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.