again. We would then see the world very differently – more fully. The world we would see once our senses were restored is called “the spirit world”.

Two of those senses are the sense of internal energy (biological energy) and the sense of the dynamics of attention (how consciousness flows through the body). The difference between an “internal” martial art and an “external” martial art is the ability to perceive and use these senses.

Each part of the body becomes more functional, alive, active and yet relaxed. You can move one small part of your body out of the way of a strike, for example, without moving the entire body. When you are grappling you can absorb the force of the partner through your body either into the ground or around back into the partner. Your body is able to absorb, use and transform energy instantaneously.

In Taoist terms this would be called, “Taoist alchemy”. To many people Taoist alchemy is known as training to increase longevity or to increase sexual energy. But its benefits go far beyond these things.

Taoist alchemy restores our biological consciousness which every animal has, while allowing us to retain that special human consciousness we cherish so much. Early humans developed a way of developing the thinking mind. “The elements” were a way of categorizing the world they experienced into five distinct groups. I have written about this in other “weekly lesson” articles. Our civilization rests on this particular development of the human mind. And so we divide our world into matter, space, energy, time and consciousness. We divide our personal lives into our bodies, minds, personal drive or energy (“will”), emotions and again, consciousness.

But in modern times our educational system has concentrated so much on this categorization or thinking process that it has ignored developing other aspects of our human nature or what I would call our “animal nature”. We pride ourselves in being superior to animals.

But I think we can all agree that something in our civilization is missing. There is an inner awareness and a deep inner satisfaction with life that seems to have gotten lost. In my many years of teaching I have found what I feel is the basis of this lost “animal awareness” or animal nature. It is the fear that if we perceive fully, if we can see the spirit world and function within it, then our thinking abilities will weaken. There is a deep-seated illusion that full awareness competes with full ability to think clearly.

The root of that illusion is our weak attention. This is the root of all the problems. Our attention is just not strong enough to think and to have our bodies function well at the same time. If we do not maintain an animal awareness in which attention is distributed evenly throughout the body, then attention actually weakens. When the attention is so concentrated on thinking as it is today, then the rest of you suffers.

Attention (or consciousness) is experienced as an energy which flows through each living thing and therefore is connected to all other living things. By concentrating it in the thinking process you cut attention off from the rest of your body and the rest of nature. It becomes like a lake, usually fed by a stream that suddenly is cut off from the stream. It then turns into a smelly swamp.

Attention that is not connected to the rest of nature decays. Just see what happens when our political leaders think they know so much that they don’t listen to people who disagree with them. They don’t consider all views and facts. The result is poor leadership.

On a biological level all our cells and organs need attention flowing through them. For most people the body is just a big thing below our brains that carries our brains around. Tai-chi and Zookinesis teaches the harmonious relationship between the thinking process we have developed and the animal consciousness. The two don’t have to be competing. They can re-enforce each other.

In the internal martial arts, for example, you need to fill your opponent with your attention so that you feel every action and intention of each of his muscles and joints even before they emanate as a strike. You flow with the opponent, allowing him to control the movements but you control the relationship between you. That relationship is that you move away from his incoming force and into his open, unprotected areas.

Internal martial arts training requires that you can perceive the spirit world before you even start to learn the actual martial arts techniques. If you can’t see inside your own body and that of your opponent, then you have no business even beginning to learn the fighting.

In modern martial arts schools the students want to fight right away and not have to go through any internal changes at all. “Just show me the techniques”. Modern martial arts schools (with some exceptions) are all about the techniques and not about the heart of the martial arts. Martial arts is a personal path, much like a religion or a philosophy. The fact that you are learning to punch and kick people is just the method of teaching the path. You are actually learning about your own desire to be violent, about its roots and about how to resolve those issues. You are also learning how to see inside the opponent and understand him on an internal level. While effectively defending yourself you can still remain calm and not have the violent emotions of the opponent duplicate themselves inside of you. If the opponent has transferred his pattern of violence inside of you then you lose, even if you have won that particular fight.

And that’s how it is in everyday life. There are many angry people walking around. Many of my students are doctors. One told me that many doctors nowadays are “practicing angry”. This means that patient’s relatives are angry at doctors and ready to sue them. Medical insurance companies look for every excuse not to pay the doctor because perhaps, the patient’s name was misspelled on one of the papers. This makes the doctors angry.

Our culture is a reflection of our nature as individuals. We put all of our attention into our calculating minds and fear allowing that energy to connect with the rest of our body and the rest of nature. Then our culture is composed of closed individuals who fear their connections to other people. We fear being connected, letting our attention, our feelings merge. Relationships are strained.

I remember as a child watching situation comedies on television. They seemed to all be based on the same premise. The husband and wives conspire against each other to get what they want. I wondered, “Is this what a relationship should really be about?”

Have we become a culture of fearful people conspiring against each other to get what we want? I guess it’s silly to even ask the question. But is this what you want for yourself?

The martial arts seem to be so much about fearful people conspiring to hit each other to “win over” each other. Yet, whether an internal or external martial art, this training is supposed to be about self awareness and the ability to live in harmony with other people. It is really about spiritual development as defined by becoming a fully developed human being. Your thinking mind must be involved in learning the martial arts but when you spar you use the animal attention.

When animal attention combines harmoniously with the thinking mind you are in the spirit world and you are fully human. You can then perceive the energies behind the physical manifestations. As an example you can feel the dynamics of attention and internal energy that leads to a person’s behavior. You feel less fearful because you can perceive the origins of a person’s behavior before they manifest physically and you can be ready. You don’t get taken by surprise.

In Push Hands practice, you begin to neutralize the partner’s incoming force at the exact same time as the force begins to come in to you. You saw the origins of that force in the preparation of the partner and know what to expect. Push Hands then takes place in real time. Yet as a beginner you didn’t realize the force was coming in until it was right on top of you and then it was too late to neutralize it.

Imagine if you could see things coming at you much earlier and prepare for them. Many people can do this economically. They study the economic trends and know that a recession or that good times are around the corner. They can then prepare for the future. They use their thinking minds to see into the future. We can do this with our animal attention as well.

Just for a moment, think of the trends of how the behaviors of people are changing. Then look into the future. Are you happy with what you see? All we can do as individuals is to develop ourselves. Our nature as individuals can then affect those around us. Each interaction with another person is a chance to decide the future of our culture.

I always ask myself, “Am I in the spirit world right now?” Have I let the angers and conflicts of the world around me program my own behavior or do I have some say over my behavior? The concept of the spirit world helps me to maintain my direction in life.

MARTIAL ARTS STRATEGY FOR EVERYDAY LIFE

2006-12-05T16:43:00Z

Tai-chi-Chuan uses a fundamentally different fighting strategy than any other martial art. When this strategy is applied to everyday life and to conducting business, it provides a more powerful and effective approach. This is just one example of that strategy.

“Yield to Yang/fill in Yin”. The aggressor concentrates his force in a particular area. If he strikes with his fist, he has a target in mind. You learn to automatically retreat from his target and to find the most empty and unguarded spot on his body to move into and strike. The retreat is not away from him but rather, towards his unguarded area.

In everyday life the defeats we constantly experience are like the strikes of an aggressor. If we focus on the defeat, we are like the fighter who blocks the incoming strike, focusing on the aggressor’s power. If we are thrown by the defeat, we are like the fighter who moves away from the strike. If we contemplate the change in our life situation caused by the defeat and re-adjust our focus to take advantage of this change, then we are like the fighter who moves around the strike and delivers his own strike.

As a fighter you know that the aggressor will not just stand there and take your punches and kicks. Most of your efforts may never reach their target and some of his efforts will reach you. If you thought of each of his strikes as your defeat, you could never psychologically muster the nerve to practice sparring. Your own emotions would destroy you more than would the opponent.

Much of the impact of a defeat is not the effect of the situation itself. It is more that it hurts your self image. It is your self image which is being beaten, more than your body or your life. Once you realize that your self image is not you, then you are on your way to victory.

True humility is not acting as if you were a lowly human being. It is the understanding that your self image is not you. Your behavior no longer is controlled by needing to maintain that image.

If, while sparring in class, someone strikes you, you can appreciate their skill and be happy for them, even though you got hit. In life you can appreciate the challenges you need to overcome and the skills you gain as you turn each defeat into an opportunity.

One of the high level achievements in Tai-chi sparring is to substitute your self image with the principles of Tai-chi, mainly yielding to Yang and filling Yin. You can only be defeated if you don’t allow your self image to grow into a wider perspective.

In business it is well known that you should not argue with a customer. Instead of arguing that your product is indeed a good one, you ask the customer how you could improve your product. You not only make him feel that you care, but you may actually get some good advice. Customer complaints are the best source of good ideas.

If you are competing with other companies producing similar products, you could throw more money into advertising or spend more hours in the day promoting the product. Or you could ask yourself, “What real needs of people are the competing products not meeting? How can I adjust my product so that it will fill those needs?” In other words you can compete in a “Yin” area, in a niche market that the other products are not reaching. It would wear you out to meet head on with large companies with big advertising budgets.

To be “nimble” in business in this way, the self image of the business has to be flexible. You think of your business as providing a product to the customer. Now you switch your viewpoint and think of your business as fulfilling a need of the customer. It’s not the same and that switch changes the way you do business.

When I began producing the “Zookinesis” exercise series of DVD’s, I approached the series as providing exercises to keep you strong, flexible and energized. I noticed a great change in my older students through the years. They looked, acted and felt much younger. In fact, these exercises are supposed to keep you young, but I never explained that in my advertising. Now I call Zookinesis “Age Reversal Exercises” and market them to seniors. I knew all along that they are supposed to reverse aging but never thought to promote that aspect.

Looking back, I realized that I thought that since most of my students were not seniors, I wanted to promote the fact that Zookinesis keeps you vigorous, athletic and toned. I didn’t think age was an issue for non-seniors. But it seems that no one wants to feel that they are getting older, whatever age they are at the moment, if by older it is meant that the body deteriorates.

So at the beginning, I thought that I was teaching exercises just to keep you strong and flexible when the need of the students (at least in their own minds) was to stay young. I didn’t change the exercises at all but just got better at explaining what they are in a way the students could appreciate.

Perhaps there was yet another factor. If I were teaching people to reverse the aging process, perhaps that means that I, myself, am getting old and that age reversal was an issue I needed to address myself. Not wanting to think of myself as getting old, I avoided using “age reversal” as an advertising point for Zookinesis. My vanity interfered with my business. Yet I, of all people, knew that age is not a matter of years but of health and attitude. This is an example of how issues of self image can interfere with business as it can interfere with everyday life.

When I first started to learn to spar with Grandmaster William C. C. Chen I couldn’t help but concentrate on his fists and feet. Which one would hit me next? After gaining some skill I found that I was more interested in the spaces between our body parts. Which space could I use to deliver my own strikes? I found that emptiness (space) was equally as important as form (the body, the strikes). I needed to know where I could move into to avoid his strikes.

I realized that sparring was not about maximizing hardness but rather maximizing balance. When you are not willing to change and when you invest all your hopes in one particular outcome, that is like hardness. When you invest in developing your attention to follow and adjust to change, when you accept change as part of life and when you learn the strategies of change to always look for opportunity, then your life is based on balance.

You maximize hardness when you try to defeat hardness by blocking rather than ducking. That brings up another related issue.

“If you think of winning and losing you are already defeated”. In Tai-chi sparring, you concentrate on the details of the aggressor’s body mechanics and the pattern of his attention. You are so connected to him that you feel that he is part of you. Your ability to remain connected to him in this way is essential to how you spar. You don’t think of defeating an “enemy” but of finding a weakness and striking that weakness. It is the weakness you discover at any one moment that you are sparring against, not the person. The aggressor and you are one unit. The weakness are the target.

In everyday life there is a tendency to think of yourself as fighting against the world. According to Tai-chi principles, the world you experience is, to a large extent, a reflection of the world you have created inside yourself. Through the Tai-chi forms, push hands, chi-gung, Zookinesis and other practices you can examine that inner world and see exactly how the weakness there can distort your view of the world around you. You are no longer battling the world but correcting that balancing mechanism that creates your outer life from your inner dynamics. Sparring is actually the most effective practice to give you this insight and the skills to make the corrections inside of yourself.

The world around you is no longer your “enemy”. Defeats are just changes. The only real defeat is when your attention becomes rigid and you can no longer adapt to changes. You are defeated when you let yourself become old, no matter how many years you have lived. When you are no longer able to adapt to change, you are old. Flexible in body, flexible in mind – you stay young.