Chapter

3

Expanding Your Mind and Lightening Your Heart

In This Chapter

Discovering the power of calm and peace

Knowing you can be as powerful as you want to be

Accepting that you are perfect

Flexing your imagination muscle

Web Video Support: T’ai Chi’s unfrazzling, internal-awareness quality

Before moving to the nuts-and-bolts instruction, read on to slip your mind into the T’ai Chi gear. You’ll get more out of the instructional chapters by doing so.

The demands of the day-to-day rat race ravage our mental and emotional well-being. The same way T’ai Chi’s engineering adjustments show us how our physical efforts can be more efficient, and thereby more effortless and powerful, T’ai Chi also reveals that life does not have to be that hard. The simple ways T’ai Chi and QiGong look at movement and life can be powerful self-improvement tools, as well as a soothing balm to frazzled nerves. As you view the T’ai Chi exhibition sections on the Chapter 3’s Web Video Support, Watching T’ai Chi Unfrazzles (www.idiotsguides.com/taichi), you’ll likely feel yourself unfrazzling, just by watching.

Leave the Rat Race Behind

Chinese masters constantly repeat “Soong Yi-Dien” (“loosen up”). The goal of T’ai Chi is to weave silken threads of calm into our lives, soothing us as we face the daily rat race. The calmer we are, the calmer our workplace and our home are.

However, at first, rather than bringing T’ai Chi’s calm to the rat race, students often unconsciously bring the rat race into the T’ai Chi class or into their home T’ai Chi practice. They do this because they want to “efficiently” learn T’ai Chi. Our work, lives, and technology are all geared toward making things happen faster and faster. So we naturally want to “hurry up and relax.” This can’t happen. We have to let go of urgency and efficiency to truly and deeply experience what T’ai Chi offers. T’ai Chi helps us become less urgent, while surprisingly becoming more efficient. Here’s how.

Frantic Action vs. Efficiency

T’ai Chi’s ability to calm, energize, heal, strengthen, and tone the mind and body in a short, half-hour workout is unequaled. However, if you try to do T’ai Chi efficiently, it doesn’t work as well. It’s when you relax, and don’t try, that T’ai Chi works its magic.

The idea that we can get something very worthwhile done without having high anxiety to hurry up and do it is a new concept for most of us. When you’re viewing T’ai Chi exhibitions on this book’s Web Video Support, notice how unhurried and how powerful the movements look.

T’ai Chi Is Smelling the Roses

Our heart and mind seem to be in a constant state of turmoil. With the tidal wave of data the Information Age has swept into our lives, it’s easy to always feel two steps behind the pack. We struggle to understand the latest technology, knowing full well that a newer version will be out before we master the one that just came out. We forget to breathe and enjoy the learning in life, which, when you get down to it, is pretty much all there is to life. We are not and never will be done learning. So we might as well smell the roses on the way.

Learning to “love the learning” of T’ai Chi is one of the most important lessons T’ai Chi offers our frantic lives. Students sometimes come to T’ai Chi classes gung-ho to learn one set of forms and then move on. The concept that T’ai Chi is a lifelong process comes as a big shock. Students think they can hurry in, get fixed, get calmed, get healthy, and then get going. They want to hurry up and finish so they can hurry up to finish the next thing they want to hurry up and do. But by living this way, our lives just become a lot of hurrying. There is no finish in T’ai Chi or in life.

OUCH!
Many Western students feel hopeless upon learning that T’ai Chi is a lifelong process. We in the West are conditioned to expect immediate, short-term results. Don’t be discouraged. T’ai Chi is a lifelong process that gives immediate results. Even if you just took one T’ai Chi class and practiced what you learned, you would get great benefit. It just gets better and better for the rest of your life.

T’ai Chi’s calming effects can be felt immediately the very first day of practice, but not if you hurry up to feel them. You have to let go of the outcome and let the nice feelings be a pleasant surprise rather than an urgent demand. See Web Video Support’s QiGong Breathing Is About Letting Go, to get a sense of this release of urgency.

T’ai Chi’s movements flow one into the other, just as life’s events do. By learning how to breathe and relax the body while moving through these events, we become an island of soothing calm even when we’re in the center of the rat race. Our habit of letting go of the frantic demands of the day that fill our minds becomes easier and easier as we practice T’ai Chi.

Remember to Breathe (Everything Else Takes Care of Itself)

As a student in a T’ai Chi class (or at home), the very first thing you should do is close your eyes and breathe. Take deep breaths all the way into the bottom of your lungs and then let go of your breath, your muscles, and your day. Let go of everything you’ve done before getting here and everything you plan to do later. Just be here and now, breathing. Enjoy the QiGong Breathing Tutorial at Chapter 3’s Web Video Support.

As your mind fills with remembering to breathe through your T’ai Chi movements, and gravity forces you to focus on your balance, you must let go of the worries of the day. You cannot do T’ai Chi without letting go of thoughts about what to defrost for dinner or the laundry that needs to be done.

T’ai Chi does not advocate starvation or wearing dirty clothes. It does, however, advocate being 100 percent in the moment, whether you’re doing T’ai Chi or washing clothes. This is what is called mindfulness, or being here and now. You’ll find that the more you can let go of the dinner and the laundry to feel your breath, your muscles releasing, and the silken flow of your T’ai Chi movements, the more you’ll enjoy doing the laundry or cooking dinner when you do get to it. The T’ai Chi practice of being here and now will seep into your daily life by reminding you to breathe as you move. While making dinner, you’ll relax and breathe, enabling you to truly smell the fragrance of dinner.

We don’t have to race if we are always where we like being. Then we never have to fear looking in the mirror and seeing a racing rat.

SAGE SIFU SAYS
As T’ai Chi helps us “feel good” on a regular basis, we want more of that feeling. You might spend more time with people who nurture you and less time with those who put you down. This is a powerfully healthful, transformative part of doing T’ai Chi. As the movements in T’ai Chi teach you to ease around areas of discomfort in the body so as to expand mobility without injury, this echoes out into your life. You begin to find nurturing ways to move and live socially.

Lose Your Grip on Reality: The Power of Effortlessness

In our fast-paced, dog-eat-dog world, it’s hard to believe that we can be more powerful when we are not straining. However, that is exactly when we are most powerful, not only mentally and emotionally, but also physically.

I am always encouraging my students to “lose their grip” on life—to breathe, to untangle, and to let go of everything. Have you ever noticed how society uses the phrase “he’s losing his grip”? This idea that we must constantly keep a GRIP on reality tells you something about society that needs to change.

T’ai Chi and QiGong’s practice of increasing effortlessness will show you that you do not have to grip reality in your cells, mind, and heart. Truth and reality exist without our clutching hearts or minds keeping it all in order. Another negative in our vernacular is, “she’s out of control.” These arts are all about learning to, or remembering how to, let go of control. We were pretty good at it as kids; we just forgot how when our mortgage payments, student loans, and credit card debt began squeezing down on us. T’ai Chi and QiGong are about not only allowing yourself to be out of control, but celebrating it. A new you cannot expand through you if you continually grip onto what you think you are, or what you think the world is. We are evolutionary beings, continually evolving into more, and the less we grip onto control, the more easily we will be flowed toward the expanding future of what our lives are becoming. If you haven’t enjoyed the Sitting QiGong exercise today, now’s a good time to do so at Chapter 3’s Web Video Support. This Sitting QiGong experience isn’t a “been there, done that” kind of experience. As you progress through the mental concepts and insights of this book, each time you go back to do the Sitting QiGong, you’ll notice a deeper, more expansive experience. Also, research shows its good to meditate every day of our lives, so bookmark that exercise, and enjoy it daily.

However, because we are so conditioned to be mentally and emotionally straining all the time, many students feel “guilty” for taking quiet, still time to heal their minds and emotions from the strains of the day. Those students need a real and stark physical example of how we function more effectively when relaxed—which is best shown by the Unbendable Arm technique.

The Unbendable Arm

The Unbendable Arm exercise is a terrific physical example of the concept of “effortless action” and how powerful that kind of action is. In the West, we tend to think of big, straining muscles and huge forehead veins whenever we think of power.

T’ai Chi can rescue us from that sweaty, head-pounding delusion. In T’ai Chi, our goal is to move and stand with as little effort as possible. Ancient Taoist poets tried to explain in words the seemingly limitless power found in living a life of effortlessness with a calm mind and quiet heart. However, the concept of effortless power is so strange to Westerners that the following demonstration of the Unbendable Arm is worth a thousand words. (Note: If you have any arm or shoulder injuries, you may not want to do the Unbendable Arm exercise. Also, if you have difficulty performing this exercise, you may want to practice the Sitting QiGong exercise in Part 3 and then try again.)

T’AI SCI
Many Western psychotherapists use Taoist philosophy as they encourage patients to let go of obsessing on the outcome and rather enjoy the “process” of life. In fact, T’ai Chi exercises are recommended as an active model to achieve these healing ends.

The Unbendable Arm is a powerful physical example of the principle of effortless power. In my class demonstrations, I ask the largest, most powerful-looking student to try to bend my arm. Resisting with all my muscular strength, they nevertheless eventually bend my arm. However, when I completely relax my mind and body, thinking of an empty flow, or of airy relaxation pouring through my head, shoulder, arm, and on out my fingers through the walls of the building, they can’t bend it. The students strain to bend my relaxed arm, yet they cannot.

KNOW YOUR CHINESE
The focus of the ancient Chinese Taoist (pronounced dowist) philosophy is the invisible force of nature’s laws. Its premise is that life flows through all living things the way ocean currents flow through the ocean. The Tao nurtures life and cannot be defined because it applies to all things. When we are calm and still in our hearts, minds, and bodies, we can feel or sense the subtle direction of Tao. Living the Tao is the most effortless, meaningful way to live, flowing with the Tao, the way a surfer rides the waves, while adding our own flair and best intentions to its currents. In the West, we may call the sense of the Tao a hunch or an intuition, or what feels right. Renowned physicist Brian Greene refers to a “sense of elegance” when choosing a direction in research. I think that aptly describes sensing the Tao.

Here’s how to experience the Unbendable Arm yourself. Prepare to be totally amazed!

Notice that the person is able to bend my arm even as I use all my muscular strength to resist.

First of all, if you have any arm or shoulder injuries, I don’t advise trying this at all. Also, if you do try this, do it with someone you trust to do it gently. He’ll push hard, but he won’t jerk and wrench your arm; he’ll just apply steady pressure.

Step 1:

1. Stand with your feet apart, holding your arm out fairly straight to the side.

2. Have a friend stand to your side, grab your wrist with his right hand, and place his left hand on the top of your upper arm, as in the figure.

3. Tighten your fist and your arm to keep your friend from being able to bend your arm, using all your muscular strength to resist. Your friend will push up on your wrist, while pushing down on your upper arm, so your elbow will be the fulcrum point. If your friend doesn’t push down on your upper arm as he pushes your wrist up, your whole arm will just go up in the air. The goal is for your friend to bend your arm at the elbow as you resist. Again, warn your friend to apply steady increasing pressure, rather than trying to quickly wrench your arm into bending. The goal isn’t to hurt you, but to illuminate you to your effortless power.

4. If your friend is as strong as you, you’ll likely feel your elbow begin to bend as seen in the figure. If you don’t, ask your friend to put his shoulder into it as he pushes up on your wrist (see figure).

However, notice here that my arm is relaxed, yet the other person cannot bend it.

Step 2:

1. Okay, now that you’ve felt your arm being bent as you resisted with all your muscular strength, have your friend keep his hands in the same placement on your extended arm, but now just close your eyes and relax.

2. Take a few cleansing breaths, and let your body relax, including your shoulder and extended arm.

3. Think of a down-pouring shower of lightness flowing down through your head, body, and out through your extended arm, hand, and fingers as if that flow continues on through the wall, and all the walls in the surrounding community.

4. When you get a sense of this, a feeling of an airy lightness flowing down and out through your shoulder and arm, as if it were a hollow reed, then ask your friend to try bending your arm again.

5. He won’t be able to bend it this time, no matter how hard he tries. In fact, you will think that he isn’t really trying this time, to make you feel better or something.

You may feel this, and then think to yourself “Wow, I’m doing it!” and that’ll cause you to lose your focus and he’ll bend it. It’s like when you’re typing fast, and you think, “Wow! I’m typing fast!” and then clunk, you lose your focus and your fingers don’t work right. As you practice this, you’ll get very adept at it if you aren’t already.

Note, if this didn’t work out for you at all, realize that you will have an intention not to bend your arm as your friend applies slow steady pressure, you won’t let it go completely limp like a wet noodle, but also you will be very relaxed, not straining with your muscles. Your friend should feel your arm as very relaxed even as she strains to bend it. So now try it again after reading this paragraph.

You should be pretty amazed at the power of effortless intent at this point. But, again, if that didn’t work out, don’t give up. You should go back to the Web Video Support’s Sitting QiGong meditation to experience the flow of Qi or life energy pouring through your body again. After that 17-minute experience, come back to this and try it again. In my classes, 99 percent of my students are able to perform the Unbendable Arm quite effectively immediately after doing the Sitting QiGong meditation. And even the 1 percent eventually do get it. You’ll get it, and when you do, you’ll have a great party trick to impress your friends with, but again, warn them not to “wrench” your arm, but to apply steady pressure only.

Our Flexibility Is Our Strength

This Taoist principle of effortless power is even more meaningful in our mental and emotional lives.

I use the Unbendable Arm not to demonstrate the physical power of effortless motion (although it does demonstrate that), but to dispel the myth that our straining is equivalent to productivity. When we breathe and relax while typing at the keyboard or answering the phone, we are so much more effective and real. We have time for the people in our lives instead of always rushing past them to get to the next urgent task.

Learning to See Patterns in the Chaos of Life

T’ai Chi helps our bodies be more effective by relaxing our muscles. This allows a more ordered pattern of muscle use so our muscles aren’t fighting other muscles. However, T’ai Chi also has the same effect on the mind. By quieting the mind of all the daily “noise,” our mind can open to more orderly patterns of thought. The Web Video Support’s QiGong and T’ai Chi Bring the MindInside the Body shows the exhibitioners’ awareness seems to be “inside themselves” on the process of effortless motion, not elsewhere, wrapped up in life’s problems.

Calming the Chaos Within Changes Our World

Similar to the way the body fights itself physically with muscle tension, the mind also keeps itself in needless chaos with noisy thoughts spinning around in it. T’ai Chi and QiGong can end this internal battle and enhance the power of the mind and imagination. The slow, deliberate motions of T’ai Chi that calm the body and get the muscles to work together more powerfully (as demonstrated by the Unbendable Arm) organizes the mind, too, and ultimately the world around us.

A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE
When studying T’ai Chi in Hong Kong as a young man, I was intrigued by the construction workers there. At the time I was in great shape, being a karate enthusiast who trained very hard. However, I was humbled by the much smaller, thinner Chinese construction workers who hauled enormously heavy bags of cement up bamboo scaffolds on their thin shoulders. They showed barely any exertion. Whether the workers practiced T’ai Chi or not, they had obviously absorbed some of its principles.

Phil Jackson, former head coach of the World Champion Chicago Bulls, is a Zen practitioner, and he introduced the entire Chicago Bulls basketball team to Zen exercises. T’ai Chi and QiGong exercises are from the same roots as Zen exercises and are often indistinguishable from them.

A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE
The Chinese character for Qi, or life energy, and the Latin root spir, as in spirit, mean “the air we breathe.” Both ancient cultures obviously saw how our breath connects us to the life force. When considering that each of us has breathed an atom of oxygen that was breathed by Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed, the Taoist claim that we are all connected becomes a very real concept.

The year the Bulls were introduced to Zen practices was the year they became the winningest team in the history of the NBA. This is no coincidence. The choreography the Bulls displayed that year was mind-boggling; the team often resembled one living entity rather than five separate players. As Zen exercise enables the mind to clear itself of its daily chatter or rubble, it also clarifies the communication between people. So just as the Bulls players began to quiet and clarify their own internal function by relaxing muscles and quieting thoughts they didn’t need, they simultaneously clarified their player-to-player communication. This clarity is what we saw in the incredible plays the Bulls made that year.

This was no easy feat, as those as old as me may remember that the Chicago Bulls dynasty was a cast of very diverse personalities, from the flamboyant and controversial Dennis Rodman, to the more reserved and serious Michael Jordan. It could have been easy for these diverse personalities to spend energy in internal ego and turf battles as so often happens with such large personalities. The way Phil Jackson, the “Zen Master,” used Zen meditation to relax these potential conflicts, and enable this team of superstars to complement one another instead of conflicting with each other, is exactly how the Unbendable Arm exercise works—teaching the muscles in the arm and body to let go of fighting against one another, so that their effort becomes a super effort that looks effortless.

This same clarity we cultivate through our daily T’ai Chi or QiGong exercises can help us clarify our relationships with others at work or home. Most social breakdowns are rooted in a lack of clarity, for if we aren’t clear on what we want and need, we can never expect others to support our efforts. Whether it’s our love life, our family, our work, or our social relationships, T’ai Chi’s soothing way of moving through life will make relationships more healing and effortless.

People around us become easier to deal with when we are easier to deal with. T’ai Chi shows us how much of the external world reflects what goes on in our own heart and mind. I was once invited to do a T’ai Chi presentation for a horseback rider society, to improve their relationships with their horses. This happened after Dressage, the national magazine for the Olympic horseback riding style, promoted T’ai Chi as perhaps the most effective exercise a rider could perform to enhance riding skills. The article pointed out that a horse picks up on the rider’s mental and emotional stress levels. Therefore if the rider does T’ai Chi before mounting his horse, the horse gives a smoother and quicker ride.

Imagine how much your unconscious mental and emotional turmoil affects those around you at home or work. Then think of how much your life would change if you did T’ai Chi before riding into work or home from your day.

SAGE SIFU SAYS
The life force is clarity and simplicity and holds no need to compete. By letting go of desires, utmost calm is realized, and all the world arrives at effortless peace.

Releasing Old Patterns Enables Our Evolution

This is what T’ai Chi and QiGong can do. T’ai Chi’s physical model of moving with the muscles relaxing off the bones is a model for letting go of mental and emotional obsessions. T’ai Chi enables us to let go of the chaos of life and let our mind lift and observe, unattached to outcomes, grudges, or obsessive desires. It enables us to see more clearly the patterns that cause us to bump our head into the same old walls again and again.

Letting go of attachments or stepping out of the game from time to time gives us a fresh perspective. Fresh perspective is what allows us to exercise our “imagination muscle.” It’s the most effortless thing you can do. However, it’s not always easy because it requires you to let go of all your thoughts, plans, and regrets. Creating space or breathing room in your busy days with T’ai Chi and QiGong helps your mind let go of old patterns. This enables your mind to open to the pure inspiration that wants to bubble up inside it, so you can evolve into the new person you could become.

T’ai Chi Dispels the Idea of Wrongness

Many readers or teachers who read my books often rush past this point, but this is perhaps the most profound benefit I got from my T’ai Chi journey. The most mentally and emotionally healing concept T’ai Chi has to offer our hypercritical world is that T’ai Chi dispels the idea of “wrongness.” When you practice T’ai Chi, you never, ever do it “wrong.” You just do it. Each time you do it, you relax a little more, you breathe a little easier, and your T’ai Chi gets a little better. On the Web Video Support’s T’ai Chi Slows and Calms, you’ll notice the practitioner’s reveling in the simple pleasure of relaxed motion.

OUCH!
If the T’ai Chi instructor you study with is hypercritical, you may want to find another one who has more fun with T’ai Chi. However, be aware that if you are hypercritical of yourself by nature, you may unconsciously project that onto the instructor. Relax and enjoy yourself when in T’ai Chi class and when practicing at home. This will help your instructor relax, too.

T’ai Chi Is a Model for Life

T’ai Chi helps us realize that we are always “perfect,” that our lives are ever-evolving perfection. When we learn things about T’ai Chi that we can improve, it is much easier to adopt the new ways if the old ways don’t have to be “wrong.” This is one of the ways T’ai Chi makes a terrific model for life in general. Again, this realization, this self-acceptance, even in the face of learning the challenging complexity of T’ai Chi movements, was one of the most powerful benefits I got from my 30 year T’ai Chi journey.

Our culture’s concepts of wrongness constipate the ability to let go of old ways and move into new ways more easily. If something must be wrong before it can be discarded, we judge ourselves as wrong for having done it that way. If we see things in an ever-evolving state of improvement, then nothing is wrong and there are always better ways. Then we can see that we were right for having done it the old way, drop the self-judgment, and proceed smoothly and happily into newer and even “righter” ways of approaching life.

The only wrong thing you can do in T’ai Chi is to tell yourself you’re wrong.

T’ai Chi’s way of seeing exercise (and life) as a process leaves us always content with where we are, while always taking us past our old limits. When we obsess over getting things “right,” whether we know it or not, we limit ourselves by thinking we are “done” when we get it “right.” By giving up that myth, we begin to feel a limitlessness to life. T’ai Chi helps us feel bigger, dream bigger, and love bigger.

Each time you do T’ai Chi, you relax a little more deeply and become both a little more self-aware and a little more self-accepting, enabling you to continually improve your T’ai Chi.

When we stick with T’ai Chi long enough, we realize that our T’ai Chi improves each time we do it. More important, it helps us see that we never did T’ai Chi “wrong,” for T’ai Chi is not a destination where a fixed level of perfection exists. Like our lives, T’ai Chi is an unfolding rose of improvement that blooms endlessly, more perfectly, and more beautifully each new day we practice it. An 80-year-old T’ai Chi master was being interviewed about his 60 years of T’ai Chi practice. The interviewer asked him, “At what point did you feel you mastered T’ai Chi?” The old master replied with a mischievous wink, “I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”

SAGE SIFU SAYS
When problems arise, use your energy to fix the problem rather than wasting energy fixing the blame. Fix the problem, not the blame. This concept goes right to the heart of what T’ai Chi offers our harried lives.

T’ai Chi Enhances Life

Does T’ai Chi make life perfect? No, not more perfect than it already is. And it is always perfect, although sometimes it may seem perfectly miserable. T’ai Chi encourages you to let go of outcomes and simply pour your energy into whatever nourishes life—your life and all life. The flow of Qi through the body is like water through the roots of a plant. It doesn’t try to fix anything in particular; it just enhances life at all levels. As the Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu put it, “The best people are like water. Water nurtures all things and never is in competition with them.” See Web Video Support’s Images of Flowing Qi Enable Us to Un-Grip and Open to Possibility.

Notice that the Qi character is a combination of steam or air (the top half) and rice (the lower half). The character for Qi (pronounced chee) represents steam rising from rice, meaning “the air of life,” a symbol for effortless sustenance.

T’ai Chi and QiGong Expand Imagination

Sitting QiGong is a motionless exercise. So if the slowness of T’ai Chi makes it seem ineffective to many Westerners, the stillness of QiGong may seem like a colossal waste of time. However, this could not be further from the truth.

These slow, mindful exercises bring the brain into a very calm state known by scientists as the alpha state. This is a highly creative state of mind. In fact, three of the great discoverers of our time had their greatest insights while in alpha states. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Nikolai Tesla all claimed to get their greatest discoveries while in a state of mind that Einstein called “wakeful rest.”

KNOW YOUR CHINESE
The alpha state is a frequency of brain waves that occurs during a state of relaxed concentration. It is one of four brain-wave frequencies: delta is the slowest, prevalent during infancy or in adults during sleep; theta is present in drowsy, barely conscious states; alpha is during QiGong relaxation exercises; and beta is common when the mind is busy or restless.

Why is the alpha state such a creative state of mind? For one thing, when our mind is filled with normal daily worries, plans, and television/radio noise, there’s no room left for creative thought. Also, there may be a deeper knowledge within our minds that we can’t access when our minds are busy with daily problem-solving. Psychologist Carl Jung said there is a “collective unconscious” that holds great knowledge, and that we all have access to it. But when our mind is busy with balancing the checkbook or worrying about our next raise, we can’t open to that great knowledge. This collective unconscious is the ocean of information our minds get ideas from. It’s like all the information on the internet, and our minds are like a computer that can download that information.

A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE
Bet ya your brain’s in beta! The stress we feel in our busy lives is partly because our mind spends too much time in beta brain waves, or “busy brain waves.” QiGong can help you drop into a calm state even when you’re in line at the supermarket.

When we are tense, our minds are tight and closed to new ideas. This resembles the problem with the internet. The internet has loads of great information, but most computers seem to take forever to access it. This is because information bottlenecks when it passes through the system’s modems because these modems have a limited bandwidth. If your brain is like your computer and ideas are like the internet, then QiGong and T’ai Chi are a way to increase the bandwidth to allow much more access to information.

You’ve experienced this, whether you know it or not. Have you ever faced a really tough problem you couldn’t solve? No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t see the solution. Then when you gave up and went for a walk, or sat on the back porch, or went for a drive, the answer came to you. You saw a pattern you missed when your mind was too busy trying to put the pieces together. Then when you gave up, your mind put the pieces together very easily and very effectively.

T’AI SCI
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
—Leonardo da Vinci

This is what T’ai Chi and QiGong help us learn to do more often and more easily. They open our mental bandwidth by allowing the mind to let go of its clutter. Things get clearer. As you can see, the stillness and nonaction T’ai Chi and QiGong cultivate are far from a waste of time.

When you utilize the Sitting QiGong experience, your brain waves will go through different vibratory levels, moving from beta to the alpha state. You won’t work this out mentally; it’ll be an effortless “letting-go” process, a surrendering of your grip on everything again and again with each releasing breath. As your head and heart let go, again and again, permeated by the silken effortlessness of Qi, you will become both more open-minded and more open-hearted. You will become more vulnerable, more empty of yourself. An empty vessel is the only vessel that can be filled with life’s adventure and possibility.

The Least You Need to Know

T’ai Chi heals your mind and heart.

Real power comes from peace of mind.

T’ai Chi teaches that life is limitless.

Stress closes the mind, but QiGong opens it.

Effortlessness is key to tapping into real emotional, mental, and physical power.

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