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Information is not knowledge is not widsom.

Information applied is knowledge. Knowledge experienced is wisdom.
D. Mason

At a t’ai chi workshop on Sunday, Dave (leader of workshop) dropped an interesting saying:

Information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom. Information applied is knowledge, and knowledge experienced is Wisdom.

This summer marked the first time I didn’t attend t’ai chi classes on a regular basis. Last night, the new semester began.

While it felt really good to be back in class, it didn’t. (more…)

Being a new dad coupled with crushing deadlines at work has piled more than enough stress on me lately. I also have been to my t’ai chi class in nearly a month, and home practice has slipped. This past Tuesday I went straight from work to class, and stayed the full three hours. (more…)

At t’ai chi last night Kim (our instructor) asked why we practice. A simple enough question, but one to which I found I didn’t really have an answer.

Am I in it for the health benefits? Some spiritual awakening? Martial prowess? Self awareness? All of this? None of this? (more…)

My t’ai chi study has fallen off and I need to get back into a solid routine. At one point I practiced 40 minutes to an hour everyday. Now I’m lucky to remember at all. It is amazing what an effect simple not practicing can have — if I miss more than a week of even semi-regular practice my old aches and pains begin to reappear (especially my old nemesis: neck pain). (more…)

After a year and a half I finally know all of the moves in our sword form. The last two or three are giving me fits as they are a combination of upward slices with steps. What keeps throwing me off is that the move is a forward progression, but the steps are two forward, one back, then finish forward in a 70/30 stance.

Practice, practice, practice.

Now that I know all of the moves I feel like I can start to concentrate on getting under the sword and getting my weight to sink into the ground. Currently I wave the sword around a bit and am generally off balance in almost all of the spins.

Perhaps I’ll do a photo essay on the form one of these days. It could prove to be a handy reference.

For those gamers out there, you are aware of “leveling up” a character — that moment when the suddenly gain enough experience to be at the next higher level of development. Always seemed like a rather silly and sudden mechanic to me.

But, the thing is, it actually seems to reflect life. Or at least my t’ai chi. I go about practicing t’ai chi and after a while I begin to get frustrated. I won’t seem to be showing any improvement, in fact I often feel quite the opposite.

Then in one instant, I will leap ahead and feel that I have actually reached a new level of the craft. My form feels and looks better. My push hands is better. I seem to actually level up like some silly role playing character. I have gotten this feeling about once per year and I’m not alone. Some of my classmates have expressed the same feeling — lack of progress, then one big jump ahead.

So, I reckon I’m about 4th level now…. (I guess that’d be a 4th level monk.)

Oh, I just realized that I have been practicing the sword form for just over a year now. Wow, that went by fast. One year and I still haven’t learned the entire routine. Believe it or not, that makes me happy. I am in no hurry.

Learning T’ai Chi is just as much art as doing T’ai chi. Instead of waiting for T’ai Chi to come to them, many students want to suck the life out of T’ai chi too quickly.
— Ralph A. Johnson, from T’ai Chi, Dec. 1999.

I just read an article, “Using T’ai Chi in Everyday Life,” and it reminded me of something I said, I believe in this column, some time ago: you can learn all of the postures of t’ai chi in about a year’s time. After that you can begin to learn t’ai chi. After a couple of years of that you can begin to see everything you don’t know.

Last week my teacher was talking about opening up our hips; a very important and difficult thing to do. And yet, it should be easy. For example, curl your hand up into a fist. Now, put your mind in that fist and think “relax.” The fingers release their tension and the fist uncurls. Now do that same thing with your hip. Can you even get your mind inside the hip? Can you feel the joint, let alone the individual muscles there? Probably not.

And yet it is your body just as your fist is. Why isn’t it as easy? Mostly, I suspect, because we don’t think about our hips in those terms. (Or our elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles, etc.) In fact, as a beginning t’ai chi student I couldn’t think in those terms. Now that I am starting my fifth year of study I can begin to put my mind into those various places and learn to control the minute parts of my body.

Today was a prime example. I had a very bad headache at work today. So bad I left early. (It was just shy of migraine status, which meant that I could still drive.) The pain caused the muscles at the back of my skull to tense up. This pulled on my jaw (at the joint), my shoulders and up around my ears. By putting my mind in the back of my skull (a bit redundant, but I think you know what I mean), I was able to release that tension. In so doing I could feel my shoulders drop, a rather large hunk of meat we have all experienced. I could then feel the finer muscles relax and the tension left my jaw, allowing it to relax and slide back to its normal position. Finally I could feel the extremely fine muscles and the skin on the back of my head, up towards the top and behind my ears relax.

The headache in that area subsided greatly. (The extreme pain in my eyes continued, however.) I had to keep coming back to this as the headache wasn’t gone — if I wasn’t careful the muscles would tense right back up again — but I at least had some control. After a nap, the rest of the headache finally dissipated.