Rooting

 

The term Shenling refers to your body having strong roots but being agile so as to move quickly if needed. (“the Taijiquan Classics” by Zhang Yun, David Ho, Peter Capellini and Susan Darley)

This is something that I work on a lot when I practice Tai Chi and I didn’t realize that there was a term for it. I don’t need one to understand the concept though, as my Kung Fu training has been influencing this rooting for a long time. Connecting with the earth, to stabilize your skeleton, and use the earth’s Chi with my own for power and strength.

It seems like a simple thing, but I have to remind myself that I have been practicing Kung Fu for 19 years and Tai Chi for 13 years. I know that it wasn’t that easy to connect and root myself to the earth and remain agile at first and that it took a long time for me to achieve that.

It’s like how easy it is for me now to just feel my Chi, without having to work at it, or concentrate. It just happens. However that also took a long time to feel at will. I tend to forget where I started, and so I have to remind myself every so often that my journey has been a long one, relatively speaking.

Achieving shenling takes time, but it starts with a toyu stance. Simply having your skeleton aligned, pelvis tucked in, knees slightly bent with an invisible string running up your spine and past your head. It’s feeling the earth beneath your feet, rooted and strong and at the same time feeling light and able to move quickly. It seems like a simple stance, and easy to attain, however it’s more about becoming one with the earth and feeling that connection. This will take time and practice.

I am by no means perfect, which is why Kung Fu and Tai Chi are a practice and why mastery is a journey.

Highs and Lows

 

We all experience highs and lows in our day to day lives. It occurs with our mental state and our physical state. So how do we handle the lows when everything seems impossible? When getting out of bed is a feat in and of itself? Let alone complete everything that needs to be done in a day?

We have to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and not hold ourselves to our normal standards as that can just exasperate our mental state. Self care if important, so how we treat ourselves has to be a priority. We need to be gentle, and allow ourselves to be less than, as long as we are still trying. It helps to remember that we are not alone, that this will pass, and you will come out the other side.

But the key is to just take a step forward even it’s a baby step. Reach out so that you are not struggling alone. There are more people that care about you than you realize.

A Calm Mental State

 

Xinjing- A Chinese term for heart calm. The heart referring to our mental state and keeping it calm or still.

One of the most important aspects of Tai Chi is to have a calm mental state. A calm mental state is focused, and will help to keep you in the void. This can be considered an abstract concept, but your mental state can be trained.

So how do you train your mind to stay calm? It isn’t easy in a world where we are surrounded by noise. Phones, computers, emails, social media, television, deadlines, and endless pressures keep us from truly breathing and able to be calm. However, by practicing Tai Chi over and over, we will eventually be able to turn off the noise and find ourselves in the void. (I should state that this also applies to Kung Fu.)

We need to practice without any preconceived ideas as to what our opponent might be doing; to be able to keep our minds still in order to simply follow or intercept our opponent. Our bodies need to just react.

Collecting Moments

 

I read the phrase “collect the happy moments” today and it struck a chord with me. Each day is filled with moments, and I know we miss most of them. Usually it’s the powerful moments that catch us, cause us to reflect and remember and they’re the ones that usually illicit strong emotions. However, if we can find just a few minutes each day to practice gratitude we will find so many more moments throughout the day that define us that we would normally miss.

It might be a small moment that made you smile, one that made you laugh or cry, ones that brought you some calmness, and of course ones that maybe rubbed you the wrong way. I think it’s all the little moments that we miss that actually hold us back from being in the here and now. And all it takes is a pause, a breath, a brief check into ourselves to find the small moments that make us who we are.

I really like the idea of “collecting the happy moments” but we can’t have the happy ones without the sad or angry ones. Yin doesn’t exist without yang, light doesn’t exist without the dark. However, it’s easy to migrate to the negative - it surrounds us constantly in the news and social media. But if we can focus on the little happy moments that happen all the time, then we have a whole arsenal of tools to help us cope with the negative moments.

The Evolving Journey

 

Evolution is a natural part of the Kung Fu journey. Over time, our techniques change a little as our bodies age and we adapt to injuries or other limitations. It doesn’t make us less of a martial artist though. As long as we are moving forward and keeping an open mind, we will continue to grow and improve.

The same can be said for techniques or forms. Over time we find better ways of doing them, or adapting them. And change can be hard when we have been doing something the same way for a long time. However, the exciting part of Kung Fu are these adaptations or changes. I love how I have to look at it from a new perspective and make it work for me.

But I see frustration in students sometimes when we change things and they wonder why we do to this to them. They feel they are just starting to understand something and then we pull the rug out from under them and point them in another direction. We do this because the discover better ways of doing things. The key is to take a deep breath, and remove our ego so that we can see how this new direction can improve us.

Manifesting Chi

 

During a simple Tai Chi exercise yesterday, I experienced something that I haven’t yet experienced or at the very least noticed before. As my arms moved across my body, I could feel my chi between the two. That energy was manifesting on the outside where I could feel it between my arms and my chest and it amazing.

I can pretty much gather my chi in a ball at will, but to feel it on the outside while moving either in a form or during a warm up exercise is new to me. It’s exciting and I look forward to working with this more.

I AM A Student

 

I love when a seemingly simple concept is introduced in class and my mind gets blown. Recently, I had the privilege of a applying lesson in which I spent the whole class with my tongue hanging out while I tried to wrap my mind around something I thought I already understood. One recent class focused on projecting forward in a form, another on chi and sticky hands (that one felt awesome!)

The chi class was particularly powerful for me, as my oldest had just been commissioned to write a poem for a dance event in Edmonton. This poem was fresh in my mind, and the words painted such vivid images that I found really focused my chi, and it was so, so strong. I have never experienced that amount of heat flowing from my body before and it left me in awe.

That’s what I love about this journey. It truly never ends, as long as I keep my ego in check and I keep my cup empty. However, without my instructors, I wouldn’t be on this journey and for them I am grateful.